What kinds of things from reddit would you like to see Lemmy avoid as the user base grows?
Personally I think not having karma limits is nice currently! I understand why they were used but grinding karma as a lurker on reddit was frustrating.
Threads upon threads of comments with people trying to one-up each other with like lyrics, film quotes, just the least funny shit you've read a thousand times on every popular post.
I was never in on any of those jokes but it seemed like people were deriving some joy from them and they were usually in predictable subreddits so easily avoided. It kind of made me feel like people were so lonely they were reaching out to feel a connection over something shared even though that thing was very banal. For those who were not bots, is it really so terrible? Like it made me feel kind of sad because it was so empty but that would be a larger problem.
I also speculated it might help divert the bots from taking up space elsewhere. Just create this space of call and response for lonely people and bots to play with each other and keep one another occupied.
If people at least would check if someone made that joke already. But nope. Top comment is exactly that, from 5 hours ago. Better make that exact same one to be sure that everyone will see it.
Bullshit moderation.
Reddit was so full of hateful shit. Reddit's AEO (Anti Evil Operations, basically the admins personal "mod team", probably outsourced to some country with lacking English skills) would continue to tell me that the most blatant hateful comments do not violate Reddit's ToS. Meanwhile, you get (perma) banned for the most ridiculous & mundane things at times, like saying that a fascist Italy should get kicked out of the EU & NATO. Apparently this is considered "spreading hate" and they even denied my appeal, explaining that both institutions require the members to be democratic. Meanwhile all the racism on subs like /r/europe would go unpunished. I also tried to report similar comments to mine as hate, but containing less popular countries like Turkey, and unsurprisingly they also didn't see it as hate.
Getting harassed by other users that reply on all your comments & follow you around? Nope, no violation.
Questioning the title & picture relation of a governmental account? Apparently harassment / bullying worth a 7 day ban.
Calling out dehumanization? Perma ban in a sub.
Perma ban in a sub? Perma ban in another sub for complaining about it, for "ban evasion".
Speaking out against predatory monetization methods & FOMO tactics in modern video games? Getting attacked & insulted by users and consequently perma banned for being "an asshole troll" - none of the attacks & insults were removed, let alone punished.
What isn't a violation? Racism, transphobia, homophobia, calls for violence, etc.
In regards to big hate subs it is also mostly the case that Reddit only goes and does something against them when there's some sort of media attention around it. When it directly affects their potential income. Maybe if advertisers start to complain about it.
The enforcement of the rules is so random at this point that I don't even know what one is allowed to say, or why I even should care about accounts and the platform as a whole. I understand that moderation of big platforms is not an easy task, but one surely can do better than whatever the hell Reddit is doing nowadays.
In regards to specifically Lemmy I would say they aren't up to a good start with the controversial admin team and their extremist views.
The nice thing about federation is that you can always go somewhere else if you disagree with a particular instance.
Lemmy's devs have questionable politics at best. IMO, I don't care as long as it doesn't impact how they run the site - people have a right to their own opinions, as long as those opinions don't harass or hurt others directly.
But let's say they changed one day. Maybe one day they added something to the code forcing everyone to praise the CCP or else.
Because the software is open-source - people could fork it before the change. It's out there already. People can totally make their own little variants of Lemmy with added features, if that's something they wanted to do. You can modify the code yourself and then self-host the modified version. No matter what Lemmy's devs do... they have no power on your instance. A fork means you own the code.
I've seen the sentiment tossed around that it's unethical to use Lemmy because if you donate to the project (or contribute to donations towards the project) you are financing people who have bad politics. That's your prerogative. I personally disagree - again, as long as your politics aren't actively contributing to harassment/harm you shouldn't be punished for them - but I understand the sentiment.
To that, I say - well, there's other options. That's the beauty of the Fediverse - you don't have any Musk or Spez that comes along to ruin everything. I'm on Kbin, which I like a lot. The dev is a great guy, and I really like how it combines the best of Lemmy and Mastodon.
Even if you want to stay on Lemmy, there are wonderful communities on Lemmy that disagree with the direction of the devs. Beehaw is a great place with a fantastic mod team, for example. You can donate to Beehaw's devs and know it's going to keep Beehaw running, and it's not the same as supporting Lemmy directly.
I think the worst aspect of Reddit is how depersonalized it feels. In a way, it's a good thing that Reddit is so depersonal as it leads people to frank and open discussion and while some (okay, a lot) of that discussion is toxic, open discussion along with good moderation and a solid upvote-downvote mechanic is the only way for people to really know what is actually going on. However, it's really disappointing that if I join a niche subreddit where there are only a few hundred regular users I'm still just anonymous no matter how much I contribute. Likewise, even after spending years on a subreddit, I don't really know anybody and while that is partially a good thing, it also makes the whole place feel kinda soulless. Reddit Enhancement Suite has a tagging system that helped identify personalities but it's really still not much. I suppose New Reddit has snoo icons now but New Reddit is... well you left Reddit to come here so you know how bad it is.
I think the place for improvement upon Reddit is in reviving the humanity of the old forums from the 2000's. A place where people can still have semi-frictionless conversations with a large number of people all while allowing for smaller spaces where people can feel like they're part of a community and not one human being in a sea of people who all kinda sound the same.
I don't know, I consider that to be one of the features of Reddit I particularly like. There isn't a cult of personality there, at least not usually. I know there's a handful of users who are "well known" for whatever reason, but even then I don't think many people follow them in any meaningful sense. In most of the subreddits I frequented there's nobody I can think of that I know the name of.
That means that every post, every comment, generally stands on its own merit. If I say something smart, it gets upvotes. If I say something dumb, down it goes. That's not universal but I think it's a good thing where it happens.
From what I understand networks like Twitter and Facebook are the opposite, and that's likely why I've never even visited those places much let alone felt a need to subscribe there. I don't want to talk to specific people or be judged as a specific person. I just want to see news and interesting things and jump in to say whatever I feel needs to be said about stuff.
As a new community we need to identify and stamp out bad actors immediately and thoroughly (spammers, selfservers, ads disguised as posts, brigading, illegal content, racism, you get the idea).
We can't control if they create their own instances, but we can isolate them.
this seems to be a good place to mention avoiding groupthink and trendy opinions. more fresh diverisity and bold independent thinkers.
a flood of general americans would be worse than cultivating a niche counterculture initial userbase.
Zero tolerance for fascists, and zero tolerance for state propagandists.
The fact that Lemmy is federated means you don't need to be tolerant of anyone and if they want to keep spewing bigotry and lies. If you make it impossible for them to exist in an instance they'll have to either give up or spool up their own instance that we can isolate.
Because running an instance requires some organization, maintenance, and money, anything that becomes too isolated from the rest of the fediverse will eventually die out.
I agree with you. I hope karma is not implemented on Lemmy. The up/downvote system is fine the way it is now. I will say also coins and awards. I don't really think those are necessary. I'm aware that was something characteristic to reddit (correct me if I'm wrong) but I prefer all that to not come back.
If karma becomes visible on Lemmy, I think it will start having the same problem of karma farm bots like reddit, people reposting to receive positive karma, trolls saying controversial things to receive negative karma, lots of spam, you know. . .
I'll never understand the concept of farming karma on Reddit. I know some subs had minimum karma limits before you could post/comment, but those were rare and typically a fairly low threshold. Beyond that... What's the point? Why did OP feel the need to mention "grinding karma"? Either it's something they enjoyed doing or it's something they didn't care about -- op seems to be both.
From what I could gather in my short time here, Karma exists on Lemmy as well, it's just not a public stat and that's great because it completely eliminates the reason for karma whoring.
Sure you could try to add up all the upvotes and deduct your downvotes, but why bother? People trying to raise their karma (or those weirdos who were trying to farm downvotes) were always annoying at best and conversation killers at worst.
Since Nazis took over a Bluey Memes (children’s cartoon) Facebook page, I realized the only way to be rid of them is to have a zero tolerance for Nazis policy. Anything community purports “free speech” should be considered an immediate dog whistle for fascist creep.
I support a critical view of western media, which has shown itself time and again to grossly exaggerate claims about the actions of the Chinese state's actions.
Is there enough there for me to be concerned about what is happening in Xinjiang? Sure, but I have been burned enough to not accept the most extreme version of events without a degree of skepticism.
Knowing a few things about the history of China over the last 200 years and relations with the west over that time period would bring a degree of nuance to the conversation I'd really appreciate.
Seems like that's a lost hope points to trans athlete comments above. Mastodon was essentially a leftist space upon creation as well, wasn't it? I'm new here, but I am hoping that once people catch on to how the fediverse works, they will sort themselves into their "appropriate" instances, or just leave altogether. I do not care about the echo chamber argument, I want my online space to be relatively cozy and not filled with "WeLl AcKtUaLlY" smug centrists.
yes, i would much rather be among people who don't actively support the pillaging of the global south and the american war machine, i don't like being among people who treat my identity as a trans woman as something that should be subject to debate over whether i should be allowed to get gender affirming care. I dont want every second of being online to be focused around debate bro liberals asking me to justify my beliefs to them, if they want to learn i'm willing to talk, if they want to try to do an epic own in the free market place of ideas i don't really care enough to engage that much, except maybe to mock them.
i think the redditor influx to lemmy is a good thing, its created an active space for liberals to be taught some class consciousness by committed communists from lemmygrad and hexbear in a space that is controlled by other open marxist leninists. it doesnt mean i have to like the liberals though.
Censorship. All the major subreddits became political echo-chambers. Reddit was founded on free speech and open discourse, especially when it was really uncomfortable. I'd love to see the same for Lemmy. Over the years I've seen authoritarianism creep into the moderation policies of most major subreddits. Today, even posting on the wrong subreddit is grounds for being banned from dozens of major subreddits. Even having a polite disagreement about, for example, anything to do with "trans," is grounds for being banned.
I'd say that a fairly debated topic related to transgender people, which isn't just transphobes attacking people trying to live their own life, is the presence of transgender athletes in competitions. Some will take it as a personal attack whether you take a side or sit on the fence. I'm not looking to start that conversation here, but yeah. It's definitely possible to hold a polite conversation about this while disagreeing on parts of the question. In a healthy space.
I think that after HRT the difference is not that big. Trans athletes may even be at the disadvantage since there are some cis woman that have higher than average amount of testosterone.
In the long shot I think it would be for the best to abolish gender based separation altogether and replace it with something more like weight categories.
Consider two 5'6" 65kg athletes, one man and one woman, are you saying that the man doesn't have an advantage?
I used to believe the same until I saw the recent Women's Premier League in Cricket. They had to reduce the size of field and the weight of ball. Even with that, the fastest bowl in the tournament was 130kmph while that speed is considered a "slower ball" in men's cricket.
Now some of these female cricketers earm more than any Pakistani male cricketers. Which is fair, bigger market, bigger payout. But female cricketers don't stand a chance against the male cricketers
Here is a surprise for you: HRT actually does things to your body. I don't think this should have been that hard to find on your own, but I can't judge your circumstances.
Transphobes always make the same tired arguments about "biological differences between men and women" and then scream and run away when you bring up actual science, because they don't care about the science. They care about being bigots, and using science to make their bigotry look legitimate.
the presence of transgender athletes in competitions
I disagree, that isn't a "polite disagreement" and is, absolutely, "just transphobes attacking people trying to live their own life" as you put it. Every time that "Argument" happens it's openly done in biologically unfounded ways by people who simply don't understand how our bodies actually work- yet those arguments get mass upvoted by people who also don't understand how biology actually works and who believe that trans athletes get some insane, unfair advantage.
If you want to pass laws to restrict trans people from sports, then you want to pass laws to discriminate against trans people. That's not really up for debate IMO, it's a straight up fact; it's what you're doing when you advocate for laws that are not founded in science, that are specifically targeting a tiny minority for the chance that one of that tiny minority might beat cis athletes in an "unfair" way, you're advocating for bigoted laws.
Such arguments are also inevietably filled with people misgendering trans people, deliberately calling trans women "men" and hiding behind the "I'm talking about biology" argument to do so.
Replace the word "trans" with "black" and you'll find that people are making literally identical arguments to those against desegregating professional sports leagues 80 years ago. Literally word for word.
Every time that “Argument” happens it’s openly done in biologically unfounded ways by people who simply don’t understand how our bodies actually work.
I'll be the first to admit I don't know how our bodies work, but I think explaining it will be more helpful in the long run than just making the subject taboo and banning everyone who asks it.
At the beginning of the pandemic a common argument against masks was "the virus is too small to be caught in a mask" - which made sense from a layman's point of view. When people started explaining that masks did stop the water droplets the virus needs to be airborne - that argument become a lot less common.
Not everybody who has questions is "just asking questions", if you catch my drift.
Not everybody who has questions is “just asking questions”, if you catch my drift.
I agree with that statement, context is everything.
I think that in the context of someone starting out going "it's unfair for men to compete in women's sports," the person is "just asking questions." That context poisons the well for questions.
But if someone comes in and makes a thread like "I don't understand how hormone therapy works, can someone please explain it?" that, to me, is a good faith question and 100% should not be bannable.
Now that I have your attention though, what would be a good counter argument on why trans women should be allowed to compete in the same league as non-trans women (please excuse my lacking vocabulary)?
Like I mentioned, at first sight as a layman, the argument that trans women would have an competitive advantage makes sense to me. So I'd be grateful if you could take away my ignorance.
non-trans = cisgender. cis meaning "same," as in "same gender as assigned at birth."
Second, I'm not the best at doing that, but I know of a really good report which has good citations of studies and really thoroughly discusses the issue. PDF WARNING: It can be found here.
I definitely get what you mean and I think the idea that you can get away with no censorship is naive. However, they could just as easily be talking about r/conservatives use of conservative only posts and their banning of anyone sharing opposing viewpoints.
No matter how politely stated your disagreement is, if it boils down to “I don’t think I should have to respect trans people’s identity”/“I don’t think trans people should have rights” then it’s transphobic and I’m 1000% fine with that being bannable
Even having a polite disagreement about, for example, anything to do with “trans,” is grounds for being banned.
A subreddit I moderate, /r/moderatepolitics, has had to do a delicate balancing act around this. There are site-wide rules banning many statements around trans people, and the red lines are not well defined. Reddit's "Anti-Evil Operations" (site-wide moderation team) frequently swoops in and deletes comments that are offensive to trans people, but well within current political discourse in the US. That has undermined our mission of being a forum for diverse voices to hold productive but difficult discussions. At a certain point, we entirely banned the discussion of trans issues because one side was able to speak freely and the other side was walking on egg shells. I'm solidly pro-trans, but that's no way to have a conversation.
This likely was done to try to keep Reddit from becoming a cesspool like the "free speech" sites like Gab, but it has turned out to be a lazy way that short circuits necessary conversations.
There is only one necessary converation around trans people, in which trans people say, Let us exist without being harassed or persecuted, and everyone else says, OK. Anything else is just allowing bigots a platform.
I wish the world worked that way, but in practice there are just too many ignorant people out there. They can walk out their front door and talk to their neighbors who are more than willing to pass on the latest slander about trans people. Our sub’s mission is to provide a space where they can try to pass on something resembling the latest slander and get push back. As-is, too much of the US is so segregated by ideology that people may not ever meet an out trans person. We want to foster those human-to-human connections instead of letting them rely on Tucker Carlson’s latest Very Concerned mouth diarrhea.
Edit: I value safe spaces for their function as a reprieve for trans people, and I don’t think every platform should provide a space for unrestricted speech. But at the same time, I think it’s beneficial to have some spaces that require a bare minimum of good behavior so that society can talk about these topics and move forward into a better future. There’s too much ignorance of trans people as-is.
See, the correct definition for this here is “no transphobia”
It’s cute that you think you can fight back against reactionary BS by arguing with it, but history does not bear this out. What you end up doing is creating another space where people can post Tucker Carlson’s latest Very Concerned mouth diarrhea, only distilled into a more toxic form that even Tucker couldn’t get away with, as long as they say it politely. Your way has led us here, to a political situation where people are actively trying to eradicate trans people in law.
Your way has led us here, to a political situation where people are actively trying to eradicate trans people in law.
Our sub’s way has largely not been followed in the US. Everyone’s retreated into their corner. Trans people have tried to keep safe, both physically and emotionally. Those hostile to them have cloaked their fear and hatred in the usual: family values and “think of the children”. The country is rife with tribalism. Different parts of the country have vastly different ways of thinking. There are fewer and fewer spaces dedicated to talking across ideologies, even closely related ones. We frequently hear that ours is one of the few spaces where people can talk over difficult issues without being shouted down.
I’m under no illusions that reactionaries just need to hear the right words and they’ll be enthusiastic supporters. But I have found that when forced out of their zone of comfort, their minds change inch by inch. Even just starting by not allowing the worst slander helps jolt them out of that mindset and filter out people who will never be interested in discussion. Civil rights are gained by winning hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. The LGBTQ rights movement has moved amazingly fast, with under 55 years having passed since the Stonewall Riots. We have moved this fast partially because LGBTQ people are harder to “other” because any family member or friend can turn out to be LGBTQ.
The thing that irritates me about this comment and the ideology your subreddit represents (well, the pertinent thing) is that the popular world “polarization” obfuscates the massive difference there is between radicalism and dogmatism. That is to say, when two people disagree politically, some people like to imagine for various reasons that their level of animosity is a function of how different their political views are plus some ability to compartmentalize. These things are factors, but ones that lead to political illiteracy on their own.
Dogmatism is the common word for having a circumscribed set of “correct beliefs” and being hostile to any deviation from that set. Radicalism is the sheer extremity of one’s views. It’s entirely possible to be a radical and to be accepting of people, and it’s quite easy to be both a centrist and a dogmatist. We know that second one because that describes a huge portion of the Democratic base! They are people with very little commitment to progressivism who nonetheless are deeply hostile to people on both their left as well as their right.
Of course, sometimes the two traits coincide, like in the Republicans, which have a massive portion of their base that is both pretty radical and pretty dogmatic – though ironically they could be said to be accepting in an extraordinarily cynical way, what with how Evangelicals supported Trump, who is literally the fakest Christian to ever be President (“Two Corinthians”).
Anyway, my point for saying this is that hucksters, useful idiots, and some who I’m sure are good people like to characterize American politics as a situation where there has been a sizable shift towards radicalism. There are new radical (QAnon) and “radical” (Bernie socdem) movements today as there are in any age, but overwhelmingly the Democrats have been getting more conservative if you look past their lip-service, while the Republicans have mostly also become more conservative. The world doesn’t need more centrists, the Democratic Party has plenty! When Obama said he’s “less liberal in a lot of ways” than Richard Nixon, that wasn’t his attempt at absurdist humor!
What would actually be useful is functional empathy and – god forbid – a political ideology that has some ability to explain why people have political differences beyond some puritanical insinuation about moral failings. That does not mean we need to be nihilistic or appeasing with our actual political ideology as though nothing is true or else the truth is the median of whatever everyone happens to believe right now.
Paraphrasing Lafayette, “If the world is divided between people who say 2 + 2 is 6 and those who say 2 + 2 is 4, that does not make it the most reasonable position that 2 + 2 is 5.”
If I was writing it, I’d probably say that the camps in America are “4+4 is 44” and “4+4 is 64”, with “4+4 is 54” being the Enlightened Centrist answer (and ironically perhaps the most deeply irrational).
The subreddit was somewhat poorly named. It’s not about “enlightened centrism,” as the insult from the left goes. The idea is to build a space where people with a fairly wide range of views can discuss those views without personal attacks. There are of course areas where different people will have different definitions of personal attacks, but for the most part we manage to keep a baseline of respect. What we’re not doing as moderators is deciding if 4+4 is 44, 64, 8, or a potato. Commenters talk that out and we keep them polite.
When Obama said he’s “less liberal in a lot of ways” than Richard Nixon, that wasn’t his attempt at absurdist humor!
Just for a little bit of context, Obama was griping that Fox and other right wing media was doing their usual “X Democrat is basically the avatar of Marxism” shtick. But the comparison with Nixon was not a good one. Nixon was constrained by a heavily Democratic Congress, while Obama was constrained by a lesser Republican House. Since Obama was comparing the outcomes of both administrations, his comparison looked at a Republican administration pushed hard to the left domestically with a Democratic administration push mildly to the right domestically.
The forced 'inside jokes' that filled so many threads, so many times you would see a post and be able to predict the top comment and its replies. Hoping that the lack of account karma helps with that.
You mean you don't like reading the same witty one-liners on every third post? I'm looking forward to actual discussion with less farming for fake internet points.
I feel conflicted between downvoting this as these are the exact types of comments that ended up grinding my gears, or to upvote you because that's precisely why you wrote them.
Here admin has even more power, except it is limited to their own instance. So it is more on the user to be prepared. You don’t want to be too attached to your data on a single instance. The instance might be abandoned, down, gone; the admin might go crazy. And the solution isn’t to have the admin be more reasonable. The solution is to hedge your bets on multiple instances and multiple communities.
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