Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

> These people are just as noxious in real life even if some of them hide it when their identities are known.

I don't think so. A lot of people, and this is especially true with Twitter, get noxious because they found an audience there to "amuse" and entertain, which might amplify the temptation for "troll behavior", especially when that audience is of the same political/cultural leaning as the speaker. Social media inflate egos. Some people who might feel insecure in real life find a community there where they can feel like someone, not by doing something positive but by being mean and condescending to whom they deem their ennemy.

However social media didn't create these divisions, they just amplify them.

IMHO Twitter is a proof that even with real identities, people will engage in toxic behavior provided they feel supported by a large audience. Of all the social media I found Twitter to be the nastiest of all.

By contrast, aside from a few brigading, Reddit communities are often isolated, self contained and don't "leak". It takes a user to actively go on a sub to see its content, while Twitter is constantly pushing stuffs to its users, even the nastiest ones.

> extremely rare, and per-sub, not reddit-wide

from your list, it's the only thing it's not correct:

there's a site wide shadow-ban that is only done by admins. that means if you post something, nobody will see but for you everything will show up as normal. subreddit moderators can approve your comment and it will show up. this started as a measure against spammers but it seems like normal users get shadow banned too.

now there's normal ban, where you can be banned from a subreddit (you can't post but you can browse) and there's a reddit-wide ban (your account gets basically deleted).

and there's also AutoModerator "shadow-ban" which makes use of reddit's auto moderator to delete a user's comment as soon as it get posted.

> HN generally works very well

After reading a few discussions over the last few days, I was thinking to my self that HN was better than ever, and very good (with one serious shortcoming). Even the echo chamber is much better than I remember.

EDIT: The shortcoming, IMHO, is the abandonment of politics. HN is the ideal place to solve that problem, with s sophisticated audience open to and interested in experimentation and in problem solving. The goal of propagandists is not to persuade you, but to paralyze you; to shut down real discussion and debate. HN is, unwittingly, capitulating and cooperating with them. HN is another success for them.

I actually use some combination of Tampermonkey and uBlock to filter out Facebook ads (I forget which finally did it, since they work hard to make those things tricky to block). Haven't thought about using it to filter out offensive posts, but that's because I just unfollow people if they pass a completely subjective tolerance barrier.

By virtue of delivering content to your browser, Facebook has put the power in your hands. It's how you use your browser that determines what you see. ;)

I strongly disagree, although unfortunately I can't really propose a better solution.

Filtering just enhances the echo chamber, it's true that social networks are proactive about it and "pre-filter" things but I think they're actually getting pretty good about it, they give the users what they want. And what we want is content that agrees with us, makes us feel right and confirms our biases. People effectively "filter" by selecting who they follow, what they subscribe to etc...

Furthermore I don't think filtering "toxicity" on huge open communities can really work because most people out there are terrible at "not feeding the trolls". I've tried /ignoring trolls on IRC for instance, but then you're left with the messages of other people engaging the troll and it's somewhat even worse because you don't have the context. Then you try to block the people replying to the troll but then you have people replying to the people replying to the troll...

Personally I feel it's mostly a non problem, I don't have twitter, I don't have a reddit account, I don't have facebook... I'm only active on smaller communities like HN. I think humans simply suck at behaving correctly in large crowds, especially anonymously online. There's no fixing reddit or facebook, they've just become the modern equivalent of scribbling a swastika on a bathroom stall. Cat gifs, pun threads, racist comments, it's the same thing really, instant gratification without any effort, just watch the karma go up or down. If you don't set any bar for acceptable content then you're bound to be overrun with low-effort content.