Melina Delkic, The New York Times ; How Creators Are Facing Hateful Comments Head-On
"Experts in online behavior also say that the best approach is usually to ignore nasty comments, as hard as that may be.
“I think it’s helpful for people to keep in mind that hateful comments they see are typically posted by people who are the most extreme users,” said William Brady, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, whose research team studied online outrage by looking at 13 million tweets. He added that the instinct to “punish” someone can backfire.
“Giving a toxic user any engagement (view, like, share, comment) ironically can make their content more visible,” he wrote in an email. “For example, when people retweet toxic content in order to comment on it, they are actually increasing the visibility of the content they intend to criticize. But if it is ignored, algorithms are unlikely to pick them up and artificially spread them further.”"
