[reb]

Norms against flame wars and the old "don't feed the trolls" made for some really excellent experiences growing up on forums as a kid (and instructive experiences when I ignored that advice). It's too bad we weren't able to bring that energy to social media, because wow is the alternative depressing to behold.

[tfgg]

Social media owners wanted all the benefits of superscale communities with none of the responsibilities - it isn't surprising that moderation got worse.

Reddit vaguely has a workable approach with subreddits, but it's still high variance, and they have to discourage long-lived comment threads.