A German study of hostility in comments on soccer blogs provides a potential reason why the Reddit ban worked. Researchers asked soccer fans to write a comment on a blog post about a controversial soccer issue that already contained six other comments. When the previous comments were hostile and aggressive, so was the new one. When the previous comments were thoughtful and considerate, the new comment again followed suit—and it didn’t matter whether such comments were anonymous or linked to real-name Facebook accounts.
