> There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook.
But is it comparable to the amount of toxic behavior on 4chan?
But is it comparable to the amount of toxic behavior on 4chan?
If there's a severity to toxicity then perhaps 4chan can peak at a 9/10 whereas Facebook posts peak at a 7/10, but there's orders of magnitude more people posting on Facebook. If you pull in Facebook comment sections on news sites and consider those too, these threads where people publicly call for torture, rape and death, you realise that 4chan has an unearned bad reputation compared to the mainstream.
They didn't say that, they said "anonymity leads to lack of accountability". Even the counter that authenticated sites have users engaging in toxic behavior doesn't contradict the original point.
That said, I do think it's a fruitful line of inquiry to wonder why that might be the case. Are there any known cases where anonymity alone is sufficient to tip the balance towards widespread toxic behavior? Related to that, if lack of anonymity frequently does not curtail toxicity then what might the important differences be versus real life interactions that can account for it?
And to be frank, there is value in 4chan. Nobody would feel compelled to believe obvious bullshit some societies and cultures impose on its members. This shit needs a counterweight. That isn't 4chan of course, but any free platform.
But really to have this discussion we first need a better definition of what we are talking about than nebolous "toxic behavior". I don't think anyone is going to dispute that 4chan posts are more likely to use crass language than those on Facebook so perhaps that is what gp considers toxic.