Before I really get into this, I’d like to acknowledge the genuinely cool people here. People with cool hobbies, who post photography and other cool art… People who are enthusiastic about something that even mildly interests me. You are the reason I scroll Lemmy for embarrassing amounts of time. I’ve learned a lot over the past three years from cool people like you. Folks like you are what makes anything about the Internet worth a damn period, and I wish we could clone you all! Another thank you to the people who have been cool to me even when I myself was being toxic. A few of you managed to be kind and offer helpful advice even when I probably didn’t deserve it, without coming off as fake or condescending. It usually brought a tear to my eye and made me have a bit more hope for the future. This has happened more than a handful of times and I appreciated it each time.
Now for the shit I need to get off my chest…
Admiral Patrick is a fucking asshole for multiple, already-discussed reasons we can all agree on. He was wrong about quite a lot, but he was right about one thing: a lot of users make this platform often hard to handle (and no I’m not proposing a system to shadowban anyone). I could write up lots of detailed examples but we all know what I’m talking about. Many people are incredibly rude, condescending, hateful, and intolerant when it comes to certain topics, and they don’t even feel the need to limit their hatred to people who “deserve it”. Anyone who dares challenge them catches all those flavors of negativity. I’ve had to block so many users, communities, and instances I couldn’t begin to name even 5% of them.
I would say this toxicity is not unique to the fediverse, but it goes largely unchecked here because certain users share their hatreds and bloodlusts and form cliques based on it, mods/admins included, and the thing that more often is kept in check by those individuals is pushback against the zealotry/toxicity. Nearly all of it is related to black and white thinking and snap judgements.
If you take issue with one minor point, you’ll often get a hateful reply assigning you horrific viewpoints. The way I interact with the platform anyhow, it’s a very unwelcoming place without lots of blocking in place, and the blocklist is always growing. I always want to see “All”, so I’m not siloed into small communities with polite people who want to discuss a cool nerdy interest. If there were more users here I would probably try to make that my usage mode, but there aren’t enough users to make that work for me.
What makes me consider leaving this place nearly every day is how absurdly common it is to have someone jump down your throat and cram words in your mouth. Over something they literally had no understanding of and don’t want to understand. They want to take out their sadness and anger on you because you represent the “enemy”, if you challenge them at all. I’m self aware enough to know that I do it too sometimes too btw.
Conservatism is the ultimate in toxicity, and frankly we don’t have much of that brand here. To hear many lemmings tell it though, there’s secret conservatism hidden everywhere and only they are above it. The purity testing, the hatred for people with slightly different positions (even if the goals are identical), it’s painfully exhausting. The other day I saw someone baselessly called out as a Zionist (who wasn’t even present in the thread at the time!) and when I stood up to the accuser on their behalf, they soon slid into the thread to insult me and say the accuser was right to be randomly accusing them, even though they are not a Zionist. That’s yet another sign to me that the toxicity is deeply ingrained. “Hey I’m not [bad thing], but I will stand up for stranger’s right to say it about me any time!”
This also reminds me of another weird quirk I see here. Because the user base is small enough to recognize top commenters/posters, it’s common to see specific users get shit talked when they are not even present. That usually rubs me the wrong way. One user even made a very in depth audio recording talking several minutes of shit about a top poster here and you’ll never guess what happened when I called that out as shitty! Banned in several communities and toxic comments galore. How dare I come on on my high horse to point out how childish and shitty that was.
All this gets very deflating. Coming from reddit, it was very refreshing to see leftists everywhere, and intolerance of views being mostly aimed at conservatism, but everyone adjusted and started infighting almost immediately. I fully expect to be called a liberal or a zionist for writing this post, because, see, some users already know everything about me that matters: I implicitly called out their zealotry and am thus the enemy. I fucking hate it. I know there are many reasonable people here but honestly? They’re probably often afraid to say anything because they’d rather not get an inbox full of shitty messages. All of this goes back to black and white thinking. And the oligarchs have gotten exactly what they want. Instead of banding together we’re slinging shit at each other constantly. Fuck that. People are capable of being better than this but every day I’m learning they just refuse to be.
Conservatives have the toxic views, but so many leftists would rather see you dead than disagree with them on anything. What the fuck is wrong with them? I get being frustrated, WE ALL ARE. But you are NOT HELPING with this shit. Cut it the fuck out.
I got a little sidetracked though because a lot of these issues come up when politics are discussed, but it’s not only politics. The fediverse-specific type of toxicity is mostly political in nature but then you also get all the normal asshole behavior you see on reddit and elsewhere. People who care far more about stating something in the exact way they understand it and become offended if you even try to add clarity to what they said for other users. Pedantry, snide dismissiveness, bigotry, most anything you hate about reddit is here too. Some other things that are sort of unique here, IME anyhow: weird/awkward horny posts. I do not want to have to block the same users account 5 times and be told I’m a prudish asshole if I say so. I simply want to use my phone in public without weird shit I don’t want to see, ever, popup in a feed. I have probably blocked 50 communities for NSFW stuff I’m rarely if ever interested in, dozens of furry and hentai communities, some portraying sexualized children, etc. Is my having to block these things the issue, partially yes, but I’m only bringing it up here because of the fediverse mantra of “dude just block it okay?! No one cares about your little hangups!” I get it, it doesn’t bother you to need to block 37 communities of dragon cocks and twelve year olds bending over or whatever, but if anyone complains about those, can we not chill the fuck out and let them vent for a second? Many if not most people don’t want to see that shit.
The last thing about this place that’s been getting my goat lately is hatred against large groups of people. Ya know what, you will never convince me or any truly decent person that it’s okay to blanket-hate Americans because of what their leadership is doing. I don’t want this to become as big of part of this post than necessary, but I just had to say it. A lot of Americans are shitty people, yes. As an American I’m insanely aware of it. I’m embarrassed, I’m sad about it, and there’s a feeling of hopelessness I wouldn’t wish on anyone that comes from watching this country’s citizens reveal publicly so many awful things about themselves. More than I understood to be possible. Guess what though, saying job losses in America is hilarious still makes you a shitty person. I’m not sure what the best way to describe it is but I call it bigotry myself. What you’re doing is literally saying “those people are terrible because of where they were born; they’re all the same there”. You can pretend that all Americans are to blame for trump or whatever you wanna say but that’s just not factual. Sure, American society is if you zoom all the way out. We Americans let it get that way here over the years, but it’s idiotic to suggest people who became homeless in America “deserve it” because of something you oversimplified. Even if 90% of them did, you’re still a hateful asshole. And yes you’re the same level of shitty if you laugh about terrible things happening to random Russians (not soldiers, politicians, etc). Those people may not support one fucking thing being forced on them by that dictatorship, and further, even if they did, it should not be so hard to understand that such a high degree of propaganda can convince people of lies.
Anyhow, that’s my rant. I keep saying I’m going to quit Lemmy but so far the cool people mentioned above and the dopamine hits keep me coming back. I probably won’t last forever though. The toxicity level seems to keep rising even after I block more and more toxic users. It sucks. That’s all
There’s certainly some very specific forms of toxicity here, and the leftist purity tests and infighting is certainly a big part of it.
That being said, I think the Internet has a broad toxicity problem. When everyone is faceless and you only know them by a single comment, it’s much easier to cast them as a specific stereotype or an enemy. It’s just a feature of how humans socialize, and there really isn’t a way to remove it from the experience of the Internet.
Don’t take people’s attitudes so personally. They likely don’t actually mean what they say, and people are giant emotional idiots. You know who you are at your core, other people’s opinions don’t really matter
I think all of this is true and yet hard to keep in mind at all times due to the big emotional idiot aspect. This place was supposed to be better though…
It is better though. There are assholes and bigots everywhere. They really do seem like a much smaller proportion of users here compared to reddit, they’re just really loud lol. There are a ton of really great people on here, it just takes a little bit of blocklist work to filter out the goobers.
Yes and I agree it is “better” – heh, that’s the thing about relative words especially when typed. I meant to say much better than it is. It certainly is better than probably most any online space that exists.
People in glass houses and all that…
That’s certainly some pretty aggressive language.
No one thinks they’re the problem.
I’ve seen Trick Dacy here for a long while and they are far from a problem.
I didn’t say they were.
Seems implied
They are a huge problem, but you yourself also have been frequently.
After reading all this, I think you’ve got a well-adjusted view. If you haven’t blocked me yet and you ever see me going on about some headassery and say so, I’ll try to stop what I’m doing and reflect.
Sorry it’s getting to you too. I also think we’re putting all of our eggs on the “blocking is good” basket without considering the broken stairs it’s leaving for other people to fall into. Reddit had a very psycho moderation problem by contrast though so I don’t know what’s the right answer
I also think we’re putting all of our eggs on the “blocking is good” basket without considering the broken stairs it’s leaving for other people to fall into
I agree, but also I don’t feel I have a choice. I used to only block the most vile characters. Over time I’ve been broken. Burned too many times. Cannot tell you how many people I knew were not fun to interact with and then later end up finding out they’re worse than I thought, so I’ve gotten more block-happy than I wanna be, but it’s just gonna have to be that way if I stay here.
Yeah I can feel that process happening too. I hate that there’s a fucker or two who I can tell without looking. That was not info I was ever supposed to have to hold mental space for.
The worst part is generally these types tend to see themselves as doing some kind of community service by just trashing up the overall culture in the community. They think they’re showing other people to toughen up or think more critically when really the sane people will just eventually fuck off to other places when the vibes get adequately toxic for these people’s liking.
They think they’re showing other people to toughen up or think more critically
I know this certainly a thing. It’s a very weird thing but that does seem to be the belief. Then there’s others just spraying hate because you said a thing that means the two of you don’t agree, and therefore you’re fair game in their eyes.
The fediverse would be a much better place if we found that Ricky Rigatoni guy and put him down like a rabid chihuahua.
boil him alive like the noodle he is
Agreed. We also need to assassinate assassassins ass.
Wait
You… You rabid chihuahua hater!
Sooo… is it weird that I participate actively here and never experienced this?
What I’ve experienced is that sometimes I get misunderstood by either the limitations of communicating by text, misunderstandings or because I do a hot take and someone’s very opinionated on that topic. Or a healthy dose of autism.
I eventually realized that explaining myself, apologizing when needed and finally not engaging in pointless discussions where probably nothing is gained gave me a mental health boost.
Exactly. I’ve had my fair share of misunderstandings, that could have been constructed as rudeness or “toxicity” by either party, but after we kept talking it never turned out to be actual hostility. Everything turned positive in some way after a better understanding was reached.
Everything turned positive in some way after a better understanding was reached.
This is like the movies version of how these issues would go. It’s happened to me before too but I wouldn’t say it’s common.
Yeah that’s kinda hard to fathom given all I’ve seen. If you look at the rest of the thread, you’ll see that I’m very far from being alone in noticing this. I mean, the whole Tesseract debacle happened because the creator of that app saw the problem and sought to solve it in the most heavy handed and dishonest way imaginable. It’s definitely real. I have had death threats and been told to kill myself, and that I should be killed. Not to mention many rude comments that I would certainly call toxic. I have gone through periods of spending too much time on here but honestly it doesn’t even take that. Like I said in the post, I’m pretty confident there are people in this thread being total assholes, but I won’t see them because they’re blocked.
Luckily, you don’t have to fathom it :) Your experience is totally valid.
Different perceptions are normal, even exactly the same situation can and often is perceived differently by the different participating parties. It’s truly remarkable how humans have this ability of seeing the world through different lenses.
Maybe I’m overly positive or something and thus my experience is unnaturally skewed towards experiencing this. And there’s actually much more toxicity than I perceive. But just speaking for me, I’m glad I don’t have your experiences, because that genuinely doesn’t sound pleasant. I hope you find a way, place or people which you can feel good about :)
TrickDacy you are one of the biggest toxic trolls on this site, what the fuck are you on about?
the old adage holds: “lurk moar”. i love getting into fights with internet strangers as much as the next guy, but knowing when (or more accurately, where) to start shit is crucial. since you’re on world i can sorta guess what places are issues (since there are so many blocked instances from there) and the assholes you can see tend to converge on certain topics. there is merit to observing from the shadows, like a perverted internet attenborough.
Lurking prepped me for a lot but not for certain individuals who have more accounts than I have wits. At a certain point you almost have to become a paranoid hypervigilant crackpot yourself just to know when one of the various zany characters has engaged you with a sock.
One user even made a very in depth audio recording talking several minutes of shit about a top poster here and you’ll never guess what happened when I called that out as shitty! Banned in several communities and toxic comments galore. How dare I come on on my high horse to point out how childish and shitty that was.
That’s not what happened.
First, you neglected to point out that was in response to a different top poster, one far more recognizable than me, banning me from a community due to me saying something about him on matrix. A level of narcissism that I found amusing and decided to poke him at the same time as making the post. You commented about it at the time.
This is your comment from that post.
After you repeatedly stirring things up for MONTHS and causing trouble, with a mile long modlog demonstrating your own insane level of toxicity, I spoke with other moderators either part of my communities or not. I then decided to ban you from my communities to prevent you from adding more to it all. You posted something to YePowerTrippingBastards about it where the general conclusion was that you fucked around and found out due to months and months of toxic behavior from you, again all listed and proven in your modlog.
So lets circle back to your original complaint.
you’ll never guess what happened when I called that out as shitty! Banned in several communities and toxic comments galore. How dare I come on on my high horse to point out how childish and shitty that was.
Nah. You were banned from several communities by myself and others due to your own behavior and you provided your own toxic comments.
You complain about the toxicity of this place but do everything you can to add to it yourself.
Oh cool so you preemptively banned him from a bunch of communities and you got a bunch of mod buddies to do the same, for “causing trouble” and a “mile-long mod log”. This reads like a you problem, and makes you look just like a crappy Reddit mod. I guess that’s why you made a several minutes long audio talking shit about one user. Yeah, methinks you’re part of the toxicity OP is talking about.
Edit: love how you’re editing your comment to make yourself seem more reasonable without any edit flag Edit2: your parent comment was edited so many times it’s kind of ridiculous
Oh cool so you preemptively banned him from a bunch of communities
Not what I said, although I could have been more clear. I apologize.
They were causing trouble constantly in multiple communities, including mine. I spoke with other moderators who had recently banned him and got their reasoning and evidence. I then made my decision to ban him as well.
and you got a bunch of mod buddies to do the same
Nope. I spoke with people who had already banned him as well as people in my own communities.
For “causing trouble” and a “mile-long mod log”. This reads like a you problem
Unfortunately, it’s a mod problem. This particular user has a very long modlog because they’re extremely antagonistic. That’s why I made this comment. They’re making it out to be that everyone but them is toxic (and I not saying I’m not) but they’re adding to the problem themselves.
Edit: I was editing the comment because I was typing on a phone.
Dude is a liar.
I spoke with other moderators who had recently banned him and got their reasoning and evidence. I then made my decision to ban him as well.
Within a couple of minutes of me pushing back on his asshole behavior he had banned me from several communities, most of which I either don’t look at or didn’t know existed. It was 100% a power tripping bullshit move. The guy clearly cares a lot about his image so he thinks he can say what he wants and then later launder his image by pointing at a modlog. I’ve never done the math but the percentage of my comments to get modded is pretty small. I’ve spent a lot of time commenting here. Covid and other factors led me to being too involved here at times. I acknowledged in the post and again will freely admit I’ve been toxic at times. But my post was trying to focus on the larger problem, which again, I am definitely a part of. This dude’s responding here to try and lift himself up by shitting on other people’s reputations. Which is fucking precisely what led me to have beef with him to begin with. I don’t feel like going back through his 15000 posts or whatever but if you found it I feel like you’d see what I’m saying. It was such a weird bullying thing to do
You call @Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com a lair but literally think you’re innocent while spewing hate. Jesus Christ, a mirror shatters from your ego.
Appreciate this very helpful comment.
Also I said I’ve been toxic at times and reiterated it in other comments. So thanks again for the block request
Pretty weird how before Stamets stank up this thread, most everyone was reasonable and most of my comments were upvoted.
Then the brigading and days-later weirdos like yourself show up just to throw out some hatred.
Yeah I’m totally wrong to write this post. I’m sure you read it too and didn’t just come here to defend your favorite cyberbully liar.
You should block more people instead of being an asshole online. Sorry you don’t like being called out and hate seeing it.
Also how is @Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com a lair and a cyberbully?
So as a mod, you should can people if they break the rules. I don’t think people should get banned from communities they didn’t break the rules in, especially just because a mod doesn’t like their tone or their opinion. Obviously if someone is like spamming Nazi themed CP or something they should get banned prematurely but that clearly isn’t happening here.
Saying “this guy is a troublemaker so I’m gonna ban em from all my communities” isn’t protecting people, it’s power tripping.
Which is what their post to YPTB was about. Mixed reactions.
If it was just a small user that hadn’t been causing a lot of trouble, then yeah. I’d agree on the power tripping. But they have 13 pages on their modlog. 12 of those pages were before I banned them. You can go ahead and check it yourself. This isn’t just some random person but a 3 year old account who has an extremely long list of acerbic and antagonistic behavior. At that point, in my opinion, it is protecting people.
That still isn’t a justifiable reason for the ban, why is it so hard for you to understand that you just preemptively banned someone who you personally disagree with? And that’s textbook power tripping
I got curious what blocked users would be saying here, unfortunately. But I do want to respond to a couple things.
- What you did to PugJesus was textbook cyber bullying. People have committed suicide over less. Deny it all you want or pretend it was a reasonable response to him being mean to you. You cannot change that. Plus, damn it was clearly a lot of effort, and in that way quite sad.
- You like to harp on my modlog. Two possibilities there. One, you really believe that most mod decisions are a good indication of “bad” in general. Or two, you need an easy gotcha. I’m gonna say it’s the latter.
If I believed your way of thinking is correct, I’d believe it was justified that I’ve been banned for calling people pieces of shit for anti-immigrant or homophobic views. Which happened on non-fediverse sites more than a couple times. But I don’t believe that.
I’d much rather be toxic by just saying mean words as a reaction to bad behavior than be a completely self unaware cyber bullying bigot.
I’m not in your clique. That’s a good thing for me. Enjoy condemning your political and other “enemies” all you want, I won’t be seeing it. You’re not reasonable nor reachable, so I won’t be trying to change your mind. For everyone else reading my post with an objective eye, they probably identified with it in some way.
Pretend that my lashing out is comparable or worse than the bile, hatred, etc I was writing about here but that’s just you needing to justify your poor behavior. I don’t care if you think I’m a toxic troll or think you can spin a modlog into a story like that. Now, I’ll revert to a better version of this place, if you can guess what that means.
Edit: also, classy of you to pretend I didn’t acknowledge that I am also part of the problem in the original post.
What you did to PugJesus was textbook cyber bullying. People have committed suicide over less. Deny it all you want or pretend it was a reasonable response to him being mean to you. You cannot change that. Plus, damn it was clearly a lot of effort, and in that way quite sad.
So is what PugJesus was/is doing to various other users. I gave him a taste of his own medicine.
You like to harp on my modlog. Two possibilities there. One, you really believe that most mod decisions are a good indication of “bad” in general. Or two, you need an easy gotcha. I’m gonna say it’s the latter.
No. I like to point out your modlog because people can see the things that were removed and make their own decisions. The reason for removal are less important than what was removed. Considering that everything you had removed was wildly toxic, it is for that reason. Not the ‘easy gotcha’.
I’d much rather be toxic by just saying mean words as a reaction to bad behavior than be a completely self unaware cyber bullying bigot.
Pretend that my lashing out is comparable or worse than the bile, hatred, etc I was writing about here but that’s just you needing to justify your poor behavior.
You have 14 pages on your modlog of you committing hate speech. Something that you’re aware of given you keep trying to dismiss an evidence log of your own behavior by saying
think you can spin a modlog into a story like that.
So is what PugJesus was/is doing to various other users. I gave him a taste of his own medicine.
How utterly bizarre, considering that even at the time you admitted you barely knew me and had rarely read my posts, interacted with me, or had prior problems with me. Or that I’ve never been unhinged enough to record several minutes of audio in a desperate plea for validation. You threw a shitfit because you were called out for hypocrisy.
I still haven’t listened to the recording because I have better things to do with my time, lmao.
Also, love that bigotry to you is calling someone a cunt for defending fucking Stalin murdering millions of people.
Bootlick more.
I thought you left this place. Why do you keep coming back to a place you hate?
I thought you left this place. Why do you keep coming back to a place you hate?
Good to see you too, my favorite (or at least most dedicated) stalker/secret sweetheart. But as usual, your literacy is as poor as your ability to stay away from me. You know, along with the ableism, racism, fascist apologia, and general horrific bigotry you regularly regurgitate whenever you find me.
Puggy replied to you because he knows you can’t read it. God he’s pathetic.
As stated in that audioclip, it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with him being incapable of not having the final say. It’s a typical narcissist trait and one of the more boring. He’s not doing it because “he knows” anything. It’s a symptom and he can’t help himself lol
How many months are we into him leaving Lemmy now?
“So is what PugJesus was/is doing to various other users. I gave him a taste of his own medicine.” Oh cool so you’re admitting to being a cyber bully and explicitly doing shitty things, thinking it’s justified ‘because the other guy is doing it’. That’s fucked up and you clearly haven’t taken the time to get introspective about it to see your hypocrisy. Bad mod. Nice screenshot by the way, i suppose you think that someone calling genocide denying and dehumanizing Tankies scum is ‘cyberbullying’. And you’re even twisting the definitions of hate speech. Yeah I’m going to just take it that you are a very unstable individual with some agenda to fill or vision of yourself that you think you need to uphold. Maybe take a minute to breathe and touch some grass, and realize you are indeed part of the problem. That doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.
👍
No one cares, you’re only upset a power user got called out.
Defending the mass murder of leftists by fascist pigs, as usual, I see. Such anarchist praxis! :)
You’re a douchebag who’s an asshole to everyone, he’s not lying, you are.
Go on and tell us the words you wrote on your account are actually someone else.
Oh Stamets. I wish you were the same guy who loved posting terrible Star Trek memes I fondly remember. You remember that guy?
He is.
I think it’s a human problem. Wherever there are humans, you’ll find the same problems.
The blocking thing always seemed weird to me. I just subscribe to all the good communities and ignore the rest. Blocking 80% of the fediverse sounds like too much work. I’ve ignored the all-feed and still managed to enjoy Lemmy. That feed is so wild and untameable that I can’t find any use for it. Maybe sort by top of the month? I guess that’s the only way to find something even remotely interesting there.
As a result, Lemmy is actually a bit boring now. The upside is, I won’t spend all day scrolling. 😄
Sounds like you like to gravitate towards all the topics I like to avoid. Political discussions tend to bring the worst out of humanity. If you hang out at a garbage dump, you shouldn’t complain about the smell, rats and flies.
If you hang out at a garbage dump, you shouldn’t complain about the smell, rats and flies.
That’s a pretty shitty way of looking at it if you ask me. Basically I’m experiencing toxicity due to my own fault because if I expect to be able to read and discuss news and politics, I’m an idiot for thinking that could happen.
People who actively avoid “politics” aren’t my favorite people.
I would like to read more about politics, but the atmosphere makes me uncomfortable. When I’m scrolling Lemmy, that’s not the feeling I’m after. As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t the kind of place where I can engage with politics.
Recently, I’ve started following some people on Mastodon to see if that works any better. Hashtags invite everyone to participate, so black listing might be useful there. When following individuals, you’re essentially white listing them, and that’s the whole point of Mastodon. Maybe that could be a better tool for this purpose.
I don’t like the Twitter/mastodon format. I have had plenty of decent experiences reading and discussing politics here, there’s just commonly a person here and there who cannot function in that atmosphere without being horrible. I’m not yet willing to scrap the idea entirely yet but I’m getting there, I think.
If you end up black listing countless people, I get the feeling that a topic centric platform isn’t ideal. A person centric one could work better for that purpose.
For many years I’ve struggled to find a good use for Mastodon since generally speaking I don’t care about the people. What matters to me is the topic, that’s why I’m here. However, politics clearly doesn’t work here, so that’s why I’m thinking that white listing specific users might be a better approach, i.e. Mastodon.
It’s too early to tell just yet. I need to keep this experiment going for a few weeks to form a proper opinion.
I’m not sure I understand this way of viewing social media. It’s always about people. I think good evidence of that is just the fact that you are here responding to me. If you were entirely tuned out of people’s points of view, it doesn’t seem like a post you’d ever read, let alone comment on.
I stumbled upon this post specifically because it’s in a community where interesting conversations take place. I’m sure similar discussions must occur in political communities as well, but they never appear in my feed because they are in the wrong community.
I care about this community and that’s why I’m here. The people here come and go, and I have no idea who they are or if we’ve even met before. I don’t feel like I need to know. The topics are interesting, and that’s good enough for me, no matter who the people are.
This community is a bit special, because the unifying feature is so broad and abstract. If you subscribe to a very specific community such as !knitting@lemmy.world, the main topic really stands out in every post. You go to a place like that because you care about the topic more than the people. Lemmy allows me to apply this approach to countless topics I find interesting.
My point though is that the community and post are both pretty specifically geared toward people and personalities. It’s about “getting something off my chest” which implies it may be a thought you’d normally just keep to yourself. This makes it especially personal. To me, it takes mental gymnastics to ignore how personal these sorts of posts are and just consider them “topic-based”.
Having said that, all social media is always about people. Unless it’s a list of posts without any commentary whatsoever, and then it’s not social media anymore. This reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a girl I had starting seeing. She said she doesn’t “get” reddit. I tried to explain that it’s somewhat interesting because of the comments. She said she would check it out, but that she wouldn’t be interested in comments. It was a confusing conclusion.
I’m going to repost this here, because the OP it was associated with got deleted, but I actually think these problems are tractable. Or at least, if we “collectively” as the fediverse tried to address these issues, I think we could make progress.
This is something I posted about how actually, both Lemmy and Mastadon are struggling as platforms, and what could be done about it.
Thats not true. There was. Go take a look at the usership numbers.
HOWEVER, lemmy admins, especially dot world, dot ml, were being shit at the time1 and poured icecold water on the whole thing. Instead of using the opportunity to build out and embrace lemmy, it pretty much sealed its fate as a “halfway project”. Seriously, go look at the numbers. Lemmy had an opportunity to “be the thing” and it blew it, and it blew it because of cultural reasons. And lemmy has continue to blow it since in this same manner. Admins and mods, instance in-fighting and drama, defederation: all of them have combined to slow/ halt the growth of the project. And in network based systems like social networks, even tapping on the brakes slightly is a deathnell. I mean look at how people like @PugJesus@lemmy.world or @return2ozma@lemmy.world have been treated. The decline in usership is a direct consequence of Admins and Mods expecting to be able to use their roles for the implicit projection of their political identities and how they think people should be using social media. And it killed lemmy.
There is a secondary and also very important issue which could (have) resolved this, in that Lemmy has some serious design flaws. And the number one/ two being (it could be considered one issue) is not having the ability to migrate a profile, or a sub to another instance; alternatively, we need a way to merge/ branch/ fork/ whatever/ communities. I think Mbin was an effort to hopefully address this, but it too now lays dead.
The problem can be described as follows, and during the reddexodous, the problem came up consistently. A curious user from reddit comes to explore Lemmy after getting burned by Reddit. Maybe they really like motocross racing. So they go to look for similar communities here on lemmy and find… nothing. There is no motocross community. There might be a dirt-biking community or a motor cycle community, but its far too small to support a tiny com. And so maybe the user makes a com for this. But its just them posting, they try for a while, they burn out. Its unsustainable.
The problem here is that networked systems, and social network systems in particular, need a critical mass to be able to function as a community. Small communities end up as vestigial dead end. Likewise, each lemmy instance is built to act like an entire reddit replacement. They’re built to effectively be an “entire reddit” also federated with “other reddits”. So instead of one c/politics, we end up with hundreds spread out across many instances. Mods and Admins implicity use their power to filter down the modes of discourse they find acceptable. Battles are waged, people who contribute substantially burn out. The top 1% of people actually contributing (re, not typically mods/ admins) get shit on for doing the work of keeping a community alive. All of this contributes to the issue of a lack of critical mass. So it can’t be said its all social. Some of it is design. But its mostly a social issue and it comes from the petty authoritarianism of moderation (mostly).
A potentially better option would be to implement a git style “fork/ pull/ branch” system for communities, potentially also with the ability to “tag” content or posts. So you have one big “news” community. And posts get tagged for the different types of news (sports, weather, political) and when there is sufficient critical mass, you could “fork” that community. However, lets say you only forked for motocross tagged sports news, and its not sufficient to have a community around, that com could get pulled back into “motor sports” and even maybe into “sports” if there isn’t sufficient activity. Likewise, an instance could “clone” a com when an over zealous admin or mod goes rogue. Take the @PugJesus@lemmy.world issue. They just didn’t have it in them to build up a com for like, a fourth time, after getting shit on time and again.
I genuinely think the design limitations could be addressed.
And I think the social limitations could be addressed as well. I think a system of voting based on Karma based contributions to a community, especially around rules and moderation, could very much soften/ fix many of the non-admin related social issues. Being a moderator should be considered a privilege and a duty, because it comes with the ability to very much “steer” a community. c/Politics is a great example of how poorly this can doing and how wrongly it can be done, from the 2023-2025 time period. Honestly this one moderation team is probably responsible for more destruction of the ability to grow lemmy than any other, and its principally because they engage in a kind of implicit, technocratic approach to an agenda based moderation. And users like @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world , they werent even wearing a mask about the matter. They were explicitly moderating many of the largest coms specifically for forward their own zionist perspective and agenda. And this was allowed to continue for years and did real and everlasting damage to the communities here, scars and faultlines still persisting to this day.
But that social issue is one we could deal with technically. We should introduce democracy to lemmy and the fediverse more generally. We should be able to vote about who moderates the communities we participate in and contribute to. We should be able to vote on what the rules are and how they are implemented. And those votes should be weighted by those who contribute substantially to those communities. Its utterly doable. Its something we could fix.
1: And some say, remain so to this very day.****
Correct me if i’m wrong, but piefed decided they wanted to limit the ability of powerusers to drive their platform. They put in a vote limit that almost no-one could hit except powerusers. Pug was upset at this because it meant they wouldn’t be able to upvote all the comments on their posts. But that was kinda the whole point of the change - to prevent people like pug having outsized influence.
Pug could’ve just kept posting and trusted in the appeal of their content. They didn’t need the ability to upvote more than 240 times a day to keep posting.
I think pug’s departure was mostly a rage-quit, rather than actual mistreatment. But as a history fan i found almost all their posts annoying so i admit that might skew my view.
Well you are wrong, in the sense that you dont actually understand the critique. So I’ll correct you.
The point is that Lemmy doesn’t exist without power users, and the exact kind of rules you are describing are disabling to Lemmy, the fediverse: any social network. Hamper a few committed users (eg, users who should be committed), and you basically destroy the project: which is exactly the accusation that I’m making.
All social networks are fundamentally driven by power users1. And not just social media networks, but for practical purposes, basically all networked systems operate under the same basic dynamic. Activity and connectivity are not evenly distributed. A relatively small number of users, nodes, whatever, account for a wildly disproportionate amount of what actually happens in the network. This is true of practically all complex systems2,
That doesn’t mean those users are always good, or always right, or are doing what they do to service you. It means that if you specifically design rules to constrain the people doing a disproportionate amount of the work that sustains the network to filter that project down to meet your sensibilities, you are the wrecker who causes the project to fail.
And saying that Pug could have “just kept posting” misses the point completely. Of course they could have kept posting. And they had. Four fucking times. They did power through the kind of actually toxic shit that ruins projects.
And that weird, excessive, obsessive shit is what keeps tiny social networks alive. But like after a certain point of having the most middling, most worthless people decide that the thing you are trying to make happen not be a thing, they gave up.
So yes, the rule was specifically intended to constrain people like Pug. That is the criticism. You are describing the mechanism and acting like that disproves the consequence.
But as a history fan i found almost all their posts annoying so i admit that might skew my view.
Exactly.
And I think that is probably doing a lot more work here than anything else. You want the world you see to conform to meet your sensibilities. But you don’t offer anything.
1 Baeza-Yates & Saez-Trumper (2015), Wisdom of the Crowd or Wisdom of a Few? An Analysis of Users’ Content Generation.
2 Barabási, A.-L. & Albert, R. (1999), “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks,” Science 286(5439): 509–512. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.286.5439.509
are disabling to Lemmy, the fediverse: any social network. Hamper a few committed users (eg, users who should be committed), and you basically destroy the project
This is meant as hyperbole right? It’s not like piefed capped how much he could post, or how many users could upvote pug’s posts. Only being able to upvote most comments on your own posts instead of all of them seems too weak a limitation to basically destroy the fediverse.
I think it’s pretty clear to anyone who’s used social media that few users generate most content, but experimenting with ways to make social networks more distributed and less concentrated seems like a reasonable goal for something like the fediverse.
This is meant as hyperbole right?
No. Its basic, graduate level network/ graph theory. A very small percentage of users contribute almost all of the content. And you have middling, non-contributing members, who also have no understanding of how these systems, trying to control something they don’t understand because it doesn’t meet their sensibilities.
I think pug’s departure was mostly a rage-quit, rather than actual mistreatment. But as a history fan i found almost all their posts annoying so i admit that might skew my view.
Still not sure what exactly your problem was with my history posts, but I’d agree that me winding down activity had more in common with a rage-quit - it was fundamentally frustration in my personal experience using Piefed which led me to fuck off.
I didn’t feel particularly ‘targeted’ or like Rimu was being unfair on some personal level. It wasn’t ‘mistreatment’, I agree with you. It was just my experience becoming more frustrating than entertaining. So off I went.
Pug could’ve just kept posting and trusted in the appeal of their content. They didn’t need the ability to upvote more than 240 times a day to keep posting.
The appeal of my content wasn’t in question, though. Like I said, it was a difference in my user experience becoming shittier, not in ‘losing’ fans or engagement, though I suspected the policy change would also cause long-term difficulties in retention of users.
frustration in my personal experience
That makes so much more sense than what others have said, thank you for clearing that up.
From your list of examples, it sounds like a big part of your problem with fedi experience has been with political discourse, mostly American focused. And just like that discourse in other media and communities is currently supercharged with frustration, you’re going to find it here too, and often those frustrations manifest like the toxicity you describe. I think the current fedi base is a bunch of independent thinking justice focused empathetic counter culture technologically unafraid wackos, and so are their ideas and passions. Honestly it’s beautiful sometimes. Im the most sensitive person out there, and rarely does a mean reply make me cry myself to sleep anymore.
But if that politics discourse still bothers you that’s okay (Honestly). There is plenty of content and users who feel the same as you, and have lots and lots of feel good communities for them. Even if you don’t like chocolate, Neapolitan ice cream is still twice as amazing as single flavor.
rarely does a mean reply make me cry myself to sleep anymore.
anymore lol… rarely…
Yeah I mean I want the political discourse, just not the vocal minority of people who are super shitty about it. And yes there is a beauty to a lot of what you see here. But the people I’m talking about ruining the space at times are a huge drag. I wish it was just smartypants condescension but it’s literal death threats and pure hatred from some of these users. I’d not be surprised in any way if I would be seeing some horrible responses ITT if I hadn’t blocked anyone.
Oh wow.
Okay you win. I’ve yet to receive a death threat for any of the stupid things I’ve said.
I wouldn’t say it’s common but it’s happened.
I’m part of the problem. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there’s a real human on the other side of the screen who is only a dick because they’re feeling things that they aren’t necessarily at fault for.
That wasn’t necessarily true even before ai. Bot farms existed long ago.
This post of yours is very narcissistic and toxic. Look at yourself first my friend.
Person: [spends several minutes discussing people being rude and judgemental]
You: [I figured I prove you right and I dismiss your valid concerns!]
You can probably guess what I’ll be doing right after pressing send.
Edit: I glanced at your profile first and literally the last 10 replies were all shitting on other people’s ideas. Your response here may indicate that you know you’re part of the problem.
We need to be able to follow certain users and highlight their posts only.
That’s mastodon.
Exactly. Mastodon is all about the people, while Lemmy is all about the topics.
lemmy has a better conversation system. but there is much to improve. we dont have to stay in 2012
