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 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.
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.
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.
I was reading some thread over at !politics
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.
You didn’t block all politics. Everything is political.
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.
The irony.
Strap in. It’s an election year
Every year is an election year somewhere.
Yeah but this is an AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR!!!
that’s like the super bowl of elections
Sent from my freedom phone motherfucker
What the fuck is a superbowl
A really nice owl
Can I pet it?
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!
Internet’s gonna internet.
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Positive and negative are qualitative and measures in this case.
Subjective ones at that.
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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.
TL;DR - A millennial goes on a tangent about the good ol’ days.
I remember being permanently or temporarily banned as a kid/teenager with simple messages like “go outside”. Mostly for being too rude or annoying, or edgy. As teens and kids often are.
Idk if it’s a thing on Lemmy, but I’m all for extended temporary bans for simply repeatedly being a dick to others.
The “old internet” for me was something like 2006-2012. And I agree, people who pine for it probably couldn’t hack it in 2024, it was racist, it was homophobic, and threads went off the rails with people giving unsolicited advice on how to please your gf, but it was fun, it was dynamic, often complete strangers behind phpBB nicknames felt more real than your closest friends on Instagram do now.
I yearn for those days. Not because I particularly want to deal with racist, homophobic idiots, but because I miss the dynamic internet before mega social network sites. I miss the nuance, people knowing each other on forums and whenever someone who’s known in the community would post something that on surface level is banhammer-worthy per the rules, the community would talk it out and the hammer would fall when people call for it, not always strictly adhering to the rules. And yes, that did produce the power-hungry mods. But it’s not like much has changed.
I feel like I’m going off on a tangent. I just miss the randomness.
I recently had a chat with a new colleague about how you can’t joke with a lot of Zoomers about race/nationality/sex because they don’t perceive nuance. I think it’s a cultural thing imprinted by the internet content coming from America. We’re both from Eastern/South Eastern Europe and people don’t immediately get their panties in a knot over offensive jokes because they realize that a racist-sounding joke does not make the person racist. And I feel that’s the state of the internet now too, and it’s ok, but I miss the sharp edge that it used to have.
I also miss the weird smileys.
tldr a child gives us his wisdom lmao
first by mocking and then by doing the thing he mocked
well played asshole
the internet only existed for like eight years before you started using it and you pine for your past but shit on those who were alive for the first part
just fuckin retarded man, snap out of it and quit being a cunt
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!
sometimes, people need to be told they’re stupid/shitty/etc. it just makes me feel better. i’m not trying to win a debate, i just don’t want to hold my tongue because fuck you. with everyone so afraid of being cringe or big mad lol, there’s no room left for healthy expressions of anger. anger is a human trait. anger is a useful tool. anger gets shit done. don’t be afraid of your anger. tell someone they’re stupid today. they might need to hear it.
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.
And it also depends on the communities you visit. If you enjoy verbal first fights, try politics and news. If not, there are also quite a few wholesome communities too.
Definitely this 👆
Sorry guys, I got mad
thats something a complete idiot would say
😝
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)
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. ;)
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.
this and a prodigious use of your block button. you don’t owe anyone the right to talk to you like a jerk. and even more, you curate your online space. vibes are off? you’re allowed to block people. even if they haven’t said anything to you specifically. if someone is the sort of person you would never want to be around IRL, why allow them in your space online?
The free ability to block users and instances here is AMAZING
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.
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.
If you’re talking about the two that I think you are, I agree. I suspect my pleasant experience is due to my instance defederating completely with those, which is pretty swank.
Which ones, if you don’t mind me asking?
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Hexbear: Similar to lemmygrad they have their strong convictions, but don’t have the maturity to back it up.
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LemmyWorld: Users are a mixed bag but the admins seem dead set on turning the place into a nazi bar.
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sh.itholefor.nazis: The only thing you need to know about these guys is they have a c/ for conservatives
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feddit de: Literally every user on this instance is dead set on reminding you that Germany never underwent denazification
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discusstchncs de: same story but to a much less extreme extent
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lemm ee: The owners don’t really moderate and its users reflect this fact. Universally unpleasant userbase.
lemm ee: The owners don’t really moderate and its users reflect this fact. Universally unpleasant userbase.
This is categorically untrue. You can find our administration policy here, and we frequently ban users for breaking our instance rules. At most you could make the claim that we are lenient when it comes to things like heated arguments, as we often give warnings or temporary bans to users in such cases, but on the other hand, our “no bigotry” rule is very strict, and violations have consistently resulted in permanent bans.
We of course don’t screen all posts and comments which our users write, so we can only respond to reports, but I assure you that our admin team is constantly going over and responding to the report queue (which is a big effort, and clearly a thankless job).
By the way, I just want to point out that we have ~3000 active monthly users on lemm.ee, I find it very unlikely that you can make an accurate universal judgement about such a huge group of people.
That’s what the owners of feddit de said too and it didn’t stop their users from constantly leaving harassing messages on anything left of hitler. In fact, it was one of your members leaving a shitty comment that spurred me to add ee to the list, it wasn’t even included initially.
EDIT: You do realize that modlogs are public right? I went through them and was less than impressed with what I saw. It seems your idea of “moderation” is to remove when people call you on your shit, which is especially convenient that someone just so happened to call out that your conservative c/ (why is there a conservative c/!?!) is being run by an actual pedo. So yeah, sums up what I expected from you guys.
I am not really interested in discussing this with you, as you already have an opinion about lemm.ee and seem intent on spreading false rumors about us. I’ve learned several months ago that no matter how much you give to people for free, there will always be users demanding more, so I don’t think there is any chance of you being interested in what I have to say. I am just responding here, so other users who may end up reading this thread don’t come away with the impression that what you are saying is true.
First of all, no user has ever been banned from lemm.ee for criticizing the admin team. Our admins have banned nearly a thousand users in the past ~7 months (just think about that for a second - that is a massive amount of bullshit our volunteer admins have had to wade through in the span of less than a year), and indeed the mod log is public, so you can easily check the ban reasons, which are consistently related to violations of our basic instance rules.
If any moderation team on any of our communities does not follow our instance rules, then such communities are closed. We have in fact had to do this several times before with some conservative-type communities, mainly because they wanted to push the ideas that some people, based on their identities, are less valuable as humans that others. The current conservative community on the other hand is consistently moderating based on our instance rules, and they have incorporated the no bigotry rule into their community rules as well. If this ever changes, then we will take action, just as we have done previously.
Regarding the allegations against one of the mods, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the event they were referencing, but I think it’s safe to say that this event was extremely misrepresented by the accuser. In any real cases of CSAM, lemm.ee has taken drastic actions. We have purged, banned, defederated, reported to authorities, we have implemented some technical safeguards, and we will continue to take action like this in the future as well.
Let me just finish off by saying that we are a volunteer team giving up our time for free. I realize that users want admins to be perfect and moderate exactly in line with their preferences, but we are humans, we miss things, we make mistakes, and we can not possibly be available 24/7 or read every single piece of content posted by other lemm.ee users.
Letting it get just bad enough that it doesn’t cause problems for you isn’t how anyone should moderate. You have to be proactive and get rid of problem users before it gets to that point, make it clear that isn’t welcome, which is something your instance has routinely failed to do.
Also for the record I know that you’re full of shit when it comes to the owner of conservative c/ not being a pedo because conservativism is at its core a pedo ideology, just like all right-wing ideologies; it always comes back to child abuse with those types. CSAM attacks don’t happen in a vacuum, they happen when you foster the kinds of people who are into that shit and you make them feel welcome, which is exactly what your “we’re going to do the bare minimum of moderating” is attracting.
I’ve already made it clear that i’m not going to fold to any of your tricks, and you’ve made it clear you’re aware you’re wasting your time on me, so why you even bothered to besmirch your reputation by even engaging in the first place is beyond me, but definitely speaks to the lack of experience and borderline negligence that you carry about. I sincerely hope shit gets better for you and the mod team and hopefully an actually competent moderation policy can go a great step in ensuring you never have to deal with more attacks going forward, because that shit fucking sucks and nobody should have to go through it. I hope whoever did it is rotting in a jail cell and that’s coming from a prison abolitionist.
Oh and BTW just going forward, don’t tell someone whose complaining about your instance members being harassing little shits “nuh-uh disinformation” unless you’re prepared to get a fatal dose of all that fermented spite unleashed right into your face. Making it about you is the single worse thing you can do in that case and really tells everyone in the room where your priorities are.
EDIT: and there go the downvotes, well I think that’s a good of a place as any to cut the thread.
Remember that time the World admins removed the rules against discrimination from their terms of service and got rid of the code of conduct? Racism was legal for a while there.
.ee is my favourite instance because I trust the average user more than the average admin.
To be fair anything is a step up over LW’s antimoderation. They wanted to be reddit and I think they succeeded in the worst way.
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I still remember that clash I had with an ecofash on slrpnk. Thankfully they were quickly taken care of but even some of the gold star instances can have problem users from time to time.
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I’m only gonna comment on Hexbear and you’re completely wrong. They do have less patience with libs comming there saying shit, but everytime that happens, there’s always people actually engaging and backing up all of their claims. It’s not only dunking.
It’s usually buried under the dunking but I think that’s because hexbear doesn’t have up and down votes, so they have to comment to make their opinion known. It leads to a lot of annoying brigading looking behavior on comments, but at least their good comments tend to be pretty good. Sometimes it’s not worth digging through all the sarcasm, pig poop balls, and picture posts to find it, though lol.
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Yeah I’ve given this place an honest try but people are so quick to downvote, it’s not exactly encouraging me to actively post here
Also I notice the same 10 assholes in every thread
You notice people? Even on Reddit I never noticed people’s names when they comment.
Yeah but it’s usually because it’s the same people having a go at me every time
You should consider blocking them. Especially if they’re consistently bugging you
Or just not post anymore
First thing I did here was use an adblocker to hide the “somebody responded to your post” button due to cunts. But I’m old and genuinely don’t give a shit any more. ;)
After a quick scroll through your history, I see why those people are on your ass. 😂
Example?
I took a look at your comments purely because his reply made me curious. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your comments. The only downvoted comment of yours I saw was that Trudeau has the worst approval rating ever, which is a matter of record, not opinion.
It’s not on you, you’re fine. I’ve had a similar experience here, people just don’t seem to be able to take disagreement as anything less than personal
right? i say the most general things and people act like I’m a personal friend who knows them inside and out, offering vicious criticism of some crucial personality trait.
Like, why the fuck are you acting like I know you? How could I possibly? Monkeyass motherfuckers having a hard time with teh whole interwebs thing
lol rekt
