Last Updated on 23 May 2026

Discussion is one of the main ways people understand complex situations. Each of us understands only a small part of reality, and discussion allows us to help one another see more clearly, complete the picture for one another, and become wiser together. As part of this process, we collect data and information and develop knowledge. But better understanding requires more than accumulated knowledge. It requires the ability to look at an idea from several angles, and those angles usually come from other people. In a good discussion, different perceptions of reality are placed in the open and analyzed by the participants. Each person responds, with some responses being wiser than others. The wiser responses contain more information presented clearly and succinctly. They are delivered in a way that allows others to understand, examine and respond to them easier. Like people, discussions can also be wiser or less wise. The wiser discussions are a powerful source of wisdom.

That, of course, is true when the discussion is not controlled by emotion. People tend to turn their worldview into part of their identity, and therefore, when someone disagrees with them, they may interpret it as if that person is rejecting them. Then the discussion is no longer about ideas, but about validating and invalidating people and groups. In a pure discussion, information, knowledge and wisdom are placed in the open in the form of an argument. The participants respond to the argument, agree with it fully, agree with it partly, or disagree with it, and add their own wisdom, which is the angle through which they understand reality. Once that happens, the other participants respond to that argument. They may absorb it partly or fully, and this enriches their worldview and their understanding of reality. The goal is to get closer to truth, which is precious.

Discussion, especially when performed face to face, is an act of exposure and vulnerability. A person reveals what they think and believe, and risks looking foolish, incoherent, or detached from the discussion. People enter the discussion with opinions that are independent of the other participants, but after the discussion those opinions become partly dependent on them, because participants influence one another. In a pure discussion, that influence is clean. Each participant decides which information to absorb into their opinions and which information to reject. The mutual influence is therefore useful. In a dirty discussion, at least one participant does not come to learn. They come to persuade, externalize negative emotions, or create noise. Every discussion needs a moderator. If the moderator cannot silence these forces and remove them from the discussion, the quality of the discussion is damaged. In that case, the mutual influence is not positive and not constructive. Attempts at persuasion create defenses among the participants. Negative emotions move between participants and create more defenses. Noise interferes with the distribution and processing of information, making it harder for participants to learn and become wiser through the wisdom of others. The dirtier the discussion becomes, the more its quality declines. Participants close themselves off, move away, and the general sentiment becomes more negative. Learning is replaced by emotional harm among many participants, in the form of a slippery slope.

This is the state of too many discussions on the internet. The general discourse online these days is negative and noisy. Participants, whether people or machines, often do not come with the purpose of learning, but with the purpose of venting, creating noise and disturbing others from learning. Bots and the general bitterness of the internet have turned online discussions into a toxic mix of negative opinions, superficial statements and extreme behavior. People would never allow themselves to express face to face the way they do online. Worst of all, as on many major news sites comment sections have become demanding swamps of noise and confusion, current discussion moderation solutions are partial at best. They focus on sentiment analysis, meaning they rate a message according to the quality of the words used to deliver it, and not according to their meaning. As a result, toxic messages that are written eloquently and politely are published and maliciously contaminate the discussion, as can be seen across the internet today. This often includes clear lies and false information.

In high-quality discussions, we would expect a relatively normal sentiment distribution, where most arguments are delivered in a balanced and coherent way, and only a minority are expressed in an extreme way. In practice, the actual situation shows a clearly negative sentiment distribution in too many cases. At SentiSift, we saw this clearly when we analyzed about 130 articles with about 50,000 comments across various English-language sites. The sentiment distribution was very negative, with about 6.5% of comments marked as toxic and about 23% as negative, while only about 9.5% were marked as positive and about 0.2% as very positive. The rest were marked as neutral. The bot rate detected by our algorithm was at most about 2.5%. As difficult as the situation is in English, in Hebrew the situation is even worse. Whether because of model differences, cultural differences, or active hostile activity, discourse on Hebrew-language news sites is negative and extreme. We analyzed about 210 articles with about 40,000 comments across various sites. About 61% of all comments were tagged as negative or toxic, and only about 12% were positive or very positive. The average bot rate in Hebrew comments, according to SentiSift’s algorithm, was about 16.5%. This extreme and toxic discourse presents a picture of divided societies and probably organized, automated and hostile activity designed to create noise and confusion. The danger is simple: people stop discussing, stop learning, and as a society we become more stupid. When people cannot speak with one another, exchange information, and learn from one another, they begin to see the other side as an enemy from whom there is nothing to learn. Add social networks that create echo chambers and clubs of supporters around even the stupidest ideas, and the result is a poisonous stew of stupidity, noise and danger.