Joanna Price, a public librarian with an interest in community-building, discusses the dynamics of building resilient and compassionate online communities. She critiques large social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, for fostering alienation and trolls. Joanna shares her vision for smaller, more intimate communities of around 100 people that grow naturally without heavy promotion. This, she believes, reduces the likelihood of bad behavior while fostering kindness and individual empowerment. Moderation is seen as key, emphasizing compassion over punitive measures. She draws inspiration from early internet communities, such as the WELL, and discusses how her proposed new community, Elm’s Bright, seeks to create a positive, intergenerational space focused on shared learning and real-world activities.
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Joanna Price:
On the Internet, we’re very aware of trolls, right? Folks who do come in to intentionally cause trouble. And one of the goals of the kind of community that I’m envisioning is that it’s 100 people max, it probably starts out with somebody and some people they know, right? Either on the internet or in real life and it expands in a less dramatic, advertised way, right? In a sort of natural way that makes it less likely that you will get explicit trolling. But were that to occur, that would I think fall under the bad acting notion of – we just ban them. And, you know, I say we ban trolls and I think I don’t want to suggest that there’s no place for dark humor or fun, right? Like there’s a difference between when we say trolling and we can mean a few different things – sometimes we’re talking about what is essentially making jokes and that’s one thing. And sometimes we’re talking about stuff that’s a lot darker and a lot worse than that.