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?
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 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.
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 👆
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
It’s usually straight white american males too.
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.
look at you pretending you don’t use heuristics
Because it’s true? And this is coming from a straight, white, American male.
Yeah, another straight white male agreeing here. I’m sorry, it’s just not punching down to target my demographic because we are the ones traditionally that have been given all the power to do the punching.
Can I ask why you wanted to add the last sentence?
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 just started a few days ago and already had to deal with a transphobic troll.
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.
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.
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.
How do you know the bots aren’t already here? What security fortress does Lemmy have that reddit doesn’t which stops bots from being here?
I don’t anymore, but it definitely still doesn’t feel anywhere near as bad as reddit is.
In the past, the security fortress Lemmy has had that reddit doesn’t is the userbase being too small for organizations to feel astroturfing is worth their time.
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.
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.
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
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.
The problem is, most of the pro-socialist posts don’t get removed when I report them for rule 2. I’m certain there’s a bias here.
For the first time in a liberal’s life, your viewpoints are being the least bit challenged. Must be awful, we socialists can’t imagine what you’re going through.
Being pro something you are against does not break the “be respectful” rule.
You really shouldn’t go around trying to silence people with different opinions than you.
Maybe you should take care to follow said rule yourself? Looking through your recent comments in this thread it seems more to me that you are going in hard with bad takes and get hurt from getting dunked at. The question is really: Do you consider yourself respectful when you use ignorance to spite leftists?
You’re awesome btw.
o7
I feel the mainstream lemmy instances have attracted the reddit mob mentality where any deviation from the groupthink is treated as radicals or bots.
Only it’s pro socialism.
That’s because capitalism is an extreme right wing idea
That’s lemmygrad
Law of probability. The more people join, the more of a chance someone will say some stupid shit.
Also: SUCK MY BALLS
THE MOON HIDES FROM ME
Thank you for translating that into Manbird
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.
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.
