People were always like that, yes. In fact sites like Twitter exploit our worst human instincts. The point of the article is that the way in which we organize p

People were always like that, yes. In fact sites like Twitter exploit our worst human instincts. The point of the article is that the way in which we organize people into communities makes a big difference as to whether the outcome is largely positive or largely negative. Throwing tens of millions of people all together into one big boiling pot with a strict character limit is not a particularly great way to organize.