Classic advice for toxic behavior is "just block". Yes it does help. I've had to block about 10 accounts in the last month and honestly, things have drastically calmed down. It seems to prove that most of the toxic behavior is from a small minority.
But In doing user research, it was clear that many people self censor out of fear of toxic blowback.
The problem is that it's not just one block, you need to do it many times and each time you do it, your perception of the problem is reinforced. The trick is to get to the other side.
Many don't make it. That is my worry.
@scottjenson I worry that professional programmers such as yourself apply a tendentious definition of "toxicity" as a pretext for cutting off communication, especially in cases where anger is justifiable (e.g. anything to do with the corporate push to normalize LLM sludge generators, which are objectively destructive and ruinous to the environment, to the communities in which "AI" installations are forcibly built, and to the safety and privacy of the general public)