Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
Discussions like this are frustrating to me because they always seem to skip over what feels like a crucial element:<p>Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?<p>I get the feeling, in general, when people talk about wanting to &quot;Do Something&quot; about this sort of thing, they are always focused on managing the symptom and never focused on addressing the cause. Frequently, when I try to bring this up, the cause is waved away with &quot;oh they&#x27;re just stupid&#x2F;ignorant&#x2F;angry&quot; or some other such explanation. The current-year favourite is &quot;they just believe fake news&quot;, and I&#x27;m sure next year there will be a political explanation, and then the year after that we&#x27;ll loop back to generic ones. (The irony of denouncing other people as causing polarization &quot;because they&#x27;re just angry and stupid&quot; is lost on most people)<p>I don&#x27;t know why this is happening. But I do know that until the why is address, and done so with care and respect, this problem will be papered over at best but never solved.<p>Also<p>&gt; Do we ditch them and go back to a literal timeline?<p>If I got one wish to change the world, but I had to give up a bunch of great things, I would sell out all technological wonder in order to get literal timelines back. As soon as other people decided they knew what I wanted to see better than I did, the problem started. And as soon as they got tired of doing that and made computers do it for them, it got worse