The article was interesting but your title is a little misleading, OP. They were not singling out Reddit. Merely using it as an example in their study on why social media threads tend to skew towards negativity over time. It was about human psychology more than any specific social media platform.

Their study was based on analysis of 2.05 billion comments from 2,150 Reddit communities.

If they want to generalize their findings to all social media platforms, that’s on them.

Would a remark like this one count as positive or negative?

After reading the article, I feel that the reply was negative and fits the article assessment pretty well

Oh yeah? Well, that’s just like - your opinion, man.

Let me tell you something, pendejo…

So does it short circuit the fuckery if you make the inevitable Hitler reference right away in a top level comment?

Also fuck reddit.

That’s where it can be one of the outliers and turn positive in the replies. I hope you have a nice day.

Quite! Pip pip!

Godwin’s law has been around since long before Reddit.

Just about any forum thread that goes on for pages ends up in an argument. I think this can be avoided with strict rules and users who reinforce the culture.

As far as reddit goes I find the larger the number of subscribers to a subreddit the worse it gets. However depending on the topic of the subreddit even a niche small subreddit can be toxic in some way. This tracks here as well.

I would like to see more discussion about an artificial technical or skill barrier needed to participate on a website or service. This might sound elitist but keeping “normies” out goes a long way to helping keep the discussion quality high. Even having something as simple as an “ugly” more text based interface helps.

I used to think everyone should have access to the internet back in the day. After that happened I changed my mind

There’s an argument that online forums should be kept to CLI interfaces with obscure controls. For that reason.

always used to be like this even back in the PHP BB forum days. Except back then it was something like “all threads eventually lead to Hitler”

If a forum thread was long enough, several pages in, eventually it would get to a hitler reference for something and then you knew that thread was done.

I like how Lemmy is much for efficient by just starting off negative with everything.

gEnOsiDe EnAbLeR!!1

I feel that most conversations I have here are someone genuinely trying to make a point and have a discussion whereas on Reddit it’s mostly people just trying to take a shit on any comment that’s made.

Yea, you notice it here, too. Hell, I do it too. Every time I have the urge to contribute, it invariably furthers the discussion towards monkey-style shit-flinging. Not on purpose, mind you, it’s just something that happens if you’re not careful.

Good to have research that backs up logical observations. I’ve never encountered any human occupied space that did not follow this pattern.

That’s not quite fair, some places do an amazing job at maintaining a harmonious environment, but they are the exception.

I posted a small comment on Reddit for the first time in, oh, idk, years. It was in a thread about the book Dungeon Crawler Carl. My comment said, paraphrasing,

DCC is not a nihilistic book

Short and to the point. I received three replies, all of them antagonistic. The first one said,

You’re wrong, because DCC is not a nihilistic book.

Except weird and long-winded. The second one said,

your definition of nihilism is wrong. DCC is not a nihilistic book.

The third one was,

You’re being pedantic.

Aaaand last time I post a comment on reddit.

I’ve noticed this too. There seems to be someone to violently disagree on even the most benign points and chase the thread indefinitely. I’m sure they are pretty much all bots.

Yeah. Either assholes or engagement bots. That and censorship by mods is why Ieft.