My short reply to this is that I am a professional advocate helping people get what they want against systemic oppression. I also work in the mental health setting. There are benefits to meeting people where they are and validating their feelings - but feelings rarely change anything of their own accord anyway.
Also, when you inadvertently reward people for acting on feelings, you get people who continue to act on feelings. An echo chamber is simply a non-constructive environment which has monetised emotional content over reasoning. If someone says 'hey, I'm really depressed' then you don't give them £10. You might explore why they're depressed and you might help them, you don't reward them.
Likewise, if someone is angry, and legitimately so - then you don't reward that anger. That is what Medium does. An expression of anger is not simply an expression of anger, it has repercussions and consequences.... some of which involve other people who are either a) actually hurt or b) butt hurt coming to tell you what they think. Those are the consequences of writing your feelings. If you're fragile with your feelings then you shouldn't be writing them in a public forum because you are enacting a therapeutic output in a non-safe space. That isn't what a public forum is for.
If we then compound the problem by monetising it and giving people the power to shut down any contradiction then we aren't meeting people half way and helping them. We come from separate places, separate job roles and separate countries - but I suspect neither of us does our work in a public space. Life coaching is one on one, therapy can be in small and safe groups, but we do not need unstable people leading the discourse because it destabilises the discussion.
And there are people who can have those discussions without feelings. You and I do it all the time. SC and I have spent four years doing it. Jeannette Espinoza and Estacious White disagree with my stance on race - but we do not need others to help us manage our feelings. If you write something particularly if your something talks about another group of people in a vague and general way then the general public is under no obligation to meet you half way. This is not a safe space. If you can write about your world and your feelings and you can deflect angry readers without hitting the block button - and both you and I can, then perhaps it's safer for us.
Things will get better via law and social policy being changed. It won't get better by the monetisation of feelings - that is the difference between advocacy and venting. Frustrating but it is true.
