[wfo]

Spoken like someone who hasn't spent much time on reddit recently. Since the massive surge in white nationalist, alt-right, and other right-hate ideologies online (and particularly the creation of the_donald, a subreddit which has shockingly avoided the ban hammer for an inexplicably long time given its obvious explicit purpose: to be an echo chamber to spread hate, scream slurs, threaten people with death and genocide, and dox enemies).

In literally any part of reddit, if there is any post on anything that could be construed as racial or about any gender, even innocuous, hordes of extremist right wing trolls descend upon it and spew horrifying screeds of hate. They abuse people into silence. They are toxic. These things leak. And toxicity is real. Hate begets hate, saying nasty horrible things to people and advocating for genocide are not innocuous "beliefs that other people might have" they are unacceptable behavior in civil society.

If you do this in real life you are ostracized, beaten, you lose your job, you are abandoned by your family and friends. And this is good. Social signals and actions to prevent "toxic" behavior have existed since forever. But the Internet is the property of a few companies who are loath to enforce those same social rules. Sometimes, they get pushed far enough they feel have to.

[slayed0]

You're mixing beliefs with tactics/behavior. The behavior you described is "toxic" no matter what your beliefs are. I agree that the lack of repercussions and social feedback online lead to an increase in people acting like this and it is a problem for pretty much all public forums. However, it is neither constructive, nor is it truthful, in my opinion, to attach this behavior to a single group, side, or set of beliefs. All you'll end up doing is driving moderates of said group further to the extremes. You can call out ideas you think are bad and you can call out behavior you think is bad, but "other-ing" an entire group based on the worst actions at the fringes of their membership just isn't going to change any minds. It only widens the divide.

Edit: The exception, of course, is if the behavior that is at issue is actually encouraged by a foundational belief of the group.

[wfo]

>Edit: The exception, of course, is if the behavior that is at issue is actually encouraged by a foundational belief of the group.

I'm glad you added this, I agree with you in general. I'm not interested in "other-ing" right-wing people, Republicans, moderates, conservatives, but I'm very interested in "other-ing", e.g. neo-nazis or Klan members. I am not worried about neo-nazis becoming more extreme (? is this possible?) and I also am not willing to let their sensibilities or concern for their feelings dictate any part of my or society's behavior.