I'm not convinced that a small-group discussion model necessarily leads to an echo chamber. With big social media the threat of mobs and brigades creates a bigger chilling effect than moderation. Meanwhile, the incentive systems baked into big media favors aggression and snark.
Conversations happen in family living rooms, church basements, and around water coolers that big social media, with its absence of empathy and compassion, just can't support.
@CBrachyrhynchos Agreed. I wrote up some similar thoughts pre-Mastodon, a while back: https://www.sanspoint.com/archives/2016/01/30/twitter-is-an-unsafe-public-square-facebook-is-a-private-living-room/
(Note that the piece is not a defense of Facebook as such.)
@CBrachyrhynchos I think this is right. This is how I feel about massively multiplayer gaming, too: what I think people want is just-sufficiently-large multiplayer gaming. To play with interesting people, not a million strangers. We want to blame the tech for echo chambers and bubbles, but it's really a sociological prior and a cultural problem that extends beyond platform and interface.
@CBrachyrhynchos Interface may exaggerate isolation; algorithms may accelerate it. Design matters--but not as much as most people think.
Also, we've known that unmoderated internet discussion favor the most aggressive and silence quiet moderation since the listserv days. I'm deeply skeptical of the virtues of big social media, or even of federation.