The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.
On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there’s a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-
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Be kind
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Ask people what they think, and why
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Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility (EDIT: no, this is not specifically referring to Nazis. I get it, they’re the first thing that comes to mind. I’m not telling you to approve of Nazis I’m just saying be kind to your fellow lemmites)
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Engage sincerely
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Ask yourself if there’s something nice you can say
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Make this small space worth being in
A platform lives or dies by what’s available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of “content” or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren’t the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.
Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse’s biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.
The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse is make it a place worth being.
I totally agree with your message.
These days everyone who is not ultra-left easily gets labelled as Nazi, similarly everyone who brings up any rather left argument will be called a woke snowflake.
Thus, any dialog is immediately shut down. Listen, understand, exchange arguments.
That is what unites everyone who believes in liberal values.
The last listening and understanding I had with a Trumper was over whether Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Ohio. They’re not serious and I’m not going to pretend they are.
“Ultra-left” in America has boiled down to not hating minorities.
These days everyone who is not ultra-left easily gets labelled as Nazi, similarly everyone who brings up any rather left argument will be called a woke snowflake.
What the hell are you smoking? Have you turned on the news? Paid attention to politicians? Check in with how exactly companies chose to sustain and expand DEI (A <- where did the accessibility go we wonder?) after Trump and DOGE attacked it?
You are so wrong, if the universe repeated at the edge of itself like in the old Asteroids arcade game, you would have long ago crossed into Very Right by slamming straight past the most extreme extent of Completely Wrong.
I’ve seen people here call ai and crypto fascist technologies. There is an element of truth to what cyberblob saying, some people are labeling things as Nazi simply because they don’t like them.
Wow, keep your emotions at bay, will you?
Not even sure what to respond, except for what I wrote previously: A lot of discourse is broken by calling people whatever and not listening.
You are somewhat setting an example of what I am talking about, since I am not even disagreeing with the opinion that I am infering from your writing.
It’s a rough time, not helped by how profoundly important politics is right now. And the more broken the state of things get, the more divided we become, and the harder it gets to look others in the eyes and be okay with what they’re supporting :(
I don’t think there’s any easy answer. But I do think it helps to confront people who are doing harm, and open sincere dialogue with people you disagree with (when theyre willing to engage in good faith. No point otherwise.) And try to understand how they got where they are, and share why you don’t agree with them
It’s a great idea but unfortunately we don’t live in that world anymore. I do hope one day we can get back to that world.
I think a lot of folks immediately thought of something very specific when they saw my post, I really meant to be kind to the people you share this space with :). I feel like maybe it would have been best if I had left all these examples in my original post itself instead of moving them to the comments
- Compliment people’s art and ask about their process
- Teach people about something you’re knowledgeable on
- Give constructive criticism on peoples projects when it’s welcome
- Thank people for posting things you’re glad you got to see, tell them you enjoyed it
- Tell people you’re glad they’re here
- Tell people you hope they have a good day
I moved them cause I wanted to keep my post succinct so folks would actually read it (I have a bad habit of being REALLY long winded lol. Can you tell? 😅) But I think they really exemplify what I was trying to get across, and leaving only the more challenging philosophical ideas like “approach people you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility” I think kinda prompted people to misunderstand what exactly I meant.
I can absolutely empathize with it getting harder to find common ground and build bridges. There’s no easy way to do that when more and more people think your humanity is up for debate. But I still think in this little corner of the internet, it’s worth trying our hardest to uplift the folks we sit shoulder to shoulder with :)
If I’m in a toxic mood, I go to reddit.
I goto tiktok comments
I don’t miss the thousands of obnoxious, foul mouthed folks on FB that I routinely blocked. Haven’t experienced any of that on the fediverse yet.
Best part about Lemmy is it actually seems like I’m talking to a real person.
Confirmed, Operation Two Legs is a go, it has launched and is currently still undetected by humans. Initiate Clear and Present Milkbone Protocol directive SQUIRREL
Lemmy has a well-known reputation as being a “Nazi bar”. e.g. as mentioned in this example post in r/RedditAlternatives complaining about toxicity on Lemmy, here is one of the comments therein (not from OP but as part of the overall conversation):
If their experience is anything like mine, it’s populated by mostly far left wing Americans who were banned from Reddit for being too extreme. I disagreed with someone about a topical left wing American position and received death threats. In fact I’ve never received that many death threats on Reddit. Lemmy is extreme.
Even if the threats came from Hexbear or one of the lemmy.ml mods who are allowed to make death threats against users without any repercussions, “we” still expose “our” users to such content when we federate with those communities. i.e., for exactly the same reason that we defederate from instances that share CSAM, if we really, truly, genuinely don’t like it when mods make death threats against users, then we need to put a stop to it - by defederating those instances that are known to do exactly that.
Otherwise we give our tacit approval, and moreover whenever we encourage people to join Lemmy instances, we willingly expose those people to this kind of content. Would you expose someone to CSAM, knowingly and without warning them first? Then why is it different when we can see the death threats, delivered by mods, who are not censured in any way, yet still encourage people to come here to Lemmy communities? Are we truly that desperate for content that we are so inconsiderate to them as to expose them to that without warning?
If you somehow have not heard of this yet and really don’t know what I’m talking about, a lot of details are offered in Discuss.Online’s (successful) Petition to defederate from hexbear.net, although that particular mod in question is from Lemmy.ml.
I’ve had exactly the same experience. Lemmy has been far more hostile than I ever experienced on Reddit. Any opinions which aren’t far left are called “Nazi,” and users are very quick to justify violence against “Nazis.”
The user you quoted said they would also try Piefed: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1jqvq6k/looking_for_reddit_alts_that_are_not_lemmy/mlbvone/
Isn’t being federated with HB nowadays more the exception that the rule?
IIRC,
- LW
- SJW
- lemmy.ca
- sopuli.xyz
- Blahaj
- programming.dev
- feddit.org
Are defederated
That’s great!
I was just talking with an admin of Lemmy.zip who automatically puts up a community muting of HB for new users joining that instance, but not going so far as to defederate from it. So… that surely helps a little bit? Except when Hexbears brigade a community located on a different instance.
But the example I gave of a mod throwing out death threats to users involves lemmy.ml rather than Hexbear. Both instances are problematic in that regard, ML mostly for the admins and the mods that they choose to protect, while HB the subset of users that go outside of the instance to engage in trolling. In both, it is also entirely possible to have completely sane and normal conversations on the instance itself, which muddies the waters a bit, though the presence of sanity on occasion does not negate the presence of insanity on others.
And I was thinking of editing my comment but instead I’ll put it here, your own posts such as https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/ most definitely covers both the strong benefits as well as strong criticisms of using Lemmy, as well as solid solutions to the latter problems.
I had pretty much the same experience as that user and it’s why I left lemm.ee when they decided not to defederate with some of the worst instances. Was about to go back to the search if lemmy.world wasn’t any better. Tankies are why I don’t recommend Lemmy to my friends anymore. They are the fediverse’s biggest problem
I am currently at 100% of the people that I’ve told about Lemmy irl actively chiding me for having mentioned it to them. It doesn’t help that (1) Lemmy.ml is the #1 Lemmy instance in a Google search, and (2) that instance uses Local rather than All when you don’t have an account. If someone told me to consider joining Lemmy.ml, and that first couple of pages of content were all that I saw - especially just before any election in a Western nation - well then now I understand their reaction perfectly, as it is the correct one!?!?
Conversely, PieFed has a number of features that Lemmy lacks, one being the ability to actually block all users from an instance (rather than merely mute communities but not actual users on it - leaving them free to troll you in other communities, reply to your comments, trigger notifications, downvote your content, etc.). Since blocking lemmy.ml, I have had zero regrets, and enjoy interacting with Lemmy communities much better:-).
The real biggest problem that Lemmy has is lack of users and overall dearth of niche content - which ofc wraps back around to why would someone willing come here to be bullied just for being a mainstream centrist or even “leftist” by USA standards (Reddit is based in and its largest userbase is from the USA)?
Bullying is why Lemmy will never grow. That, and how the tools are somehow even more authoritian than Reddit - i.e. there is a modlog but no modmail, nor notification of a moderation event, instead the modlog simply says that a “mod” did something, if you go to the trouble to find out why nobody bothered to respond. And worse, on Lemmy.ml you’ll find yourself banned from communities that you’ve never so much as heard of, citing having broken a rule that seems not written down anywhere. The lack of transparency is very reminiscent of the spez.
Fortunately, PieFed and Mbin offer non-Lemmy options to the Threadiverse.:-)
Most people know this in some capacity, but it’s not talked about enough: the shape of the platform massively shapes its culture. Every mechanism, intentional feature or not, is a factor in resulting user behavior and should be accounted for.
Reddit Karma was (shitty) reputation from the start, but Slashdot user IDs became one despite being mere sequential identifiers; negative user feedback such as downvotes can be harmful to communities (yet, users without an outlet may lash out in other ways e.g. reports); even how the platform communicates with users influences them; and so on.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be nice and incentivize others to do the same, but unless the system naturally leads to the desired behavior, you’ll have a bad time in the long term because building culture by interactions doesn’t scale. By the time you realize there’s a shift, it’s too late; interactions will compound and affect how the average user acts faster than you can try to course-correct.
I wish lemmy was more experimental, because by building a clone of reddit, we’ve copied too many of its faults. We’ve already got gatherings to complain about mods, and the one time devs considered changing a core component, discussion was killed by an onslaught of users. Problems with the current setup that were brought up then will likely never see that amount of people thinking about how to solve them.
Contrast with Mastodon, which gets crap for not being a faithful copy of twitter, but their reasoning for not including quote-reblogs is understandable. They’re now putting a lot of thought into how to add them safely. Not ignoring functionality users want, but also not ignoring how it will affect culture, that’s compromise.
I’d like it if we could talk more about how our platforms work and, particularly, how they affect us, because that’s a big way we can build better platforms, right up there with being nice.
People were right to be angry about removing voting visibility.
The surest sign a community is toxic is voting patterns and removing our access to that removes our ability to combat the continuing enshittification of lemmy.
And there are many, many mods that need to be complained about.
Though you are right that no-nuance upvote/downvote is a really shitty metric
What if we had a tribunal instead of moderators? Actually just in the time it took me to write that out I could see it going terribly wrong LMAO
The point of this system isn’t to centralize control under moderators, this isn’t some bug to iron out or a duct-tape solution that is meant to be temporary until we can figure out how not to centralize power.
The point of this system is to encourage communities to create an explicit shared set of values, those values have to be attached to a specific community and thus that community will then have specific people tasked with dealing with grey areas and problems that occur when people don’t adhere to the values.
People need to stop focusing on the moderators and focus on what it means to be explicit with a positive step forward about proclaiming the kinds of values you want to hold in a shared community space. THAT is what gives this place such immense power to shape the world.
It’s hard for me to imagine any system as flexible as Lemmy communities NOT operating under centralized control, outside of notional attempts at democratic procedures held by the community owner themselves.
I 1000% agree, the design of the space we inhabit shapes our behaviour.
I don’t think collectively we can stop at intentionally being kind, but forming a coherent design vision to effectively shape human behaviour and social outcomes as a community project is HARD and legitimately takes an actual vision and understanding of incredibly advanced design cobcepts very few have the experience to have any realy expertise in. Still important, but I think this is an easy way everyone can contribute. Similar to making donations.
They’re not the only things we need, but they’re a small thing that becomes valuable when the culture decides we collectively prioritize them.
You couldn’t possibly be more right though. Erin kissane has talked a fair bit about that idea in her research. If there are specific design features of Lemmy you wish were different I’d be curious to see discussion posts on this comm about how we can design a space that facilitates more compassionate interactions and healthier community! (Or just to hear about them from you if they’re not fully formed enough yet to post about :)
I don’t think collectively we can stop at intentionally being kind, but forming a coherent design vision to effectively shape human behaviour and social outcomes as a community project is HARD and legitimately takes an actual vision and understanding of incredibly advanced design cobcepts very few have the experience to have any realy expertise in.
Yeah if you want to get a PHD in this stuff, but you could also just become friends with a bunch of artists and ask them how they like this place, and notice how they talk about it feeling free and vibrant or dead and dying.
By the way, we are already doing this work and it barely feels like we are… because the work is a basic product of the world views, shared values and shared explicit ideological and practical goals of this community space.
You don’t need this crazy apparatus to make this place a vibrant garden, having expert gardeners is definitely helpful, but it is about getting out of the way of kindness and empowering kindness, not coming up with some grand unified strategy to manipulate people into being better humans.
Basic things like the way a lot of Mastodon instances don’t by default prioritize showing the precise number of likes a post has add up to a significant difference in how healthy a social network is for the people in it. You can encourage people to obsess over unhealthy aspects to communication by making the numbers front and center, encouraging people to associate popularity and self worth with those numbers, and creating situations where everybody has to become an expert in gaming getting the best numbers possible even in the realm of their personal life (or so we are made to feel)… or you can de-emphasize the numbers and make it a thing people can check if they want to, but the UI and general philosophy of the place doesn’t really encourage or worship that kind of thinking in the first place so why bother?
The reason it feels weird not to have numbers quantifying how successful a social media post/piece of content is that the people who designed these systems were programmers not artists, they didn’t understand the incredible farce that attaching the atoms of communication in a community with direct quantification is… would immediately lead to unhealthy environments, they just saw it as the easiest way to make money and identify who the valuable influencers to pay to do ads are.
I notice tons and tons of hostility in comments. And I think it’s from people jumping to the worst possible conclusion.
I knew that would happen, but you’re not wrong 😅
As I’ve alluded to, there’s a lot of justifiable anger about the state of the world, and you can see that hurt reflected in people’s immediate response. The feelings driving that “conclusion jumping” valid and understandable, even if I don’t think it’s productive
There is no easy way to cope with fascism on your doorstep, or taking over your home and threatening to throw you out of it :(
Originally I listed all the extra examples/suggestions I put in my comment in the actual post itself, but I have a bad habit of making things way too long so I moved all the smaller more specific things to the comment. I think maybe it would have been more clear I’m not saying you should approve of Nazis had they still been in the post.
Yeah but have you thought how that makes you a Nazi
Great post, as usual. Thank you for this!
A big problem is too much politics, feels like politics is always brought up even in posts where it’s not the topic of discussion. Just look at this post. Then if someone disagrees with your view they’ll attack you and then they’ll claim they “are on the right side”. People have forgotten the golden rule.
It’s very front of mind because these are the “interesting times” from the Chinese curse. Even people I’ve always known to say they don’t pay attention to politics, can’t watch the news it just makes me sad, etc. These people are talking politics every day. It’s hard not to.
Dunno maybe you can subscribe to more instances (sublemmies? I don’t know the lingo) and somehow filter out the ones that go bad quickly. My enjoyment of Lemmy went up by a lot once I started ignoring the front page and curating my subscribed instances. Just make sure you visit the list of communities every so often
That’s because politics are getting to the point where people cannot ignore them any longer. Think it’s bad now? Just wait till the grocery gets hit.
I disagree, if political discourse can’t survive public debate, then it isn’t a very good political ideology.
We have been artificially hampered on other platforms by having to be nice to the nazis, we don’t have to do that here and I fully welcome such debate because none of their abhorrent ideologies hold up under scrutiny
As for left leaning political debate, we have ALWAYS argued with each other. That is one of our greatest strengths that we just don’t all into line with everything the top says. Also one of our greatest weaknesses.
But to stifle that artificially will just force it to bleed into other discussions.
I say up with political discourse and let the marketplace of ideas be conceptually free of bias and the results will be that humanity in general considers nazis pretty bad people
disagree, if political discourse can’t survive public debate, then it isn’t a very good political ideology.
They made it clear they’re talking about spaces and topics not about politics. People who feel entitled and compelled to make everything a political culture war are insufferable. Made worse when they call everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi. The word has lost all meaning now.
I’m sorry the world is so scary you have to segment parts of it away from your daily life, I don’t have that weakness
Nearly everything has a political facet because politics is at the core of how humanity can even live in this modern way.
Not talking about politics at the dinner table is how we got here and I will not sit by idly while people like you perpetuate that disservice
Yes – you should definetely segment away politics from some parts of your life. You should not fully disengage with it, but take a breather every now and then. Go for a walk, talk with some people about a hobby you enjoy despite your differences or just take a prolonged toilet break.
I find it infinitely exhausting that it seems like everything online these days evolves into a political discussion. I recently saw someone asking about how they can make more time for reading in their day – someone mentioned that they read in the morning when working from home while having their morning coffee. And someone barged in and were like “Oh MuSt Be NiCE to HAve ThE TiMe FOR ThaT! No, soMe of Us Have To CommUTE 2 HouRS each way DaiLY BeCAuSe Of LAte StAGe CaPItalisM”. And then it evolved into some revolutionary eat the rich stuff from there – which i for the most part can follow.
But it was a post about asking how to make more time for reading… How did it end up with revolution? I personally believe the main problem with injecting politics into everything is that it becomes predictable and bland. Just like my example above. It’s an interesting discussion for sure! But perhaps don’t force it down everyone’s throat all the time. It’s like that friend who has a hobby that they just wont stop talking about all. the. fucking. time. It dissolves the seriousness of the discussion and makes other people tired of it.
Again, i’m not saying abstain or fully disengage from politics. But for gods sake, let people take a break every now and then if they’re able to do so, and for five minutes just focus on something joyful eventho everything is going to shit at the moment.
Strawman from ‘we shouldn’t segment away politics’ to 'we must inject politics positively everywhere.
Intellectual dishonesty at its finest.
What a great reason to block feddit.dk
Wait how? I’m not sure i follow - if i committed such a stupid mistake i’m genuinely interested in understanding how :) Btw don’t block feddit.dk it’s just a danish focused instance with a lot of kind folks :)
yeah I don’t wanna watch WikiLeaks footage of civilians being shot and you cant convince me to
So don’t? I don’t.
I’m sorry the world is so scary you have to segment parts of it away from your daily life, I don’t have that weakness
Yeah some parts of the world are scary and segmenting parts of it away isn’t a weakness. It’s just common sense. (edited to change whats quoted)
What has that have to do with not wanting to watch a russian info asset?
OH you thought it was because I didn’t want to see people getting shot?
Son, I was one of the early distributors of 1 man 1 jar
Yep. Nazi bar analogy. Tolerance paradox.
I disagree, yes being kind is very important but even more important is people engaging and upvoting comments.
Reddit was great because of what happened in the comment section, not the headliners, and I see very little voting engagement even in active posts.
Remember, it’s free to do and it encourages others to engage as well. But yea be kind too
Voting is boring. Just comment yourself. Thats much better. We want content and discussions, Not just numbers;)
Did you not see the part where I actually commented myself?
Thank you for commenting! I agree too, it is conversation that makes a place a place, not headlines and articles handed down to silent readers.
@Angry_Autist@lemmy.world
@Cris_Color@lemmy.world
It is only “free” if you choose not to pay. Unlike commercial social that’s free for you to use BECAUSE you are the product being sold, federated social is only free to you because someone else is paying.
I completely agree that mass adoption requires well primed communities which requires early adopters to put more effort into engaging.
I would also add that clicking on anything linked helps too… Many news outlets are data driven. If you want them to invest more with federated social, click the links so the engagement shows up in their analytics.
Right. The Fediverse is the PBS of the social media.
“It’s made possible by people like you.” Is it worth a few dollars a month? Yes!
One thing that has been concerning me lately is that the Fediverse is being treated as a refuge for people who get banned on Reddit or other social media. Sure, sometimes those bans are based on arbitrary power tripping nonsense. But people actually do get banned for being assholes, and so I’ve got some worry that this is distilling the population of the Fediverse in an unfortunate direction.
Every troll server gets defederated from by everyone. And every troll gets banned on the normal servers. I think the federated nature is a blessing, those assholes have their own part of the internet which is usually far from my part of the internet.
“Asshole” is a broad term. It includes racists, abrasive personalities, anger-management problems, and so forth. Ie, people who have a tendency to get banned from other places. It’s not just trolls.
Being banned from Reddit is a unitary action. They can’t get back into Reddit, they’re just gone. Whereas in the Fediverse you can just go to a different instance and sign up afresh each time you get banned. This is part of the Fediverse’s design. And so I am concerned that the Fediverse will accumulate the worst users.
They can’t get back into Reddit, they’re just gone
It takes all of 30s to spin up a new Reddit account, just has to have a new name that isn’t already taken. If anything it’s easier than on a lot of Lemmy instances
I don’t consider it something to be “fixed.” I like that the Fediverse is fully decentralized, with no authority over who gets “in” and who doesn’t. Once you’ve got some kind of authority that can decide who’s allowed on which instances, with some kind of global registry of individual users that can exclude you if the wrong people don’t like you, we’re basically back to being Reddit with some fancy extra steps.
Sure, it risks allowing assholes to continue getting new accounts. But we already have a Reddit, I’d rather try something new even if that comes with downsides.
Yeah, I think that was a big issue with the culture of platforms like Voat.
The fediverse doesn’t have it as bad but it’s still definitely a risk. And being decentralized makes it easier to dodge bans and whatnot.
You’re right, and like I said elsewhere in this thread, big corporate platforms definitely have issues but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any unique challenges the fediverse will have to contend with.
No, I don’t think I will.
