alt Hacker News> 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?
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I'd wager the amount on FB is orders of magnitude _more_ than on 4chan. 4chan's average severity is likely higher, though. They're different problems, but saying that online toxicity only exists on anonymous sites is naive at best.
My dad posts daily on Facebook about how much he hates Muslims.
Yes, it is far worse because it gets personal far more quickly with non-anonymous users. People don't feel exhausted by 4chan, it is mostly the comparison to others on "legit" platforms.
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.
There is vastly more toxic behaviour on Facebook, it's not even close.
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.