Embrace An Opportunity For Conflict

It's our role as lawyers to embrace conflict and debate, according to columnist Keith Lee.

People are exposed to more people, ideas, and opinions today than they ever have been before. We all carry a portal to the rest of the world in our pockets. We can choose to see pictures of family, get sports scores, or play games. Or we can push our own thoughts and selves into the world through the portal – blog posts, Tweets, or Insta. All of these things mash together online and vie for people’s (and algorithms’) attention.

But due to algorithms, complaints, and self-selection, people are seeing and reading less and less of anything that challenges or provokes them. Facebook has long censored and prohibited provocative images and text. But Facebook is also more constrained due to its nature. You only see information from “friends.” It’s curated and limited in a way that a service like Twitter is not.

As William Gibson, famed author of Neuromancer and other novels, once remarked, “Facebook or MySpace feel like malls to me. But Twitter actually feels like the street. You can bump into anybody on Twitter.” This has long been the case on services like Twitter or Reddit – but that seems to be changing.

Twitter is considering different ways to display tweets. It’s offering new features, like the ability to share block lists. Reddit has had a public meltdown in the past few weeks over the direction of content and user interaction on the site.

Why are the more “free/open” social media services having these issues? Why has conflict or disagreement become such a hot button issue that companies are changing the nature of their services?

Is it because Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) are being harassed? Or because SJWs are loud-mouth whiners who wither under scrutiny? Is it due to #gamergate – the idea that misogyny is rampant among core video game players? Or the #gamergate that strives for ethics and disclosure in media outlets? Should people be allowed to debate the virtues of the term ‘cuckservative,’ or should it be banned?

A few years ago, none of this debate would have occurred. People would have duked it out in the marketplace of ideas and the chips would fall where they lie. Some would lose, some would win. But that’s increasingly not the case. Instead there are calls for censoring or removing any ideas that challenge certain people’s narratives. They don’t want to engage with conflicting ideas online, they only seek confirmation and reassurance of their views. That can be expected in walled gardens like Facebook, but Twitter? Reddit? Other forums?

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What’s happening to “the street” of the Internet?

Beware Online Filter Bubbles

Back in 2011, Eli Pariser released a book and TED talk entitled, “The Filter Bubble.” You can watch the talk here.

Pariser warned that social media services’ reliance on computer algorithms would be harmful to society. This is because the algorithms strive to show people more of what they already like and tend to obfuscate things the algorithms think they don’t like. There was concern that reliance on computers would funnel people into narrow silos of thought and opinion and they would become ignorant of new and challenging ideas. Not only would people be ignorant of differing ideas but due to the echo chambers created, they would react hostilely to such ideas.

And while that has assuredly happened to some extent, people don’t need algorithms to create filter bubbles, they’ll aggressively create them for themselves. Not just online either of course. People tend to either watch Fox News, or not. They watch MSNBC, or not. Somehow, someway, conflict – a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one – has become anathema to many people. People want filter bubbles. They want to be protected from challenging arguments and opinions.

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But conflict is the bread and butter of lawyers. It’s what we do. Clients go to lawyers because they can no longer handle their own conflicts. They need professional a**holes to do it for them. Yet, I think there is a worrying trend among many younger lawyers to shy away from conflict as well. It’s apparent if you pay attention to interactions among lawyers online. Many lawyers seem as apt to block and filter dissenting opinions as quickly as regular users of these services.

That’s not to say lawyers (or anyone) have to suffer fools or harassment. If someone is plainly harassing or threatening a user, then that user should feel free to block them. But often times it seems that’s not the case with many lawyers online. They seem as quick to shut other people out if there is any challenge to their narrative. When something as simple as asking about a cite results in blocking someone, there is a problem.

As lawyers, it’s our role to embrace conflict and debate. It’s especially revealing to due this online as it is the new “town square.” It’s where people go for news, information, and culture. Part of that culture needs to be a healthy debate of ideas and principles. Lawyers have an opportunity to display to the public their skills of rhetoric and persuasion. If a lawyer is unwilling to be challenged in the court of public opinion, it doesn’t exactly instill confidence that they are able to handle themselves in an actual courtroom.

In the last hyperlinked post, attorney Eric Turkewitz noted that Judge Alex Kozinski recently gave an interview in which he stated, “If my proposals raise controversy and opposition, leading to a spirited debate, I will have achieved my purpose.”

But you can’t have a spirited debate if you make a proposal and then block anyone who disagrees with you. You have to be willing to put your ideas out there, and be willing to take the chance that they may get knocked down. Or they might win! But you’ll never know unless you put yourself out there.

As President Roosevelt said in his speech at the Sorbonne:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.


Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.

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