True, people have become more emboldened to speak their mind on the internet. I'm guessing it's partly realizing that privacy doesn't exist anymore anyway and positive reinforcement. The removal of the dislike button / hiding dislikes has further opened the floodgates to crackpot ideas. 

What I notice is that the PSVR sub reddit quickly deals with 'trolls' through the down vote button. That little bit of self policing / gate keeping has been removed from most social media. At Eurogamer it led to almost igniting a 'war' against the mods, things got out of control, tons of people got banned and now the comment sections there are a ghost of what they used to be.

It's just 2 anecdotes. Maybe the mods here have some perspective on any changes after the removal of the dislike button. Here it seems most people have either left, gone back to lurking or retreated into one of the official PC/XBOX/Nintendo mega threads. 

Social media has mostly been turned into a positive reinforcement machine:

Using only positive reinforcement can lead to an inflated sense of self-esteem, an overestimation of one's abilities, and the potential for negative or harmful behaviors to persist. While positive reinforcement is effective for building desirable behaviors, a sole reliance on it can create unrealistic expectations, make individuals overly dependent on external praise, and fail to address dangerous or serious misbehavior effectively.

That pretty much sums up the state of social media today...

That's a fair point about downvotes. However, at least here, it seemed that for every actually bad comment, there must've been like five decent enough comments that were downvoted, and I don't think that seems fair either. I guess 'self-moderation' is a tricky thing to do properly. I think I have/might be able to come up with some potential improvements, but it's not really ever going to be perfect - have to pick the upsides and the downsides that fit what you're trying to do with the community.

True, down votes were just as much used for trolling as 'burying' that behavior.

Also thinking a bit more about it, the removal of dislikes is a reflection of 'modern' schooling where positive reinforcement outweighs all criticism. I can't really blame social media for that as the rise of participation awards started in the 80's and 90's. Boomers trying to fix low-self esteem by showering kids with praise no matter what.

So it seems the pendulum has swung to the other side now and we're dealing with inflated self-esteem. Schools made kids dependent on external praise, aka likes...

I get the reason why VGChartz added the agree button (we had way to many posts quoting a post with the only contribution being "This", just click agree instead) so it's not really a like button but the effect can be the same. Yet the site traffic is so low there's no 'farming for clicks' here.

Yet social media seems obsessed with 'going viral'. And with monetization tied to views and likes, the internet is teaching kids you can make money by playing into people's emotions, while logical, complex arguments are mostly a waste of time.

Of course it was no different in the age of tabloids and newspapers. Catchy headlines same as clickbait, Sun page 3 to sell the tabloid, next to saucy rumors and conspiracy nonsense. The only difference is you can now keep scrolling tabloid type nonsense any time, any place on your phone without it ever ending. At least with a newspaper you still got exposed to some in depth articles, nowadays that's all filtered out to keep your attention with low effort tidbits. No more picking up a Reader's digest or Time Magazine at the doctor, dentist etc while waiting. Just keep scrolling the clickbait.

I think I partially agree about positive reinforcement, although that might also be getting a bit into cultural territory too. At least here in Finland, I don't think there's a strong tradition of providing positive feedback even when it's appropriate, so some corrective action might have been in order. I suspect it's the same in many other places as well, although possibly to a lesser extent. I also have a hunch we might have gone a bit too far with positive feedback and vibes in general, at least at times, but at this point it's really more of a vague hunch for me.

Not sure how I feel about your inflated self-esteem claim. I feel like it's probably true for some, but at the same time issues with mental health seem to be on the rise (I'm assuming in the West in general, but don't quote me on that). It feels like we're doing something really unhealthy to have such issues both at the same time. I'm guessing much of that can be attributed exactly to what we've been discussing here, probably alongside some other factors (I especially have some concerns about parenting, possibly largely but not necessarily entirely attributed to social media).

Feels like social media is so much worse than tabloids and whatnot, maybe because it's more engaging.

You again raise many interesting points, many of which seem like they would be pretty interesting to research in greater depth, if only I had infinite time.

Inflated self-esteem can be associated with depression, particularly when it is fragile and defensive. Narcissistic personality disorder is another condition where inflated self-esteem masks a fragile self-esteem and can co-occur with depression.

That seems to match the behavior of digging your heels in, refusing to see 'the other side'. Fragile and defensive behavior, unwilling to challenge your own beliefs.


And yeah social media is much worse since it's 'free', always available and endless. Tabloids you have to buy and there's only so much of it. With social media you are the product, competing for your attention, while you pay with your browsing data and your eyes seeing ads. Basically paying with your time.

Yeah if only we had infinite time! Yet we don't and perhaps people should be made aware more about how much their time is worth and stop giving it away for free to their phones.

Anyway my solution to this trap was to restrict myself to a few sites, VGChartz and r/psvr is basically all I follow nowadays. (Apart from ME news) Both slow enough to quickly reach the end of new updates :) (I ditched my phone 15 years ago)

Negative.
Sure, it has made many things much more convenient, fast and limitless, but I'm not sure those things are the ultimate expression of the human experience. Or if those things are even good for us, it doesn't seem so if you scratch the surface just a little and look beyond the immediately gratifying.
There's too much information for us to handle and yet we still want faster and faster and more and more. There are also infinite things to divide us into different boxes over every opinion now. The very opposite of the great unifier the web was supposed to be.
Yeah, there's a bunch of good here, but in the big picture, I think the world could be a better place without it. It would be very different, but better.
Maybe we will catch up as a species and grow up with the tech we have been given. Learn how to really use it and what not to do with it. There's no going back at any rate.

Fair points, I don't think we disagree. Thanks for the insight again!

Positive, by far. We’ve come together as a civilization in ways unmatched in history. The proliferation of trade, not only in goods, but in the sheer volume of information is unprecedented. The internet has become a powerful tool for keeping in touch and organizing events with far less difficulty than at any other point in history.

But no doubt that people with poor metacognition shouldn't be on the internet at all. Not only for their own sanity, but for the sanity of everyone else. These sorts easily fall victim to their own habits. They also seem to very easily get lured into toxic culture and other forms of group-think stupidity.

Negative and it’s not even close.

Can you imagine completing a degree without the internet? Yeah, no; the internet is a great success story.