>I have no problem there, people are very friendly on every reddit sub I enjoy visiting. The same is for twitter.

The only way to have a good time on those platforms and to a lesser (but increasing, in my unscientific observation) degree, HN is to only express opinions that toe the party line (party line being relative to whatever the mainstream opinion is on the platform or subset of it in question). Those platforms have features designed to amplify consensus and quash dissent.

You must be incredibly lucky, as I carefully curated my Twitter feed to a few scientists and some baseball figures and was still overwhelmed at the hate and awfulness on display. Twitter is for the hateful and gleefully cruel.

I follow a large number of web developers, male and female on Twitter. I see a lot of complaints about men in general from women - some of it fair, some of it nasty. One dev in particular regularly rage tweets about men and makes the point her tweets are aimed at every single man - including those who are generally nice people and respectful towards women. Reading Twitter just makes me feel depressed some days, being constantly reminded that because I’m white and male I’m actually a fucking scumbag

I'm not sure Twitter and Reddit are equivalent here. There are plenty of really great subreddits. It's pretty easy to avoid the ones you don't like. You can stick to a political silo for sure, but also (and more ideally) you can just stick to an interest group that stays on topic but doesn't talk about politics. (if you take this approach, there will be many subreddits that are off limits, but you'll also avoid much outrage and addiction.)

Twitter is much more of a free-for-all. There's a much greater chance of politics and general public reaching you on Twitter.

> there's value in learning to participate without being dragged down by griefers and trolls

There's also value in knowing when to detach. For most people, these platforms are value subtracting.

It is generally not possible to participate on the reddit while presenting an alternate viewpoint. You go to your own echo chamber or you get downvoted into oblivion.

Maybe you haven't heard that word in this context before, it's of course not meant to be read literally. I understand it the same way as I would read "toxic workplace culture" or "toxic social environment", which is that there are people who bully, abuse power, take advantage of you, deliberately misunderstand you, are racist, sexist, etc.

>What does "toxic" mean?

Toxic -- adjective (ˈtäk-sik)

1) containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation

2) exhibiting symptoms of infection or toxicosis

3) extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful

4) relating to or being an asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market

In the context of this specific discussion, for the sake of disambiguation, the third definition listed above is the one being used. Here are some articles which may help to further clarify the concept of "toxic" as it applies to people, social interactions and online communities:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/whats-a-toxic-person-how-do-yo...

https://www.healthscopemag.com/health-scope/toxic-relationsh...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/26/racism-...

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/18/americans-s...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/toxic-masculinity.html