Civility has become a cult.
Mods on modern websites (including Reddit and Lemmy.world) are forced to maintain courtly behavior instead of deciding who's the asshole. They will protect any cautious troll who can politely phrase 'you're subhuman and also secretly agree with me' but jump on the obvious reasonable response: "Fuck off." Even when that curt dismissal is followed by an explanation of how a comment was dishonest and manipulative, you said the no-no word, so only you get the boot.
And that boot will tend to be as heavy as possible, sometimes instantly permanent, because god forbid anyone learn anything. You keep permanently banning these trolls, when they can get a new account in minutes, and they keep coming back within minutes? Wow, it's almost like you've given them no reason whatsoever to stick out their ban and keep that username. Spritzing them in the face with a three-day time-out works better. This is basic Skinnerian conditioning - immediate reliable feedback is internalized and shapes future behavior.
Disagree on the spritzing - perma bans from individual communities cause significant inconvenience to users.
Agree on the civility. Fuck civility politics.
Yes. The ending part was the only part I disagreed with.
I think changing the dynamic, so that it's explicitly understood all around that being on the network is a privilege, would do a lot to improve this. Right now it's a little incongruous, because having an account is an entitlement, but then you're trying to claw it back after the fact and tell people there are rules they have to follow, and so of course they're going to dispute with that idea. And then, trying to tell everyone they have to be "civil" to all the other users, toxic and nontoxic, only makes it worse, because it makes it harder to self-correct the toxic users within normal interactions inside the community.