RoyalRoad has a higher standard. RoyalRoad is also way more vocal than Scribblehub. If you combine those two together, there will be bad eggs that will show, and yes it can be toxic at times, but that's the internet anyway. You should focus on the positive. Once you get a bunch of followers, it's really more fun to have an interactive and vocal readership.
Just sharing my experience, my SH followers are 1/3rd the number of RR followers. I just finished my previous volume and uploaded a chapter sort of thank you message, and talking about writing and that kind of stuff to commemorate the completion. Here on SH, that chapter got like six comments that weren't my replies. Since my RR readership is triple, you'd expect 6x3= 18 comments there. But no, that chapter had like
eighty (
80) comments (only one was critical).
It definitely is more fun to have a vocal readership as a writer. It goes without saying, that if people are more vocal, there are some of them that probably should shut up, and that's where the perceived RR toxicity comes from. But you can't have one without the other. Yes, SH is more chill, but it's also very quiet.
I think it's because RR is older and some authors have gotten very good over the years. Which created a more seasoned bias among the readers.
I don't think a lot of people know this, but about six, seven years ago, RR has an approved reviewer group literally called "The Group". They handed out extremely critical reviews that can stretch for pages. The "harshness" of RR now is nothing to when The Group was around. They became like the Inquisition actually. The RR admins regretted that move because of the toxicity it brought and The Group disbanded. However, a sort of side effect of that was the level of writing of the community was raised, and people became more critical and have a higher standard than other writing sites. And it was passed on to this day. Still, RR now is way more chill than when The Group was around.