this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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I would use Lemmy more if people on here weren’t so toxic. It’s been bringing out the toxicity in me more than I’m comfortable with. Too many confidently incorrect people speaking on topics they have absolutely no experience in, complex discussion completely boiled down to platitudes without any nuance, and tribalism that rivals what’s on Twitter.
Mac and Windows users are immediately downvoted for not sucking down Linux’s balls in every scenario, a complete cesspool of discussion with regard to Israel and Palestine appears all over the most popular posts, straw men and bad faith discussion appears in every community (with rare exception), and deification of the popular faces in the orbit of any topic without any room for critical thought around their positions is the norm. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
I was excited for the fediverse after watching the slow decline of Digg, /., Reddit, etc. but it’s obvious that the worst parts of those platforms are creeping up here too and there’s nothing to be done except wade through the sewage to get to things that are interesting and insightful. It’s a shame but Lemmy will never be as popular as the alternatives were. Techie incels rooted in here too early.
Edit: I’m now banned from /c/technology (or at least shadowbanned on one instance) for not accepting their arguments on piracy. This is what I mean. There’s no nuance here.
I'm gonna tell you something.
While reading your comment i became more and more convinced it would end with and don't let this man distract you from the fact that in 1998, the Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
Except then you didn't.
Which was a bummer.
You know… I’m gonna tell you something too.
I usually debate throwing that in there and then I realize that, outside of Reddit, that thing doesn’t really work anymore. It’s not an original idea. It doesn’t add anything to the discussion. Outside of being a meme and an occasional source of a good chuckle, Lemmy is too young for something like that. There’s not enough good content here to justify repeated jokes and junk like “Oh no! He broke both his arms! Where’s mom?”
If that means that this is a bummer for you, then I think you need to reevaluate what you’re trying to get from Lemmy. It reminds me of the time when 2 years before the new millennium, the Undertaker threw his adversary, Mick, off of the cage in a match called Hell in a Cell and plummeted 16 feet through the table of the announcers giving commentary on the match. Although it may have been entertaining the first time it happened, it probably wasn’t as funny to the person that was dropped and probably why he never attempted it again.
All that’s to say, be careful what you wish for.
We need to change the way we interact with social media.
My advice, points don't matter and you don't deserve anyone a debate.
Drop the phone or press back and go next if it feels toxic.
Internet should serve you and not the other way around.
If you have something to share, make your essay in a different post with the appropriate documentation and let it sit for someone else to find.
Block toxic people and tell them why you blocked them.
Meh. Life's too short. Probably better to just block and move on.
Works too.
I saw a "downovoted" in there, felt like it mattered too somehow.
I only mentioned downvotes because new users are getting downvoted immediately for completely benign opinions like “Linux was too hard for me to figure out” and “I haven’t had any issues with Chrome”. When someone’s first experience with this platform is what amounts to a deluge of negativity, it hurts the platform as a whole. Instead of being presented with better alternatives or being offered help, people are simply downvoted and, for someone who’s new here, downvotes sting when you don’t realize they’re kinda meaningless.
Agreed 100%. I don’t use social media at all with Lemmy being the only exception and, as I stated in my original post, I’m not really having a good time here so I’m spending less and less of it on the platform. It’s incredibly unwelcoming here.
I like the way you think.
I can relate to your frustration about jerks and toxicity but I dont share the severity of it. At least I would not say it that way.
Yes, lemmy can get pretty bad (looking at you c/firefox) but that’s normal with niche stuff.
I moderate a smallish subreddit (2k peeps) and get regular questions if I can please ban the noobs that ask noob questions. I politely decline.
This place here is in its literal infancy and saying „its so sad that it will never…“ helps nobody.
Just report assholes, check if you made mistakes and if nothing else helps, make a new community based on that change. That is how we improve. Moaning and spelling doom is a bad strategy in every part of life.
How is /c/firefox a niche community? You’re just reinforcing what I’m saying. The biggest communities here are filled with the worst kinds of people. The ones that should be the most welcoming to entice new users and more discussion are the ones that are the least welcoming.
I do report assholes and I have made some communities but no one joins them when their first attempt at joining Lemmy is being downvoted repeatedly for saying “Windows 11 isn’t as bad as I thought it would be” in the tech communities and then never commenting again.
I’m not moaning and spelling doom. I’m pointing out that if Lemmy ever expects to grow to the point where it’s a realistic alternative to sites like Reddit, then the moderation and, by extension, the users need to lighten up and be open to discussion that may not agree with them.
As was to be expected, you got me wrong. I don’t know if intentional or not but let me explain:
c/firefox isn’t niche, lemmy and the fediverse are.
The biggest communities always have the largest variety of people and will have a lot of demand in moderating, not lemmy‘s strong suit as we‘re still debating if „moderation bad“ or we‘d like to silence bullies.
I‘d also like to see your scientific study that proves the communities that should be most welcoming are the least. This kind of black/white claim isn’t helpful for debate.
Windows 11 be what it may. You shouldn’t be downvoted for using it, correct. I have been downvoted like hell for other inconspicuous things. Thats unfortunate and something you can change by talking about it with people. Make posts, engage, but maybe try to stay on the „i want this to succeed“ instead of „this is going to fail“ side.
The fediverse in general is still finding its identity. You can be part of that if you decide to have meaningful debate.
Btw. opening communities and have nobody join is not a lemmy thing. That happens on reddit as well. It’s only a question if you can hit the right nerve. I‘m neurologically incapable of doing so since I‘m very different from others but some do. Maybe try helping out in other communities and help out that way.
Have a good one.
On the other hand, since Lemmy is made up of a much smaller userbase, I've had a lot of success with just blocking users. When it's one user with 100 comments, it's a lot easier to solve the issue with the tools available to you as a user than on Reddit where you're more likely to have 100 different people making 1-3 comments each spouting blind rhetoric/useless exaggeration/unfunny meme responses. It's not big enough for people to bother too much with alt accounts or brigading yet either.
I do my best to stay away from posts with topics likely to attract that sort of crowd too.
In general while it's not as good as I hoped for, I find Lemmy/fediverse a hell of a lot better than what I left. People are going to be assholes wherever they think they can get away with it, and the best response is to starve them of attention.
Fair enough. I find that with the federation, blocking people just results in my feed being emptier than I’d like to be. It’s already pretty sparse. Removing even more of it just because someone was an idiot in a singular, particular topic seems like overkill for such a small space. We’re just barely getting over the hump where new content is showing regularly enough to where the front pages aren’t filled with the same posts for days. And, even then, it’s not great content.
Have you considered blocking people you don't want to interact with?
Yes. Not only have I considered it. I’ve done it. The issue is that the Lemmy communities aren’t that big, even when you’re not referring to smaller instances and just sticking to federated communities, so blocking people just for dumb comments means you’re removing more and more of an already small user base.
It’s a solution to be sure. It’s just not one that I’d care to use right now when me blocking someone doesn’t actually help what I’m perceiving as the issue that is keeping Lemmy from growing.
I use Boost because it has a tagging feature. So instead of blocking people with smoking hot trash takes I tag them so I can read their posts and comments with scepticism in the future.
I only block people who troll and do nothing else.
It's really helpful for not shrinking the pool of comments or posts I can read.
I may need to try another app, then. That sounds useful.
Yeah, I feel like with Reddit I had the opposite problem.
There are so many low-effort, memey comments that blocking each user who engaged in it would cause me to block half the site!
That's the point, though. You're being hyperbolic to suggest that you could even attempt to block half of Reddit. On Lemmy, you could probably actually do that, depending on the instance.
My point is that there's no point in blocking each annoying account on reddit because there are so many.
Yes, I got that. Hence my reply. But they also make up less total numbers than the rest of the user base. That’s not the case here because the user base is so small.
Mmm, relatively speaking, most reddit posts (>50%) have become low-effort/pandering garbage that isn't worth reading.
You act like that’s a new thing.
Also, case in point: Both our posts have gotten downvoted already. How is that even possible for such benign replies?
I thought we were talking about blocking users, not downvoting them.
The thread we’re in, that I started, was about how unwelcoming Lemmy is for new and casual users. This entire interaction is just highlighting it.
I see your point.
A lot of "technical" users are on lemmy who can't tolerate dissenting opinions. Thankfully the mods seem to be doing a 'decent' job of keeping things in check on both sides.
You’re far more charitable than me. I just see a bunch of immature jerks who think that Android and Linux are a personality trait.
Speaking of the Simpsons, do you think the people on alt.nerd.obsessive were better?
Who said anything about the Simpsons? 😘
I never went there, to be honest. All my newsgroups were programming/computer/game related or were piracy groups. I think, in general, newsgroups were better because there was a barrier of entry that was required to get there. Now that anyone can just download an app and spew whatever garbage they want in seconds, we have what we have.
Are you old enough to remember actual flame wars on Usenet, etc.? That's what I'm talking about. The people who invented the term "flame war" weren't deterred by a high barrier to entry.
I am old enough to remember that. It wasn’t a huge part of what Usenet was. I remember downloading the original DooM shareware and finding an entire community of people that were super helpful and showed me resources for how to make my own maps and levels. I learned all about programming, making websites, and video editing. Maybe I got in earlier than you did or something, I’m not sure. For the most part, it was a group of highly technical, highly educated people looking for other people with similar interests. It was great.
I totally get what you're saying, and those things drive me up the wall too.
I've ended up curating my feed heavily, blocking and filtering words, users and communities that don't interest me. Since then, I rarely see any of the whining. If your client supports filtering by keyword, it might dramatically improve your Lemmy experience :)
Ah! That rules out filtering. I don't envy what you have to trawl through all the garbage to keep the rest of us safe!
I don't really see anything toxic. Unless you go to different instance which has certain reputations. I didn't realise I was in a tankie instance because I have all instances appear on my feed. I am still accustomed to Reddit just being managed in one site and occasionally stumble into communities full of morons. But since, Lemmy is still has not got much people, I can still spot communities that are toxic because I have seen them before, unlike in Reddit where multiple subreddits appear but serving one ideology or interest.