📖 Content moderation glossary
What is toxicity in online comments?
In short
Toxicity is a broad label for rude, disrespectful or aggressive content likely to make other people leave a conversation, including insults, contempt, threats and personal attacks.
Toxicity is a common category in moderation models because it captures the tone of a message rather than a precise offence. It is useful for spotting threads that are degenerating, but it is a fuzzy notion: what one community finds normal banter, another finds offensive.
Example: 'this article is lazy and badly researched' is negative but not toxic: it criticises the work. 'The author is an idiot who should be fired' is toxic: it attacks the person.
Treating every toxic score as grounds for removal leads to over-moderation, especially of strong but legitimate criticism. A better approach defines which kinds of toxicity the space does not accept and keeps the rest visible. OpenModeration applies each client's own rules, keeps criticism visible and hides clear violations.