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How did Lemmy World become the default instance? (mander.xyz)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it's just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.

I really can't see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I've heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking [email protected]), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less... nice than those of smaller instances.

I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn't make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Then again you’re talking about Beehaw, their users react so badly to anyone telling them they might be wrong that it’s not surprising their mods need to spend a disproportionate amount of time taking action against other users.

I think that you're partially right.

The sort of online fight that Beehaw seeks to avoid depends on having at least one dumb fuck¹. Two cause it faster, but one is enough - because smart people have an easier time reaching agreement or realising that no agreement is possible.

Both sides (LW+SJW and Beehaw) have their shares of smart posters and dumb fucks². The later are there for different reasons:

LW+SJW absorbed the bulk of the Reddit diaspora, and Reddit culture revolves around being a dumb fuck;
Beehaw doesn't prevent you from being a dumb fuck, as long as you are not the one apparently starting the fight. Effectively sheltering dumb fucks who are really good at passive aggression, and who'll have a meltdown once you say "what you said is incorrect, here's why", as they'll interpret this as a personal attack.

If you're a smart user, you eventually learn how to handle the dumb fucks in your instance, in a way that is allowed there: chewing them out (within limits) or avoiding them like a plague. But those approaches break once you're handling someone from the other side:

smart Beehaw user interacting with LW+SJW dumb fuck: "I feel like I'm always swallowing frogs with those users, as they say stupid shit and I don't want to be rude."
smart LW+SJW interacting with Beehaw dumb fuck: insert here your first paragraph. It's why I think that you're partially right.

notes

For the sake of this comment, I'm defining "dumb fuck" as someone who assumes too much, oversimplifies, disregards context, focuses too much on who says it instead of what is being said, lacks basic understanding of what other users say, or a mix of those.
Note that, while it's useful to pretend that "dumb fuck" and "smart user" are different categories of people, they are not - those are different categories of user behaviour, i.e. the same person could be theoretically a dumb fuck in some situations and a smart user in another.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This isnt really true about beehaw though. Their mods actually have really good heads on their shoulders when it comes to policy and enforcement.

Their goal is to protect the general vibe of the place and their prime rule beyond of course not being a bigot is to "Be(e) Nice". Discussions are meant to be had in good faith and if someone is say spready hate speech and someone tells them to fuck off the mod will likely bad(and depending on what they said delete) the hater and probably do nothing to the person who told them to fuck off.

They will go after people who are arguing in bad faith, trolls, people who are being too aggro for no reason, and of course people getting into a fight who need to cool it.

Their more simplified ruleset is to combat what is often seen when you have the more reddit style strict rules. Where you wind up with users knowing just how to be a dickhead without actually breaking the rules and ruin the place. If a mod bans or deletes a post when the person isnt breaking a rule but stinking up the subreddit then the user causes drama towards the "abusive mod". So the mods then put in more and more rules until the subreddit becomes bland or hostile towards posters. In this example if someone posts hate speech and someone calmly just tells them to fuck off then both posters will have to be penalized for breaking rules.

The beehaw system allows for discretion. Ive also seen admins and mods on that site try and talk things out with posters who are causing a stink and giving them a good faith opportunity before showing them the door.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We're talking about apples and oranges. Or rather, fruits and oranges. Contrast my note #1 with your comment:

[Me] For the sake of this comment, I’m defining “dumb fuck” as someone who assumes too much, oversimplifies, disregards context, focuses too much on who says it instead of what is being said, lacks basic understanding of what other users say, or a mix of those.

[You] people who are arguing in bad faith, trolls, people who are being too aggro for no reason, and of course people getting into a fight who need to cool it. [...] say spready hate speech [...] users knowing just how to be a dickhead without actually breaking the rules and ruin the place [...] if someone posts hate speech [...]

You're talking about intentionally socially disruptive behaviour; Beehaw does address it. However I'm talking about bad = non-contributive behaviour in general, regardless of "intentions" or "faith".