Hacker News Reader

Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

Considering Reddit and 4Chan are things, Wikipedia is far from being the most toxic .

Maybe the most elitist

Strong disagree. The vast majority of subreddits are fine. Toxicity is compartmentalized to specific subreddits, which you can very easily avoid.

On the other hand, I find a community like Stack Overflow to be much worse because the BS can strike any time, any place. Between questions marked "Off-Topic", and snarky replies, and the non-replies ("We won't answer your simple question because you should not be asking that!") you can't avoid the negativity.

I also agree. I find both Twitter and Reddit to be on the most part delightful sources of information. I do have a certain self-made bubble in terms of who I follow, but it's a bubble full of creators, artists, and those that want to share what they've done in a positive way.

Exactly! Reddit's anonymity and the sheer scale of the site make bullying impossible (hard to imagine /u/subhumanbuttocks88 being victimized by /u/mandocalrissian).

Sure it makes targeted bullying impossible, but not general discrimination. There have been lots of subreddits removed for racism, sexism, etc.

Even then if you want to become a somewhat public figure with a presence on Reddit you can end up with a small team harassing you.

The only winning move is not to play.

In subreddits which are non political you'd still see people injecting nastiness.

That's a peculiar way to describe things. I would consider being "elitist" almost synonymous to being "toxic", and thus 4chan being about the least toxic platforms on the list of major English social media, far below Reddit, Wikipedia, Twitter, HN and so on.

I don't think Wikipedia fosters the kind of nihilistic hatred that lead to harassment campaigns and real world violence the way 4chan does. I get that not all of 4chan is pol and r9k, but that's still a decent chunk of the users. I can't think of a place on the internet with a higher concentration of incels and alt-right nazi types, besides 8chan.

I think the title of most toxic should go to Twitter.

yes

Both sides on the spectrum are on the same thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com