The technology that goes into the Internet is straightforward and largely understood. But the social inventions that the Internet brought out are still being understood

The problem with politics and our inexperience with the Internet is that it can be a completely dehumanizing experience. We can talk about policies and actions that can impact millions, but without seeing faces, seeing the people we are interacting with, we lose the idea that we are indeed dealing with other people.

This can make the Internet an easy target for hate. It suddenly becomes possible to give a voice to writing off people in the worst way without experiencing remorse for the words you say. You can see this already with hate speech in forums and online communities. Creating a virtual persona with no link back to a physical person allows people to say terrible things without consequence. It gives life to some of the more terrible aspects of humanity without needing to live in any one person.

This makes politics on the Internet a dangerous place. Every policy and every problem that our country faces impacts millions of people in different ways, yet in order to be heard, they must also be reduced to a sound byte or a tweet. Long term solutions and effective governance needs more than that, but hate speech does not.

Our online personas do not seem to follow the same conventions as an in-person conversation, especially when you consider debates on social media.

Its possible that in your debates, you are debating multiple people, none of which will feel like they are debating in good faith or take your points at all. It may not even be possible to determine if you are debating with people or bots/foreign actors who are attempting to influence you.

When you have a conversation in person, there's an implicit understanding between people. The ideas and opinions are attributed to the person speaking them and are responsible for them.

Our online personas do not directly link back to us in many cases. In some cases you cannot verify that the person you are talking to belongs to the person in real life, or that you are talking to a sophisticated bot. This allows people to take liberties online that you wouldn't otherwise.