The internet can be toxic. But there are also online oases where mutual care flourishes

By George Buchanan, Deputy Dean, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University

This piece is part of a series on the great internet letdown. Read the rest of the series.

The internet can be a toxic place. Disinformation, hate speech and trolling are not just abundant – they are encouraged by the economy of clicks which governs many online platforms. There are no good clicks, no bad clicks, only clicks. By that metric, mutual hostility is great, because it results in lots of clicks.

But this is only one side of the web.

As I…

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