It's too late - the web already "democratized" communication, meaning that not just people with writing skills, credentials, connections or experiences capable of impressing some gatekeeper get to have a voice. People with absolutely nothing worthwhile to say get to talk to everybody now. Sound elitist? Then the desire for "no toxicity" is elitist. (It's basically expressing a bias against Shitty People.)
EDIT: Possibly against my better judgment I'll take the question a bit more at face value. I think it's all about the climate or culture of a place. As an engineer I've tended to dismiss talk of "culture" esp. where a company or workplace is concerned, but in recent years I've changed my mind. For example, one message or pronouncement by the CEO can change people's entire experience of working there. Same thing for a website, which is a virtual place. And what kind of culture do you expect will develop in a place where the incentives, motivations, values etc. of the people running the site are actively hostile to yours? A place where the very premise of being there is already a hostile act against other humans? It's a corrupt and fundamentally dishonest (not just incidentally dishonest, I would argue) place where the social order has already broken down before a word is even said.
Yeah okay, being a surveillance platform that optimizes for dark patterns and "engagement" doesn't guarantee that it'll be full of trolls. But it's not exactly a surprise when it turns out to be that way.
Steve Jobs was obviously pretty shitty in some ways, but at the height of Apple's revolutionizing of the UI (before it turned shitty) it made you feel like there was something noble about it and you felt better and more of a sense of decorum just by being there. Meanwhile Twitter refuses sensible and awesome ideas for UI/UX over and over for years because they get more engagement by keeping it shitty. And shittiness has a way of spreading. If the place is shitty you will act shitty. But if you suddenly get invited to go have lunch with the Queen of England or something, you probably behave better despite yourself, even if you're Johnny Rotten.
We don't "behave better" because, fewer and fewer of us are getting invited to lunch with the Queen, and because we're not the (U)ser whose (X) the ones running the place care about, and because we can tell we're being taken advantage of, and the nearest person available to take out our grievances on, is each other.
EDIT: Possibly against my better judgment I'll take the question a bit more at face value. I think it's all about the climate or culture of a place. As an engineer I've tended to dismiss talk of "culture" esp. where a company or workplace is concerned, but in recent years I've changed my mind. For example, one message or pronouncement by the CEO can change people's entire experience of working there. Same thing for a website, which is a virtual place. And what kind of culture do you expect will develop in a place where the incentives, motivations, values etc. of the people running the site are actively hostile to yours? A place where the very premise of being there is already a hostile act against other humans? It's a corrupt and fundamentally dishonest (not just incidentally dishonest, I would argue) place where the social order has already broken down before a word is even said.
Yeah okay, being a surveillance platform that optimizes for dark patterns and "engagement" doesn't guarantee that it'll be full of trolls. But it's not exactly a surprise when it turns out to be that way.
Steve Jobs was obviously pretty shitty in some ways, but at the height of Apple's revolutionizing of the UI (before it turned shitty) it made you feel like there was something noble about it and you felt better and more of a sense of decorum just by being there. Meanwhile Twitter refuses sensible and awesome ideas for UI/UX over and over for years because they get more engagement by keeping it shitty. And shittiness has a way of spreading. If the place is shitty you will act shitty. But if you suddenly get invited to go have lunch with the Queen of England or something, you probably behave better despite yourself, even if you're Johnny Rotten.
We don't "behave better" because, fewer and fewer of us are getting invited to lunch with the Queen, and because we're not the (U)ser whose (X) the ones running the place care about, and because we can tell we're being taken advantage of, and the nearest person available to take out our grievances on, is each other.