I truly wonder, without judgment, why the author thinks that HN is toxic. I doubt he reads this but maybe some people who don't share my impression can guess?
I find toxic subthreads from time to time but they are mostly flagged or already dead.
I love it here but sometimes it can be very negative. Any discussion of Bitcoin for instance used to bring out the worst of people.
Same goes for messaging networks (surprised me) and politics (not all that surprising after all.)
discussing different opinions doesn't need to become toxic however, so a civil discourse is possible even on polarizing topics. But having said discourse be civil is important, as otherwise both sides of the argument just get frustrated with no real progress in sight.
Perhaps partly because Peter Thield is a "fascist"?
https://refererhider.com/?https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/02/n...
(An argument that holds very little water. Fascism/national socialism promotes mixed economies and is very far from libertarianism, which is Thiel's actual political ideology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions )