[dingnuts]

>Some of the instances are (imo) full of straight-up insane and, worse, perpetually angry people

This has been true for every instance of every Fedi thing I've ever tried to use or thought of using. And many instances block single-user instances so forget about running your own unless you only want to interact with the absolute fringest nutjob basement-dwellers -- because the "mainstream" Fedi is already fringe.

I once had the dumb impulse to reply to someone who was mad about fluoride in drinking water with "you probably get more fluoride from your toothpaste" and I deleted my account as I started to receive arguments about brushing your teeth, as it made me realize exactly the kind of people I would be interacting with on this network.

Honestly I think this is grows out of the incentives for operating a homeserver. There's a negative financial incentive so you must have some other kind of motivator, likely a desire for influence or power.

[mardef]

Similarly, I replied to someone suggesting they pay for a service and I received multiple replies suggesting I kill myself.

This wasn't on some random Marxist community, this was on one of the big tech communities.

[bombcar]

Internet death threats are so common and boring that I only notice the amusingly new ones, like “I hope you can take advantage of Canadian healthcare.”

[ctrw]

The way to save the internet is to force everyone to have a recent picture of themselves next to any post they make.

[chownie]

That would almost certainly end up with the internet becoming one gigantic linkedin and everyone leaving it to flock to whichever underground 4chan-esque service pops up with a promise of pseudonymity.

[matheusmoreira]

That's actually how you kill the internet. This won't change people's minds. They'll still think all those "offensive" things. They just won't post them publicly anymore because of the social consequences. You'll never know what people are really thinking.

I prefer to know. I want to experience the full spectrum of humanity.

[karmakurtisaani]

Is that why Facebook is such a nice and balanced website?

[ctrw]

You uncle McRacy doesn't have 200,000 followers. Your cousin McFatt does.