I'm not really disagreeing with you about discord and google docs being popular but something strikes me about it.
(1) because they're both centrally controlled, which leads to some of the same problems
(2) google docs for chat is pretty ad hoc, which is fine at some level, but points to something (secrecy? ban-proof-ness? teenagers co-opting something where there might be a better solution, like irc or riot or various group chats?)
(3) I don't think google docs or discord are quite the same as twitter etc. in the sense that they serve a different function (group chat)... maybe discord has some similarities but it seems to serve a different function.
which leads me to:
How much is this discussion about centralization versus public versus private-facing communication?
I've always felt that centralization (as opposed to federation or decentralization) is a bad thing (or at least, less desirable, network math be damned), and think that some old-school things are underrated (e.g., IRC). At the same time, there's been a common thread for years of people wanting to communicate over the internet without the technical hassle. webpage without learning networking and programming -> MySpace/Facebook... rss without learning networking and programming -> twitter... forums without learning forum software and dealing with name registries etc. -> reddit ...
I've toyed around with mastodon and have been struck by how much it has the feel of a lot of the old web, but it seems like it needs more critical mass to take off like something like email.
I'm also libertarian (leaning, in the sense I have voted for libertarian candidates in multiple elections at multiple levels, but not most of the time) but do research on this. I am not sure what to say to allay your concerns, except to say that mathematically/statistically speaking approval voting is what I would implement after a rating system, which I think is the best but also maybe the most cumbersome.
I personally don't really care about the political impetus behind changing the election format (not to say I don't care about politics, just that in the case of alternative voting systems the standard US format is almost the worst you could do). Anything that moves the US toward something better would be an improvement.
My one concern is that for whatever reason ranking systems seem to be the thing being pushed most, when approval or rating systems would probably be better.
Changing to an approval system would probably be the easiest way to increase 3rd party viability at the moment. Which of those 3rd parties would benefit is a different issue, but approval systems allow people to diversify their expressed preferences, so at the very least it wouldn't be worse for 3rd party candidates.
The basic issue is that plurality voting is a very poor measure of preference. Imagine if you were asked to measure height of 5 people in the room, 3 of whom are over 6 feet 10 inches tall. You could report how tall they are; this is most similar to a rating system. You could rank order their heights; this preserves rank ordering information but not anything about absolute difference, so the two people who are 7'2" and 7'1" look as different as the people who are 7'2" and 5'2". You could also ask people to just mark which are taller than 6'10", which at least acknowledges that more than one person could be taller than 6'10", and preserves some info about absolute height. Or, you could do as is standard, and just indicate who is tallest, which doesn't preserve much information at all about height.
(1) because they're both centrally controlled, which leads to some of the same problems (2) google docs for chat is pretty ad hoc, which is fine at some level, but points to something (secrecy? ban-proof-ness? teenagers co-opting something where there might be a better solution, like irc or riot or various group chats?) (3) I don't think google docs or discord are quite the same as twitter etc. in the sense that they serve a different function (group chat)... maybe discord has some similarities but it seems to serve a different function.
which leads me to:
How much is this discussion about centralization versus public versus private-facing communication?
I've always felt that centralization (as opposed to federation or decentralization) is a bad thing (or at least, less desirable, network math be damned), and think that some old-school things are underrated (e.g., IRC). At the same time, there's been a common thread for years of people wanting to communicate over the internet without the technical hassle. webpage without learning networking and programming -> MySpace/Facebook... rss without learning networking and programming -> twitter... forums without learning forum software and dealing with name registries etc. -> reddit ...
I've toyed around with mastodon and have been struck by how much it has the feel of a lot of the old web, but it seems like it needs more critical mass to take off like something like email.