This isn’t the sort of thing that tends to happen as widely on Facebook or other social media sites. There are a couple reasons for that, says Tammy Vigil, a professor at Boston University’s School of Communication.

One is that Facebook is largely a closed system in which you mainly communicate with people you know — unlike Twitter, where a tweet goes out to the whole world.

Moreover, Facebook friends can react more directly to vitriolic posts, either by calling the poster out or simply unfriending him or her, she says. In May, the site strengthened policies to stamp out hate speech.

“With Facebook, there’s more accountability,” says Vigil. “Most people’s Facebook accounts have multiple pictures of them, they’ve got connections to ‘these are my friends.’ There’s a lot less of the anonymity, so there’s a little less of the disinhibition that occurs.”