OTOH anecdotes in nostr:note1qlzlqnhqnlnr2dpptpzrn44dkup29upalvyz0kpj59k3kr6j6ckqtu5tqh sound toxic. It seems people have different experiences on different services/protocols, I guess in part based on some path dependent thing of who they are following, conceivably even what bucket they are placed in if it's an algorithmic system. Lots of people report that twitter is a cesspool, and much more so recently. I've never experienced that, but then I don't look at big accounts or the "for you" feed much. On Mastodon I see almost no garbage, probably in part because I turn of retoots. Here I see almost no garbage, because I follow almost nobody. But if I look for garbage, it's in massive abundance on all of these (as well as BlueSky and Threads, just haven't looked in awhile).

Twitter-style social media (all of the above are basically that) is kind of undifferentiated and general purpose, which means people don't necessarily get the experience they wanted without significant work including self-restraint. But for other styles of website/service, you pretty much know what you're there for and will get (eg reddit or particular subs; not that those experiences couldn't be improved, but at least there's some level of agreement among participants about what they're doing).

I wonder if some kind of signaling of intent about what kind of interaction one is looking for, and use of that by clients, would be helpful. This is kinda accomplished on Mastodon-and-adjacent through instances, and on specific posts by some people with reply guidelines. But could same or better be accomplished without instances, and guide not only people who see posts, but guide people who want a style of interaction toward posts where the author signaled a compatible intent? There's a vast amount of people posting on any given topic (say NZ visit suggestions: aside if that's really what one wanted, as opposed to random convo, wouldn't they ask a search engine, chatbot, or Wikivoyage? but anyway...) and is there really any reason for people desiring trolling to not get that, for people who want affirmation to get that, for people who want literal-minded helpful responses to get that, etc? Anything else is wasting people's time. Well, except that figuring out what you want and taking time to signal it, may well be a bad use of time?