The toxicity here is rather different than what i’ve experience in Reddit, the kind that make me quit it just like that. It’s just too many kids there.
I agree, people around here seem more mature on the whole. In my last year of Reddit, not only was I getting tired of the comment reposting bots, the teenagers subreddit seemed to permeate throughout the rest of the site more.
Not really. Disagreement, even angry disagreement, but only hexbear did I find truly toxic.
Conversely, I had to use reddit recently (to find an old post) and I don’t know if its because I haven’t been there for months and I’d forgotten how bad it is or if it is actually worse but fucking hell it was like a war zone.
Yeah I popped over there for a sec and holy hell what a toxic crap hole. Like, ok, on lemmy there are a few shitty takes here and there. But most of the folks writing them are generally ok and it is a one off. Discussions are mostly good faith and reasonably civil. Signal to noise ratio is so much higher.
On Reddit it is just a deluge of hateful bullshit and most of those post an endless stream of it. Nearly all the discussions are bad faith full of venom and ire pushing propaganda and lies and hate. With downvote brigading and astroturfing galore.
(Mind you I don’t see anything from hexbear anymore… Quite a few really bad eggs from that basket JFC)
Reddit is a huge site, depends on what subreddits you visited. The news and politics subreddits could be particularly toxic. Some of the “men vs women” themed subreddits were bad too.
Every time we get a wave of fresh influx, it seems to bring a fair number of upset people here. I’m not particularly surprised, they’re coming from a less-pleasant environment just in general.
People do seem to settle down a little bit after they get some time to unwind from that all, though.
I think joining an instance that's defederated from Hexbear and Lemmygrad could be a good starting point for an enjoyable experience here. You don't even need to hold right wing opinions, being an anti-authoritarian leftist is enough.
I was agreeing with you that there are too many tankies and Putin fanboys around here, making it sometimes annoying even if you don't belong to the idiot brigade of right wing Americans.
Sorry, the fact you’re being downvoted for this is kinda funny.
As a generally left-leaning person, lemmy absolutely has a leftist demographic, and most politics-related threads are full of upvoted low effort hot takes, while relevant but unpopular opinions tend to get downvoted.
But, then again social media is gonna social media…
There are a few pieces that involve actually taxing the wealthy and businesses that would fund both single payer and UBI.
Since billionaires' net worth is mostly based on their businesses, taxing businesses instead of giving them massive tax exemptions would add a huge tax revenue stream. Removing caps on social security would as well. Then we raise capital gains taxes back up to reasonable levels again, put reasonable caps on deductions for stuff like interest on home loans and depreciating assets. Things that the wealthy use to pay a far lower percentage of their income and wealth than the average person. They use infrastructure for their businesses and personal use more than the average person, so they should be paying a higher share.
Basically, getting rid of all the tax advantages that come with being wealthy. Just make them pay taxes as their wealth increases and actually make businesses pay taxes. Use that to fund basic necessities and more people will be able to actually climb the economic ladder.
Trickle down economics has never worked, and any excuse to not actually tax the wealthy at a progressive rate is just shilling for the wealthy. Even if it isn't a dollar for dollar exchange, the taxes should be raised on the wealthy so they pay their fair share of what they got out of society because lowering taxes has been counterproductive.
You're not wrong fundamentally, but my point is that all of these actions would have various effects on the rest of the economy, and none would exclusively affect billionaires. There's this misconception that if only Bezos, Musk, and their friends paid some taxes for once, we could have single payer healthcare, and that math doesn't math.
Additional business taxes simply get passed on to the consumer in the price tag. You can say it's worth it, but it certainly doesn't exclusively affect the executive suite. Raising the Social Security cap would be a significant tax increase on the upper middle class. I don't have that much pity for them, but there are a lot more of them than a handful of billionaires, and they tend to be pretty important for winning elections. One of Biden's campaign promises was to not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, and this would violate that. Raising capital gains taxes would have ripple effects throughout the economy, leading to less business investment overall, fewer new jobs, and more layoffs. Plenty of normal homeowners take advantage of tax breaks on home loans.
I'm not saying that any of these steps are inherently wrong, and they're all perfectly legitimate tools. But they do have real consequences, and we can't pretend that they don't. You can say that they'd be worth it - and hell - I'd probably agree with you, but the family in suburban New Jersey with two parents in middle management who will suddenly see a big tax increase is probably going to be less of a fan. There is no giant pot of 100 billionaires' money that we can raid without any consequences.
And you're not engaging with literally anything I said, even the most basic things like the social security cap affecting far more non-billionaires, so I suppose I'll just give you the same amount of effort in return and dismiss you as a scientifically illiterate child, and we can both go on with our days.
Well, your point being about only billionaires was stupid in the first place so I replied about the wealthy to try and steer it into a reasonable discussion about taxing the group that billionaires are in.
Why are you worried about multimillionaires paying more taxes?
The communities I frequented in Reddit were pretty positive. I see more snarky comments on Lemmy, but I’m posting more here, so maybe I’m just getting more interactions.
Are you asking about a specific episode or community of toxic behavior that originated there but has found its way here? If so, then my answer is no. Granted, I haven’t visited that other site in such a long time, I likely wouldn’t know if some specific instance of toxicity here was actually related to something over there. Also, I mostly avoid the communities here that are named similarly to subs over there which always seemed to be a magnet for drama or poor behavior. Mostly.
But if you’re asking in a more general sense, then my answer is yes(-ish). I have experienced and seen a fair bit of toxic behavior and numerous toxic users here. In many cases, the behavior and mannerisms mimic the toxicity I was used to seeing on the other site. So, I presume it’s something that originated there and then subsequently migrated here, but I obviously couldn’t say with complete certainty and absolute proof.
Granted, that’s not unexpected, and as other folks have already commented, toxic people and toxic behavior are pretty pervasive and ubiquitous on social media sites.
When I first came to Lemmy, I was more defensive than I realized. I had gotten used to aggressive, obnoxious behavior. Soon, I noticed that wasn’t an accepted norm here. It only took a couple days to realize, but I needed a few weeks to actually get out of the habit. In those early days, I’m sure I brought some toxicity with me.
Now, though, I don’t create, feed, or encourage toxic comments. I just assume it’s an honest mistake, poor choice of words, or someone whose primary language isn’t English. If I choose to reply, I’m friendly, and give them the benefit of the doubt. If a comment seems deliberately rude or trolling, I don’t engage at all.
Also, how nice is it to be able to give (or get) the benefit of the doubt?!? You can make a spelling error without getting three or four pedantic screeds! I didn’t realize how much I missed basic civility until I rediscovered it here!
Maybe? I definitely interact with more users lately who seem unable to make a point without being a condescending ass hat at the same time. Couldn’t say for sure if they’re coming over from Reddit, though.
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