What If There Was A Platform Where We Could Peacefully Debate Politics?
It’s no secret that the political climate in the United States is tense and that it only drives people further apart. Under such circumstances, I think talking about the issues at hand and what we can do to address them, and more importantly, see where our differences are in these issues is significant to moving forward as a country. Currently, in my experience, I have seen people debate politics based on a post or comment someone makes on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok. Unfortunately, what I sometimes see is that the conversation may get out of hand with both sides becoming frustrated, and overall, neither side changes their mind about anything. Nothing happens. This only drives people on opposing sides further from each other. Nothing is accomplished here.
There should be a space where we can talk about these issues without it getting out of hand. If we want to accomplish anything further and better the lives of others, we must discuss current events and the problems that come with them.
So what if there was a social media platform where we could peacefully and civilly talk about political issues? I would propose a platform called DebateThis. Ideally, it would be a social media platform where people (regardless of political ideology or views) can debate any topic available. Productive conversation is the primary focus of this application unlike on other social media platforms, where anyone can post about essentially anything in any medium.
In relation to other social media platforms, DebateThis would be most similar to Reddit, where there are communities (subreddits) organized by topic. Topics on Reddit can range from anything like r/Democrat to r/Crochet to r/natureismetal to r/Overwatch. You can find a community about anything on Reddit and be part of that community to discuss things related to that given topic. DebateThis would be similar but only focus on political topics like Gun Policy, Immigration, and Education. Like Reddit, DebateThis would be very public where anyone can view content, but you must have an account to contribute to the conversation. Even if you do not necessarily want to add to a debate, you can still view posts. This can be useful just for people who want to educate themselves on issues before jumping in with their viewpoints.
One difference from Reddit is that DebateThis would not be anonymous. Users should have a known identity. This is primarily to prevent the presence of trolls in these debates and discourage hateful content and harassment. Trolling and harassment would not be tolerated as this detracts from the conversation. Having a known identity may also provide an idea to fellow debaters of your background and credibility. Accounts can also be linked to other social media platforms to help build credibility as well. For example, you will know if you are debating a college student, small business owner, corporate employee, etc.
The actual conversations/debates will run similar to social media posts we often see, but it would likely be more text-based. However, any kind of media (image, video, audio, text) can be posted to converse. Like Reddit, an upvote/downvote mechanism would be provided for each post and comment. In a debate, other users can jump in and add points but the original creator of the post drives that conversation. Opposing users can “counter” a post with another post as well, or a “reply” to that post (similar to TikTok). When appropriate, references should be linked as well to back up a user’s claim in a debate.
Debates do not take place in real-time and these are conversations that can be held at any time. All content would persist over time (in that it doesn’t go away and won’t be deleted) unless it is deemed as trolling, harassment, or hateful content. Misinformation would also be deleted. Like Reddit, there would be moderators on the platform to help control these instances. Moderating content to ensure it is productive and civil, I believe, would be the most difficult part of managing DebateThis. Furthermore, what happens if someone gets off-topic and strays away from the conversation topic? What then? Moderating this kind of content may be difficult as well because slightly irrelevant content may not be harmful to users: it just has no place in that conversation.
Below are three mockup wireframe diagrams of what the app could look like. You can view the interactive diagram here: https://gn4rlx.axshare.com (Note that only the scenario depicted here will work. No other buttons in the diagram function.)
To summarize, DebateThis would be a social media platform app solely for debating politics in a more civil, peaceful, and productive environment. The hope is that the tensions between political parties in the U.S. will decrease so that moving forward as a country can be smoother and easier for all. Affordances of this platform and include the following:
- Content persists over time (non-ephemeral) — can be viewed at any time
- Text-driven posts — text is the primary way to converse facts and opinions
- All content is public to users with and without accounts — allows people to be educated and view content at any time
- Not anonymous — keeps users liable and may help prevent trolling, harassment, and hate speech
- Topic-driven conversations — allows for certain political topics to be focused on (quite similar to Reddit)
- Not (necessarily) real-time debate — similar to non-ephemeral content, debates may be real-time, but likely will not be so users can contribute to the conversation at any time
With these affordances, it becomes more likely civil and peaceful behavior is incentivized (and trolling and harassment is de-incentivized). It hopefully also incentivizes actual productive conversation on the platform as no user is anonymous and is expected to uphold community guidelines and respect, regardless of how differently they may feel about a topic compared to other users. Moderating content to ensure it stays civil likely will be the most difficult part of maintaining the platform, but I believe could be accomplished.
