Sub-Standards and Mal-Practices: Misinformation's Role in Insular, Polarized, and Toxic Interactions on Reddit

The spread of unreliable information online has been linked to rising political hostility, yet its specific relationship to user behavior and discourse remains underexplored. In this work, we examine the influence of unreliable information on political incivility and toxicity on the social media platform Reddit. We show that comments on articles from unreliable news websites are posted more often in right-leaning subreddits and that, within individual subreddits, comments are on average 32% relatively more likely to be toxic compared with comments on reliable news articles. Utilizing a zero-inflated negative binomial regression, we further show that as the toxicity of subreddits increases, users are more likely to comment on posts from known unreliable websites. Finally, modeling user interactions with an exponential random graph model, we find that when reacting to a Reddit submission linking to a website known for spreading unreliable information, users are more likely to be toxic toward users of different political beliefs. Our results collectively illustrate that low-quality, unreliable information not only predicts increased toxicity but also fosters more polarizing interactions between users of different political orientations.