I think this academic search for an example of purely unfiltered community is getting in the way of the practical point that communities, however filtered they are, are clearly more or less filtered relative to one another, and that yields observable effects.
4chan is clearly less filtered than reddit, and we can see how differences in the degree of filtering creates a race to the bottom.
4chan is too restrictive for some people who want to race to an even deeper bottom, and on and on.
>That doesn't necessarily mean we need more of the toxicity at the bottom of the cesspool that imageboard culture is known for
But the whole point is that the less filtered the community, the more a toxic lowest common denominator develops, which is not preferable to the things decried as "echo chambers" in more filtered communities.
4chan is clearly less filtered than reddit, and we can see how differences in the degree of filtering creates a race to the bottom.
4chan is too restrictive for some people who want to race to an even deeper bottom, and on and on.
>That doesn't necessarily mean we need more of the toxicity at the bottom of the cesspool that imageboard culture is known for
But the whole point is that the less filtered the community, the more a toxic lowest common denominator develops, which is not preferable to the things decried as "echo chambers" in more filtered communities.