Technology

I think you're wrong.

Yup and guess what they are way more vocal online since they can still have an audience there and this is one of the reasons social media sites are so skewed from representing generalizable opinions. It's a contrarian incubator.

I play devil's advocate in most friend-space conversations, it's just who I am, I don't do it disrespectfully (I hope) but it's just the first thing my brain goes to.

Oh, disagreeing with the post, huh? Looks like we found the AI troll, get 'em everyone!

Read the article. It's not about normal run of the mill disagreement. It's about:

...an entire class of Reddit users whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree with others. These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.

Absolutely. Someone will always disagree and that‘s a good thing, actually. Bubbles are just as if not more problematic than the disagreeing „troll“. Sometimes there are reasons to play devil‘s advocate and sometimes you just bring up concerns that you‘d like to be eliminated.

I remember when I was part of a tiny minority bringing up concerns over Elon Musk and let me tell you the pushback and ridicule I received IRL was even worse than discourse online at the time. It took a long time until someone came up to me and actually admitted that I was right about Musk the entire time. I just failed to bring my point across earlier because they were better at debating but I like to think I sped up their process of becoming disillusioned about tech billionaires a little bit.

There‘s also a case where I got temporarily banned from a community I was very active in and labelled as a „right wing troll“ when almost every comment I made on Lemmy pointed to the opposite. A moderator probably had a bad day, read a comment they disagreed with and let the hammer fall down before even doing as little as to check my post history. Not much harm done I guess but man we should learn to embrace other opinions a little more.

But this isn't about people seeking worthwhile debates

These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.

Ah okay but you won't respond to this.

Disagreeing is often treated as trolling by those you disagree with, depending on the subject. Mostly because those disagreements are often bad faith talking points from some groups of people.

That's not an argument, that's a contradiction!

I'd also argue it's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're talking shit be sure you're able to back it up. I am naturally contrarian but in many cases it's less about what I feel and more about taking the side of the voice that is missing.

Wow this guy really loves to disagree

No it isnt

i was surprised when they kept him on after that.

Clearly did not learn anything from The Office Space. that's management material and your future boss

read the article.

Perhaps our most striking result was finding an entire class of Reddit users whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree with others. These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.

no you don't 😜