[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.