Is it just me, or have the comments on Lemmy become extra aggressive over the past 3 months?
I feel like things on Lemmy were pretty chill several months ago, and that’s started to change.
People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor. Now I get the sense that people have become quick to be negative, attack, and not be constructive.
Am I crazy in feeling like the vibe has changed?
Worth noting, the number of people who come here "to escape authoritarian moderators". Nearly all of them were moderated for good reason.
I also don't think the presence of places like hexbear are doing us any favors.
You can see them jumping from Lemmy server to Lemmy server as they get banned from each.
Eventually, they'll just set up their own instances so they can bother people with impunity.
And then we block that instance! Or it gets defederated.
It would be super nice if users could block instances.
Like, I have no desire to see anything from the furry instance.
It became a thing in Lemmy 0.19 - as long as you're on an instance that has updated to that, it should be available to you. At the bottom of the settings page in the web ui, but if you use an app they might not expose that to you yet.
I think that came with version 0.19.1 specifically.
I hadn't realized it had been implemented yet since I don't use the browser. Thanks for the update!
You can on instances running .19 or newer. Settings -> Blocks -> then at the bottom is an option for blocking instances.
Connect has been able to do that from the get go. As well as individual communities within instances.
You can do this with certain apps, like Boost!
Or Connect (Android)
Huh, I guess I haven't tried it recently, because that's what I'm using.
I think that's coming (or is it implemented already!?)?
I totally thought that was in 0.19 but I haven't actually seen that yet.
It's under Settings -> Blocks -> then down at the bottom is the block instances option.
If the apps don't have instance blocking yet, the webui does (in 0.19)... I haven't tested it, but it's there, at the bottom of my settings page 🙂
0.19.1
the 0.19 implementation is so half-assed I genuinely think the Lemmy devs just don't want that functionality but expected quite a lot of backlash if they outright said as much, so they decided to implement something that ticks the box in the "wanted features" list without having any effect
afaik it only blocks communities and explicitly lets users from blocked instances through
Feel free to make open an issue to improve instance blocking. Or better yet a pull request. We are only a few devs with limited time, and hundreds of issues to work on.
This is possible on kbin.
...and then they spin up a new instance with a new domain...
Domains are unfortunately fairly cheap and it's not impossible to get a different IP assigned to a server box.
I don't mind costing them the effort or $10 for a new domain
Incidentally I have several domains with DNS provided by freedns.afraid.net, which allows sharing domains. Everyone who asks for a domain under any of mine just seems so very sketchy. Now I have to worry if they're a nazi looking for a new domain to get banned
So there's going to be a fediverse and a mirror fediverse?
That was always a risk of decentralized services, unfortunately.
And the other one is the one with opposite facial hair
Isn't that basically what basedcount is?
I'm unfamiliar with it. Would you be so kind as to explain what you mean?
This guy
From the siderbar:
The thing that actually worried me a little bit more was people upvoting the aggressive comments to be top comments.
I was reading some thread over at !politics@lemmy.world today, and a lot of stuff advocating for political violence were the top comments. Mods yanked it, but nevertheless, people were vibing with some comments about dragging people through the street. I felt like I was on X/Twitter.
Yeah, I think it's a legitimate and growing problem. I think a lot of folks don't realize, but since growth has slowed from Reddit more broadly, the people who feel they have been "unfairly silenced" are the fastest growing subpopulation around here. If I'm honest, I think the only real antidote is to reestablish growth from communities with kinder dispositions.
We don't need to take from nicer communities, we need to build nicer communities. Right now there aren't any left wing instances, which is a big problem. It was nicer back when lib.lgbt existed.
Lemmygrad or ml aren't left wing? The entire platform feels left wing as all anyone can ever say is how bad capitalism is.
There you go, that's your problem. Political topics always gets heated and brings out the worst in people, no matter the platform. The first thing I did is block all politics (and general news + sports) communities, and it's been a fairly pleasant experience so far for me, except for the odd troll or fanboy that shows up every now and then.
Lemmy.nz also defederated Hexbear, which helped a lot.
Technically they pulled a "you can't fire me, I quit" and defederated first, but whatever.
Yea, they tend to do that, think they did the same with blaahaj. Pretty funny tbh.
People like to fetishize revolution.
Even offline I have friends that talk that kind of way and just reveal themselves as being poor students of history.
You read my mind. It's the same feeling I got when a reddit sub would degrade into a toxic circle jerk, and I'd have to unsub. Except it feels like it's a lot of lemmy communities lately. I feel like I can't respectfully disagree with anyone without being met with ad hominem attacks. I don't think something like changemyview could survive.
Also reminds me of those anti-moderate subs, which is a sentiment literally synonymous with radicalization. I'm all for free speech, I would just rather they state whatever take they have with a calm, measured demeanor.
Well remember that any instance you federate with also gets to vote. If you feel like votes aren't matching your values, perhaps you should try an instance with more of the "aggressive" stuff defederated.
Possibly, although those instances also have less content. I remember starting out with a BeeHaw account like many of us here. Trade off was often less content, no ability to create your own communities, but less people lashing out at each other.
Beehaw is very selective though (and that's fine). There is a middle ground between lemmy.world and Beehaw though.
But you said elsewhere that you go on American political communities. I'm not American but from what I've seen, it is hardly surprising that those places would be toxic. I think at this point, arguing US politics online seems like a lost cause. You're probably better off discussing politics IRL.
The irony.
Indeed. And looking at the deleted post... definitely a power trip.
Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and Lemmy.ml bring nothing of value to the community, in my view.
hexbear is insanity larping
YES, IT'S JUST FUCKING YOU, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WITH THIS GUY...
Careful with the punctuation it makes you seem rather aggressive
Suck rocks you worthless git!
How dare you make the obvious joke before I got a chance to make it! You supreme overlord of feigned fury! Fake raaaage!
I was busy and couldn’t make it to the comment section in time, you two comment sniping chodes deserve to be interrupted by someone knocking on the door then lingering until you finish when you’re taking a poop
Friend, this is 'MURICA. You just don't stand on someone's doorstep unless you want to get shot.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-rules-white-man-will-stand-trial-for-shooting-black-teen-ralph-yarl-who-went-to-wrong-house
Strap in. It's an election year
Every year is an election year somewhere.
Internet's gonna internet.
Blocking still works though.
It's almost always a small amount of people causing problems.
I still get some ghost replies occasionally, but it's never going to be anything worth reading. Most of the toxicity comes from reply chains they start as well, so you're not missing out on any constructive conversation.
People have been asking this for as long as I’ve been on lemmy.
It depends a LOT on which instances you interact with. It’s a challenge of the fediverse in that every person has their own unique experience, some bad others good.
Definitely this 👆
The vibe has gotten much more negative, to the point that I don’t really want to post anymore. I came here in early June with the Reddit API stuff, and was shocked at how communal it was. It actually got me to start posting again (I hadn’t posted on Reddit since the early to mid 20-teens because it had gotten so toxic).
My last three posts (nothing inflammatory) have gotten flamed. Someone actually hunted me down based on my post history and I had to take the time deleting most of my old posts.
So from my perspective it’s not just you. I’m back to being a lurker.
Sorry to hear. If you want a more laid-back community, there is !casualconversation@lemmy.world
Please don't. Join another instance, run your own, whatever. We need more canapés!
Maybe, but you're still awesome.
Awe shucks. Thanks. Right back at ya.
No you. /j
What I found is that hot topics come with the season, in June/July about Ukraine, in July/August about Meta, in October/November about Gaza, in December about Biden. There's been plenty of charged discussion on these topics, and internal Lemmy dramas.
However, one thing I see more often here on Lemmy than other places is people updating their comments, being willing to admit they're wrong or that their comment came off as hostile, and open negotiation in general. Consider the near defederation of programming.dev and lemm.ee, it was resolved amicably to everyone's benefit.
I also see people thanking others for softening their tone and being kind, to them I say, keep doing that and encouraging good behaviour and ettiquite online!
Law of probability. The more people join, the more of a chance someone will say some stupid shit.
Also: SUCK MY BALLS
Thank you for translating that into Manbird
Lost among the "internet sucks now, it used to be better" discourse is that the old internet was heavily moderated. The laissez faire parts of the old internet were known as the seedy corners of the web. Social media and its modern derivatives like lemmy take on that latter philosophy.
It's no wonder it's chaos every where. The libertarian tech bros have really impressed their world view on everyone. So the prevailing philosophy is these "digital town squares" should be absolute free speech zones. Except town squares in real life do not work like this anywhere. At least not in most liberal democracies. In real life there is bureaucracy. There are police, fire, ambulances. There is the simple matter of neighborly social contract. You cannot go into a real life town square and do whatever you want. You cannot just up and fight strangers, engage in lewd acts, set up encampments or what have you without permits. In the same way internet requires structure. Counter intuitively it used to have a lot more of it on account of sites being run by a real human being. Not the mega conglomerate investor groups feeding off ad/engagement profits.
Those users unfamiliar with the old internet yet pine for the good old days would have hated it. Power hungry mods is a meme as old as the internet itself. It's a necessity of the internet. Hardly anybody gets banned for being an asshole anymore. Sometimes (often more like) people need to be forced offline so they can go outside.
Say something dumb in an IRC channel? Get banned.
The good ol' days when I was young and irresponsible and got banned for it. I learnt how to converse with people online through this. Talk shit, get banned. I also feel like I forgot some of this on later platforms.
I hated it at the time, but like most learning experiences, grown to appreciate it later. I can't believe I had free and unmoderated access to the internet's back in the early 2000s. Shout out to those mods for putting a teenager in their place!
It's an election year and Trump is in the election.
A terrible and infuriating time. Brutal year ahead.
At least we had three years of rest, right?!??
Well, not exactly, that orange cockroach has been scurrying around this whole time.
Didn't you guys have an attempted coup in that time?
xXX88Trump_The_Strongman14XXx personally assured me that was just a peaceful protest
Why don't you shut hell up nerd
My suspicion is that a lot of redditors migrated over here about 7 months ago when certain apps shut down, including myself. At first, they were polite in an unfamiliar environment, but they've grown comfortable and act out, or speak less thoughtfully, like they originally did on Reddit.
We can absolutely do better than reddit on this one. If someone is breaking rule 2 (be respectful), report that comment and we'll get to it as soon as we can.
You’re awesome btw.
o7
Are reports anonymous? I don't want to report a user that breaks rules only for the offending user to be friends with an admin and get me kicked from a community as payback
No, the mods of the community can see who sent the report.
That can be a good thing, too, to find out if someone is abusing the report feature, as was common on Reddit when people didn't like someone's comment.
Reports are not anonymous, but they also aren't public. Only visible to admins and mods of that community.
It's a tradeoff, anonymous report abuse was a big problem on reddit that I didn't want to replicate here. If the admins or mods aren't trustworthy on your server, you should pry move to another one.
thats something a complete idiot would say
😝
Trigger warning on this. Can't get the spoiler thing to work at all.
Definitely not imagining it.
Since I first joined I went from having nice conversations with strangers about the weirdest things, never having a single negative interaction, to nowadays saying I think women deserve a baseline level of respect and being told I should die giving birth to a rapists baby.
To be fair, the dude who said that did get banned from the instance I'm on for that, but it happening in the first place would have been unthinkable to me a few months ago.
agreed there is a definite influx of misogynistic incels lately. Feel like I’m spelling out how women are human beings a lot more than I ever had to here before. Conversations are more on the de-evolutionary side.
There's no need to debate misogynists here. Downvote and report them and we'll ban as soon as we can.
It's amazing how quickly the Internet ruins the Internet. Hopefully we can work together through defederation and as a community that doesn't just let shit slide to keep that 00's era chat and forum feel alive. Either way, good luck out there!
People ruin the internet*
Yeah it fucking sucks
::: spoiler test, spoiler test eueaouaoeuaoeuaoe :::
The syntax is a bit confusing. You need to leave the first "spoiler" untouched. You can delete the second "spoiler" to set the title, and then replace the three underscores ___ with your text:
"
::: spoiler my-title
my-text
:::
"
Edit: Looks like most apps don't support this and this spoiler markdown only works in the browser.
I've found that it depends on the community. The bigger ones get more toxic comments but more niche ones are still polite. What that suggests to me is that people who are here for entertainment are more likely to rant and mouth off, whereas as those who are here to share their passions and interests are engaging in a more fun and positive way.
Dunno. I still think Lemmy is better by quite a bit. I still participate I reddit occasionally, and I think it’s become far less engaging as a place of discussion. It’s just the same old reposts and tired old comments over and over. It’s rarer to find insightful comment chains.
Lemmy is starting to attract some of the Reddit tropes. Dumb sex questions in asklemmy or any of the other retreads that we’ve all seen a score of times. But as far as discussions go, if one can get into one, they’re good.
I feel the mainstream lemmy instances have attracted the reddit mob mentality where any deviation from the groupthink is treated as radicals or bots.
Holy cow I thought I was the only one running into rude people.
I'm dealing with that right now, and also what I noticed is the abundance of downvotes on facts, but upvotes on feelings.
I disabled votes on my clients. I don’t want a number to potentially sway my opinion on a comment or post
I wonder if that's why Youtube did it also, for downvotes at least
I think downvotes on facts and upvotes on feelings is just people wanting to feel validated, but not having the energy to engage with content. It used to happen on reddit too a lot. A lot of communities there are based on dealing with human emotions and situations in life. People seeking advice and validation about their lives being the primary motivation for even creating an account on the site.
I have a little pet theory backed by some reading that people are overstimulated by junk content to the point where they just can't meaningfully engage in serious discussions anymore and that leads to the phenomena of populism on a political scale and simple, emotion-based upvoting on a Lemmy scale.
Interesting theory; what also plays a big factor is mob mentality I find.
And if someone comments after you correcting one small thing, you'll then get downvoted as well.
Lemmy users discovering that human nature doesn't change just because the name of the website isn't Reddit:
The 80/20 rule applies to toxic Internet behaviors as well, 20 percent (or less) of the user base is responsible for 80 percent of the toxicity.
It's always the same people being awful here, if you are taking notes, you can quickly identify the worst posters on this platform after a week. People always complain about how they are unfairly banned by reddit moderators, but you have to remember, sometimes the bans are really justified.
I think the ony real (and unpleasant) solution is to moderate very aggressively whenever there is bad behavior (although, I must add, permanent bans should be rare and reserved for extremely bad behaviors)
That really is the case. Back when I went to war with feddit de for constantly leaving shitty comments I was surprised at how few people I had to block from that instance before the abuse stopped coming my way. Now that you mention it, 20% of the population sounds about right.
As long as you are able to differentiate between bad language (skills), cultural differences, and bad behavior. On Reddit that's basically the same. Many things may sound harsh, but are often just expressed frustrations, voiced in an imprecise way. And often, nuance is lost in translation. Many foreigners aren't used to nuance like Americans are.
Many Europeans won't hold back. Like, you tell your neighbor that he's an idiot directly to their face. Out of love; how else would they know. Apparently, none of their friends told them. Poor fellow. Just an example. I've learned that Americans won't do that, for whatever reason. they would just call them idiots wherever they are not around, and keep smiling. ;)
Tangentially related, but yeah, some usernames one can remember after seeing them for the umpteenth time and then one spots the same people all over the hot topics 😅 that doesn't only apply to toxic ones, it's just that an active core of Lemmy community is still small enough, a nice time to be a part of it
I’ve always found the tone harder here than it ever was on Reddit. Community blocking is key to enjoying Lemmy; even still, I think the audience is younger here than it was on Reddit and younger people broadly feel pretty shafted by today’s economy (they’re not wrong either) and tend to express themselves in simpler solutions (some of them correct in ways older folks can’t let go of their habits to recognise, many of them wrong in ways you can only learn through wisdom). Lack of consistent community management means you have to be much more aggressive in blocking individuals and communities yourself.
I've resorted to instance blocking instead of community blocking, most of the worst offenders are all on the same instances anyway. And then individual users based on their nonsensical comments, plus a curated keyword blocklist.
It's just like back on reddit... One of the reasons why I couldn't do it without Sync, haven't seen the filter capabilities in any other app.
Coincidentally, a genocide has been unfolding in the past 3 months, and that tends to put people on edge.
Well said, rising slope of solid rectangles
I just call them crescendo.
Thank you, though I know you're not willing.
Early adopters are closer to a community and are aligned by technical and ideological similarity; then come secondary waves that aren't as community focused; and then once you hit a critical mass it becomes worthwhile to try to shape consensus, so the marketing and agit-prop shillbots enter the fray.
This isn't a new problem, Reddit was the same way. As a site grows, it gets harder to moderate, and that means more people trolling for attention. Go to your user settings and change the default view from "All" to "Subscribed", and you'll have more control over your home page.
Reddits comments were slow to deteriorate. It initially had very insightful and genuinely comical comments and slowly turned to common jokes and politicized arguments. But now that we changed to this I feel like we can't go back, it is the discourse now.
Yeah, probably a little, but this same change was 1000x more noticeable like half a year ago when reddit banned third-party apps. I think it's reasonable to lament the change, and I kind of miss the tight-knit community from the first three years I was here, but it's still worth celebrating the platform taking off. Ultimately all you can do is be the change you wish to see in the world.
That said, if we start getting heavily astroturfed with bots and spam I'm going to be a little less zen about it.
The spammers aren't here in custom full-force software_dev_lemmy_bots mode yet, but when they come, moderation tool development will increase in effort tenfold.
The nation states are already using their "play Guess The Bot and lose" games. It's the ones who post often and with clear lines in the sand you need to worry about. Problem is, there is a sea of regular people just like that.
Lemmy needs to go through a fork or three before it becomes viable to the mainstream. Currently Lemmy users produce much less legitimate worthwhile information on far less subjects than reddit, and even Quora shudder thinking about it.
Granted, I've only been here for about a week before reddit disabled 3rd party apps. Maybe the first 3 years were the golden years. I'm only speaking as to the bot infestation I see currently.
I feel like its hit and miss with lemmy. Depending on the topic, your way of thinking and the community, you can either get folks to be agreeable and helpful or get dogpiled on, called names and other childish things.
The internet is still a place where being a jerk has no major consequences so folks may let loose ok someone they deem lesser than themselves, dumb or plain offensive.
IRL this doesn’t break through as much if you‘re no longer in school as most workplaces at least have some restrictions against bullying or mobbing and a lot of peeps have good lawyers these days.
So, from someone who polarizes since being born (not by choice): it’s just circumstances imo.
At least in the communities I'm subscribed to and interact with, I've still seen it mostly be positive interactions.
It's been my experience that it's a couple problem instances where most of the toxicity comes from.
Lemmy.ml users are the worst by a long shot. I hear they're mutants who live underground!
Well i'm here to put the allegations to rest: I do in fact live above ground.
Holidays, shorter days, colder weather affects depression a lot.
And there is a correlation between being very active on social media and depression.
Online Social Networking and Mental Health
Just be nice and patient with them they deliver most of your content for free.
I must be ancient here, because nobody has claimed this is like September 1993 all over again...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
I am not that old but I know that reference. :)
If I say something spicy it's usually because I feel like whoever I'm responding to isn't making a point in good faith.
There was a thread last month where someone was asking why race was a bad thing. That wasn't the text, but it was subtext. I posted something about how op probably would have been sterilized under eugenics policy. I get why I was banned. It was spicy. I still think op was pulling a "just asking questions" racism. I responded how I felt that kind of question deserved to be treated. Look me up in the mod logs if you're curious.
I suppose you wanted to handle it yourself, but the proper way to treat that stuff is just to report it to the mods and move on.
Marked spoiler for potential vibe harshing
::: spoiler spoiler It might be a mix of a lot of things. The Palestinian Genocide, Ukrainian War, Chinese Expansion, actual probable chance of a second Trump Presidency, and a great many other issues are probably weighing heavy on the minds of net denizens. That and less sunlight than in the summer months.
Plus I've never seen any posts from a Foodporn or cute pets lemmy community, but I have seen crimes against the culinary arts and some posts about pets that have died.
People are just not feeling optimistic, and that leads to feelings of repression and anger. :::
The superb owl community is pretty great for cute animals
The spoiler block doesn't work on Sync it seems, unless you used the wrong >!spoiler tags!<. I wonder if it was the full stop or it being broken over several lines.
Seems like Sync only understands one-line spoilers, so you need each line in a separate spoiler
I apologize if these include me.
As we in the US loom towards the election I am getting more and more raw and worried about it. And with that my fear brings out screechy obscene me. That is one of my fear responses that I lose the handle on a lot.
So please forgive me. I will try to avoid political threads as we ramp up to either the end of American democracy or the continuing gerontocratic oligarchic republic.
I think there are more bummer world events happening like the Israel Hamas war and bummer late stage capitalism in general which leads to more inflammatory and charged discourse, compared to just after the Reddit exodus when we were united against Reddit.
Lemmy in general isn’t different from other social media in that it isn’t great for political discourse. Without the human connection there is less incentive to consider the experience and viewpoints of others when you can just downvote and read a hundred that agree with you
Yes! I've been seeing a lot of toxic comments and posts lately. It's kinda turning into a niche hyper toxic reddit.
many, if not most of the popular/highly-trafficked communities are basically echo chambers now, anyone who disagrees with whatever the cookie-cutter general consensus of the day is becomes a hate magnet.
Disagree with an admin and you're a pariah.
I feel like a very high percentage of posts and comments here are just "Americans bad." And as an American, even though the things they are complaining about don't apply to me specifically, it makes me feel very unwelcome.
I feel like that’s kind of the case for a lot of things here. God forbid you find anything remotely positive about the wrong brand of phone, operating system or web browser. You’re unwelcome.
Oh man... I use Precisely the wrong phone, operating system, AND web browser! Heck, I am using the wrong Operating System on my wrong Phone, and I am commenting right now on the wrong web browser. Also, not American, but alot of my friends are.
It's a bit on an echo chamber. The world is frustrated with us. But if you are in another country as an American, you'll be judged more by your actions usually. In my personal experience most people still understand that there's 2 Americas and a little bit of humility and humbility is all it takes to be seen as more than a red hat and a flag.
Europoor here, sending virtual support to you.
I honestly don't feel much has changed. There was perhaps a bit of a "new" feeling in the start and some excitement about the project, but I don't think people have gotten more aggressive or anything.
But I think all this probably depends what circles you hang out in. Probably also depends on what instances you federate with.
Comming from Reddit, I find it really peaceful, but IDK how it was before. Except for the people at Hexbear who bullied me for liking South Park. The socalled "dirtbag left" is basically the proudboys pretending to be far-left.
It's never a bad idea to instance block them. They'll endlessly bully you and gang up like a bunch of school children. The only thing that stops it is to stop responding.
I haven't noticed, but some people say they are feeling political tensions, and...
From the Wikipedia complete list.
I guess everyone is just a little worried about national and international elections.
This is the first I've heard this perspective. It's worth keeping in mind the remainder of the year. Thanks for that
I'd say things look progressively grim in the world even outside the elections being another possible source of problems. I used to not know what anxiety was, now I can only wish I still didn't
A lot of people are having a hard time right now. Try to be the change you want to see and react kindly and rationally would be my advice.
I just started a few days ago and already had to deal with a transphobic troll. Online is so toxic that I'm afraid eventually all social media platforms end up on trolls radar and they seek to destroy them. It's a shame because they ruin social media for everyone including themselves.
So many people lack a basic sense decency that they actually think it's ok to cause harm to other people simply for their own amusement. It's usually straight white american males too.
Report transphobic comments and we'll get to them as soon as we can. No one should have to deal with transphobes.
This is why a lot of trans people are on Hexbear, which aggressively polices such behavior and defederates from instances that don’t sufficiently moderate it.
Can I ask why you wanted to add the last sentence? You might be right, statistically, but the tone sort of implies that you judge the group rather than the behavior. (apologies if that was the joke).
Personal experience.
From personal experience about 80% of the harassment I recieve is from straight white american males, not kids either, many times they're middle aged. There are some females in the mix, rarely people of colour but there have been a few.
If I were to guess I would imagine it's because women and people of colour also belong to vulnerable communities and run the risk of attracting the wrong type of attention and becoming targets themselves.
Not every white american male is a troll or violent obviously but since 2015 the ones who are continue to become active threats.
Honestly I see them almost as victims themselves. No troll, stalker, mass shooter, etc started out that way. They became radicalized online by getting wrapped up in online activities they were not emotionally nor intellectually equipped to handle.
An example is the Christchurch massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings
He didn't start out as a mass murderer, he was radicalized online in places like 8chan. He even posted on 8chan that they needed to keep an eye on Christchurch because something big was going to happen.
It's not just americans and it's not just white males but so many get caught up in the culture of trolling that there are going to be those who become fundamentally damaged by the continued activity to the point that they take it too far and sometimes that leads to things like mass shootings, or swatting, stalking or other criminal behaviour.
It's so easy for them to fall in to those holes. I'm currently half way though my 19th year of being a father to a what is now a fellow man.
That's a loaded statement, but trust that he arrived there on his own. We had some amazing conversations along the way about; what gender meant to him, what the words gay and stright meant, hell we discussed what his fursona "could" be.
That one scared me, I was on b long enough ago that furf*g (sorry y'all) was still a term that I had defined 20 years ago without reassessment until the moment the 13 year old that was my favorite human brought it up over greasy appetizers at Applebee's during a 4 day LAN party. Man, those kids that were sightly older than him with tails and ears were his everything at that event. Haha
Anyways, all along the way I've been part of his dialog with "the Internet". I've done it as a very active user and a long time lurker. I still have irc channels I idle in and I still remember epic gets going back to 1 million. I was a boxy hater and you'll never convince me otherwise even as the shoe head shit comes back as lame ass Q pedo baiting for 40 something neckbeards with poor relationship skills and amazing commander decks. (trigger warning for keyboard warriors that are really going through it, I hope you find grass some day).
I digress. What I have seen and tried with all my ability to do is steer him from being someone incapable of true human interaction and empathy despite natural bias. I think I got there but it wasn't without tours through Wikipedia articles about misogyny, incel culture and feminism. It wasn't without incredibly frustrating moments where I didn't get why the fuck you'd spend hours a day on YouTube being fed what ever shit the algorithm served you. But I asked if we could go over his watch history and I had honest conversations with him about Andrew Tate and that culture. We did. I think I made things better by doing it too. Either way, there's millions of dudes out there who never had that and it sucks. But advertisers know that nothing sells better than anger, unless it's loneliness.
No matter what though, we may be an anomaly. And I understand why some can't help but yell online in impotent rage. The only path they see to actualizing that is through a barrel. My neighboring high school senior year was the site of one of the first mass school shootings in America some 25 years ago. Now I've normalized active shooter drills and had legit discussions with my ex-wife about bulletproof backpacks. The fuck are we doing?
It's a travesty we don't have the support systems in place for anybody that doesn't have the means for self sufficiency and it's ever more so that we have created systems that further deny that for those that would benefit most from them. I don't have an answer. Wish I did because it would sure give me something to write a manifesto about and possibly even inspire a lifestyle change to the Vegas strip with a belt pack microphone. That always seemed like an interesting reality. Alas, I'll continue to live in a medium sized town, building a bug out NAS and hoping shit doesn't get so hot I'm too exhausted to enjoy the fallout.
Stay safe out there. And thanks for letting a 40 something CIS dude monopolize the Internet once again.
/rant
Good, high quality comment. It's these discussions that I like Lemmy for, and makes me confused about why everyone complains about it.
Even though I was on the other side of you in the Boxxy wars (lol feels so quaint now), I think we'd agree about a lot. You sound like you're taking a very active part in your child's life, which is key nowadays in this age of the internet and social media. So many people are letting their kids get half-raised by the algorithms without any oversight or context. Just wanted to say that though I don't know you personally, I can tell that you care and are doing your best, which is all we can do in this crazy world, and I'm happy we still have parents like that who are able to adapt to raising a kid in this "information age".
I won't hold the Boxxy against you. Lol. Thanks for the reply and encouragement. Trying is the best we can do and hopefully it makes a difference in the end. I advocate for all the other parents I encounter to try and be aware of what's out there, it's not like it was when I was growing up where the worst that could happen is you'd end up cybering with some creepy old dude. But that's hard for folks to do when they too are distracted by the asshole parade that is most social media.
I appreciate a thoughtful response as well. If we're all diligent we can keep that discourse as the standard here and maybe continue to live in that early internet era that Lemmy had in the beginning. Much like Portlandia, the dream of the 90's is alive on the fediverse.
Cheers friend!
So I am also a straight white American male and the ones I blame for this culture is the old rich white American males. They don't want to lose power so they use their money (Rupert Murdoch as an example) to radicalize those who don't have the education and/or training to tell real from fake. Yes there will always be the "deplorables" as well. But i do feel for those who fall for the bullshit. Doesn't mean they can be allowed to drag everyone else down, but I at least understand how those who might have initially had the best intentions could be radicalized into more extreme mindsets. Propaganda and peer pressure is far more powerful and insidious than a lot of people give it credit.
Thanks for your response - I think that we agree. My point was just that your post was about being decent, then you randomly dunk on a group.
It's not that your personal experience isn't representative - I think that there is a contingent of privileged people who feel left out by progress towards a level playing field. That sort-of makes sense, right? There are also strong echo chambers pushing those people towards radicalization. I suppose I'm asking you to feel empathy for these, very privileged, victims of a society that doesn't know how to engage with them. Egalitarianism has to bring everyone along - I don't know if that can be done.
As a straight white American male, word.
And, sorry (that's my greeting, lol. no one seems to ask why when you're 40, bearded, chubby and white, they just nod in silent agreement).
Some people just don't like others to have nice things. Even if it's something that should be as simple as tolerance at worst and acknowledgement and acceptance at best. A diverse community creates a better world, it can also cause stress for folks that are afraid of change. Thank you for being part of this one and sharing your experiences so any of us that are listening can self analyze and be better in the future. Please be patient with the slower ones as they are drug Cialis first into the modern world.
Sometimes it's hard to see yourself through a narrow lens.
I FART IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!
YOUR MOTHER WAS A HAMSTER AND YOUR FATHER SMELT OF ELDERBERRIES!
Careful. I'll correct my neighbour's spelling, too . :-)
100%. Seems like people are just itching to fight now and taking comments out of context constantly. They're just throwing out insults instead of engaging or asking for clarification. Dunno what happened.
It's definitely gotten worse, especially the political circlejerk, jeez.
with the american elections coming up, tensions are rising. Quite predictably so, really
Yeah, definitely the vibe has changed. It's kind of sad.
Vibe has changed but it's because of more users. The original users picked Lemmy because they were tired of reddit, so they were naturally nice people that didn't vibe with the shit that was going on at reddit. They wanted something else. We wanted something else.
That's why we shouldn't wish for exponential growth. This place will lose its charm quickly if we end up arguing with the trolls.
It has gotten worse and it will only continue to do so. There are people who are respectful and hold back their darkest impulses, but there are others who choose to hold those same features in high regard, as literal virtues in their eyes. Blocking hexbear and lemmygrad has helped my own peace of mind immensely, but you would not want to block lemmy.ml or lemmy.world or such so... here we are.
I do not really see any permanent solution to this problem, short of eternal vigilance. That's just nature though, e.g. viruses constantly evolve and seek new hosts, hence hosts that do not keep up die, there's no way around needing to keep up defenses against such a tireless onslaught. Similarly for information vs. misinformation too, it seems:-(.
It has also gotten much harder to have any discussion with even the tiniest hint of subtlety on the Fediverse - is Biden/Linux/socialism/religion good or bad? "Yes." For some of us, knowing what will happen - the flood of toxic responses I mean - if we dare to speak up is enough to cause us to cringe enough that we would simply rather stay silent instead. If only the opposing side were like that too! But no, they elect not to hold their own tongues, even while expecting YOU to hold yours. That too seems just the nature of the universe.
It's a different kind of Chilling Effect. It reduces conversation, because it convinces some people to not become involved at all.
Whereas conversations like this one with you has the opposite effect - thank you for your addition and the link:-).
People here realize that narratives have consequences and know we can't just live in la-la land where everyone is happy all the time. I mean yeah you can do that but then don't be surprised pikachu face when you find yourself in the company of neo-nazis who are doing the same.
Sorry guys, I got mad
I don't mind disagreeing and even bickering a bit, but when somebody gets extra or pointedly disengenuous I just block em. IDGAF. 🤷
Idk why, but I feel like I'm starting to associate this kind of behavior with people who used to be on Reddit and moved over here when all the third party apps got Thanos snapped.
I first got here around July 2023, and it was pretty cool. Nowadays it's probably a little less cool.
You mean comments like this one?
https://feddit.nl/comment/6215624
Yeah, it's getting worse.
My god. I sit here couching my thinly veiled calls for civil disobedience in "in minecraft" and "this is satire," and here's someone openly calling for a murder. Maybe next time I want to make a joke about billboard burning being a fun pastime for the whole family, I won't be as afraid of getting a visit from the fun police
You can just say whatever you want on the internet. Watch this:
People who eat meat are murderers and deserve to be killed. It'll reduce the number of murders overall.
See? It's easy.
Just lots of trolls lately, most communities are fine but some have poor moderation so these types of comments/posts take some time to get deleted. All the communities I'm browsing are quite chill.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen more spam lately too.
Btw, what are we calling aggressive chat bots? Auto-trolls? Strife bots? Contentionator-3000s?
Giving them a name means acknowledging their existence. Block and ignore ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ.
The same assholes who were on Reddit being pieces of shit are here too.
It's the internet, everything is reduced to being shitty within weeks of getting noticed.
I'll downvote all of you
I posted a cookie recipe in response to a cookie meme, got roasted for not converting baking units to science units. So yeah, people are getting kinda aggressive.
Dont you mean you got baked, not roasted?
You should ask a police officer how some neighbours talk to each other...
The number of trolls is going to increase as the user base increases.
Plus, you get the same negative effects of the echo chambers like Reddit did, but I think the communities being so small amplifies the effect.
Never forget the way the human brain works, with the more common interpretation being: "it takes 7 instances of positive things to outweigh 1 negative."
For my part I haven't really noticed any difference, but I only infrequently comment!
Many will tell you this is normal and just how the internet is.
How depressing.
OMG, yes! I've been running into so many rude/toxic comments lately. For me it feels like this place is devolving into Reddit again.
Yeah, I feel the comments are getting worse as well, though from seeing the upvote numbers and less tankies/hexbears, I'm guessing some old folks are leaving and new people are joining. Guess it's only natural.
removed by moderator makes this funnier no matter what the original comment was.
I blocked hexbear not because of their political beliefs, but because they would fucking ruin entire content sections by being super annoying.
I'm also glad to see your comment not triggering the same brigading behavior I used to see a lot more often.
I honestly haven't noticed any changes. 2 months after the rexodus and the honeymoon phase ended, things stabilized. Some drama with tankies but not much else. People here are just as generally rude or kind as they’ve ever been.
I have noticed more hostility and more downvotes. Whereas before, everyone was mostly civil and hardly ever saw any posts get downvoted unless it was actual spam.
I’ve only been here since July 2023 but yeah, feels like over the past few weeks, it’s gotten a little different.
The halcyon days of Lemmy lasted a week or so. As soon as you have mods coming over for Reddit you have all the shit they are schlepoed along with them. I’m only in here when I’m shitting and then only because I’ve memorised the blurb on the back of the air freshener can already.
I feel like
peekpeak positivity and optimism was during the weeks between the reddit protests starting and the actual app banI've said it before, Lemmy is a fickle place.
I expect it will get better with time as we get more users.
Depends on the threads you discuss i guess, I find it pretty chill
Simply a side effect of successful user growth without adequate growth in moderation of the user base. Same thing has happened on every forum since the first BBS
Aggressive yes, and more people deliberately misinterpreting what you say just to feel smug. Also people that don't understand that a Lemmy comment can't have the exhaustive detail and context of a Wikipedia article, and they take any omission of such in a comment as ignorance by the op.
That's just normal behavior of human beings.
Fuck you
Edit: im sorry
Before it was toxic positivity. The veneer has broken down now that people aren't trying their best to bring over reddit refugees, and the ugly underneath is visible.
I haven't really noted a shift, but there's always a few folks in a given place, real or virtual, that are absolutely unwilling to take a nuanced view. My way or the highway and all that. Hard to have a historical view though when a major part of the users have all come on board in the last 7-8 months, me included.
You're aggressive!
NO YOU
fight me in my driveway
Sounds like fighting words..
Yes. Yes you are.
This vibe has been here from the start. But it was kept at bay by defederating left and right from "troublemakers".
Problem is actual troublemakers don't care where they are. All they have to do is make a new account and keep on troubling.
So all the isolation managed to do is slow down the conflict, make it less visible. And it worked too.
Yet you can't stop the fighting, not for long anyway.
We have to fight, have to make drama. Peaceful living is too boring all the time.
When they are insulting should mean that they have no arguments... maybe they have issues on their life. Who knows, but it's a waste of time to reply to them.
every time I see a full page meme in the middle of a comments thread I want to punch a hole right through its face
Yeah tbh image embeds were a mistake IMO.
i love them personally, it was annoying as fuck not having them on reddit
Maybe a size adjuster is needed
I kinda started getting that feeling too but I thought that was because I started getting more involved in discussions and political ones more. Before it was mainly quick comments for me. Anyways if someone starts to insult or deliberately distort what I am saying by cherry picking combinations of words from my comments, I put on my "three words at most troll hat" and the discussion dies pretty quickly. No point in writing a paragraph for a comment if the other person is just gonna take one word out of it and bash the rest with it.
A couple days ago someone was trying to debatebro me I told them to eff off and that I wasn't going to humor their bad-faith ass.
Was expecting to get hate for it but instead woke up to 20 votes on the comment. It's awesome.
Especially the grammar Nazis that floated here on a turd from the reddit cesspool.
Not just the comments. It used to be page 4 or 5 where the hate/rage content would start appearing in the top posts. But it's been creeping up, and now even page 1 looks pretty bad sometimes. I bet even Americans are starting to feel alienated if they're not perpetually angry.
Lemmy is a left leaning echo chamber loaded with hateful and violent speech toward Trump and the GOP in general. Whenever I bring this up, I get downvoted to oblivion. I hardly engage anymore, not like I used to. Too much crazy. Trust me, I fucking hate Trump, but the death threats and shit are too much
As should be the case :)
These groups are only alive by sheer mercy.
Taking about U.S politics is a good way to make anyone not from U.S leave. I don't care about politics, yet my wish to not get bombarded by it simply cannot be fulfilled here. So I have to seek other social media platforms, which means I spend less time here.
The simple (depressing) fact that U.S. politics affects nearly every single person on the globe to some degree makes your indifference towards politics in general somewhat dangerous on a personal awareness level. Consume what data you choose, but avoiding it only prolongs the inevitable?
LMAO
Yeah, I’ve been blocking a lot more than I used to.
I blame politics
The subject of the arguments is certainly politics (and war and religion), but the source of the arguments is strongly differing world views.
Despite what we'd like to believe about ourselves, humans are not well-adapted to being exposed to a wide variety of differing viewpoints. We evolved in small, racially and socially homogenous groups, for the most part. Up until the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of humanity lived and died within 30 miles of where they were born, and only had daily interaction with what was essentially an extended family.
Travel, mass immigration, and the Internet changed all that. Being exposed to such a diversity of opinion on a daily basis quite simply breaks our brains. It causes a tremendous amount of internal conflict and stress, for some more than others. That constant strain becomes more intense when there is war, such as in Gaza and Ukraine, or particularly divisive politics. There are obviously some extremely contentious elections coming up, including the US election, which has tremendous global implications. There are, no doubt, people on Lemmy right now for whom the result of the US election is a matter of life and death, and yet they aren't US citizens and can't vote.
We should all take a chill pill and try to be less confrontational and use less emotionally-charged language when it comes to hot button issues. The politics and news subs are an avalanche of charged words and phrases like genocide, fascist, apartheid, Nazi, racist, transphobic, anti-gay, religious zealot, and many others. Those are fighting words. Deserved or not, words like that not only reflect, but also create, a lot of emotional dissonance and stress, which lead to emotionally charged arguments.
I blame someone else
I feel you: someone was trolling me for what I said about Busuu because I used the words ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ as a Christian.