Real-life political conversations are difficult enough ;-)

There's something about having a public political decision that turns it into combat in front of an audience instead of a collaboration between two partners trying to better their situation.

I've found the New York Times's comment section to be surprisingly decent for some reason. But that's in comparison to my very low expectations for these things.

Could this have to do with the fact that the site is paywalled and not open to the bots and trolls that overwhelm other news organizations' comment sections?

It’s because they are heavily moderated.

See https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014792387-Comm...

what if there’s no moderation? I mean, what if moderation is part of the problem..

Then people just yell past each other and everyone becomes Hitler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Generally, when unmoderated, the loudest user(s) will drown out everyone else

There are a few dozen smaller Discord servers whose community nature allows you to engage with more interesting political viewpoints and discuss. There are still incidents, but in general if its possible for a communist to debate an anarchocapitalist in good faith, most political discussion should be possible.

I don't think that it requires heavy moderation.

Reddit, up until some years ago, was great for political discussion. Simply ignore low quality opinions and focus on the few people who have actual knowledge.

Then the "safe space" movement started and anything that wasn't mainstream opinion was banned all over the place.

Suddenly, political discussion became impossible, because you could not discuss any non trivial things without few of being misunderstood and your account getting banned.