I very much appreciate the urbane nature of HN, and strive to contribute in a way that brings light; not darkness.

My digital community experience harkens from the USENET days, which made the worst pissing matches on Faecesbook look like polite disagreements between scholars.

A day or two ago, someone made a real mild slap at me (I can come across as a bit tiresome, if you haven’t noticed. Take my word for it; it’s preferable to my USENET persona), using a very tired old troll technique, and someone else flagged it.

I was actually surprised it was flagged, but it does show that people take civility seriously, hereabouts.

Since we’re on the topic of civil conversation, I’m going to be a bit picky:

“American” is a generalization. Accusing them is not productive to discussion.

I was thinking of American social media companies with exploitative engagement algorithms that foment adversarial discourse. You are right if you are saying the users are all over the world, not just America.

Is that what you mean? Or is the term “American” problematic in some other way?

I though you were referring to American users. Accusing American companies is ok.