The broken windows of the internet

29 Jan, 2026

Post last updated 2 months ago

I try to reduce my usage of traditional social media like Reddit, but old habits die hard, and I often find myself scrolling through my homepage, especially on the aforementioned site. After my ban on the main Romanian subreddit¹, I joined a new one, created to not be so trigger-happy, and of course, trumpet itself as allowing true freedom of speech.

At first, it was decent. There were more questionable takes, but overall the atmosphere was good. Sadly, as is often the case, tolerance for intolerance will just spiral out of control, and that happened there too. Amidst Romania's year and a half of elections, a period characterized by rising extremism and a quick loss of institutional faith, the subreddit became increasingly populated with trolls, bots, or downright fascists.

I'm eager to argue for my beliefs and launched into many hopeless back-and-forth arguments with said trolls, bots, or fascists. I gained nothing but frustration and lost time. Now, after the EU-India deal, the subreddit is once again flooded with racist posts against the Indians who will steal all our jobs and the evil EU that is enslaving us. I've lost hope that place is salvageable, as the mods don't seem to mind, and I started reflecting on the broken windows theory. Long story short, the theory says that an intact object (a vehicle in that experiment) left unattended will remain intact for a relatively long time, but once the first sign of vandalism appears, the ravages snowball quickly.

This seems to be the case with places on the internet too: lack of moderation works until the first problematic content appears; then it's free-for-all. However, I fail to understand how one can enjoy (or not care about) seeing downright lies and evil things thrive in their metaphorical backyard.

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#internet #reflections #society