[Steve_Seattle]

Are people less likely to express “dissenting views” on social media than in real-life, face-to-face situations, as the research claims? That seems unlikely to me. The Internet is notorious for inducing people to go “overboard” and say things they would not say face-to-face. So I suspect there is some sort of agenda behind this research.

[Objective Scrutator]

You're absolutely correct, the article is just whining that conservatives want to isolate themselves from liberals (but if liberals want to isolate themselves from conservatives, that's A-OK!). The NYT, being liberals, would prefer that all online communities organize themselves like 4chan, where people can post without a username (thus encouraging consequence free trolling) and are encouraged to commit suicide. There are countless other peer-encouraged suicides linked to the Internet, whereas before the Internet peer-encouraged suicides usually happened in secretive, difficult-to-access cults.

The Internet, if anything, gives people the perfect platform to abuse others without remorse. Most people simply don't want to engage with anonymous people unless they can find common ground with them, but that's also the case in real life. The people who do want to engage with anonymous people (with no common ground) generally want to do so maliciously, and you are much less likely to face the consequences of your malice on the Internet.