People in companies like Facebook and Twitter debate and disagree all the time about features and their effects, and that has a real impact on how culture and ethics are defined in organizations. Part of the goal of this project was to empower them with ideas to advocate for and drive change. I'm a strong believer in thinking about value over longer time horizons (ala Warren Buffett) and find short-termism a real cancer on our society, and I hope we as a society can come to realize incentives need to be more aligned around long term value and effect. This does require a different mindset than some companies take, but if we can get people to think longer term, it will trickle down to individual product and design decisions that I think can have big impact.
I'll take a look at this article, I hadn't read it before. Cheers
All in all, I think you're quite correct about how the toxicity is a long term risk, but perhaps people there need to realize how much of a threat it is for the platform.
Finally, I think your article was really great, as I said before. I came with a negative perspective but you convinced me otherwise. I still believe that certain cultural and mindset issues need to be addressed that might be beyond design but I definitely feel you're right that the UX design could help reduce toxicity.
[0] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vam...