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Comment by a_bonobo | Hacker News Reader

What's interesting here is that many of 'us' and the current mainstream say that Internet toxicity is due to The Algorithm, the methods of Facebook/twitter that maximise engagement leading to constant negativity and toxicity.

Mastodon's big selling point during the big move away from Twitter/X was the absence of The Algorithm, it was supposed to be a friendly, geeky thing, free from monetised outrage. But I've seen it for myself, there's an undercurrent of Twitter's holier-than-thou outrage, it's just from different sources: part exclusionary crusty geeks who've always used Mastodon ('you use Windows???'), part exclusionary leftists ('you're with the Judean People's Front????').

Perhaps it's not always The Algorithm that's to blame.

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It's really just down to the size of the site/service and Dunbar's Number. Whenever a site or service gets big enough that you can't really know everyone who's active there, then it tends to spiral towards toxicity. Hence why big forums used to be a lot crazier/dramatic than smaller ones, why social media platforms tend towards becoming a cesspit over time, and why the means of which a platform is run matters less than people think civility wise.

The Algorithm(TM) tends to make it worse, in that it greatly increases the risk that weird cranks will see your posts, but "the internet is full of arseholes, some of whom will probably reply-guy you" is a problem as old as Usenet.

Personally, I've generally had far more positive interaction on Mastodon than I used to on Twitter, but I've got about 300 followers. I think the author of the article had many thousands, and at that level you're going to be exposed to weird cranks at a much greater rate; the advantage of not having The Algorithm(TM) is likely diminished.

The funny thing is that while the "big move" population likes to say that they wanted to get away from The Algorithm, what actually convinced them to move was the threat that the Algorithm might change (due to Musk's takeover).

When it's a social problem, it's always people who are to blame. Reddit for example even had(? I think they fixed that one) downvote trolls farming downvotes because any attention works, and if it can be measured long term, it's even better!

You can't blame made up things if people actively choose to engage with rage baits. Every time something like that has occured, I time and time again notice that people could've solved this by doing nothing.

In real social setting, when someone says an unfunny joke, literally nobody laughs, and whoever said it feels very uncomfortable. On internet, when someone writes something stupid, they might sometimes get more replies than an interesting thing...

How can something like "The Algorithm" be blamed for people laughing at incredibly bad jokes?

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