What's the problem of helping people insulate themselves into an echo-chamber? Increased polarization, diminished empathy for people with different values, greater social-sorting, lower trust in institutions, and plenty of other problems.
Yeah, I do get that. Personally, I wouldn't use Block Party nor Social Media in general, for all the reasons that you outline. I don't want those things. Nevertheless, I see no major problem in providing tools to people who have a different set of priorities to myself. Particularly if they purport to solve other social problems, such as harassment.
As in all things, there's a trade-off. For me, the social benefit of a functional Block Party outweighs the risks. I take at face-value the founder's claimed issues with abusive content and assume that many others deal with similar. It is a shame that those doing the abuse had insufficient empathy, but that ship has already sailed.
At the end of the day, I don't believe you can win this one. Even if your concerns were overwhelming - which I think they are not. Simply, you cannot force people to read content they'd prefer not to. If this abuse is a genuine issue, someone will inevitably provide those tools. Either Block Party or another provider.
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