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

Absolutely, because it's wrong to regard the web as a thing that's separate from the real world and it's effects. We're talking about people's identities in the sense of how they see themselves, and that's shaped by their environment (what they see, hear and do), online and offline.

What happened is that people are able to find a tribe, whereas before the web was a thing, finding a tribe was more difficult and often exclusive to cities.

People living in rural areas were likely to adapt to existing "big village tribes", branching off wasn't viable or a matter of circumstances because of a lack of different subcultures within those rural areas.

The web changed that, everybody can socialize and find a tribe online, it's like a big city full of subcultures, and subcultures provide identity.

Early people on the web were often already part of urban tribes I think, and took position of views within those, so if they encountered a rival group online (think about poppers and rockers stereotypes from the 80's) toxicity was almost ensured. So what happ[ens if a mainstream culture that's fed with stereotypes through hollywood etc. is let loose on the web?

The before tribeless population which was forced into a tribe by circumstance is basically discovering the world and is going through their teenage years.

That's my explanation of what's happening.

Though in some ways it's the same, here is the difference: it has become more diverse.

In 1991, the people you might have conversed with on Usenet were a lot similar to you. Of course, if we go to some comp.lang.* newsgroup or whatever, people are similar even today.

But I mean that if you went into any newsgroup whatsoever in 1991, on any topic, everyone there would probably have been some sort of professional in a STEM field, academic or university student. Go to, say, rec.pets.dogs, and it wasn't just any dog lovers from any walk of life, but mostly engineers, programmers and sysadmins who are into dogs.

That's way different from going into Reddit today, where it's now any Tom, Dick and Harry from any walk of life, who only have a certain topic of interest in common and that's it.

People have social interactions online which they wouldn't have in real life. In real life, if you run into someone who is from, say, a "lower" social class, they have it written all over them, and it puts them in their place more effectively than any downvoting system.

For instance, in real life, you would either never argue politics with an obvious "despicable", or else you'd immediately attribute everything they say to the limited scope of their background and just nod your head politely.

Basically, there is no new divisiveness; the quiet divisiveness we already have just comes out when people get together and hide behind aliases and avatars.

Anyway, I don't comment on any services that use a real name policy. I'd prefer that my name didn't appear on the Internet at all, but don't fight against it when it inevitably happens via some participant lists and whatnot.