Have you had any bad experiences with people on Lemmy?

I was recently talking to some friends about Lemmy and the whole Fediverse idea, as it seemed like a really cool part of the Internet. As I was talking about it, though, I realized how unusually friendly this whole place is, and I joked that I “surprisingly haven’t found any bigotry.”

I’m wondering if anyone has come across that, by any chance. If it’s rare, my guess is that even though it’s decentralized, each instance has a set of rules and values that are shared throughout the Fediverse, and I’m guessing it’s easy to defederate with any seedy communities haha.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I’m an admin for a relatively busy instance, so I see all of the bigotry, and there is more of it than I’m comfortable with :\

There’s a lot of bigots out there that have moved over from reddit.

BlueEther,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

I suspect that your instance attracts those sort of person, just trying to rattle someone :(

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

A little, but most of it isn’t even targeted at our users. Lots of the stuff I see is just stuff reported by our users, in communities that have nothing to do with us specifically.

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve personally been wondering this and wanted to ask you precisely this but didn’t because I figured it’d be rude. I hope it’s going ok!?

But yea, it unfortunately makes sense that the reddit migration would have brought over more “mainstream” rubbish.

This, plus what’s happening over on Threads and the arguments here about the fedipact etc, for me, have seriously raised the prospect that as much of a critique can be leveled at the culture often (and pejoratively) dubbed “HOA” etc, actually being protective of a culture to the point of coming off as “gate keeping” etc has real world value.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I mean, that’s the selling point of this instance. We are aggressively protective of the queer community. I explicitly aim to cut the toxicity off at the source rather than forcing each of our users to react to it after they see it. The wall is there to ensure we can exist without having to be on guard all of the time, and the HOA stuff is often driven by people who don’t care if we’re on guard, or actively want us to feel unsafe

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

the HOA stuff is often driven by people who don’t care if we’re on guard, or actively want us to feel unsafe

… sighs … yea

I think @zens / @bri_seven puts it quite well whenever someone tries to describe aspects of the fediverse as inevitable … they repeatedly say something to the effect that the real danger is the one that tries to convince the victim that the abuser/monster is simply a force of nature that must be accepted.

Just my ranting there … hope your instances go well and the moderation work isn’t too much for you!! And thanks for the response!

myrrh,

🫡

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Otherwise … and I’m essentially quizzing you here, so feel free to ignore me

Do you think lemmy/kbin’s relatively poor and insufficient moderation tooling is partly to blame for what you’re seeing?

Do you think that the communities based structure make this sort of thing more likely to be bad or problematic?

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Do you think lemmy/kbin’s relatively poor and insufficient moderation tooling is partly to blame for what you’re seeing?

Not as such. The moderation tools lead to redundant handling, and make it easy to miss reports you shouldn’t miss, and force you to leave reports open so that others don’t miss them, but the actual number of reports is more of a cultural thing than anything else.

Do you think that the communities based structure make this sort of thing more likely to be bad or problematic?

So, the microblogging fediverse (which I’ll call microfedi) existed for years before twitter crapped the bed. It housed queer folk who had left main stream social media, and those queer folk set the culture and ran the instances. So when twitter happened, even though the culture changed, there was a sufficient mass of existing instances to ensure that bigots remained unwelcome in the mainstream fediverse.

However, when reddit crapped the bed, by comparison, the threadiverse basically didn’t have an established culture. There was a handful of lemmy instances (we were one of them), but the only one of notable size was lemmy.ml. kbin didn’t even exist in any meaningful way until a couple of months before reddit died.

So, when reddit died, there was no established culture. Instead, people brought reddit culture with them, and reddit culture, because of lax admins, was much more tolerant of hate speech than microfedi. And so, people who are “reddit people” more than “fediverse people” set up lemmy and kbin instances, and brought those reddit norms with them.

So then, you get instances like blahaj and beehaw that are threadiverse instances, but have the “old school” microfedi approach to bigotry. We smash it down hard at the first hint of seeing it, but most of the instances we federate with don’t attack it so aggressively.

And thus, on microfedi, much of the work is done by remote admins before I ever see it, but on the threadiverse, it’s often just not done by remote admins (unless it’s aggressively hateful), and that means I end up seeing a lot of shit, and blocking a lot of users that wouldn’t have had a chance to get established in the microfedi universe

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks!! And, that all makes a lot of sense.

I’m curious, if you’re willing to answer.

As lemmy.ml and beehaw are older and have closed/application based sign ups … can you tell that there’s less bigotry coming from them?

Blaze,
@Blaze@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Interesting feedback

Nemo,

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying lemmy more: No access to reports and removed comments.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It’s interesting, we’ve got blahaj.zone itself, and even though it doesn’t have as many users as our lemmy instance, we’re lucky if we see a report every couple of days over there.

The microblogging fediverse is more aggressively opposed to queerphobic bigots I think, so they never get a chance to take root over there, but here on the threadiverse, lots of them fly under the radar of admins that aren’t the targets of their bigotry

hsl,
@hsl@wayfarershaven.eu avatar

lots of them fly under the radar of admins that aren’t the targets of their bigotry

General note: as a mod and admin who may not know what to look for, please flag these posts and comments so that we can review.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

So honest question.

Lets say someone comes along and says “Woman are adult human females”. A trans person reports this and tells you that it’s a dog whistle, and the person saying that is a TERF.

What would you do?

hsl,
@hsl@wayfarershaven.eu avatar

This is a question that would makes me feel out of my depth as a moderator. My first thought would be to see if there’s a community where I could fnid help in how to handle this appropriately.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

And that’s kind of what I mean.

To any trans person, that phrase is a klaxon. It’s an alarm bell that tells us the person we’re talking to is actively transphobic.

So we report it, the mod or admin who isn’t trans feels out of their depth, the trans person doesn’t have the spoons to explain it, and the transphobe stays in place, now empowered to keep their transphobia going, as long as they keep it at the level where most admins and mods don’t recognise it.

And that’s what the threadiverse feels like now.

But on microfedi, there is a much greater awareness of these things, and someone saying that would be dropped or defederated from most instances very quickly

BlueEther,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

Yes, this.

As the sole admin on a [very] small instance I’ve seen had no reports, and the only thread that I did see getting toxic it was shut down by both the users and then the mods.

I guess, mostly sub’d to tech type communities there is less opportunity for open hatred.

@ada, is there a good community like r/twoxchromosomes that doesn’t mind a [almost] 50 y/o straight guy lurking?

meldrik,
@meldrik@lemmy.wtf avatar

The more people, the more bigots in between.

cwagner,

Bigotry? Not yet. Toxicity? Quite a bit.

The first big example was the reaction of quite a few people when beehaw defederated shitjustworks and lemmy.world, people called beehaw users and their admins all kind of names, sometimes even in communities and by users who were not on either instance.

Then Threads. There are a lot of users who think people who don’t agree with everyone defederating Threads before they even support federation are barely even human, and anyone who questions it, will be called all kinds of names. Just pointing that out gets you downvoted.

Then there are the usual people who can’t handle other people having different opinions/experiences, I recently had to defend that my Reddit experience (when I use it which is very rare now) is barely different from before, and no, it did not turn to shit and no, it’s not full of bots, and no, the quality of discussion is still high because I curated my subs.

On Reddit, I would unsub from communities behaving like that (e.g. I decided to leave /r/Fantasy when I realized that not hating Rings of Power or the WoT show is not behaviour the sub deems acceptable), on Lemmy, communities don’t have enough of an identity for that yet, so for now I just block some users.

spaduf,
@spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I wonder how your experience differs from mine, being on an instance with no downvotes.

cwagner,

Not hugely, I think. A lot of it was actual comments.

But seeing as I’m on my own single-user instance, I might disable them at some point just to see ;)

myrrh,

Gotcha. I haven’t been in the loop with beehaw and shitjustworks and everything like that, but I could picture that kind of drama happening.

The Threads stuff is also hella wack, people seem to have a ton of heavy opinions about it.

I do think the ability to filter different communities and stuff out is really valuable. I’ve had a few friends who (understandably) had pretty negative opinions on Reddit long before the API stuff, but I think a big part that they missed is how easily you could curate your Reddit feed, which made my experience much better. I did delete my Reddit account, but I wouldn’t find it unreasonable to believe that Reddit’s fairly the same way it was before the protest since lots of people still stick around and are just casual users who don’t care too much (and I don’t really blame them haha).

Obsession,

A comment on my other account got brigaded by tankies a while ago. Was told to “fuck off, liberal”

But then that guy got banned from the instance, and everything was good.

luthis,

Yeah theres a few too many genocide apologists hanging around, but (just to spite them) i dont want them to be banned. Its better they stay here and see the light

phorq,

Yeah if they’re banned then they’ll go back to their bubble saying they’re being silenced, but how can you silence someone who’s not contributing to the conversation?.. I’m fine with different opinions, but I don’t understand people who think the way to convince someone of your viewpoint is hostility. Telling someone to “fuck off” with no reason is just toxic. Once might be a bad mood/state of mind (happens to the best of us), but repeat offenders shouldn’t be allowed to keep harassing others.

luthis,

Perspective. That comment says more about a person who cant concieve of a logical rebuttal than it says about me. I dont want to live on sesame street. That said, those comments get old reeeeal fast

JoeClu,
@JoeClu@lemmy.world avatar

Hi, I’m not in in the know. What’s a tankie? Pardon my ignorance.

twei,

the leftist equivalent of an alt-right person i guess

OwenEverbinde,
@OwenEverbinde@reddthat.com avatar

Short version? Mix and match the following:

  • Pro Xi Jinping
  • Pro Joseph Stalin
  • Pro Mao
  • Pro use of tanks against civilians as in Tiananmen Square in 1989 or Hungary in 1956.
  • Pro Vladimir Putin

Basically a tankie is any apologists for government violence against civilians – usually by claiming something like, “those weren’t real civilians. That was a color revolution. The government of [authoritarian regime] responded with no more than the necessary amount of force. Western propaganda is making it look more violent than it was in reality.”

From Wikipedia

The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

JoeClu,
@JoeClu@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks. Did not know that. So tankie is short for military tank. I get it.

elkaki,

Yes, I discussed with an andrew tate fan that asked “why do people get angry when I don’t respect pronouns of trans people” or something to that effect, a real shit stain but I think he got banned after a few hours

Today,

I think everyone I’ve encountered has been very polite. Well, except the one person who said my crochet project looked like Chewbacca shit. Jokes on them - i didn’t buy the wookie yarn; i bought the Groot yarn and they just can’t tell the difference.

Antimutt,
@Antimutt@lemmy.world avatar

Deleting the thread out from under you is usually bad behaviour, but in the one instance it happened to me the chap was entirely right to do so - he’d left his exif location data in the image. Still, the hedgehog pic was good enough to be posted again, which I did.

Candelestine,

Ooooohh we’ve got plenty. lol

One thing about the Fediverse is its a little less “singular” so to speak. People spread out a little more, and you get fewer bigger places where a whole lot of people mingle.

The fascist kids and the tankie kids both have Instances of their own, fairly heavily defederated with a lot of the rest. They’re about as pleasant as you’d expect.

fsxylo,

Political stuff is as enflamed as ever. I’ll take the beans over that any day.

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve seen a few people, here and there, trying to test the limits and finding very quickly that they’re not going to get very far.

myrrh,

Haha, I think that seems like a common pattern.

trouser_mouse,
@trouser_mouse@lemmy.world avatar

There is plenty of rudeness, hostility, and general toxicity and bigotry to go around. But there is also a lot of kindness, thoughtful consideration, and people who want to do the best for the platform and communities forming here.

I feel like the amount of more challenging or unwanted behaviour has gone up just in the time I’ve been here (hopefully not because of me!). From hardly seeing much of that in the first week or so, to then gradually seeing more and more as presumably more people move over from Reddit.

Be interesting to see how instances and communities respond, and if a more firm line will be drawn.

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

I feel like the amount of more challenging or unwanted behaviour has gone up just in the time I’ve been here

I see that too, but I attribute that to the growing number of users here. It’s an unavoidable part of growth, sadly.

trouser_mouse,
@trouser_mouse@lemmy.world avatar

Absolutely! I think it will be good to keep an eye how users, communities and the mods and admins of different instances respond - because where the line is drawn or isn’t, or when people stay silent on important issues happening on their servers or in their communities can speak volumes. (I’m not saying I have seen anything like this yet, not implying anything - just interested to see how things will unfold over time and hopeful for the future!)

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

There’s this one commie user who I always end up getting into an argument with. I don’t mind though because they actually seem to be intelligent and I like to hear what they have to say.

intensely_human,

Please tell me it’s me

myrrh,

Haha, those are the best kinds of arguments.

ghostwolf,
@ghostwolf@lemmy.fakeplastictrees.ee avatar

So far so good, I see less toxicity than on big social media. I guess there are not enough people yet, I see mostly enthusiasts who are excited that they’re building something new. Perhaps because of that the probability of seeing or getting some unpleasant comments is lower. But I’m also quite picky in what posts I read, something related to Elon Musk or Threads doesn’t interest me.

AlternateRoute,

If you don’t hate Twitter, Reddit, Threads you must love them and are the enemy.

Lots of us vs them hate on this platform like many others. You arnt allowed to have a nuanced opinion or conversation about some things.

JasSmith,

I stay away from the politics related communities. A bunch of people from r/Politics migrated to Lemmy and I’ve received death threats for having the wrong political opinions.

NightOwl,

There are toxic instances and users, but the communities have done a good job of staying focused on staying on topic. So not really any people going off on some personal unrelated tangent screaming on their soap box.

Like the game based communities have focused on talking about games. I’ve usually avoided and filtered communities that tend to get rather argumentative like politics, and I don’t expect it to be any different in that department here from reddit.

My reddit experience was nice too because I stuck to my subscribed feeds and filtered lot of stuff out. Argumentative communities will always be that way regardless of where it exists and there is nothing wrong with that because it is on topic for why it exists . It’s an easy unsub and block if I want to avoid it.

I just hope some keyword filtering gets built in soon so browsing /c/all is easier to discover new communities I’m interested in without being cluttered by the ones I’m not interested in. Back on reddit my filtering list was useful, since it led to making /r/all a pleasant one where it was mostly filled with dnd or anime or star wars stuff as opposed to the default politics, Twitter/tiktok/Facebook reposts, and fight and gore clips that dominate it by default.

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