> I wonder how the positive and respectful space here may be reproduced in other social media platforms.

It's very simple once you stop chasing growth and engagement metrics. The main reasons the other social media platforms are cesspools is because outrage generates engagement so the platform is designed to encourage it as well as encouraging users to join and stay regardless of the quality of their contributions, where as here the design itself acts as a small barrier to entry, in addition to a karma system and competent, human moderation that discourages (and eventually bans) bad behavior.

I think it's the people and the nature of the "hacker" topics. You need a certain amount of attention span to read plain text comments, enjoy a front page with no images, you need patience to learn programming and tech stuff. You need some explicit thinking and less knee jerk reactions. There is some actual object level to discuss, some objective technical things, not only who stands for what and who likes who political games.

Of course this could be reproduced in other similar communities as well.

That's precisely what I hate about the LinkedIn feed. It's way too positive.

The fake kind of positive. I don't understand why people do that. They're trying to fool other human beings by pretending that everything is awesome, positive, etc.

my bet is a combination of high barriers to entry and the disincentivisation of bad behavior.

on hackernews, the first one comes as a side effect of the general topic and the relatively high level of discussion and entries, and maybe also of the fact that it's text-only.

the second one comes via the threat of downvotes, or, more generally speaking, the possibility of negative feedback.

I criticize HN all the time, but it has very strong points because it resembles the old Internet. No gifs, no pics, no videos, no graphical bullshit. Just text, this serves as a huge filter.