I’ve been on lemmy for over a year now, and I just realized I used to read all those HackerNews articles + their comments, I haven’t done that in probably 6 months because the discussion here has gotten much better. What’s changed for you with Lemmy over the last year?
I got banned from the Canada community and according to the mod log, it was for homophobia and bigotry.
That really rubs me the wrong way because I’ve never ever posted anything like that. I’ve been the subject of homophobic and bigotry based bullying my whole life and the only comment I posted on that topic there was an account of my first hand experience of being catfished on Grindr and then outed as bi on the towns facebook page and subjected to ridicule and harassment.
I mean the nice thing about Lemmy is you can always create your own community, and if that’s not enough, your own instance.
It removes a bad mods ability to completely dominate, because there’s always an escape hatch for folks who are just done with their shit.
I mean the nice thing about Lemmy is you can always create your own community
You can do that on most platforms. It isn’t worth the effort unless you can pull users into your new community. That’s hard.
You don’t need any users to interact with other instances. A lot of people are in a instance of one person, themselves.
Are you still bound by the rules of individual instances, no matter if you agree with them or not? Yes.
If their rules upset you, consider blocking the entire instance/community.
True, but when it’s a main community that pertains to your interests, it’s crappy to be banned from it for fictional reasons. Would be the same on any other social media site I guess. I find people here are more militant in their beliefs.
Yeah. Lemmy’s biggest strength (decentralization) has also shown to be one of it’s biggest flaws when micro-managing admins/mods turn their instance into their own personal fiefdom, inflicting their “justice” broadly and without discernment. I’ve been banned more here in under 2 years than on reddit for over 13, almost exclusively for voting “wrong” according to what feedback I can find, which is a a seriously treacherous practice in communities like these. I have no real sense of loss over it, but I do worry the Lemmy-verse will end up with tons of siloed off instances instead of an interconnected community if it goes on unadressed.
I believe you misunderstood why you were banned.
You were banned because of incivility and ableism. You were making derogatory comments about the mentally ill as though having a illness was a bad thing.
I can see why you were confused, as homophobia is also listed under rule 1.
Things I have been permanently banned for:
- Saying dragons aren’t real
- Referencing The Bee Movie
- Pointing out Kamala Harris was not the president
- Upvoting a comment
Admins and moderators of all stripes: you should be handing out three-day bans like candy. You can give people a month-long fuck-off time-out, and in the future, they will think twice. Even if it takes a few whacks. But all a one-step permanent ban does is chase people to new accounts. That’s why outright trolls do it - it’s not hard, and you don’t seem great at catching them. The experience for people who are merely wrong has to be better than for people who are actively malicious, or you will cease to see any difference between their behavior.
- Less buggy
- Instance blocking
Election spam which filled the front page is mostly gone.
Not enough jeans. :(
Real answer: there’s been an uptick in the amount of content lately, which is great. I’ve also unfortunately noticed an uptick in belligerent comments, which often detracts from the conversations taking place.
People here have gotten progressively meaner and I am seeing more and more AI slop. Also the quality of memes have fallen off a fucking cliff in all meme communities.
For me, Lemmy was a place where I mostly found like-minded people. Even if we don’t always agree (and we shouldn’t) I have had some genuine feedback to the thoughts that haunt me or tickle me. Nevertheless, I was surprised at the interinstance drama which I mostly ignore. And I think that the base probability of transphobia is higher than the sidebar rules would implicate. I am always surprised when I see naive and uninformed takes.
Although I do have found a place to share such thoughts with less harassment and backlash than Reddit, there is some unearned harassment and hating here as well, eg there are some consistent downvoters, to the effect I have a single downvote to anything I post.
Although I think that here in Lemmy I enjoy a higher probability of getting thoughtful responses and well-intended humor to what I post, I feel that a number of people I have interacted with me were highly prejudiced I was a troll or a bad faith actor.
This lack of trust to other users is one of the greatest achievements of fascists and spooks, and they have successfully used it with freedom movements everywhere.
I was also surprised at how conservative the privacy community is. Compared to the amount of radical content posted on every other topic, I find myself among those who think that c/Privacy actively discourages newcomers from developing advanced privacy and anonymity skills.
The privacy thing and some aspects of the Democrats situation pre- and post- election make me think that there is some “manufacturing of consensus” bad faith actors among us. This can lead to disbanding of any project, so we need a solid mindset, in which we assume good faith, but have exact methods for handling disagreement and genuine questions, but also look out for bad faith actors and take steps to build healthy online communities for anarchist and communist free and private software enthusiasts.
Afterthoughts
- The sitewide rules ask us to assume good faith, be civil, and discuss thoughtfully. As it happens, we fail to adhere, and I am to blame as well. I am quite uncivil to people I disagree, but it is often forgiven because a lot of other people are cheering. This makes us a stupid crowd by the way.
- As a Disclaimer, I switched sides wrt to Democrats. Although I had chosen not to post anything pre-election, I was like “Quit this nonsense and vote Democrats already”. I was radicalized after the election, and now think that Democrats are lobbying grifters and can stuff it.
Lemmy has become my main social media outlet. For better or worse, Lemmy’s just my kind of place. I’m off of all mainstream social media except LinkedIn, which I barely use, but keep around for work related reasons.
I do still peruse Reddit, mainly for TV shows and niche subjects I can’t find here. But I haven’t logged in or posted since the first major exodus over the API pricing, and have no plans of returning.
I do post on Mastodon from time to time, but the format is just too geared towards short form content, and ultimately just isn’t my cup of tea.
So yeah. I’m generally happy to be here with you all shooting the shit about politics, Linux, etc. Long live Lemmy!
Hey bud, you dropped this
Here’s one from me to help.
Lemmy is teaching me things by accident.
Most recently; I’ve started learning media literacy and now I can see all the same manufactured consent and narrative shaping that exists in legacy media and social media like Facebook and reddit; but in .world and lemmee too
I will always link Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” when this subject comes up, haha.
My goodness, that was a roller coaster. Although I found it lacking in cohesiveness (I’m not sure that the evidence supports the conclusions), it’s certainly a thought-provoking article. Thanks for the link.
No problem!
I wish the .worlders & lemmee’s would open up a book to learn this for themselves.
Of course, there must always be tribalism.
Lol
The hard truth is .world and .ee deserve to make their space exactly like reddit and/or facebook if that’s what they want.
They have their space, we have ours. The weekly feud posts at .world are hilarious. Desperate attempts to keep the barn doors closed so no one escapes to the better instances.
These sorts of people eventually show their hand and people will leave on their own. Most recently the Luigi related debacles.
Desperate attempts to keep the barn doors closed so no one escapes to the better instances.
i wonder if this is why .ee rose to prominence in user counts.
Yea… 🫠
Your go to
A lot more comments like reddit that are the quick (very tired) zingers. I was happy to get away from that but I’m sort of thinking of putting lemmy down if it gets worse.
I don’t need your “this.” Or “broken arms” or “that’s insulting to trash” etc.
It’s beyond tired. But it gets up voted and can dominate the comments section. I appreciate threads like this one that promote actual discussion.
I feel that, too, but also…
There’s a large number of news articles that it feels literally pointless to respond to with anything other than jokey derision because it feels like we’ve been talking to people about those issues for two decades (or more for some of us) and no one listened.
So, with a lot of it… what is there even to talk about anymore and instead crack jokes to try to feel less dead inside?
I fully agree, but at the same time find myself making jokey throwaway comments on the millionth thread about “turns out Trump was lying about his campaign promises!!!” as if anyone with a fucking brain couldn’t figure that out since at least 2015. It just feels pointless to engage with beyond comedy when the media continues to sanewash that guy.
I would love to slap down my copy pasta in every poltical post about how First-past-the-post voting artificially limits the number of viable political parties to 2 and is the greatest barrier to effective non violent change in the country. But people don’t want answers, they want to be mad.
And the mods kept banning me. Even when I ran the copypasta through chat GPT to get a unique comment every time I posted the pasta.
Why the fuck should my comment change at all when the solution hasn’t changed?
I completely agree. It’s tiring to ask a question and then have some low-effort absurd answer every time.
any advice on washing my cat without her scratching me?
is it two metres long and has orange and black stripes and are you in a jungle? try a tranq dart first
park it on the driveway and get a hose. oh wait u said ‘cat’ not ‘car’ #oops!!
ez bro just dress in a SWAT bomb defusal outfit. works every time.
yeah jeez thanks. It’s worse than no replies.
Sorry, but… “broken arms”? What does that mean, aside from its literal interpretation?
Famous story of a son who broke both arms and the mom felt bad he couldn’t masturbate so she started jerking him which led to more…
It’s very fucked up story. But whenever a similar topic comes up someone has to say “I bet he had broken arms” or something like that.
Similar one is “shoes came off so he’s definitely dead” whenever some fall or other force throws someone to the ground.
It was funny at one point… Maybe like 6 years ago. But like jfc there’s no original thought, just echo chamber zingers.
Oh another one: “I also choose this guy’s dead wife”
While I understand your sentiment, the coconut will never not be hilarious
Some or most of the people upvoting this stuff is just part of the lucky 10,000
More content and more comments. I basically only use mastodon and lemmy for my memes nowadays and as general social media.
Lemmy has a bit more active users which is great. However, I have also noticed that Lemmy has gotten similar things as Reddit these days. Different opinions are not welcome, quick/ angry comments (politic community though)
However, Lemmy now has a decent app(s) such as Voyager. I also love that Lemmy does not restrict/ block users from using swear words (at least the instance I’m on does not).
Though in all honesty, I mostly use an RSS-feed such as Reeder and InoReader.
Different opinions are not welcome, quick/ angry comments
I feel like Lemmy is consistently hostile to different opinions. It’s a real disappointment.
I, unfortunately, have to agree and that’s why - most of the times, I just check Lemmy posts through RSS-Feed.
I sometimes hop onto Voyager and comment on posts/ articles. But the more hostile, twisting of words and such are happening. The less I will be using Voyager to comment and just use the RSS-Feed to see the posts.
I really liked Lemmy in the early days when people went from Reddit to Lemmy. Miss those times.
Depends on instance, largely. Lemmy instances usually lean towards 1 or maybe 2 camps of the “liberal, anarchist, Marxist” triangle, and are hostile to the other 1 or 2 camps.
In my view, Lemmy ecospace became a lot more dark. People are snarkier, less prone to engage in polite conversation and divergent opinions get hounded.
I also sense an increased tendency for doom and gloom. Nihilism is on the rise, as well.
Still better than Reddit, where a divergent opinion is grounds for a permaban.
Not saying that makes it ok though, it still sucks, just a little less.
That’s interesting because for me it’s the opposite, or maybe I just don’t notice it anymore. But when I first joined people were almost always hostile to one another. I feel like that’s not the case anymore.
Would you say the doom and gloom is Lemmy specific, or more of a global thing, given the state of life ATM?
Great point.
“Doomers sure love doom scrolling”
does nothing about the amount of doom in the world
It’s definitely not just a Lemmy thing just any site that grows a user base.
I kind off think of it like the difference between talking to random people at a local hobby space vs a national convention. Sure you’re gonna still find people with shared interests but you got more people coming in with an agenda or chip on their shoulder, Or just general trolls who target larger groups because it’s more people to get a rise out of.
But you’d have to consult some sociologist or someone for a in-depth factual answer, I’ve just been on a lot of random sites/forums over the years.
Honestly Lemmy has handled it’s growth a lot better than most places online I’ve seen. I’d say people on here are pretty raw but not actively spiteful (mostly), which I very much vibe with.
Agree. The size of the community seems to correlate with the number of trolls, which can quickly change the tone of a platform. Trolls are more active, outspoken, and literally feed on negativity.
I’m only on Lemmy. Can’t speak for other places. On my day to day life, people are concerned with living their lives.
Among American users, this probably has a lot to do with the recent election.
I can’t see a flag near the nick, so I just try to treat everyone with respect.
I see that too recently. I just call them out, report, and block.
less prone to engage in polite conversation
What the fuck did you just say to me, you little shit lemming? I’ll have you know that I graduated top of my class in online forum debates…
/jk
Yeah, yeah, yeah… and Happy New Year!
It seems more active now. Which has been great!
I feel like there’s less Canadian content. After the Reddit API Exodus, there was a fair bit, but that dropped off.
I think a lot of people have gone back to Reddit.
Lemmy is my only social media interaction these days, the content has improved, and the communities feel more distinct than they did a year ago. That could just be me getting up to speed though.
It was a nice surprise finding out that the left wing instances on here are actually pretty chill, way more so than on Reddit these days.
I peaked into r/communism and it’s genuinely awful. Full of the most toxic people I have seen in the supposedly “Marxist” communities. Surprisingly Lemmy is way more chill than Reddit.
