On the internet content is prioritized by how people interact with it and I think people are far more likely to interact with content that is affirmative rather than dissenting, unless they're a contentious asshole like myself,
That's kind of the point. Some people seek dissenting viewpoints. Some people seek dissenting viewpoints, so they can criticise them, in order to affirm their POV.
Some people seek dissenting viewpoints to learn from them.
There's no clear rules that everyone follows.
but the consequence of this is that it creates an affirmation feedback loop.
True. There are different ways of handling your emotions and concerns. Some are more functional than others.
People could benefit from everyone being taught better ways of handling their emotions and relationships with others, and encouraged to use them on a regular basis.
I think SJW culture is simply a consequence of this, these people are disengaging with reality in favor of their safe spaces and carefully curated gated online communities where they compete among themselves to see who can take their ideology to its most ridiculous extreme.
Consider: the kid who usually gets 99% right in his exams, is usually not afraid of admitting that he got 1% wrong. The kid who usually gets 99% wrong in his exams, is usually keen to hear that he got 1% right.
If we're seeing a lot of this sort of thing, then we can expect that people on the internet are regularly criticised for this sort of thing. They're escaping to these online communities, because they are now afraid of engaging in real life.
They have NOT been taught how to socialise and get on with others. So they don't know how to handle it.
Classes on how to get on with others and express yourself, your opinions and your needs in ways that will make others more keen to accept you and help you achieve your aims, used to be called "etiquette classes". They were standard until the 1960s, for this reason.
Now I'd be inclined to think this an online only phenomena and these are just a few particularly outspoken idiots, y'know that's not really a problem, however it has entered the realms of governmental policy (the ever broadening definition of hate speech and sexism) and pop culture (hollywood, games and comics in particular).
The internet went from being a backwater to the premier form of communication, and that includes the marketplace of ideas that affect how people vote. The politicians were being swept into power by the internet, whether they liked it or not.
The first American and British rulers to structure their campaign to primarily focus on the internet, were Barack Obama and David Cameron respectively.
What should we do about this, indeed should anything be done?
Teach people the consequences of their behaviour, and a proper psycho-education about other ways to communicate, that will allow them to achieve their aims in ways that other people would accept.
Because they're already on the internet, this becomes easy. Get them to play Game of Life. It's like real life. Whenever anyone talks to them, they get one of 4 different responses. If they choose the "f**k you, motherf**ker" option, their avatar gets stabbed.
After a while of playing the game, you get to figure out the patterns. This trains them to be able to use those same patterns very easily, quickly and fluently, in real life and on the internet.
Does the internet need to undergo a structural change or have the contentious netizens been slacking in their duties?
1) In real life, laws were made to prevent the kinds of things that go on on the internet. You can have several hundred million people watching the same page, with the speaker able to say ANYTHING HE WANTS.
In real life, that would be a huge open space packed with listeners. Governments generally have laws requiring that public meetings of that large a size need to apply for permission, in case the speaker is another Adolf Hilter, and enough of the speakers listen to him for them to have the power of the Nazi party.
But you can do it on the internet.
Not really hard to set some parameters for who can join a thread, like set a max number, so you can't get a thread about Nazi supremacy with more than a few thousand readers.
2) In real life, you can't just say what you want, because then the neo-nazis would start spewing everywhere. So we all have to watch what we say, to live in a nice world.
As a result, if you HAVE to vent, you go to a private room, with a few friends, and you speak with them and them alone. If anyone pops their head in, you tell them that it's private. No-one gets to hear or read your messages except for the 3 people in the room during the conversation.
On the internet, the default system is that everyone can listen to and join in on those conversations.
So the neo-nazis really can start spewing everywhere on the internet. So can every person with ideas that are totally unreasonable, unfeasible and highly morally questionable.
The original chat servers worked to mimic human patterns that reduced hate speech.
But then the internet forums changed that, precisely because it gave humans the limitations that they'd already chosen to impose upon themselves in real life, not because they had to, but because it made for such a better environment, and it got the result they expected.
Re-install the human-type limitations on chat and message systems that we have in real life, and you'll see internet speech evolve to resemble the human speech of those environments with those environmental parameters.