That's a highly complex problem, IMHO; since it involves lots of variables and variability. And, quite honestly, I doubt there's ever going to be a proper way

That's a highly complex problem, IMHO; since it involves lots of variables and variability. And, quite honestly, I doubt there's ever going to be a proper way to solve it. But here are some of my observations: - Everyone's online. Everyone. That includes people a) who had a less than stellar upbringing (whatever that means to which one of us); b) with mental illness (some of them untreated and/or self-diagnosed); c) from other cultural background (which don't necessarily align with western point-of-views); d) who are underaged; e) who are (very) bored (and some find entertainment in provoking chaos); f) who lack proper education; g) who simply do not care about educating themselves and others; and h) who are naturally antagonistic for whatever reason. - Bots. There are also a good number of botnets out there (the "like" economy comes to mind) or subverted systems (smartphones, routers, PCs, etc) which act without the owner's knowledge; I'm convinced there's also botnets out there that purposefully amplify certain controversies online (websites' comment sections come to mind). Now, understand, this doesn't apply to every controversy. But I've seen some weird stuff on YouTube, for example. And, quite frankly, it's not that hard to extrapolate that since there are "like" bots there are equally "hate" bots as well. The end game is, in most cases, visibility. In others, it's probably social engineering for whatever reason. Mostly political. Unfortunately, media outlets have fallen into this scheme as well. I mean, it's not like the concept of clickbait is new. Attractive headlines are as old as newspapers/journalism. - Highly progressive opinions will always clash with the status quo; - There's a fundamental and unavoidable loss (or lack) of signal whenever people communicate in short sentences, or when they do not have enough time to fully understand what's being said, or when they communicate with people who they don't know; If I have a friend who's a prankster/jester I might be used to their shenanigans and tolerate them--a stranger might not find them funny. Maybe the stranger will find it funny after they know my friend, but that would depend on a lot of other variables as well. - There's also the problem of the person who transmits information not expressing themselves properly (for whatever reason) which will unavoidably lead to miscommunication; - Social networks are fundamentally designed for engagement--now that everyone is online there will be a clash of ideas. Tribes will organically form (just like offline). And - with few exceptions - what was meant as a benign message ends up in a declaration of war from the other tribe. So, in sum, I just scratched the surface of the problem. It's very hard to make sense of all the noise and coming up with a proper solution to this problem. Is it an education problem? Is democracy the root cause? Would a totalitarian (regardless it being Right-Wing or Left-Wing) system work? Is it something fundamentally ingrained into our human condition that makes it impossible to solve this problem? (Look at bees, for instance, they're ruthless and yet highly efficient at what they do.) Is it a fundamental purpose (or lack thereof) that each and everyone of us has defined - through whatever heuristic and for whatever reason - that's to blame for all this chaos? Is it its visibility? Yeah. It's a hard problem to solve. Maybe lots of compromise would help. I honestly don't know. The quote "All models are wrong, but some are useful." --George Box comes to mind.