[v_london]

I believe the biggest problem is virality. What you see is determined by what captured the attention of other users, or what algorithms think would keep you on the site so they can serve more ads to your hungry eyeballs. As it turns out, divisive and emotional content (whether it's politics, pop culture flame wars or YouTube drama) is great at capturing that attention.

It's a problem I've recognized, and we're currently working on a new kind of social network that aims to promote better discussion on the internet. One of our methods is removing the concept of "virality" and having the discussions happen in small groups instead of on public forums. After all, your group chats with friends still have good discussions, that's what we're trying to replicate on a wider scale. We don't yet have a website to show unfortunately :(