I'm a pretty active person online and I genuinely do not understand your concern. If you want to say something controversial online, just do so anonymously like you are doing now. If you want to give somebody candid advice I'm not sure why you'd do that in public anyways.
> Wasn't most "legitimate discussion" already happening in private already?
Probably, but I think there was still much more interesting discussion going on publicly in years past. It's anecdotal but I've definitely seen a huge spike in how many of my colleagues are retreating entirely to private communities and most of them never make public comments anymore. That's disappointing to me because I think there's a lot of value in having these discussions in the open with respected and accomplished names attached. It also gives a level of perceived accessibility that I think is important.
Really? Prior to anonymous Internet comments there were even fewer discussions. I think recent years is when we’ve finally began to understand how people really feel.
The second one, which I only use occasionally, is a private Android/iOS app that is very similar to Signal group chats.
I've heard of quite a few others but I don't have first hand experience with them.
Pop culture and politics is where the mob culture resides.
I vehemently disagree. In my experience, a very substantial number of them fear the mob because there's so much at stake and nobody is interested in falling on their sword. Many people want to talk politics and philosophy and those subjects are often hard to avoid unless conversation is heavily restricted. I've had tons of conversations about algorithms that naturally turn into discussions of political and philosophical ramifications. A substantial amount of the screening that goes into accessing private communities revolves directly around likelihood of charitable interpretation, secrecy and behaviour on public social networks.