Yes, I believe I have and recently too.

A post came up about sexism and someone mentioned the wage gap. Men always go to the talking point of “well women don’t want the hard and dirty jobs, men do all that work”. So I mentioned my experience as a woman trying to become an electrician:

I overheard another electrician and the foreman talking about my body in a way that made me know I was unsafe around those men. Speaking about how I’m not “woman enough” because I have short hair or the things they would do to my body without my permission to make me a “real woman^tm”.

I received a direct message from someone saying that they reached out to women they knew in the trades who confirmed my experience was not unique. It was just not something they thought about and it’s not talked about enough or pushed back on when talking about the gender wage gap.

Women enjoy working in trades but we are sexually harassed and assaulted out of these spaces and it has nothing to do with “men do all the hard work”.

Debates don’t change anyone’s opinion, online or in person. At best you or the other person will go from one side to understanding the other side, but you still have the same opinion.

I used to troll the Jreg discord when it had genuine Nazis next to anarchists (weird times). There was an expectation of earnest debate there, and because of that I managed to convince a couple fascists how dumb all that was. It felt good, though they both ended up aligning themselves as tankies so 🤷

Hopefully I did my part

Back in 2016 i got a Team Bernie person to acknowledge the genocide and aparthied in Israel.

(Yang was the correct choice, btw)

It’s rare to straight up change someone’s mind. But most change is about planting a seed that will grow over time as they remember what you said and start seeing patterns that align with it. I’ve had a few more of those, and they are still productive.

You’ve got to figure out your audience. You can’t change people unwilling to change. Since most people online prefer an echo chamber to reasonable discussion, you’ll overwhelmingly encounter those that won’t change their mind.

That said, I still find it mostly worthwhile to have SOME back and forth with those people because others will read it. I feed some trolls a few scraps in hopes that lurkers will be able to discern the better argument from it. Don’t go in too deep, and once the ad hominems come nonstop from them, or you can’t keep your next reply from containing them, stop.

I’ve had my mind changed plenty of times, but I’m also open to the idea I can be wrong. If you are talking with people that can’t manage that much, you won’t feel like you’ve “won” any arguments because it’s coming down to two people saying the other is wrong without allowing themselves to be the one in the wrong.

All that said, I’ve had way better discussion here than reddit.

I’ve both had my mind changed and had others change their mind when talking online, but I don’t think it’s the norm if I’m being honest. Most people don’t seem to enjoy having their views challenged and someone feeling defensive will very rarely approach discussion with an open mind. I say this as someone who gets defensive and struggles at times with this very thing. We’re all flawed. 🙃

Don’t know about changing my opinion while actively arguing with someone, but I have had opinions that formed for the first time when I read through comments of other people arguing. So, there’s still some value in arguing your own points for a third person observer. :)

I’ve had it happen a few times. I’ve had a surprisingly high rate of success from showing compassion to someone who has left an excessively abrasive comment. Even times when the ensuing conversation hasn’t changed someone’s mind, I’m always pretty jazzed to be able to have a civil conversation with someone.

No, I dont think so, but I have been DM’d by one or two people who weren’t participating in the discussion, they were reading or just following along; my (and other similarly minded folks in said discussion) arguments apparently got them to at least somewhat reconsider what they believed. It was only ever a handful of times over the years, but I think it still fits the premise of your question.

Now granted, this was mostly on like 2010’s “Christian creationist verses basically all of science” rage-bate Facebook groups (as was the style at the time). I have no way of confirming these people were being genuine, but also no real reason to doubt them. Most of the messages I got were people learning for the first time that Evolutionary Theory wasn’t “anti-Christian.” That the vast majority of Christians and Christian denominations weren’t actually Young Earth Creationist or necessarily against the concept of the theoretical foundations of academic biology. Heck, one or two of them didn’t even know that the overwhelming majority of Chritstians are not biblical literalists. They had been taught that most of the fields of science were basically a (insert boogeyman here) plot to destroy Christianity or god or something.

Again, these weren’t the people I was “debating” but rather just curious onlookers watching me, an insufferable 20-something edgy-atheist (again, as was the style at the time), dunk on people who had absolutely no intention of doing anything other than move the goal post to protect sky daddy.

Yes, it happens from time to time on lemmy. People convinced me to their point of view couple of times as well. As long as someone actually wants to talk and not just silence you it’s possible. I was way less likely on Reddit.

I’ve certainly had my mind changed.

One of my earliest memories of the internet was when I was like 12 and I went to nuklearpower.com (home of the 8-bit Theater webcomic), and I saw a thread in the forums debating religion. I knew atheists existed, but had never met one and never really considered why I believed the things I did, or why they believed something different. I posted a comment defending what I’d been taught but then started really thinking about it. It wound up reshaping my entire belief system. I realized that if everyone just believed what we were taught, then there’d be no way for us to really know which of us is right, and even if I was right it would be through pure luck and there are countless people following the same approach to wrong conclusions. This led me towards science, and towards grounding my beliefs in reason and evidence.

That was the first time I had my mind changed, and yes I was very young but it wasn’t the only time. Some years ago, I not only had my mind changed but changed a big part of my lifestyle, in a large part because talking about it with people on the internet convinced me to go vegan. I don’t believe I’d met another vegan irl (unless they didn’t tell me, an what are the odds of that?) and if I did I certainly didn’t debate the nitty gritty with them.

There are countless smaller examples I could point to. But in virtually all of those cases, the conversation didn’t end with, “Huh, I guess you’re right.” It ended with me arguing my position as best as I could, but being dissatisfied with the things I was saying and thinking it over over the course of days, months, even years. Changing your perspective or worldview usually doesn’t happen over the course of a single conversation, but it can cause a seed to be planted.

On individual points, yes, but I hardly engage these days. This was also back in the days of forums and fark more than on modern SNS

Yeah, several time on lemmy. Maybe like once ever for 7 years of reddit lol.

You could never know. A lot of people are not self confident enough To admit they were wrong. Even of they do, they may not tell you.