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.

  • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    The Linux thing, I doubt you’ll get toxic comments. You’ll probably get comments asking why to try to help, though that can always come off as demeaning. If you say Linux is bad, that’s different. You’ll likely get a lot of comments explaining why that isn’t true and that it’s a pretty ignorant take.

    For the other comments, “piracy is theft” is, again, an objective statement, not a value judgement. Saying that is to say people who disagree are wrong. Same with the YouTube one. Change “good” to “useful” would probably be better way to say it.

    There’s a difference between comments that judge other people (which will likely get a strong response) and comments that judge the subject. It’s something people frequently fail with. Even if it’s worded well, people will often take judging something they agree with as an attack on their character, which is also not useful. Humans aren’t logical beings.