It's so much easier to comment on Lemmy because it isn't a toxic cesspool waiting to tear you apart
It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it's generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there's no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
Add to it, some of us habitual lurkers (me for example) find it not as meaningless to comment. Didn't want to do it often because most comments get buried and it would feel empty and kinda pointless.
Yep, I can now see how much of a cesspool Reddit has become when going back and forth between the two platforms. Part of me wants to see the platform grow bigger and bigger, but I fear the same will eventually happen if it gets bigger.
I was also a lurker in "the other place", but convinced myself to participate here since I wanted to help lemmy feel "alive".
Now I really like it and comment regularly.
I was also a habitual lurker. In all my time there I posted maybe 3 comments and that was only because I wanted to be helpful and I knew the answer to very specific questions.
I'm not a very confident person in my interactions with other people, but got inspired by others like yourself that I should be the change I want to see (or something like that, I'm paraphrasing). So I took a deep breath and just started posting whenever I had an opinion, or thought of something that tickled my funny bone. And I have to say I'm enjoying it so far, people are positive and I love the sense of community I'm feeling.
I'm glad I took that step.
A small handful of people are working to change that, you find them here and there. Easy to identify as they downvote based on "I don't like that.", they're not really capable of greater complexity usually. Or that's how it seems anyway.
We should expect it to get worse though, as our population grows. It's inevitable, the internet is the internet. Our initially strong culture is an excellent sign though, if our growth continues at a measured pace, we should be able to maintain it for some time.
Especially the upvote/downvote system drives bandwagon behavior. If a post gets like 3 downvotes and the next gets 2, people just look at the votes and assume who's right and follow that. They will literally think votes decides what's right. Though when you're on the other side of that, it's also important to know that votes don't matter and it doesn't mean you're wrong. It's also important to know when to leave a conversation when it stops being a discussion and turns into an argument. Arguments are literally useless and just aggravating, which people won't admit that they love.
The reddit behavior certainly still comes out. But an upside about decentralization is you can block the instance they're from since that annoying behavior tends to follow the same company and you probably block a lot more annoying people as a result.
I've looked at comments I didn't feel like reading, looked at the score then voted based on that. This is a bias we're all subject to, knowingly or not.
You see a comment had -20 downvotes your interpretation of the contents is immediately swayed to side with the majority. Removing downvotes looking at you beehaw also doesn't solve this problem. Less likes than the person who responded to you? You must be wrong.
So I'm glad Lemmy, at least the browser version, shows both up and downvotes by default and the total score is hidden away in the top right. Helps remove a little bit of bias.
Yes, it absolutely does. But I think it's still worth it to have a downvote system.
I'm glad we can even see the exact ratio, too. The more transparency, the better.
At the same time, it would be cool if users could just sort by means other than votes. If you'd like, it'd be nice if you could hide the votes altogether so you don't see them. I wouldn't do this, but I support having the option to for those who would.
We have the momentum now, and that makes a world of difference. Lemmy isn't beholden to any "engagement" metrics, so all the dark patterns that infect other social media have no incentive here. The internet wasn't always toxic (as a general statement). People engage more in conflict than in an interaction with no winners and losers, we're just hardwired that way. The "Web 2.0" crowd hijacked that to keep us in front of more ads for longer, "Hur-dur, number go up." Without those institutional incentives I'm very hopeful that the strong foundation of the Lemmy community can "hug it out" with the few rage baiters that are bringing their bad habits here.
Bad, nasty people are not few in number, you're describing a very significant percentage of the Earth's population. Billions of them, probably. My irl sample has a great many, at least.
But we can certainly do our best. If we want to see a certain type of world, we are ultimately responsible for fighting for it, or we'll never even deserve it in the first place.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
I feel like there isn't a "hive mind" on Lemmy like there was/is on Reddit. Even if just a few folks disagreed with your opinion on Reddit, everyone else felt like they HAD to downvote it too and then the next thing you know, you're being downvoted to oblivion. Here, it seems that folks actually respect your opinion whether or not they agree with it; and while you may get a few downvotes or more, people aren't afraid of upvoting your comment either.
I think a hive mind will develop, just based on the nature of the format. In any community there will be prevailing opinions that are upvoted and dissenting opinions that are downvoted. People are still settling down and searching for their specific corners to camp in, which is why you're probably seeing more variety for the time being.
Plus Beehaw exists, so there's your hive mind right there. Get it? Cause they're bee themed? Beehive?
Is Beehaw like Lemmy? The world feels like it has exploded since Reddit died (imo), I have been never on the niche parts of the internet but this is so interesting and i like it. So is Beehaw worth checking out?
Does anyone else feel like we're kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop though?
We did see a bit of drama that resulted in various instances being defederated, and even if Lemmy is more resistant to corporate bullshit there are some people and groups out there whose sole purpose seems to be ensuring that nobody else can have nice things.
I'm hoping that the people who contributed fine work towards tools for Reddit will be willing to help improve Lemmy as well, but as the same time users need to understand that while the experience is very "Reddit-like" there are some serious differences in technology and implementation that are going to lead to interesting and potentially unforeseen bumps in the road for the future
They always do. Though in lemmys case I imagine it'll be bigger instances running off with delusional admins thinking they're some exception to the rule.
Also, pre-digg, most people used webforums like vbulletin or phpbb. Which, honestly, I prefered to this centralization of information you have today on reddit/discord/etc.
I like lurking, with a comment here or there. I have noticed the comment sections are giant circle jerks with everyone congratulating each other on how smart and civil they are. Better than aggression and trolling but still... ew.
i used to love r/yourjokebutworse when it was still new. then people started doing the exact same thing in the comments that they were making fun of.
im jerking myself off writing this i know
So many posts right now are "DAE think Lemmy > Reddit?" If anything, people are more anonymous here, so it is only a matter of time before the amount of users brings in more toxicity. But just like reddit, users can avoid toxicity outrage baiting, and other issues by joining better (smaller) communities instead of echo chambers.
I already see it and it bums me out. People are already stepping in a discussion just to be aggressively mean for no reason. I hope we can reply to them with patience instead of feeding the monster (or, just, y'know, don't engage)
Grumblegrumble this is our chance to be different!
Yep, that and people bringing along all the mindless echo chambers and circlejerking I was hoping to leave behind on reddit.
People hated reddit for these reasons, and many of us left reddit for these reasons, and now these toxic assholes are doing everything they can to make lemmy just like reddit.
I wish those people would just stay on reddit. If they want to make lemmy like reddit why did they even leave??
So... people should disagree with each other just to disagree?
If you're talking about biased mods, then I completely agree. But as far as the community, of course people are going to agree with what's popular and disagree with what isn't.
I've been trying my best to reply to such comments with kindness and what they could have done to make their comment more constructive. Lot's of people react on emotion and sometimes they just need a bit of guidance to engage constructively. Others that are both unhelpful and rude get a report also.
Do you think -and I really mean this in earnest- that saying people unfairly slander conservatives and then unfairly slandering the left is counterproductive?
How dare you say something like this? Who do you think you are?!
j/k of course. This community has definitely been like a breath of fresh air after metaphorically living for years in a crowded bunker where everyone was constantly passing gas. I'm happy to be here.
Maybe also because of the learning curve. Those who find to bothersome to set up accounts on their preferred instances will just give up and stick to whatever toxic platform they're currently using. In other words, I'd like to think of fediverse users as smarter than most.
Sure, but it took years for reddit to devolve into what it is today. It started out as a really great place to read interesting articles on all kinds of topics and have intelligent discussions about them afterwards. Reddit hasn't been like that in a very, very, very long time but what we have going on here right now is very close to that.
I'm afraid the bots and techniques to troll, manipulate, etc. that have been developed for Reddit, can directly translate to Lemmy. Instances that grow big fast, are likely to get targetted much faster than Ye Olde Reddit was.
There is always a balance between quantity and quality.
Defederation will likely be a useful tool if we start growing too big. But also reddit, Facebook, twitter will still exist and capture the worst users.
I believe there is a critical mass of smart people that can repel idiots from a platform, which we have and need to protect. But that's just my intuition, I'm not really sure.
Is it the volume of users or volume of cretins and bigots? I feel that if you flood any site with 100k Shakespeare's and Dali Lama's the discourse would improve. Lowering the bar of entry into any technology dillutes the quality, e.g. driving. Perhaps the only solution is to make it easier to move on. The federated nature of this platform is a move in that direction and cause for optimism.
It's wild. Maybe it's a honeymoon period where we're all in this big spaceship together, or maybe that's just what it's gonna be like! There's a sort of liberating feeling of being on Lemmy that I think brings out the best in people
I like the mental imagery of us all being in a Lemmy-shaped spaceship, traveling to an exoplanet to start a new society because the Earth was destroyed by corporate greed. We're all laughing and joking together, there's free pizza, lots of nerdy discussions, and the atmosphere is jubilant, having escaped our dystopian living conditions and feeling hope for the future.
My very first ever post on Reddit,12 years ago, the first commentor called me a fa**ot and the second commentor told me 'KYS'. I posted a picture of a dog sitting in the driver seat of a car with his elbow hanging out and he was wearing a sweater. It was discouraging to say the least and burned me pretty bad. I deleted the post, tried to wipe it from my memory, continued on reddit for the next decade treading lightly knowing how toxic and mean it could be.
I’ve been at various points on reddit where I would open the replies in a background tab and just close it without reading them… or, and maybe this sounds weird, hold my hand up over replies so I could screen them without reading them so I could ignore insulting or provocative replies and not be tempted to engage.
I've commented plenty enough but did definitely decide often that it wasn't worth it. I do try to consider people's interpretations of things I say, but words still don't always come out as intended. Sometimes I'd hava a hit. Occasionally I'd be down voted somewhat heavily. Usually I'm stressing over what I say and it gets maybe 10 upvotes..
At this point I'll probably still do that contemplating before posting thing, because frankly, despite it not really impacting my life, it can still hurt to be down voted on a comment you carefully wrote and curated.
I think one thing people need to keep in mind how small this community is right now.
Right now communities are big if they have a couple thousand subscribers, and the portion of people here generally have a commonality in choosing this place over places like reddit.
I time, those opposing opinions will come but I think it is good to try and temper them with the reminder that we do not want to live in an echo chamber. Best we can do is encourage people to engage in a way that makes everyone feel welcome.
There's also a good life social tip of that to make friends you probably shouldn't discuss politics, it just creates division. But if you do tend to slide in with "man this thing is happening and it's totally fucked because x, y, z" you get them to see it without a political lense and people agree significantly more. Just don't mention political parties.
What the heck did you just flipping say about me, you big meanie? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Tiny Tots Program, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on the girl's bathroom, and I have over 300 confirmed noogies. I am trained in Nerf warfare and I have the most gold stars in the entire kindergarten class. You are nothing to me but just another butthead. I will beat you the heck up with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my dang words. You think you can get away with saying that baloney to me on the glowy type-box? Think again, doodiehead. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of teachers across the USA and your parents are being called to pick you up right now so you better prepare for the spanking, junior. The spanking that wipes out the dumb little thing you call your playtime. You're in big darn trouble, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can wedgie you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed fartfights, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States PTA and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your dorky bottom off the face of the playground, you little poopypants. If only you could have known what serious punishments your little "smartypants" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your goshdarned tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you silly doofus. I will spray boogers all over you and you will cry about it. You're frickin grounded, buttmunch.
Probably because all of us are real people struggling to find an alternative to Reddit where we used to spend our time in. No bots, no algorithms, just real people trying to make our new home a better place.
Eh. I've already spotted some ideological zealots and full threads pandering to them on here, sadly. I think if Lemmy does take off, we'll sadly see that culture of toxicity blossom here too.
Same. I stopped commenting/posting on Reddit years ago due to the toxicity issues being referenced, and it's nice to be able to participate again. Don't think it'll last that long though, but you're right: enjoy it while it lasts.
Give it time. Should it become more popular the trolls will come. In fact I've seen a few already (some anti Ukraine posts makes me think those were professionals trying to shift opinion, but what do I know).
Yeah I’ve had the misfortune of expressing the wrong opinion on a politics community. It was about as toxic as any r/Politics submission, including someone telling me to kill myself.
I've taken to just auto blocking anything to do with politics on Lemmy now. The beliefs on here are more radicalized than Reddit, and I thought they were bad.
You downplayed the current laws against LGBT+ people and climate change, so I'm not sure why you are surprised you were downvoted. That's misinformation not "just your opinion man"
I'm not counting on it staying that way, but that's ok. Upvote systems, dedicated channels, etc, will always promote a type of groupthink but you can always opt out of a community. Like if Lemmy gets it's own r/conservative, or something, I would likely not comment there.
That said, there are definitely malicious actors at play on most mainstream platforms, stoking anger and divisiveness. Even proof that fake news is spread for that exact reason. You won't see that here for a while but if it does come, I'm not sure if this system is setup to protect against it.
One big reason I don't really want it to be too successful.
In my view, big tech was actually pretty ok until politicians and companies realized they were large influence markets and started messing with them. It doesn't matter left or right, at that point the platform is broken because you've got all kinds of special interests spending money to push their thing.
If it can be big enough to be fun but small enough to fly under the radar, mission accomplished.
I think it should have one, though. That's where I'm pretty much permissive, people can have shit opinions if they want. At the moment I'm getting spoonfed all kinds of crap in my feed just because there's not enough activity to direct content I would actually be interested in. Maybe a touch of the echo chamber isn't a bad thing, up to a point. I'm not sure.
The load of stuff you're not really interested in sort of feels like an important part of the formula to me.
It's like a reminder that the world doesn't revolve around you like algorithms tend to make us feel. It also means you see people you don't like being boring or even saying stuff you agree with which isn't useful for the algorithm.
Absolutely. I can make nuanced statements and "technically this is right but" comments without massive hate. And from what I've seen, the "hey this title is misleading here's what's really going on" sits near the top. It's so refreshing.
My main motivator to comment here is this being federated, a decentralized network that belongs to no one but the community.
I'm old enough, and I have been on the internet for quite long to know that we can't trust centralized platforms. If you add to that the misplaced incentives of profit and what you get is simply a community time-bomb.
But here? Here we have a completely different scenario. We may still post shit like beans for the lulz, but this happens organically. The end game is just this, and not some fucked corporate agenda.
Agreed, on other platforms, as a generic trans girl, just existing there was call to action to yell at anything and everything I said or did or anything. I had boost when I was on Reddit and my filter of people and subreddits was extreme because of the hate they had.
I only had to block sp*ders because of a extreme fear. Feels nice here.
Reddit used to be like that too, but those people gravitate to the community eventually. I think best we can do is recognize the behaviour early and down vote it on sight.
So far. One the nob ends find a way in it'll not be as friendly, that's why blocking them and their instances promptly is important.
I saw something on blocklists the other day and will look into that. I may be totally wrong, but to me it sounds like the filters we'd use in uBlock Origin or similar. Sounds good to me.
I did see a theory that part of the vibe is the result of federation itself. People drift to instances that align with them and their views, and instances have defederated each other based on hate or trolls. Basically the trolls start quarantining themselves.
I think that a lot of toxicity on commercial socian networks comes from their need to increase engagement, so they tune algorithms for that. Which is usually agresive behavior.
Just by not having that sort of algorithms we will be better.
Just don't say anything bad about the Fediverse (or anything good about Meta/Threads). That's when the toxicity with appear. That's what I've noticed, at least.
Agreed. It’s peaceful for now at least, if the Fediverse becomes a huge mainstream thing; we’ll likely be right back at square one as far as community goes unfortunately. Right now, I guess people are nicer on the Fediverse because a lot of less-tech savy people believe there’s some sort of barrier to entry even when there really isn’t, essentially making the majority of people that join more deliberate in their intent to interact with a community as opposed to people on Reddit who might sign up just to insult everyone because in their mind, it’s just that simple.
The big advantage that the Fediverse has is that due to its decentralization, instances can govern their own communities in all sorts of unique ways.
So if the Fediverse ever becomes as big as
Reddit and we end up with a bunch of trolls and toxic people; there could be your general public instances, but I imagine there would be more exclusive servers where the only way you could get in is perhaps by some sort of vetting that ensures you’ll be a good internet citizen so to speak; that could be anything from proving you have a good track record on public instances to downright having instances that aren’t meant to be interacted with anonymously such as small town communities and professional networking where you just get vetted with your identity.
It opens up a whole new variety of possibilities that would’ve been so much more difficult with Reddit; especially with everything being at the discretion of a single entity; with the Fediverse. It’ll be ran by many different people hopefully and we won’t face those same problems :)
I just hate how “toxic cesspool” is the default. I was just watching a short video on YouTube about the US city of Baltimore, a place I heard about from an old family friend who studied at Hopkins many years ago.
The video was about the city’s decline, with the primary cause (according to the video) being the hollowing out of the manufacturing and logistics industries. The channel, Forgotten Places, doesn’t strike me as one that toxic people would be flooding to (those channels exist).
Can you guess what every other comment is about? Hint: it’s not the abandonment of productive industry. A small number of comments name more historical industrial employers that have left the city, but by far the comments with the most upvotes are “we all know we can’t discuss what happened to Baltimore 😉😉😉😉😉”
I think that is because all those sites (youtube, twitter, facebook, reddit,...) are promoting "user engagement" or whatever they call it, so they made algorithms that promote it. Of course, that means they promote toxicity and agruments, easiest way to motivate people to comment.
So the whole network becomea unhealthy and toxic.
That's also the reason I am against federating with them.
Ive encountered a few, and i think had a post deleted. Sure it was kinda low effort but i learned that old plates had lead on them so i shared. And some jesse dude got offended by it being low quality fear mongering even though its a fact the plate have lead paint. Kinda puts me off the TiL here.
I've encountered more than a few. You expect that sort of stuff when forums hit critical mass, but smaller communities I sort of expect civility. Sadly not I guess. The conspiracy theorist in me is wondering if it is trolls and bots intentionally trying to sour this place with their toxic assholery, to keep people from migrating here and sticking with reddit or whatever.
Exactly the same here! I lurked on Reddit for yeeears (like, the pre Pao days). I made one post in a very specialized sub, and three general comments elsewhere. The post went well, I got a quick answer but it really could have been an e-mail or forum post. The general comments were absolute DUMPSTER FIRES, and so I never did engage or contribute.
Lemmy has been so different, the community is smaller, but every post interaction I've had it feels like the folks I am engaging with read what I wrote and are making a good faith effort.
After the last ten years of social media, it's a little... weird. But good weird. "Oh, this is what it's supposed to be like."
I'm surprised of how many replies I have had to my own replies with people actually adding to the conversation and being polite. On reddit I barely got any response and most of it was tangential to the subject at best.
I think part of it is early adopters of any new, not-yet-mainstream technology are more open to differences, after all, we’re all doing something different.
Also, when you’re an early part of something, you want it to be the best that it can be, whereas when you are part of this massive corporate social network you don’t feel that same responsibility.
My early Reddit experience was scary that way. I'd quickly learn the hard way (e.g. with antics and misunderstanding) that the name of a subreddit was either an early intention or an inside joke (that I didn't fully get).
Far right subs banhammered me for failing to speak the newspeak and signaling appropriate allegiances. Far left subs banhammered me for... saying something tankie-adjacient, I guess? I'm still not sure what atlantism is.
Spend too long in either echo chamber and I start to realize I'm not part of either. The world is complex, boiling it down to two corporate sponsored and totally insane ideologies doesn't fit.
it means you're racist against people from Atlantis. You make me sick.
It also means "Advocation of or support for cooperation among western European and North American nations regarding political, economic, and defense issues."
I feel you on the subreddit names though, and I feel like that is happening here as well as many communities are just old subreddits that migrated over. I especially dislike the naming convention of using "porn" as a suffix like FoodPorn or ArchitecturePorn, as that can very easily drive away people not familiar with the naming convention. I hope (maybe naively?) that that will eventually turn around, but only time will tell.
I've generally only had good interactions on reddit. The trolls aren't very hard at sussing out when you've seen enough of them. You can either interact with them knowing that you're not talking to them, but the people reading, or you simply block them if they start spamming your replies. A quick report and they get banned relatively quickly anyway lol.
Like others have said above, don't worry. That'll be coming here too. Once the tipping point is reached the comments will be just like reddit.
I stopped regularly using reddit years ago once i realized it was just a boring hivemind circlejerk. I'm pretty new to this lemmy and fediverse thing and I think it's really cool and refreshing how down to earth and not circle-jerky the communities are. The potential for something awesome is exciting.
I’d often type out a comment on the other site and the. I’d decide not to post it purely because I knew that I’d be flamed for daring to have an opinion of my own.
I disagreed with someone once (politely) over something extremely minor and got told to go die in a fire. So why would I post just to get shit like that?
Here though things do seem nicer and I really hope things stay that way. My fear is that with any large number of people you’re going to get those arse-hats who ruin it for others, but maybe they’ll stay on Reddit where they can act like wankers together.
Disagree. There was a thread the other day about how it's annoying seeing nothing but posts bitching about reddit, that it's like complaining about your ex on a date with someone new. I posted something like "yeah I noticed that too" and some lunatic started harassing me nonstop. They even admitted they confused me and my post for OP and the original post, and still doubled down on their own mistake. Truly unhinged behavior.
There was also another religious lunatic in a thread about keeping government secular who couldn't understand the concept of keeping their religion out of our government. I've never wanted to punch someone in the face through my monitor before that badly in my life.
People are gonna be people no matter if they are on Reddit or Lemmy, that guy who was arguing with you had a negative score, next time just stop replying, saves both of you time.
Agree, much more relaxed when people are nice about being in disagreement. Kind of the point of a forum is to have civil discussion. I think most people are civil, but it only takes a few hostiles to make the whole thing toxic.
Excellent, I am not the only person refraining from what I really want to say in comments and replies, haha.
Minor jest aside, it's because this is all "New*" And people aren't looking to take the mask off yet/are afraid of getting banned via some other persons sensitivity.
💯 agree. This has been my experience going from Twitter to Mastodon which I’ve used since late last year. There’s not as much drama, but *turns out that was the problem all along. *