[kuzehanka]

The size and conviction of 'toxic' groups is growing, not diminishing. Marginalising them and pushing them to less-visible communication channels is only harmful from every angle except staving off short-term moral outrage of social justice types.

When various less-desirable groups existed on reddit, it was easy to monitor and gauge their size and their beliefs. It was possible to engage with them on some levels. Now they are scattered across various difficult to observe channels and are fully enclosed in an echo chamber that amplifies their beliefs that much more.

The early days of large social platforms like Reddit was the only time in the last several hundred years when it was possible to get a reasonable estimate of what segment of the population held what beliefs, including the less popular ones. Being able to get an objective view of that distribution was the first step in qualifying and addressing the underlying issues.

Instead we are sweeping those demographics under the rug again, and destroying the ability to study and interact with them.

[p49k]

What evidence has shown that engaging with them is more effective? It seems to be like it’s nearly impossible to convince someone that their worldview is wrong; however people do feel the need and desire to be part of communities and knowing they might be excluded for having hateful views might be more of a motivator for them to rethink those views on their own terms, which is possibly a more effective method of changing someone’s views.

[kuzehanka]

> What evidence has shown that engaging with them is more effective?

We have a lot of evidence that marginalising sufficiently large groups leads to tremendous backlash when they reach critical mass, e.g. almost every revolution in history. I think we can agree that doing exactly that which failed every time before is not a productive avenue.

> having hateful views

Let's not conflate hateful views with 'toxic' views. The term toxic refers to any unpopular view. In addition to hate speech, this includes various sexual preferences, political views, anti-science movements, mens rights groups, etc.

[DFHippie]

> Let's not conflate hateful views with 'toxic' views.

Is this a terminological distinction you just made up? In the usage I'm familiar neither "hateful" nor "toxic" is a term of art.

[kuzehanka]

As per TFA, reddit banned a list of 'toxic' demographics. A quick scan over those demographics makes it quite apparent that about half of them are not related to hate speech but rather some of the other categories I listed above.

Not sure how the distinction between 'hateful' and 'toxic' could possibly be contentious.