A new study links partisan activity on the Internet to widespread online toxicity, revealing that politically-engaged users exhibit uncivil behavior even in non-political discussions. The findings are based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of comments from over 6.3 million Reddit users.

Politically-engaged Redditors tend to be more toxic – even in non-political subreddits::A new study links partisan activity on the Internet to widespread online toxicity, revealing that politically-engaged users exhibit uncivil behavior even in non-political discussions. The findings are based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of comments from over 6.3 million Reddit users.

  • mindbleachEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Every community demanding “civility” has failed this test. It sounds pleasant… but it’s an absolutely miserable thing to enforce, because polite discussion has limits. Sometimes people deserve to hear, “fuck off.” That is ostensibly what moderators are for. But if they’re not proactively pulling people aside to explain how they’re being assholes - and users aren’t allowed to explain how they’re being assholes - then assholes are allowed to proliferate, so long as they avoid a few specific no-no words.