For some time I was an active user on Reddit, and my experience was the same as most where I often got some useful information, sometimes learned something new, and sometimes ran into users who said things I didn’t agree with. Then in 2019 that started changing, ever more drastically, where disagreement on some topics was taboo. Along with the ever increasing polarization and division of Canadians, this lead to a certain orthodoxy with dogmas that should not be challenged.

At the time I’m writing this we have some benefit of hindsight, but topics like BLM, COVID lockdowns, protests, and so on were some where in some communities you were only allowed to agree - the other option was to be silenced (posts removed) and/or banned. I had created a small community on Reddit called Ottawa/Gatineau as place where people from the region could connect, converse, challenge each other on their views, and perhaps start finding some middle ground. I see open conversation as the principal cure to polarization. That community was created as an alternative to an existing community that, through new moderators, actively prevented this and encouraged polarization by re-enforcing some views and removing anyone that didn’t agree. In other words, moderated to actively create an echo chamber of homogeneous views on certain topics. The community I created was eventually removed from Reddit, after the moderators of the other community repeatedly complained that criticism of their approach to moderation was online harassment, and therefore against site rules. Any following attempts to create an alternative community were all followed by removal by site admins, enforcing that there can be only one Reddit community for the Ottawa region.

This bit of a history lesson is to give context for why I’ve created this community here on Lemmy.ca. While I’m certainly leery of investing more of my time creating an online community, especially after seeing it removed with no recourse earlier, I still believe that there is a need to reduce polarization in the Ottawa / Gatineau community. Recognizing the need, and doing nothing about it, isn’t something I’m able to do.

So here I am, and here you are as well. Welcome.