Which is more inclusive, Disneyland or a traveling carnival?

To participate in Disneyland, you must buy an expensive admission ticket, which puts entry out of reach for many who cannot afford the fee. But once inside, everyone has equal access to all of the rides and attractions. (Almost) no one has any inherent advantage at enjoying Disneyland simply because they are white or rich. This type of activity is inclusive in the Habermasian sense—once inside, status is fairly well bracketed.

Meanwhile, anyone can attend a carnival regardless of whether or not they can afford an expensive admission ticket. The tradeoff is that people with more money have an advantage in enjoying the carnival, because they can play more games and see more attractions. This is the philosophy of many modern tech companies, who offer all customers a free service knowing full well that some segment of power users will achieve greater utility from the platform than others.

But exclusions can occur on the basis of more than just financial means. A far more pernicious form of exclusion is exclusion based on ideology, because such exclusions create faux public spheres that purport to facilitate discourse but in actuality are little more than echo chambers. An example of something like an ideological Disneyland would a moderated internet forum. If you don’t hold enough majority viewpoints you run the risk of being denied entry (banned), but if you do, then all users have roughly the same level of power.

An ideological carnival, on the other hand, would be something like Twitter. Even individuals with fiercely anti-majority views can access and use Twitter, even though they will never have the same power (i.e. number of followers) that other users may have.

Viewed in this light, it becomes apparent that the carnival is a fundamentally more inclusive model of technology, because the carnival philosophy at least has the capacity to ensure some positive utility for all people, whereas the Disneyland philosophy provides no utility for people who cannot “afford” entry.

The primary argument against the inclusiveness of the carnival-type approach to technology (with little to no exclusions based on ideology) is that groups of users can band together to “silence” others, even though the silenced individuals have the technical ability to use the service. This is the “Twitter trolls” argument, which is that the service effectively allows Bad People a heckler’s veto. What this argument fails to consider is the difference between self-imposed and system-imposed restrictions. For example, it is difficult to have a conversation both in a library and at a rock concert, but in one case it is because you as an individual don’t want to make noise because of social conventions, and in the other case it is physically impossible to hear each other. It is fundamentally better (more inclusive) for any silencing that occurs to happen because the individual involved personally chooses to be quiet than it is to have the system physically prevent an individual from speaking, assuming we are agnostic to the views involved. Thus, the carnival approach defeats the Disneyland approach because all censorship is self-censorship (which, while not great, is better than the alternative).

So the most inclusive possible technology, in my view, is one with no bars on entry and no removal-based moderation. While (ironically) I don’t use it much myself, reddit fits this bill fairly well. Individual subreddits do not, but the service as a whole allows anyone to make a subreddit and post almost whatever they please. I suppose it might be worth pointing out that “most inclusive” does not necessarily mean “best.”