[the_af]

> You don't have to spend long on Reddit, Youtube or Facebook to really appreciate just how nice and non-combative it is here

Let me offer a counterpoint (I'm glad you didn't mention Twitter, because I'd have to really agree that Twitter is a Hate Machine. And I'll grant you YouTube as well, to a lesser degree): I use facebook mostly for its closed, special interest groups. For each of these groups, which are relatively civil -- until there's the occasional namecalling flamewar and some people get expelled -- the most common assertion is by far something of this kind: "why, this is the best group about $SUBJECT, people here are so nice and civil and I haven't found a group like this one anywhere on the net!". If you belong to a couple of groups on facebook, you'll see this repeated in every one of them, each of these groups oblivious to the existence of other, similar or possibly nicer groups, each selectively forgetting the most recent fight.

I think some degree of this phenomenon is at play here on HN, too.

[lewispollard]

I agree, the only thing I use Facebook for these days is 2 private groups on specific subjects. While they're incredibly good for the kind of support group style 'ask a specific question, get a quick answer' type of thing, they definitely suffer from the problems in the article - mostly people getting very defensive and combative when their comments are questioned or criticised. That may be a characteristic of the type of group I'm in though.