Those people who read lots of things to reinforce their world view are acting on confirmation bias. This is also potentially true of you. People seek out the things that they already think to confirm their views. In your case it was helpful and therapeutic — but did you ever click any articles that said ‘By the way, therapy is bollocks’ or something like that? I’d guess not. The human journey is to seek out something you already are psychologically working on. You add information and things you didn’t know, but arguably it’s information that you’re already subconsciously seeking.

Which means that when you invite people with controversial views into Medium, you’re asking them to join a meeting place of ideas. You’re taking them off the dark corners of the web (where people find them anyway) and you’re asking them to put their views front and centre. Those views can then be challenged in the comments and reply articles can be written. Provided the discussion remains respectful and the writing quality high — I have no problem with this. In short, I would prefer everyone got a seat at the table so you could work out who the dickheads are. Shine a light in dark places etc.

Again, if you’re looking at extreme views that cause mass amounts of suffering to others — I’d be banning Catholics, anyone with a car and people who buy cheap clothes on the high street. The suffering of others is very difficult to define. I’m typing this reply on a Mac, knowing full well that doing so is creating a market that means some underage kid in Africa is being forced into a mine to grab Cobalt in the Congo. This world is too complex for simple solutions like ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Or even ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’

Getting an agreement about what is acceptable and what isn’t, tends to pander to the loudest and most vocal. That’s currently the millennial liberals with very little understanding of what liberalism actually entails.