I never stopped doing this. The problem is, a lot of younger people were never taught to or never learned they should do this and a lot of older people same thing sort of.
I was kind of lucky I suppose, years ago I had a friend say something on a work Facebook page that caused some trouble, I realized Facebook wasn't a place I could have people like that, so since I've kept Facebook or any other social media website with personal information and concersations on it strictly professional or Christmas dinner at grandma's house level. Which pretty much means, no politics, no getting involved in other people's arguments, no posting things I wouldn't want an employer or my grandma seeing, no friends that post ridiculous things on my feed etc.
Then i've got my forum and other online site accounts that lack, for the most part, studd that could easily identify me, though I'm sure someone with lots of time and dedication(dunno why though), could figure it out, that use a different email than my 'real' email, where I can talk about things without worrying that I might randomly piss off someone I know.
If I want to have potentially divisive conversations with people I know in person, I'd rather do it in person or at least not on what might as well be the community billboard.
I agree with you that size is one of the main contributing factors to the problem, I just don't think smaller sites is a practical solution for the public at large. That being said, if you don't care about "fixing" the public problem, then you're right on the money. If you personally don't want to experience toxicity, get off the big sites, it's that easy. I just don't see that being a fix for the average teenager/college student/boomer
I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can move elsewhere.
Even federated approaches like mastodon also have big issues with toxicity.
Smaller internet forums, subreddits, Discord/Slack groups, etc tend to be a lot more civil than the likes of Twitter or YouTube are.
So a revival of those types of sites and communities will help a lot.
As will returning to the days of multi pseudonyms for different websites. Because people are not one sided. They don't always act the same way in every setting.
No, their behaviour depends on the company they're with. They might act one way with family, another way with friends, another way at work, etc.
That's how society stays together to some degree. People don't know how others act in other settings, and they don't care. Your coworkers likely have a whole mix of political opinions, but since it likely doesn't come up during work, it doesn't really matter.
Social networks seem to be trying to demolish this sense of separation between sides of people's personalities, and that's making society more and more fragile, as one wrong move means someone's entire life gets destroyed by the internet mob.
Oh, and decent moderation too. Unfortunately for Facebook and co, you can't automate moderation and expect it to work well, and you can't outsource it to a bunch of full time employees in a distant office somewhere. It has to be done by people with a real investment in the community, which is again where a well run small community shines.