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.

  • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    11 months ago

    I’m glad you took it that way, because it was indeed meant as a compliment. In real life I’ve actually gotten into some tight spots using “thank you” as code for “fuck off and die” (it is occasionally taken as implied consent instead of as a FOAD imperative) so I recognize it is an art to be simultaneously both unfailingly polite and straightforwardly factual and still communicate effectively. Glad you’re not deleting your comments: to be agreed with or disagreed with is not a valid measure of personal worth.

    Yeah, I’m not missing Reddit karma either. I tried not to pay a lot of attention to it, but Reddit makes sure you see your grand total wherever you go on the site. Here on lemmy.world, I think I have to sign in on the old.lemmy.world format just to even view my lemmy total, so I literally have not seen my karma or vote count or whatever in months. Refreshing.

    • eric@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      It is definitely difficult to gauge a stranger’s tone. Not sure what it is exactly about the way I write, but people often suspect I’m trolling when I’m being genuine.

      As for the karma, I suspect that the total on the desktop site will be going away soon. It used to exist in the apps I use, but one day comment and post karma disappeared from Voyager, and recently Avelon dropped their summed total karma altogether. At first I resisted losing the counts, but after asking around, I learned that showing the totals is being actively discouraged to devs of the various apps because it’s thought to lead to unhealthy user behaviors. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed I’m guilty of a lot of those behaviors as a result of my 15 years on Reddit, so I’ve since tried to embrace its absence.