Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?

I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior.

You are, essentially, projecting the characteristics of bad actors onto other actors who are warning and complaining about said bad actors.

I've found that when I actually talk to so-called "toxic" people politely, they are willing to listen. It's not them that are causing the polarization.

That's a tactic known as 'entryism' designed to leverage your nice, conflict-averse personality as a vehicle for normalization and possible future recruitment.

When I complained about his moderation by saying this:

>A moderator just a hair left of your current moderation approach on the authoritarianism scale would "flag and remove" PG's entire recent article about income inequality with a note calling it "tedious ideological posturing."

For that comment, my entire six-year account was banned and I was told to email ycombinator to have it restored.

When I emailed to have my account restored, I was told this:

>We're happy to unban accounts when people give us reason to believe that they won't repeat the things that led us to ban them. In your case it's a little less clear what that reason might be, since you've expressed how much you dislike a bunch of things about HN, our moderation, and me. But if there's something we could do to help you have a change of heart about those things, let me know.

So basically, since I complained about his moderation, he took it personally, and only if I was willing to revoke my criticism of his moderation could I be unbanned..? I was never able to get clarification on what exactly needed to happen for me to get unbanned. The gist was, if you argue consistently in favor of free-market approaches to anything economic, you will be accused of "tedious idealogical flamebait" and eventually be banned.

Take it for what it's worth, but I was never what you would call toxic by any standard definition, and those were my results.

I think there is a lot more to this than many people think.

If more people participated in hobbies, then they would spend less time on the internet. The time they do spend would be more targeted and focused instead of mindlessly scrolling and scrolling and getting baited and agitated.

They would also form communities, as you suggest, with common interests and get to know people better. It's basic socialization.

Part of the problem is that for some reason there is a notion that everything has to be a business today. There's a Fidelity Investments TV commercial running right now where a daughter says to her retired mother, "Did you paint this [painting]? You know you can sell these!" And a business is born. Why? Why can't she just enjoy painting for painting's sake. For her own enjoyment? Why is money what decides if something is valid or not?

I encourage people to start hobbies. And be bad at them. Be terrible at reading, stamp collecting, woodworking, gardening, model railroading, brewing, or whatever. Do it because you like it. If you happen to be good at it, great! If all of your carrots die, that's OK, too. You got to spend quality time with yourself, which is more important than all the carrot sales you could possibly make.

* single user - evidenced by harassment, trolling, attacks

* group - evidenced by an echo chamber, which is typically present from down votes drastically outnumbering replies or replies suggesting silencing or solicitations for recruitment

Both forms are equally toxic, but they are not equally recognizable or distinguishable. An example a lone attacker is typically repulsive and starts out as a bold violator to most users in a well moderated environment and so they rarely attract supporting attention from other users.

Contrarily, group attacks are typically benign, at first, but misery loves company. The negative attention grows on itself drawing in users with insecurities how tend to fear diversity. While group toxicity may start out benign the toxic nature of it becomes starkly apparent as it is allowed to fester resulting in comments that are direct and hostile attacks claiming justification of group support or agreement to a premise.

Toxic groups do occur on HN, but they are rarely able to grow wildly out of control in any measurable way because downvotes to any contribution are capped at -4. The only evidence of group attacks in an online environment like this are the quantity of down votes and the nature of the reply comments present.

It is my opinion toxic group behavior is a more serious concern and the lone wolf, because the lone wolf flamer is easier to identify. In many cases users have no idea they are contributing to group toxicity as conformance without explanation may feel natural. It's also serious because it is substantially harder to correct.

Either way the nature of toxic behavior is about attention whether it's to draw attention to a single user's contribution or to silence a disagreement.