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.

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.

  • @pacology@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28•7 months ago

    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.

    • @idiocracy@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2•7 months ago

      it’s not only that, remember the point of news articles is to make engagement too and one tactic is to fuel people with rage, even by the means of fake news, and given the internet anonymity, u get anger fueled keyboard warriors

    • dustycupsEnglish
      2•7 months ago

      I haven’t heard of a collider in that context before. Could you mean a confounder?