Blahaj Lemmy Meta

Obviously I'm generalising here, but I feel like this is largely the outcome of putting a bunch of middle-aged white STEM bros on the same small social media network as a bunch of queer communists who trend a lot younger.

The latter group would be mostly content keeping to itself (albeit with the usual amount of infighting), but the former group sees it as its god-given duty to barge in and disrupt any and all "echo chambers" they happen into online. They have all the social awareness and political literacy of the stereotypical facebook boomer, they're just more technically literate.

To be clear, a lot of folks here are perfectly amicable, but if the quality of the experience on Reddit hadn't dropped so drastically in the last two and a half years that I found myself questioning my sanity I probably wouldn't have come back here.

It's absolutely been worse here lately. I don't know that I'd call it worse than reddit, but Lemmy is definitely trending more toxic. I'm certainly not a heavy user by any means. Idk if the more reasonable voices have just become less active or if more toxic voices have arrived or what, but where as 6+ months ago things tended to be more discussion prone than antagonistic, it's now mostly antagonistic, especially in the more popular communities.

I will say, I've left many of the lemmy.ml communities in favor of similar communities on other servers and that's helped as far as making my feed of posts less toxic to boot (and less spammy).

I haven't done much of my own moderation in blocking so I'm running mostly based on the server moderation.

I will say, lately lemmy has been in uncharacteristically confrontational. It's been a rough year so far, hopefully things chill out

This is a genuine concern and I do get tired if it myself sometimes. Users here can be extreme.

Have you considered beehaw? Their primary focus is to "be nice", although I think they're only federated with a limited set of instances.

I totally understand that. A lot of people here are arseholes.

I think my experience has gotten much better now that I have a long blocklist and am on an instance with downvotes disabled. But yeah it doesn’t feel super friendly all the time here.

But I feel the same way on reddit.

I’m sorry you’re experiencing this kind of behaviour, you deserved better than that interaction.

Personally, I have met a lot of hostile users from sjw and lemmyworld. So I’m going to do what Beehaw did and block out their instances completely. Besides the smaller instances need more love, the fediverse works best when it is decentralized.

Lemmy: What the fuck do you mean, "you use Windows"

Keep this in mind and stay. We need and want you here.

a lot of people came here because they were shitty enough to get perma banned from reddit

im just guessing with that but its probably true with the attitude these people have

I asked a vegan what the word "carnist" was and got banned, lol. You're right, there's a lot of angry folk on here...and it's hilarious

Yep yep yep, it's very confrontational and getting worse by the day

I'm too new to be making these kinds of suggestions and I'm far from the moderator type myself but multiple times throughout this week, I've been thinking that it would be pretty cool if there was an AskBlåhaj. Or even just general Ask Lemmy based here, that could be asking for unwanted attention from shitty people on other instances though.

Not even 24 hours after seeing this post, I've seen someone else getting the snark and a non answer for a simple question. And also a Blåhaj user.

As much of a public bathroom as it could be, AskReddit was pretty fun for 'silly' questions and general chatting. And a nice place for new users to hang around and gain karma and confidence. But with the gatekeeper neckbeardy types around, maybe what it needs on Lemmy is to be in an instance with rules that promote friendliness and good vibes.

Just an idea to throw out there anyway.

Speaking of which, I was in a discussion about that yesterday:

I specifically avoid .ml and .world because the collective behavior (i.e., hostility, downvote trolling, etc.) is so much like Reddit.

Beehaw, Hexbear and Blahaj have all disabled downvotes, but Blahaj is the only one that's decent, which is why I'm here.

(I would link directly to these if I could, but am having issues with that.)

For what it's worth, Discuit is also a generally friendly place.

Lemmy really needs to focus on improving the default UI, and making it as easy as possible for users to sign in and start seeing posts etc.

Especially on mobile, it was a nightmare for me to figure out which app, which instance etc. most people would have given up by then.

People are used to having a very smooth process when using social media etc. and Lemmy is really lacking in that department.

I don't agree its as bad or worse than Reddit which is packaged fury everywhere. However, the last few months tempers have certainly risen and bad-faith takes and antagonism are more visible in some communities. There seems to be a lot more right-wing people, or centerist apologists at least, than there were before the US election results and I think those results might play a part - emboldening some to speak up and causing so much stress in others that they lash out where they wouldn't have before.

Just make liberal use of the blocking options and take your time to find your people.

Regardless of the community, those people exist. The thing with lemmy, and federation as a whole, is you essentially have to curate your own experience.

Joining a specific instance over another gives you a starting point on that, but even then you're going to have a more wild west than you get from one of the centralized sites. That's both a boon and a curse as there is no algorithm trying to feed you whatever to keep you engaged. Reddit is less algorithm driven than other sites, but there is some secret sauce they are working with that seems to weight the votes on things.

As for user comments. Reddit has enough people that the assholes can get suppressed, especially if the subreddit is moderated well, but it's mostly down to how active the community is and what the community vibe is. Mods can't see everything so rely a lot on user reports.

Also, because of how a lot of people think, most average users went to lemmy.world because it was the easy option. A lot of communities on there are going to be much more rife with that kind of person that somewhere else.

For someone who grew up with the early internet this is a familiar experience, but if all you know is the post social media algorithm driven state things have been for the last 15 or so years then I can see how it could be daunting. There were certainly communities I avoided back in the ancient internet because of overly toxic people who think being mean is being funny because they are a teenager trying to be edgy or never grew out of that mindset.

As for the question you asked them, it's one of my biggest things I think fediverse stuff could be better on. Like, we obviously don't want algorithms, but its kind of hard to find communities that are active without actively searching. And many times you don't know about things you might be interested in. A simple "people you follow like this" or "people who follow this also follow this other thing" and have an ability to turn it off.

I think lemmy self-selects for passionate (and autistic/adhd) people, so either way you end up with those kind of responses. Lemmy.world is where all the redditors ended up, so if it happens a lot I would block that instance. Other people will say "this is totally wrong!!! but here's why" which maybe I'm just used to because I have a few autistic friends lol

I know you're venting, and there's not much to say to help.

I am genuinely surprised that you've found lemmy more unwelcoming than reddit. Yeah, it runs higher to snark here, but there's less outright nastiness. But on either platform, it usually is going to come down to the community and the type of community.

You know, gaming communities tend to run high to assholes because gamers run high to assholes. Same with specific anime series or other fandoms. Politics is always a shitty subject matter to talk about. That kind of thing. But, you step into one of the knife communities on lemmy, and you don't find the kind of aggressive jackassery that's available on reddit ones (not all of those, a couple managed to keep good mods during the debacle).

It sucks that people suck. Genuinely, I'm not dismissing your experience. I haven't found any corner of the internet that doesn't have suckitude due to sucky people, though some specific communities/subs/forums moderate for a civil and chill atmosphere. The jerks still pop up in those places, but they get whack-a-moled soon enough.