I think genuine and thoughtful discussion takes a lot more effort than shit posting, and when you mix that with a karma system that encourages one-upmanship and a few echo chambers, it can get toxic real quick.

Wow, there’s a lot of finger pointing at different generational demographics here over something that’s structural to Reddit.

Stupidly big forums + up/down votes dictating what actually gets seen is a recipe for dunking, sarcasm, and generally shitty behaviour.

Onces there’s more people in a community than people can actually remember the name/pfp of, then other members stop being people and start being either an audience or cannon fodder. Couple that with the fact that people love a good snarky comment or rhetorical thrashing, and that leaves busy spaces as prime real estate for smack talk showdown.

On top of that, there’s simply the fact that anyone not trying too hard to get noticed just doesn’t get heard at all. Taking the time to post something thoughtful when literally no one is going to see it is a fool’s errand, and not worth anybody’s time. So, you either waste your time and become increasingly embittered, or you don’t, and just say vapid but snappy bullshit.

Then there’s the fact that moderators are overwhelmed by groups that large, and will default to mental self-defense by doing things like banning without warning, not being transparent, not attempting deescalation, etc. This creates a gulf between the community and the community managers, which furthers the dehumanizing dynamics (and leads to people seeing moderators as power tripping narcissists, rather than tired and fed up people).

We simply didn’t evolve to empathize with, listen to, or manage 600,000 people at once. We did, however, evolve to try to win popularity contests and define in-groups and out-groups.

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Nah, it’s people and algorithms. The algorithms we see today in certain social media apps etc encourage certain behaviours and patterns of use.

Not all algorithms or systems necessarily encourage productive and rational discussion or “information hunting” for practice and forward thinking.

Consider that brainwashing and warmongering propaganda is still alive and well used today in many parts of the world, the reality is that nobody is immune, but we can at least make ourselves aware of the “drug” that these systems give our brains and avoid allowing ourselves to become a victim to the system by being aware of someone else’s dogma or agendas.

The early adopters at kbin are thoughtful, articulate, and considerate. Very welcoming.

It’s not just the toxicity but the intense hivemind. I flicked back to check some news and saw an article about Pete Davidson crashing a vehicle into a building and to my recollection it was really the only controversy he’d been a party to, but because he’s on the Reddit’s Most Hated list every comment was picking apart every perceived slight, calling him terrible names saying he was washed up, waste of space it was just like… guys take a fucking breather. He’s a human person, sorry he dates celebs.

I’m an old fucker, to me it seems like the tipping point started in 2008, and really started to get bad in 2016.

I was already chatting on online forums in the late 90s, and on slashdot starting around 2000. There was lots of discussion, some of it first, but it was just discussion. Not a lot of politics per se.

In September 2001, al queda attacked the world trade center, the Pentagon, and another plane was flown into the ground. This led to lots of discussion online and a massive increase in political conversations.

In 2003, America went to war in Iraq. This was a generational event, and it fundamentally changed internet conversation. Partisanship really started to show up, in part thanks to George W. Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” rhetoric.

At some point along the way, I stopped using slashdot. I tried using kuro5hin for a while, then Digg, and eventually landed on Reddit.

Two fundamental changes that happened in 2008 were the election of Barack Obama, and the Ron Paul revolution. In both cases, internet ground game ended up having an outsided impact on politics. Barack Obama ended up being an internet sensation, and his Democrats got the presidency and both houses of Congress by a wide margin. Ron Paul didn’t come close to winning any primaries, but the shadow of this campaign cast a long shadow over the Republican party, arguably leading to the tea party faction taking over the party for a time.

This made everyone perk up in politics. Where a few candidates realized before that this Internet thing could be powerful, 2008 showed that it could fundamentally change the game.

While reddit was highly political in 2008, there were many factions. That’s what made it a fun place to be – there were right wingers, religious people, libertarians, liberals, socialists, and social justice advocates. I think at this point, however, forces started to work to take over the discourse. By 2015, subtle changes had taken place to really make anyone who wasn’t part of a specific ideology feel unwelcome, including a differential treatment of different groups. Most brigading subs were handled by admins (by shutting them down), but notably /r/shitredditsays which brigaded “bigoted” comments was allowed to stay up. Powermods were previously a problem on Digg, eventually the same problem seemed to start occurring on Reddit where a small group of mods were controlling hundreds of subreddits.

By the time I left for good, it was clear to me that reddit wasn’t anything like the place it used to be. Many subreddits either through social engineering or through bots would see posts that were not part of the mandatory orthodoxy immediately hammered into the dirt. “The downvote button is not an I disagree button” clearly didn’t apply anymore. Until that point, I was deleting my account every few months and making a new one because doxxing was a growing problem and I didn’t want to have my real life destroyed for having an opinion people disagreed with, but eventually the site lost all value to me since I knew you couldn’t have discussions on the discussion site any longer.

The successful election of Donald Trump put everything into hyperdrive. Controlled subreddits became graveyards of dissent, and polarization became total as people picked sides. At that point I no longer returned to reddit in any regard because there was just no point.

The cultures of the different highly polarized sides became quite different, all toxic in their own ways. The left became ridiculously authoritarian to keep outsiders out, the right became ridiculously offensive to keep outsiders out. The fact that there was one website (whatever that website was) meant that you could kinda play for keeps – take over a website with authoritarian moderation or with extreme offensiveness, and you win that front.

My hope is that the decentralized nature of the fediverse helps. When Lemmy.ml or beehaw go too authoritarian, people can just find something else on the same platform that’s more reasonable. If certain websites are too crass and offensive, people can go find something else on the same platform that’s more reasonable. In it’s built-in diversity, the fediverse is set up so everyone can have their space, and the worst that can happen is someone shunts you out of theirs (but you get to keep yours).

I’ve found the fediverse actually deradicalized me a lot. There are still people I disagree with, but I get to participate in discussions that remind me that whatever the “other side” is has some good ideas, and also I get to see that I actually disagree with extremists of all kinds. Being exposed to bad ideas doesn’t make me agree with them, it helps illustrate how bad they are regardless of source.

I’m not sure it was, unless you actively sought it out.

Lots of communities were nice and pleasant, with little to no animosity. The politics subs invite debate and discussion, so naturally argumentative people gravitate there. But most of Reddit was fun

Online discussions can be toxic anywhere. You don’t have to take part in a community and don’t have to be dragged into dramw. There’s always somewhere more welcoming.

Reddit became too popular, and in general the average person using the internet just wants to be nasty to feel better about themselves.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. I try to avoid doing it myself.

Zoomer toxicity it’s unbelievable, maybe the frustration of being of the crystal generation makes them anonymously hate in the internet.

More toxic communities mean more activity. More activity means bigger numbers to show to investors, advertisers, etc. No, they don’t care that a large portion of those comments are just calling each others names.

Let’s hope that kbin/lemmy won’t get too toxic. It’s inevitable at some level, but we can combat it with proper moderation.

A big part of it is people are just angry and stressed in general because the system we live in is fundamentally broken (pretty much no matter where you are in the world, though I am speaking through an American lens since the majority of Reddit is American).

Everyone can feel the effects of an economy and government that just doesn’t work for them. We’re fundamentally divided on how to fix it. Minorites are directly under attack and that manages to leach into most conversations, either directly or sideways. It makes people incredibly defensive.

The fediverse has a higher barrier to entry and, statistically, tech-minded people skew liberal. We’re a self-selecting community that is just more likely to agree – for instance – that trans people are people.

Further, since these services are decentralizedv and self-hosted, we can literally make hate groups unwelcome/banned from our instances because there is no profit motivation for hand-wringing like there is with Reddit.

Its a blend of critical mass and the userbase. Some Reddit subs have subscriber counts in the millions, you’re inevitably going to reach a lot of eyes on your comment if you post in the right thread and not get drowned out. Additionally, high quality comments and positive discussions take a lot of energy and thought to write out, while low effort brigading, trolling and regurgitating sarcastic jokes are quick and easy to do.

The larger subs have a high amount of low effort trolling, where the good answers tend to get lost in the noise of funny jokes. The smaller subs often have a high level of autism and people that take their passions way too seriously. They can get triggered over differing opinions or nit pick a misplaced comma for way longer than reasonable. Good positive discussions still exist, I think just due to the sheer size of Reddit now it just gets a bit hard to fight through the noise before getting downvoted into oblivion.

Right now on Lemmy, we’ve managed to escape the bots, jokers and trolls of the masses and are reaching crowds of techy headed first adopters that are much more willing to grow the community and are used to forums and threads. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of and something that’s become quite rare on Reddit. It’s very refreshing to be able to just comment and know the commenter will see your answer and even reply. This makes it much easier to put some effort in rather than chuck out a cheap joke for some upvotes.