this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Politically-engaged Redditors tend to be more toxic -- even in non-political subreddits::A new study links partisan activity on the Internet to widespread online toxicity, revealing that politically-engaged users exhibit uncivil behavior even in non-political discussions. The findings are based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of comments from over 6.3 million Reddit users.

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

Political topics are also the topics that are most strongly gamed by political actors using Persona Management software to make it seem like their opinion is in the majority. The idea that people who participate in things such as "forum sliding" aren't toxic in their interactions is absurd, so we're left with assuming a large number of these toxic accounts aren't actually real people.

I'm not saying people deep into politics can't be toxic. Plenty of them are, sure. However, it's in the interest of people with political power (especially politicians with politically unpopular ideas) to make regular people not want to participate in politics. One way you do that is to make all political people seem unhinged, angry, and just terrible. People wonder why hardly anyone votes in elections, this kind of stuff is why, and it's not on accident that these folks seem like the majority.

I'm fully convinced the majority of them are bots trying to make politics in general seem more toxic than it actually is to dissuade more people from even wanting to be involved. The intent is to drive political apathy.


Sources:

US government developing Persona Management software in 2011: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

Eglin Air Force Base is most "Reddit Addicted City" in 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html

One of many research papers on Persona Management and Influencing Social Networks from Eglin AFB: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf


Helpful Reading Materials:

The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

100% agree with you. The worst part is the bots are getting better and better. I have a policy that you respond once to clarify and then walk away. These are for obvious bad actors, but now they're seeming more and more like decent people with a flawed idea until you keep talking and realize it's a bot. I don't know how to counteract that.

[–] voidMainVoid 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't know how to counteract that.

Simple. You don't. When I'm debating, I'm usually not trying to convince the person I'm debating with. I'm trying to convince a disinterested third party who reads the exchange later.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

I completely agree that it's for the later people, it's just a waste of time for me when it's become a lengthy thread that nobody is going to read anyway.

The other thing they do is a bot attack of taking what people are saying, changing it, and then posting a lot of them to bury comments that they don't want others to see. Not sure how to counteract that either.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (3 children)

How do you know they're actually bots? 90% of the time, when I'm debating with someone who is passionately defending their position, they'll at some point accuse me of being a bot or a shill. I also can't recall any time I've debated someone and have been convinced they are a bot.

I'm just skeptical as it's a convenient ad hominem.

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[–] alvvayson 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed these bots were mostly absent on Lemmy.

But recently, I have noticed they have arrived here, too.

I fully agree with your analysis.

[–] deweydecibel 14 points 10 months ago (10 children)

In what way? Lemmy has been very political from the start. It arguably got less-so after the influx of redditors.

What are you seeing in the last month or so that makes you think there's something more abnormal happening than usual?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

I'd imagine the same is true for Lemmy and politically engaged people (at least online) overall.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (21 children)

I'm not so sure. The study discusses specifically people who engage in partisan subreddits, which is not the same as being politically engaged. It also uses an AI to grade toxicity, which surely mischaracterizes many interactions.

For example, I have been in communities of a non-political nature, where political discussions occur. These are often about real issues that affect real people in the community, and yet there are people complaining about political content.

To complain about political content is, at best, a very privileged take, demonstrating that you are in a position where politics do not affect you much. At worst, it is actively hostile behavior with the goal of continuing the status quo and shutting down discourse. I would call most of these kinds of comments "toxic", and yet the rhetoric is usually fine, so I doubt an AI would agree.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'd say if you are politically engaged, the likelihood of you being in a political internet community is fairly high.

To complain about political content is, at best, a very privileged take, demonstrating that you are in a position where politics do not affect you much.

Could just be that they don't care for politics in that community. Time and place for everything and it seems some feel the time and place for politics is everywhere all the time. It can be tiring. I don't remember what year it was that pretty much every single place was talking about immigration politics. Important topic for sure but a meme community about funny road signs isn't the place for heated soapboxing about closing down the border.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The thing is, what a politically engaged person thinks of as "politics" and what a disengaged one does probably has limited overlap. People probably aren't bringing the Tories or the Republicans up in a D&D community, but bring up race portrayal or representation for disabled people and watch the sparks fly.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (18 children)

See also: hexbear, lemmygrad.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

AkA Chappo Trap House. I've never received so much hate from a community (expept on the_donald maybe). My crime? I think South Park is fun.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Doing my best to change this. I am extremely toxic without engaging in political behavior.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

The first step is knowing there is a problem. Kudos.

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[–] pacology 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This sounds like the textbook definition of a collider. Meaning that being toxic is the likely “root cause” and that toxic people are more likely to engage in political discourse (because it’s likely going to be toxic anyways? Idk) and they are more likely to comment toxic stuff in general.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

In a turn of events that comes as a surprise to precisely zero Reddit users...

[–] Something_Complex 10 points 10 months ago

I think it's the same here on Lenny, ik because I'm one :(

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Politics leads to stress, stress leads to anger, anger leads to people saying "KYS, fascists, or I'll do it for you."

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (21 children)

I'm political as fuck.¹ While I try not to be toxic, I will sometimes call out aberrant opinions or counterfactual assumptions when I see them and that can lead to toxic exchanges.

So, yeah, I think the virtue of having strong opinions about things controversial is going to inspire heated exchanges more frequently.

¹ Sex in the US is very political right now.

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[–] Windex007 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Really curious about the tool they used to quantify "toxicity/disruptive" comments. My initial suspicion would be that political commentary, regardless of human-perceived toxicity, might be biased toward "toxic" by an automated sentiment analysis.

In short: I am suspicious that automated tooling exists to reliably distinguish between toxic and non-toxic political discourse.

[–] deweydecibel 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

We also have to deal with the fact that toxicity has become an almost meaningless label. The way we seem to apply it now, feels like we'd say there was a lot of "toxicity" around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, too. Or even the Civil War.

We've conflated "angry, hateful, bitter, disruptive, belittling" with "caring enough to get upset". There's been study after study trying to blame social media for the rise in "political toxicity", and every last single one of them seems to want to sweetly ignore the context of the moment in time we're living in.

People are acting volatile because there are a lot of volatile events happening that directly affect people's lives. And all these high-minded discussions about how people online are so mean and rude, or how people don't listen to each other anymore, consistently sidestep that very crucial piece of context.

So I ask, what do we mean by "toxic"? Because I have a strong feeling a good deal of women were being real "toxic" on June 24 2022. Why is the story not about why? And why does that deserve to be grouped in with the same toxicity comes from the people responsible?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I think it's the other way round – expressive people are more likely to have strong political opinions

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

I like to argue with people about politics. The internet is the safest place to do so.

[–] snek 11 points 10 months ago

I found myself becoming a lot more toxic the past few weeks, but the carpet bombing of Gaza has gotten me exceptionally angry. A lot of Zionist content is deliberately false and provocative. Not an excuse though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No shit?

If you are discussing the exploitation of labor and people are bitching and moaning that "lazy devs" are taking too long to release a patch, you aren't going to grin and say how awesome of a burn that was on those losers who just got purged in a layoff. Because social and political issues permeate everything we do. Hell, we have people who are insisting that one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet re-platforming alex jones is "not tech news".

Which gets to the other aspect. Reddit, and Lemmy, has a tendency to never consider the source of a problem. Going back to the lazy devs example: Most moderators have zero issue with "This is trivial to implement and they are wasting their time making trailers or adding new skins". It doesn't violate any rules (and, even if it does, you can't gather that from just the single comment). But when someone points out how toxic that narrative is? Suddenly this becomes a flame war (because nobody can accept they might not be perfect) and the entire branch gets nuked... except that initial lazy devs commentary is still there.

Sometimes that is intentional by the moderators (the lemmy.world 3d printing board has some good examples of that...). Mostly it is just because... being a moderator sucks and it is rare that a burst of traffic doesn't involve a disproportionate burst of flaming and trolling. So suddenly they are inundated with angry people from all around whereas last week they had just a few porn posts a day.

But pretty much all of this is an extension of "tone policing". Someone saying the world would be a better place if you and everyone like you were executed or enslaved? Better be careful how you respond. If you don't smile enough, then YOU are the problem. So lighten up and learn that both sides have a point and maybe you should be the bigger person and only breathe 20% of the day instead of 90%.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This just in, the sky is blue and the Pope is Catholic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

The sky is currently black where I am, stop spreading disinformation

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

they needed a study for that?

[–] voidMainVoid 7 points 10 months ago

It's worth studying even things that seem obvious, because sometimes what seems obvious is wrong. And the only way you're going to find out is if you study it.

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