Nature: Long online discussions are consistently the most toxic

[The_J]

Now, that is some research we can relate to:
The Nature magazin has just this week published an article called "Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time", together with an perspective about the article, called "Long online discussions are consistently the most toxic".
The authors followed conversations over multiple platforms such as Facebook and Youtube, and determined the toxicity of a conversation over time. Most people here will probably not be surprised by the results, the toxicity increases on all platforms over time. Godwin's law is also related to that, as with the first occurence in a conversation of this specific group makes most conversations go downhill.

Image from here (CC BY 4.0).


The summary of the article is the following:

Growing concern surrounds the impact of social media platforms on public discourse1,2,3,4 and their influence on social dynamics5,6,7,8,9, especially in the context of toxicity10,11,12. Here, to better understand these phenomena, we use a comparative approach to isolate human behavioural patterns across multiple social media platforms. In particular, we analyse conversations in different online communities, focusing on identifying consistent patterns of toxic content. Drawing from an extensive dataset that spans eight platforms over 34 years—from Usenet to contemporary social media—our findings show consistent conversation patterns and user behaviour, irrespective of the platform, topic or time. Notably, although long conversations consistently exhibit higher toxicity, toxic language does not invariably discourage people from participating in a conversation, and toxicity does not necessarily escalate as discussions evolve. Our analysis suggests that debates and contrasting sentiments among users significantly contribute to more intense and hostile discussions. Moreover, the persistence of these patterns across three decades, despite changes in platforms and societal norms, underscores the pivotal role of human behaviour in shaping online discourse.

My personal opinion: Seems we need an expiry date for threads....

 

[r16]

like this is the way to shut down monologues ?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Interesting. How long is the normalized length? A day, week, or month? We have over two years of Ukraine invaded conversation spread over 8 threads. Are things more toxic over the life of one thread of 5000 posts or more toxic over the 8 threads of over 30,000 posts? Do more participants make things more toxic? Do controls on the content make things less toxic?

 

[Moriarte]

Only totalitarian censorship through moderation can enable constructive and long lasting discussions.

 

[Joij21]

BS!

Free Speech!

 

[Gori the Grey]

We've got our serial threads. Some of those have been going on for decades and aren't particularly toxic.

In fact, both Rants and Raves might be regarded as healthful, each in its way.

 

[Joij21]

I don't need no statstrologists telling me what I can or can't post. Who gives a damn about these so called "experts"?

Sounds like overpaid publish or perish nonsense to me!

 

[uppi]

Interesting. How long is the normalized length? A day, week, or month? We have over two years of Ukraine invaded conversation spread over 8 threads. Are things more toxic over the life of one thread of 5000 posts or more toxic over the 8 threads of over 30,000 posts? Do more participants make things more toxic? Do controls on the content make things less toxic?

Thread length in this graph is number of posts instead of time, I believe. And it is normalized to the maximum length for each source, so the maximum length can be from a few hundred posts to a few hundred thousand posts.

 

[amadeus]

I only took a peek at it, but my question is: is that better or worse than other forms of communication? For all I know, we might be better than cable TV or newspaper editorials.

 

[amadeus]

Are these emojis integrated into the forum? I thought maybe I was only seeing them because I post from my phone.

I remember when we had one selection of smileys and by gum we liked it that way.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Are these emojis integrated into the forum? I thought maybe I was only seeing them because I post from my phone.

I remember when we had one selection of smileys and by gum we liked it that way.

One of the major forum software updates came with a ton of new emojis

 

[warpus]

For reddit at least, it depends which subreddit you're in. Most of the larger default subreddits are full of chaos. There are a lot of great smaller subreddits that are good places for honest intelligent discussion. Most of them are well moderated, but not all are. Some have just so far managed to escape being targeted by virtue of not being that popular yet.. so they have a small dedicated userbase that focuses on rational discourse or what have you. Some just seem to be pretty solid for reasons unkonwn. For instance, I don't think /r/soccer is moderated that well.. but hateful speech gets shut down pretty quickly, and a lot of jokes and puns do tend to be upvoted, but there is a good amount of solid discussion about the sport, fans, teams, players, etc. It's one of the better large subreddits I'm in. Something like /r/AskScience on the other hand is moderated heavily. They remove a lot of posts. As a result you get a really solid subreddit for anything related to science. Contrast with something like /r/pics and.. well.. yeah. They are nothing alike.

 

[Arwon]

 

[Narz]

This isn't surprising, the people who persist long after others have gone will be the most crazy/bored/lonely/stimulating seeking

 

[Smellincoffee]

Only totalitarian censorship through moderation can enable constructive and long lasting discussions.

That varies widely on the integrity of the moderators. I never got to experience early reddit, but these days it appears to be highly concentrated on one end of the political spectrum, so that discussions are essentially between Stalinists and Trotskyists, or between 1930s Stalinists and 1940s Stalinists, that kind of thing. Still worse, moderators in some reddits will auto-ban people who have participated in subreddits thought to be perpetauting thoughtcrime --- and these aren't members of /r/Progressive banning people who subscribe to r/Trump, but (in my case) being banned from /interestingasf() for subscribing to a Jordan Peterson subreddit. Nevermind that some of us monitor threads of thought we don't necessarily affiliate with, but that we are interested in the perspective of. I follow a lot of accounts on twitter that I don't agree with on some things. Reddit is the internet's toxicity distilled.

 

[Gorbles]

The thread about an article on toxicity is starting to get meta by debating what counts as toxicity in other threads and communities

 

[The_J]

Interesting. How long is the normalized length? A day, week, or month? We have over two years of Ukraine invaded conversation spread over 8 threads. Are things more toxic over the life of one thread of 5000 posts or more toxic over the 8 threads of over 30,000 posts? Do more participants make things more toxic? Do controls on the content make things less toxic?

I think uppi mentioned it already, but this should mean the relative thread length, from first to last.
They are over their length probably toxic. I'd be curious if the splitting made them less toxic.

We've got our serial threads. Some of those have been going on for decades and aren't particularly toxic.

In fact, both Rants and Raves might be regarded as healthful, each in its way.

These aren't real discussions though.

I only took a peek at it, but my question is: is that better or worse than other forms of communication? For all I know, we might be better than cable TV or newspaper editorials.

They didn't check on that, I think that would be hard to compare. It's interesting though that this is independent of online platform. While youtube comments might be the worst, it still goes downhill everywhere.

This isn't surprising, the people who persist long after others have gone will be the most crazy/bored/lonely/stimulating seeking

I think this is not the only component. Another part is that after 1000s of pages of discussion, you will just have nothing new to discuss. You've went over all the points again, and you'll be looking at the other side thinking that they don't move an inch, that their opinion is static, and that they are not open for discussion. Then Godwin's law happens, and the only thing you have left is insulting each other.

 

[amadeus]

They didn't check on that, I think that would be hard to compare. It's interesting though that this is independent of online platform. While youtube comments might be the worst, it still goes downhill everywhere.

That doesn’t surprise me a whole lot, and the fact that it goes down everywhere says to me it’s more of a PEBKAC error than the internet’s fault.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Kristine Bruss, Searching for Boredom in Ancient Greek Rhetoric: Clues in Isocrates
Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2012), pp. 312-334

Abstract.

Definition.

Still awake? Then it's time to bring in the World's Best...
WORLD'S MOST BORING LECTURE COMPETITION
FRIDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2000
BORING SPEECHES - THE TEN DEADLY SINS
Michael Kirby, Justice of the High Court of Australia.

BORING SPEECHES - THE TEN DEADLY SINS

 

[Crezth]

God only knows why conversations about who should have all the money end up a little shall we say impolite