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.

rentar42,

I 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.

NotSpez,

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.

BEZORP,

I 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.

Ubermeisters,

Your username is toxic and you’re complaining about toxicity and I just want to point that out

NotSpez,

I’m sorry my username offends you.

Also, in another comment in this thread you say

[Swear] words are just different words, they hold no additional power I don’t know why people are acting like they change anything. Fuck.

If to you words hold no additional power how do the words of my username offend you/become toxic to you?

Ubermeisters,

I’m holding a light to your hypocrisy, not asking for an explanation thanks

NotSpez,

I thought I asked you a question, not the other way around. Anyway, maybe you just want to argue/hate on me. All fine.

If not, I would be interesting to hear how by your interpretation my username is toxic.

Ubermeisters,

If I really have to explain to you how your name, which is centered around the fall guy for the toxic community we all previously left, is a toxic display, then I really can’t see any value in any conversation with you, in any light, at any hour, on any subject matter.

I think you’re an unimaginative boring boy who can’t come up with things on his own to create common ground woth other people, so you resorted to a “lowest common denominator” username in an attempt to be a cool kid.

It failed.

NotSpez,

Thanks for so beautifully and eloquently illustrating the whole phenomenon that caused me to make this meme. Couldn’t have done it better myself if I tried.

The irony of you calling reddit a toxic community whilst behaving like this is not lost on me.

DessertStorms,
DessertStorms avatar

I 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.

mo_lave,

What 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.

_number8_,

‘no politics’ means someone is a coward at best.

Ubermeisters,

So if I start a 3D printing related community and I make it a rule that there’s no politics you think I’m a coward? Fuck out of here

DessertStorms,
DessertStorms avatar

Except no one is talking about a 3d printing community here and you know it, so you're clutching pearls at a strawman you made up in your own mind..

_number8_,

plus 3D printing has lots of obvious political issues…right to repair, copyright, patents, gun laws, etc etc

Ubermeisters,

I see you don’t like people coming up with examples outside of what you’ve made up in your putrid little imagination. Oh well. I don’t give a fuck about your narrative sorry

nucleative,

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.

BilboBargains,

Is it an inevitable problem with scale?

torpak,

It 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.

BilboBargains,

Perhaps 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.

Spliffman1,

I won’t go into details but very quickly Lemmy has changed for the worse. I don’t see it as that different from Reddit now

Kerb, (edited )
@Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

i 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.

Spliffman1,

Yeah that is it well articulated… I’ve noticed recently more and more people that seem to only want to argue… And very often not even about the actual topic at hand.

ComradePorkRoll,

Lemmy see those nuts. Ha! Goteem!

Civility,

😤

Zuzak,

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.

original_ish_name,

I have got a death threat

420blazeit69,

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.”

NotSpez,

Fully 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.

Civility,

🥰

Civility,

😔

Alaskaball,
@Alaskaball@hexbear.net avatar

@Civility

whelk,
@whelk@lemm.ee avatar

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.

darq,
darq avatar

note: 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.

shiveyarbles,

I 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.

SpiderShoeCult,

I 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.

whelk, (edited )
@whelk@lemm.ee avatar

(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.

darq,
darq avatar

This comment is weird because it doesn't really follow from what I wrote.

I just find it strange that people value the tone of a message more that the content. Surely the content of the message is far, far, FAR more important than the tone it's conveyed in?

Like, when people post genocidal rhetoric, it's not better because they say it in a polite fashion. And it's not worse if they were raging while they said it. It's bad because of the content of the message.

But then people say stuff like you did, and it's kind of unbelievable to me because it seems like valuing the lipstick more than the pig it's slapped on.

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.

Wow. My experience is quite precisely the opposite. With algorithms on most social media constantly trying to shove "opposing views" in my face at all times. Except those "opposing views" are usually that I am a danger to society and should not be allowed to exist as an LGBTQ person. Because that is what drives engagement.

So uhm, maybe an echo chamber is a privilege you enjoy, but it's not universal.

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.

But... I genuinely do not understand how you can say this? Because you have primed yourself to ignore anyone who disagrees with you with any degree of vigour. Some disagreements are not going to be civil. But those are often the MOST important disagreements! The ones that people are passionate and angry about.

I'm not saying every troll has something of value to say. But in my experience, you have it precisely backwards. The people who are angry are more likely to be sincere in their beliefs, while the dickhead who types like they're participating in a debate club is usually the one trolling.

whelk,
@whelk@lemm.ee avatar

I can see where you’re coming from. I think you might be conflating the idea of what I consider worth taking the effort to block a Lemmy user over with what I might personally consider good ideas or opinions of inherent value. If I see a single post spewing genocidal rhetoric I’m not going to block the user and think that my blocking them is somehow going to make a difference in the underlying issue. I might want to see future the responses to their post (hopefully arguing against it), or I’ll just scroll past it.

Now if I’m seeing that user consistently posting that same kind of thing as I browse around Lemmy, sure, I’ll block them even if their posts are written in the most tactful and respectful way possible, because at that point it’s become repetitive clutter that I don’t want to constantly see while browsing Lemmy. The user blocking part comes in when something has become a consistent annoyance or frustration, because I find it’s not worth the effort to block every user who posts something awful the first time I see it rather than just moving on.

Because you have primed yourself to ignore anyone who disagrees with you with any degree of vigour.

We might be experiencing some semantics issues. I don’t equate angry or frustrated posts to inflammatory and trollish posts. I’m talking about when people are smugly trying to “own” or “dunk on” someone, or being excessively rude and accusatory (I can imagine some situations where this might sometimes be considered justified), or baiting a reaction trap. And I’m generalizing, not arguing a hard unbreakable rule. I agree there’s nothing wrong with getting angry or frustrated about important issues that are a real problem, and I admit some of my most frustrating interactions have been with people who use the approach of “I’m being civil (in my argument for something awful, like genocidal rhetoric) and your angry response means I win the argument by default because I am being ‘reasonable’ while you are not.” I really do get frustrated by that rhetoric playbook tactic. So I do think I see where you’re coming from.

I do agree we’ve had different experiences, and that none are universal. I was caught in an “echo chamber” that almost had me voting in support of California’s Proposition 8 (ban of same-sex marriage) back in the day and had I not been willing to listen to opposing views going against what I had been raised to believe in, I might still be trapped in that environment that I still see some of my old friends and family stuck in.

mo_lave,

My mantra with those things is:

  1. 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.
  2. Informing lurkers takes priority over changing my conversation partner’s stances.
NotSpez,

To me the second point is the reason to engage woth trolls/ridiculous comments sometimes.

mo_lave,

I’ll do it exactly once in that scenario.

LinkedinLenin,

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.

SaltyIceteaMaker,

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.

Ignacio,

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.

Ubermeisters,

Swear words are just different words, they hold no additional power I don’t know why people are acting like they change anything. Fuck.

Ignacio,

Sorry, 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.

hungryphrog,

I feel like adding swear words usually changes the tone. For example, “shut the fuck up!” sounds more aggressive than just “shut up!”.

Ubermeisters,

Aggression =/= power

arefx,

Hard to avoid it when the morons brigade every post.

Ignacio,

I’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.

randint,

Agreed.

PopcornPrincess,

Well put.

mke_geek,

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.

NotSpez,

Yeah 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.

Mothra,
@Mothra@mander.xyz avatar

An immense loss for which platform, Reddit or Lemmy you meant?

NotSpez,

Why not both?

Levsgetso,

Before 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.

BEZORP,

I think a part of it is the same old "normies are invading our community." A bunch of the queer old guard of fedi are having to dent the new kids into shape.

I'm seeing a lot more centrist takes than I did before, and we all know what that leads to

Ubermeisters,

You want to do what to the kids now?

Balthazar,
@Balthazar@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yep. We all know it leads to hope, dreams and positivity.

BEZORP,

It actually leads to at best inertia

Spliffman1,

I agree 💯

torpak,

I 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.

BEZORP,

I'm finding it's the opposite. Depending on what thread I stumble into I'll get wildly different takes

Valmond,

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.

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