It’s the inevitable result of reddit-style design, imo, particularly with regard to having downvotes. Downvotes discourage people from making controversial comments, because even if you’re correct and lots of people agree with you, your comments can still be buried or limited in visibility if enough people dislike them. The downvote button isn’t supposed to be the disagree button, but in real terms that’s what it is.

If comments that people agree with get more visibility, and things people disagree with get less visibility, then the natural result is going to be that people learn to make comments that everyone agrees with. A recipe for banality.

Hexbear has no downvotes so it functions more like twitter. You can’t just hit the dislike button and move on, so if you want to express dislike or disagreement, you have to comment and amplify, which reddit people hate. They think it’s brigading or trolling because, despite their ostensible love of debate, they don’t actually want to discuss anything.