Toxic
Toxic
OK so if you feel Lemmy has been trending towards hostility in the past weeks ppease here me out, interact in the comments but keep it civil.
Lemmy vs Reddit
We all had our reasons to move to Lemmy. What I remember clearly from the beginning of the summer was that we were all praising the tone. Over the years, Reddit has become increasingly toxic - most of all in the comment section. To me, that was what made Lemmy special. Even with less content, the general vobe was what made me come back every time.
clash of the clans
Due to the nature of the fediverse, we get to interact with people with different backgrounds and dofferent ideas. Potentially an incredibly enriching experience for everyone. Anti-defed lemmings defend staying federated with everyone for that precise reason, which I really get. But lately the vibe has turned sour. Every post that has the slightest political undertone becomes this big us-vs-them show. Please stop
discussion vs. shitshow
I am not arguing for stopping discussing our opinions. I also get the whole they don’t have downvotes thing. But can we please treat eachother with dignity, and when writing comments say ‘I believe’ or ‘in my opinion’ instead of ‘you all this or that’?
I think this is the only way forward if we want to prevent everyone from personally blocking a lot of instances in the furure.
I'm new to Lemmy but it just feels more like Reddit in the sense that if you're not part of the "hive mind", then you're just told to "go away" instead of participating in actual discussion.
It's caused me to post less than when I initially joined. There's not as much activity on Lemmy than on the Reddit equivalent in the main "channel" I read. So I've found myself wandering back to Reddit but I don't post or comment much there either.
37Yeah a couple of months ago a lot of lemmings were talking about how they were commenting a lot here while they never did on Reddit. I really think there has been a big shift going on and that has been an immense loss for the platform.
15Before I used to make a few comments a day, which is a lot for me, but now I find myself commenting less and less. The whole vibe is really different from a month ago. When I joined the fediverse I hoped we could make something better than reddit, and I still do, but there has been a rise in toxicity recently. Arguments are a good thing but most of the time they just result in insults being thrown.
14
For me that's one of the things from Reddit, the other was the niche subs!
The whole political algorithm driven doom scrolling dopamine reward thing Reddit pushed is actually what I want to go away from.
I want a tech sub without billionaire drama but with the newest PCB for raspberry, the new CPUs, tests and quality posts, "SSD only or does HDD still have a place for the usual gamer?", even mice & keyboards.
I'd like a news sub without the same inclination of not talking about People (us presidents, rich people, known people, ...) but that treats news.
And a headphone sub I can visit every 6 months someone in the family needs a new pair, and giving my feedback ofc.
Fountain pens, longevity, comics, art, ...
That what's I'm hoping for here, small(ish) niche subs run by people interested in the subject.
5I'm finding it's the opposite. Depending on what thread I stumble into I'll get wildly different takes
3I think part of this problem is that the USA has split more or less into two different cultures that have developed different languages to the point that they don't even understand each other and what seems a rational argument in one language is perceived as hate speech in the other.
Europe is going into the same direction but it's not as extreme yet.
2
My mantra with those things is:
- Attack the message, not the messenger. If the messenger insists on repeating a sufficiently absurd message, I'll not stop them from repeating their mistake.
- Informing lurkers takes priority over changing my conversation partner's stances.
33To me the second point is the reason to engage woth trolls/ridiculous comments sometimes.
19I'll do it exactly once in that scenario.
9
I agree with one exception:
There's a certain type of person who has no coherent message, their whole purpose is to engage in bad faith. In that case any attempt to attack the message is futile due to the asymmetrical nature of disinformation. And the disinformation that spreads so effectively is often stuff that dials into people's subconscious assumptions. So it's not always obviously absurd to average people.
See Sartre's description of how antisemites use this tactic:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
The difficulty people have, from what I've witnessed with federation, is differentiating good from bad faith users. And I see this very much from all sides: putting it broadly, people got used to a certain Overton window. Thus it's easy to assume someone with a foreign opinion doesn't actually hold that opinion, they're just trolling or crazy. I think it's best to assume good faith until proven wrong, otherwise the trolls have succeeded in their goal to poison all dialogue and exchange.
Another thing worth keeping in mind, Lemmy represents a major threat to corporate social media. The best way for this threat to be eliminated is if, in its infancy, it fragments and stagnates due to drama like this. It's very easy to make an account on any instance, or multiple accounts.
It's also been my impression that the meme of federation being impossible has taken up 95% visible discourse, with the perceived ills that the meme is based on only being like 5%. One of those things where a small problem is artificially blown up until it becomes the big problem it was falsely claimed to be. I've seen a few people voice this sentiment: that their only exposure to the drama is people complaining about the drama. I saw a similar suspicious phenomenon happen on Reddit a few times.
4
I feel much the same, but I also feel that there has been a rise in trolls and those who seek to create strife.
Arguing is all good and dandy, but arguing with trolls tends to result in wasted time and bad after tastes. If we are not supposed to block or ignore the trolls from the troll instances (those whose admins ignore or promote trolling and crusading), we'll need more powerful moderator tools, potentially spanning multiple instances, which Harbour their own problems.
23Honestly it seems to be mostly related to the instances you're on and who they're federated with
The instance I primarily use (Blahaj) had some drama recently that turned it into a bit of a shit show for a little while but once we were no longer federated with the problem it quickly got a lot nicer
Basically now you can have a civil discussion without people dogpiling and sealioning you down for having a slightly different opinion
21- 16
When people explicitly participate in bad faith, I frankly don't get what's so terrible about showing them the door, or in this case, turning off their megaphone line to other instances. If their behavior is great, terrific, super-acceptable and cool where it comes from - wonderful! It can stay there, and the rest of us can see less childish trolling. Because that is 100% "their thing" at an instance level.
Whatever excuses, "boo hoo Reddit was so mean to us years ago", whatever crocodile tears that "it's not everyone", whatever "eThIcAl ImPlIcAtIoNs" of blocking or defederating - I don't give a shit about excuses trolls make, sorry not sorry. Being taken seriously is not a Right, let alone when you obviously just want to dick with people. "Yes, sure, let me get into Serious Debating Position right in front of this boxing glove on a giant spring I just watched you set up."
Every discussion about this is not only provoked by their consistently shitty behavior, it also tends to get derailed, trolled and sealioned across instances proving the point immediately. Droves of people are fed up with the whole thing - or would be, if the threadiverse even had "droves" of people left. It is directly and indirectly harming participation: surprise, most people do not want another 4chan, whatever the paintjob.
Their alleged, tragic, Reddit-discriminated backstory seems a lot less convincing going by their current behavior. Instance gets federated, people immediately start to troll and "dunk" like the brave Internet Warriors that they are, and are not subtle about it. When notified "that's not really cool here, could you not?" the response is a solid "UP YOURS" because they're Just That Cool and/or literally "Owning The Libs". This remind you of anything?
The threadiverse was something I'd idly mention to friends (at least the more political and leftist ones, because even before this shitshow, it was relentlessly politically shrill as fuck) and hoped I'd eventually get to seriously recommend. Now I just can't recommend it to anyone: a dying, troll-infested, technologically suspicious mess, circling the drain.
19Yeah good luck talking about politics or economics (anywhere online) lol.
BTW, what's "sealioning" ?
2https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.
3
Lemmy see those nuts. Ha! Goteem!
18If people post memes or whatever with politics you are going to get political responses.
Politics is real shit, and with the state of things in the world right now, it's going to get heated.
Civility can be a little hard to maintain when you genuinely believe the other side will wipe you out given half the chance.
16Mate, if you don’t believe you can retain civility in your first comment then report the content and move along, if the content doesn’t actually break any rules and you still can’t be civil then please use the block feature extremely liberally.
14I wholeheartedly agree with this approach
7Personally I'd rather address something myself. I like forming and expressing my own opinions, I like standing up for myself, I like arguing.
I post as I please.
1
Politics is real shit, and with the state of things in the world right now, it’s going to get heated.
I totally get that, and you're right in that there's some real shit going on.
But what does getting heated about it on a Lemmy thread do? How does it improve the status quo?
If you cannot answer that, perhaps it's best to redirect your energy.
6But what does getting heated about it on a Lemmy thread do? How does it improve the status quo?
It challenges the stance. Which helps set the tone for the space, and prevents the normalisation and mainstreaming of that stance. Which has value.
For example, aggressively challenging bigoted political takes will show that those sorts of takes aren't well received, and aren't popular. This prevents those sorts of takes from becoming more common in the space, and more generally. It also shows the people who are the targets of that bigotry that the space is welcoming towards them.
1
😔
4Sorry sir, you've tested positive for hexabearlent commium. We're gonna have to enact remediation protocols.
0
I always avoid communities related to politics because of that reason. There are other reasons, like a big focus on US politics or being feed with politics 24 hours per day every day.
But I noticed an increasing amount of hostility in other communities as well, not related directly to politics. For example, in those communities about Ukraine, there is always the usual tankie spreading strong words and what not. Or when there is a post about defederating certain instance, it seems that people take it personally and swear words are easily launched.
People can say the same things in a good way, being nice and polite. There is no need to troll or make others feel shitty. It also depends on what instance you're on, but for the most part, it's on us how we want this to become into: either a civil place to discuss everything, or Reddit 2.0.
15Swear words are just different words, they hold no additional power I don't know why people are acting like they change anything. Fuck.
5Sorry, I didn't write correctly what I meant. I meant calling someone names, like "you're this" or "you're that", just because you have a different opinion than mine.
5
Hard to avoid it when the morons brigade every post.
5I've only seen brigades from hexbear on other instances I don't belong, but I understand that it's a thing we need to deal with, using proper and more effective moderation tools. Defederation can also be a solution, temporary in this case, until the admins of that instance control, somehow, the brigaders so they stop brigading.
I mean, I can behave in any way I want in my own house, because it's my own house. But when I'm in someone else's house, I never think about behaving in that same way, unless I want to face consequences, even before a court of justice. Instances are like houses, and communities are like rooms, and you have to follow the rules of the place you're interacting on.
3
This i completely agree with.
Just recently had an argument where i voiced my opinion (albeit not in a really intelligent way at first i admit) and i immediately got a fat load of sarcasm from a person who disagreed with me. Said person thought i was a troll. I tried to convince them multiple times that i am serious and in fact not trolling but i think they still don't believe me. It got to a point where it was so cumbersome to continue the argument that i just stopped replying.
I'd really prefer if everyone could be a bit more civil/professional in a disagreement.
14As with most social media, I think the voting system makes it worse. There is always an element of "playing to the audience," in that the easiest way to get validation (votes, boosts, replies) is to make sure everyone thinks you're morally or intellectually superior over the person you're talking to, whereas an actual normal conversation would be focused on the exchange of new ideas and perspectives.
Stronger moderation could help, and filtering the less civil communities could help, but I suspect it's just a natural consequence of having a built-in validation system that applies to every post and comment everywhere. As engagement in the fediverse grows overall, I could see it getting worse mainly because of more 'vote-seeking' behavior.
13Your comments succes also hinges too much on the first reader, a single downvote by someone who disagrees, you go to 0 and you are never going to be seen by anybody again. Especially in larger threads.
There is lack of nuance in so many opinions here. Single sentence statements and if you don't get them you supposedly just have'nt watched the right youtube video about the topic they seem to care about but are unable to tell you in their own words. Just don't assume I have the same background as you dammit, everyone here could be from the other end of the world and your context matters in understanding.
Otherwise, multiple servers have a great population with polite discourse communities. You can find your favourite place where 'local' is fun and engaging. Bring patience when you venture to 'all'. Reddit felt a lot more US local with only language barriers separating islands of other communities.
5I upvoted you, hope it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. But I really do think you are right. There is something in our nature making us want to be seen.
3Is there a client that lets you easily block vote counts and buttons?
I remember RedReader did this for the bad old place, and it greatly improved my QoL while browsing. I only looked at what people were saying.
1
Yesterday evening I was feeling the same way, so I started blocking users that are clearly posting inflammatory or aggressively brigadey content (note: not to be confused with things I don't agree with. It's about tone and tact, not content), or things that I find annoying to see over and over like the same trollish meme and emoji images. After only an evening of doing that, my Lemmy experience has been worlds better. I did notice a particular instance being the trend which makes me look forward to instance blocking, though at the moment I'd prefer to still do so on an individual user basis.
10note: not to be confused with things I don’t agree with. It’s about tone and tact, not content
I've got to be honest, I find this kind of wild. That the tone a comment is said in is more important than the actual content of the message.
That assessment is precisely backwards for me.
5I share the same view on this topic with the person you're replying to and appreciate that you chose to type this out the way you did instead of something like 'lmfao, wtf?', which could have also signalled disagreement.
3I agree . I mean I expect people to be passionate about some topics.. ie climate change, wage gap, fascists, big pharma, etc. If it's not spicy you're doing it wrong.
2(TL;DR: I'm blocking users I feel are significantly cluttering Lemmy with trolling or annoying posts of no substance, not ones that have different ideas than my own. Acknowledging different ideas and perspectives is good.)
I feel like we're already being hurt by algorithms and whatnot only sending us what we want to hear and filtering out opposing views or ideas. If someone disagrees with me or has an idea different from how I already think, I should know that someone is out there who thinks differently than I do. Maybe I'll even learn something or come to appreciate a perspective I hadn't considered before. It can be interesting and even enlightening to see differing viewpoints, and that's part of what's so fun to me about the Internet. We can easily see there are all sorts of people out there with different thoughts and ideas.
We're all bound to lose our cool sometimes, but if I see a poster consistently being inflammatory or trollish, I don't find value in trying to digest that kind of exchange. Some people may enjoy watching the setting of the bait and seeing others walk into the trap of engaging. It's just not the type of content I'm into and I found it was becoming increasingly common so I started blocking users that I felt were consistently producing these kinds of situations.
1
Permanently Deleted
9i think the issue is fundamental to the "meta forum" concept both lemmy and reddit share.
when comunitys are small, they mostly consist of people that are intrested, and usually knowledgeable enough to participate in discussion.
but as size and thus discoverability of a community increases, posts start trending more and more.
so less informed, and more reactionairy users (if not straight up trolls) that browse r/all start flooding the posts and dilute propper discourse with bad uninformed takes.
ti;dr essentially, reddit style plattforms turn into twitter for big communities.
5Permanently Deleted
3
In the early days of Reddit it was said that the voting buttons were there to reflect whether the poster was adding to or subtracting from the discussion. I really liked that idea because you could upvote someone you completely disagree with because they were having a conversation in good faith.
Instead, the voting buttons devolved into an agreement button and a popularity contest. The toxicity is obvious here when a post is heavily downvoted for disagreement with the masses, despite being a bona fide entry into the conversation.
Slashdot always had an interesting take on the idea with max +5/-5 and the whole "outstanding", "funny", "informative", etc tags that could be applied. This allows for several meta conversations - the jokes and memes, the serious, the philosophical and more with our interfering with one another and lets the readers absorb the topic based on the level of their mood.
I wish we could somehow encourage and promote content that makes an effort to understand and contribute, or even share a differing opinion (politely). And highly discourage nasty replies.
8I fully appreciate the desire for more civil discussion.
But please be aware that tone policing has been used as an offensive weapon against many marginalized groups: "We get that you want to fight for your rights, but could you please do that in the form of civil discourse?" That phrase is almost always heard when years of civil discourse lead nowhere.
8I came here to say something similar, this "no politics" bullshit is such a privileged take.
Never mind that many of the largest communities on reddit had a similar policy, and it didn't stop them being toxic cesspits, because it's never about policing those who support the status quo, but only ever those who stand up to it.
6What I observe is a dichotomy forcing people to choose between "no politics" and "politics everywhere and all the time". It's frankly like NSFW content: YouTube doesn't allow NSFW because otherwise the majority of content would be of that nature. At least that was the popular reasoning.
Awareness of political issues is important, and also, please understand that people have a life outside of politics too. Very few people can endure receiving only political content 24/7.
5
I get what your are saying. Let me just offer some nuance. As I said in the post above, I think our diversity can be a huge strength. Discussing ideas and having an open environment to do so is something really good. I just think a lot of people come to these discussions just to speak, not to listen. Also, divisiveness and dogmatic political discourse is metastasizing over to all kinds of communities that were (in my view) created with no political intent.
So it’s becoming increasingly hard to get away from this toxicity without defederating or blocking a huge amount of instances, and I think that’s a shame. That’s all I’m trying to say.
5I get ya. I'm also privileged enough that I used to be able to ignore politics unless it was really in my face, because most of it didn't affect me directly.
But some people's actual identities, bodies, their continued existence, is political - whether they like it or not.
So I'm sorry. We live in interesting times. Historical times. Some people feel we might be at the end of history. It's going to get loud.
2
Agreed.
6Well put.
4This.
1
Is it an inevitable problem with scale?
6It is inevitable with scaling quickly. In the early days of the internet there were unwritten (and later written) rules how to behave. And people who didn't accept those even after being educated were usually banned for a time.
This worked because the early internet users were mostly us nerds and we tend to be able to have civilized discussions.
Every time new users came, those were quickly educated and if they didn't fit in they either left or built their own communities.
Of cause there were always trolls but they were few and quickly isolated.
The problem with people who couldn't behave started when people came in more quickly than they could be educated. And those who knew the rules didn't want to repeat the rules 20 times a day to some newcomers. So either a community stopped accepting new members or started accepting shitstorms.
3Perhaps we are setting the entry bar too low. Many places in my city have gatekeepers that do not allow shirtless people to enter. The internet tends to gatekeep via subscription or employ moderators, if those elements are missing the discourse deteriorates with scale. I wouldn't mind paying for a service such as Lemmy if it maintained order. It's also possible to create cryptographic identities so users can assure their historical reputation using signed PGP, in this way dark web markets have reduced the problem of fraudulent sock puppets.
1
I like good faith, nuanced discussions but it seems like a lot of times when I try to be nice people see it as a sign of weakness and go on the offense. There's a lot of interesting political and historical discussions we could have, like, "Were Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms necessary for the conditions of the time to eradicate extreme poverty in China, or were they a deviation from socialist ideals that have caused China to be irrevocably compromised by corporate interests (in which case, what should've been done differently)?" On Hexbear, that's something that we have disagreements and nuanced good faith discussions about, but it's impossible to do that in an environment where everyone accuses me of being a bot or shill or a tankie or whatever whenever I acknowledge that any policy China has ever implemented was at all successful.
I guess it's easier to get into higher-level discussion when you have a set of agreed upon values and basic assumptions. I just wish I didn't have to deal with all the accusations and name-calling, but I'm not one to roll over either. There's a reason we have Pig Poop Balls.
6I have got a death threat
2
Civility is a two-way street. It is not "I get to insult whoever I want and they have to meekly argue on my terms."
4Fully agree. I’m agruing for all parties to remain civil. And to me this is independent from instances. We can agree to disagree on stuff, we’re adults in a complicated world.
9🥰
3
😔
2
I get what your are saying. Let me just offer some nuance. As I said in the post above, I think our diversity can be a huge strength. Discussing ideas and having an open environment to do so is something really good. I just think a lot of people come to these discussions just to speak, not to listen. Also, divisiveness and dogmatic political discourse is metastasizing over to all kinds of communities that were (in my view) created with no political intent.
So it’s becoming increasingly hard to get away from this toxicity without defederating or blocking a huge amount of instances, and I think that’s a shame. That’s all I’m trying to say.
1oh god, I hope it IS contagious
1😤
1