[anbotero]

I want to agree with this. Maybe OP is young or didn't frequent other communities before "social networks", but on IRC, even on Usenet you'd see these behaviors eventually.

Since they are relatively open, at some point comes in someone that doesn't give care about anything or it's extremely vocal about something and... there goes the nice forum.

[mnky9800n]

MySpace was quite literally my space. You could basically make a custom website with a framework that included socialisation. But mostly it was just geocities for those who only might want to learn html. So it was a creative canvas with a palette.

[ricardo81]

>Maybe OP is young or didn't frequent other communities before "social networks", but on IRC, even on Usenet you'd see these behaviors eventually.

I was too young for IRC/Usenet and started using the net/web in the late 90s, frequenting some forums. Agreed that anyone can come in and upset the balance.

I'd say the difference is that on the open web, you're free to discover and participate in those social settings for the most part. With everything being so centralised and behind an algorithm the things you're presented are more 'push' than 'pull'.

[cj]

Right, but that’s slightly different.

I think the nuance here is that with algorithmic based outrage, the outrage is often very narrow and targeted to play on your individual belief system. It will seek out your fringe beliefs and use that against you in the name of engagement.

Compare that to a typical flame war on HN (before the mods step in) or IRC.

On HN/IRC it’s pretty easy to identify when there are people riling up the crowd. And they aren’t doing it to seek out your engagement.

On Facebook, etc, they give you the impression that the individuals riling up the crowd are actually the majority of people, rather than a loud minority.

Theres a big difference between consuming controversial content from people you believe are a loud minority vs. controversial content from (what you believe is from) a majority of people.

[jon-wood]

Or if the moderation was good someone would go “nope, take that bullshit elsewhere” and kick them out, followed by everyone getting on with their lives. It wasn’t obligatory for communities to be cesspits.

[Aurornis]

> Maybe OP is young or didn't frequent other communities before "social networks", but on IRC, even on Usenet you'd see these behaviors eventually

I’m not exactly old yet, but I agree. I don’t know how so many people became convinced that online interactions were pleasant and free of ragebait and propaganda prior to Facebook.

A lot of the old internet spaces were toxic cesspools. Most of my favorite forums eventually succumbed to ragebait and low effort content.

[jfindper]

>pleasant and free of ragebait and propaganda

Most people are putting forth an argument of pervasiveness and scale, not existence.

[Aurornis]

I remember a thread a while ago where someone was claiming that Hacker News comments were much more civilized and on topic in the early days.

So someone pulled up Wayback Machine archives of random dates for HN pages. The comments were full of garbage, flame wars, confidently incorrect statements, off topic rants, and all the other things that people complain about today.

It was the same thing, maybe even slightly worse, just in a different era

I think the people who imagine that social media is worse today either didn’t participate in much online socialization years ago or have blocked out the bad parts from their memory.

[macintux]

I suppose more than a few of us olds remember Serdar Argic's attempts to redefine the Armenian genocide on IRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic

But Serdar was relatively easy to ignore, because it was just one account, and it wasn't pushed on everyone via an algorithm designed to leverage outrage to make more money for one of the world's billionaires. You're right: pervasiveness and scale make a significant difference.