I dunno. I just feel less like I’m experiencing a fun new tool for communication the last few weeks. The communities here on Beehaw are still great and fantastic and aren’t what I’m bothered by. It’s just when I venture out in the world (which I often do) that I notice conversations are much more argumentative than I...
Beehaw elected to disable the downvote. The theory behind disabling downvotes is that its easier to have a meaningful discussion if you can say “this is why I think your comment might have some problems” instead of everyone clicking the dislike button. It also encourages users to mentally question if something is bad enough to report
I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.
My small instance had some instability while Beehaw was being botspammed in the random magazine. My instance’s administrator explained that it was related to how Lemmy handles banned accounts in a very database inefficient manner. I think he also has an update not go as smoothly as anticipated once. But Lemmy.world being the largest instance gets the pleasure of discovering new scaling challenges as it grows
But, the big thing with the outages is I just went “oh okay, I’ll just do something else then” just like the couple of times I experienced a reddit outage. I don’t think it’s as much a thing as the memes make it in both cases
I just noticed my private instance, derp.foo, was recently defederated by Beehaw. Thing is, I have no idea why. Was my instance accidentally included in some bulk defederation to get rid of spammers, or is there something specific to my instance?
When I first joined this community I saw it as a respite from reddit where I was free to chill with people without being constantly expected to debate or defend arguments or anything. Just a forum where people are nice....
I haven’t been here that long, but the dopamine hits are a familiar mechanism underpinning most social media these days – something I try to do as someone who has a lot of strong opinions on stuff and am pre-disposed to debate is to still give out votes to replies that disagree with me, even strongly, as long as they are thoughtful and reasoned.
I do it because I think sometimes people can recognize that gesture and it helps them check their attitude if it is getting a bit too aggressive, it can sometimes interrupt the “debate me bro” circuit that social media so often tries to reinforce. You basically give them the dopamine reward without them feeling they have to reach that extreme end of the debate to get it from someone. But, more importantly, it’s also a small action that forces me to swallow my pride and ego a tiny bit. Clicking upvote on something you disagree with is an acknowledgement that your own ego has its flaws. It’s an exercise in maintaining perspective.
I used to be against discussion-oriented social media that doesn’t have a downvote, but going from Reddit to Beehaw has made me really appreciate how downvotes can only really feed toxicity outside some very specific use cases. On reddit you’d more often get downvotes with no response or explanation, even for innocuous comments or simply content you shared with people. Which is disheartening and makes you start to behave in a paranoid way.
The way people used the downvote was not to moderate content that added nothing to the discussion, but simply to try and shutdown ideas and content that they personally didn’t like, which is a subtle but consequential difference. Removing the downvote means that the way to deal with unwanted content is now to either confront it with words or, if you have no real justification or argument you are willing to get into, take no action.
Instead of using the upvote as an ‘agree’ button I use it now as more of an acknowledgement of the person’s perspective as valid and not intentionally disrespectful, even if I disagree. It helps me reel myself back in if I feel that pull to dig my heels in to an unproductive degree.
This is it and don’t forget it! Keeping Beehaw a nice place to be relies on people first reminding people who are verging on not nice behaviour, then reporting them if they continue or get worse. Have the pulse on your own emotions too, sometimes the answer to disengage and leave it be if you find yourself worked up by something.
For the newer Beehaw users, don’t be afraid to use the report button if talking it out doesn’t appear to fix unkind behaviour. Beehaw mods and admins can’t scan every single thread at this point.
I can’t comment on beehaw specifically, but I do know I’ve seen it rise in popularity on Lemmy / The Fediverse, just as its generally prevalent on the internet itself (that’s the core of the problem, its not really a Reddit thing as much as it is an “internet” thing from what I’ve found).
Like you, I don’t mind debating something with someone when they attempt to do so in good faith - or if I post something incorrect then I’m happy to be corrected if someone isn’t rude about it. I do also try to make sure that if I post something, that I’m either sure its correct, or I provide some sort of hint that I’m not 100% sure about it.
Can’t say I’ve noticed it on Beehaw but I have on some other instances. Just posted in one actually - was an interesting discussion on the nature of violence in media. One person immediately lashed out at the person and I’m struggling to see why as they were being civil and were just exploring ideas.
I think it’s a wider thing than Lemmy or even the internet. It feels like some kind of way of getting control over something for people who lack any control in other aspects of their lives. They can have it if they’re ‘right’ even if they have to attack people for it.
I feel like they are near the Orange LibLeft quadrant: a liberal that actually ends up behaving in a somewhat authoritarian manner in enforcing their beliefs onto others for the sake of safety, diversity and so on.
Both beehaw and their admins are great and at the end of the day the beauty of the fediverse is that everyone can run their instance as they please. I just wish there was another way to fix this sort of probems without having to block 5k+ people from accessing your website.
I am gonna give a hot-take, but we need more conservative on the fediverse
100% agree. And no, this doesn’t mean Trump supporters. In fact it doesn’t even mean anything close to the American right. Other countries have reasonable and functioning centre-right parties and I’d love to have something like that on Lemmy.
Given the approach/philosophy of Beehaw, I’m kind of confused and surprised by the choice of Lemmy for building this community space. Not that I disagree with it, but it undeniably complicates administration/moderation in a variety of ways thanks to federation (as has become apparent with new Lemmy instances & the population...
There’s something similar on Beehaw: on !technology sidebar they include links to “subcommunities”: for c/foss, c/programming and c/os. I would love to see more communities add related c/'s in their description too!
I feel like I’ve seen a ton of comments about how the Fediverse is so nice, but I feel it’s the same as what was my Reddit experience. Just less likely to get enshittified because it’s not corporate, and not optimized for maximum engagement and thus max outrage, so still an upgrade.
Seeing bigots (not on Beehaw, but on other servers), although they’re downvoted to hell and contradicted? Check. (Yes, they were downvoted to hell and contradicted on Reddit too.)
Seeing contrarianism just for the sake of being contrary? Check. Happened twice on my own post. I asked people to please reply with advice to my post and not just “me too” or “I didn’t find a solution lol” and got two “I didn’t find a solution lol” so it’s contrarianism, not just me freaking out over a differing opinion. At best they didn’t fully read my post, didn’t get to the part where I make the request, but somehow I don’t think so and I’m usually the type to try to assume the best of people. Those two replies were thankfully removed by an admin, so unfortunately I don’t have any proof to show you that this happened anymore.
Seeing people being condescending? Check. Lots of “Imagine telling people with real problems [insert the original poster’s complaint about a non-world-ending issue]” type replies. Lots of “touch grass” or “and those who think [other opinion] are dorks who need to go outside more” added when a user disagrees with the person they reply to. Lots of all these other snide things that let you know a user thinks very little of not just your opinion but you as well, merely because they disagree with your opinion. And it’s used against people acting in good faith talking about stuff like video games, not against people spouting bigotry on a server that explicitly has rules against it.
The kicker is I don’t even go on the communities that you’d think would be more likely to get heated, like Politics. I have that blocked.
Maybe it was wrong of me to say this was like my Reddit experience. It was like my Reddit experience when I wandered into bigger subs. When I stayed in my niche topic subreddits I rarely saw this kind of behavior.
I still post here out of habit and to try to contribute to the Fediverse’s activity. But I see something like this in at least 75% of my Beehaw sessions. (Yes, I report the meanness when I see it.) I’m probably going to slow my activity and fall off, back to a Kbin server and a different Lemmy server where all I sub to is tiny hobby communities that don’t have any of this behavior. And where they didn’t promote themselves as a nice space, so I’ll be less shocked if I do run into bad behavior. I understand bad actors are everywhere but most of the people seem like abrasive actors and less like intentional disruptors—perhaps it’s people not being too aware of the norms of the instance they’re on because they come from a different server. But I’ve also seen this kind of behavior from people who are on Beehaw accounts. Would think group norms would filter the meanness out, but I encounter it more often here than I do in other places. Honestly not sure how to fix it, otherwise I’d be posting my suggestions because I really do want people to have a nice experience on the be(e) nice server, including myself.
I’m glad everyone else seems to be having a good experience.
The amount of content has been ok. It’s not always what I’m looking for, but I’ve been learning about ecology in Australia and other things I never would have on my own or on Reddit because it would get buried.
The part I like best though is also the part I like least - engagement.
I loved Lemmy right away because all of a sudden I could post or comment and not be lost in a swarm of clickbait articles or useless comments like “this” or “I also choose this guy’s wife” things. But so many things are posted that get decent up votes but no comments. There are good articles posted, but no one comments, while ragebait things about defederation and politics get all the interaction. People say they want niche content, but dont post it or don’t engage with it.
I’ve been trying for weeks now to get a niche sub going. It’s finally above 1k subs, my posts can get 100 up votes, especially on weekends, not most posts don’t get a single comment. How long do you want me to post without making me feel it’s worth my time? The votes tell me at least people are seeing it, but if you don’t talk to the group, how’s it going to grow? I’m posting animal pics, some OC, some not. Google up a pic you like, and post it with a comment. It isn’t hard.
I don’t judge, but I do not care at all for all the meme groups. If I could block all communities with meme in the name I would. But those guys post like crazy. It’s the same amount of effort to post that stuff as a pic you think is cool, an article about your town, or something you did or saw that was fun. Post that stuff! Comment on things! Let posters know you like what they post.
This got more ranty than I intended, but it’s been getting to me lately. I am enjoying Lemmy, Beehaw in particular, but I want it to grow in a healthy way.
As a person who only used downvotes for incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, I mostly agree because apparently most people would use the downvote button as a disagree button.
But I do miss having the “fucking [insert slur here]” “kill yourself” “only a basement-dwelling loser would have this opinion” comments auto-hid because the average passing user disapproved of it and decided to express their disapproval via downvote, instead of coming across it myself semi-frequently and reporting it. Also meant that I could contribute to hiding the bad stuff, without fear of getting lashed out on. Sometimes I don’t reply to comments that have good points but seem unnecessarily mean because in my experience, there seems to be a 50/50 chance between getting decent discussion and getting some rude snarky reply with a lot of unflattering personal assumptions made about me no matter how civil I was and how I deliberately avoided addressing the mean tone to avoid getting called out for tone policing (I know that tone policing is a problem I personally have. I don’t want to cause problems and I don’t want to face backlash for tone policing). And there is something to be said for if people only used downvotes on incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, the Beehaw admins would probably find themselves less overloaded with work.
Too bad people try to use downvotes for ”I disagree with your civil, well-thought out opinion” instead of “spam and cruelty not welcome, misinformation not useful and sometimes actively harmful, hide this.”
And there is something to be said for if people only used downvotes on incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, the Beehaw admins would probably find themselves less overloaded with work.
I think that while this is true, it would also invite for more deresponsabilization about the spaces we make and who we allow in these spaces. I generally think it’s best for those things to be reported because in most cases - we don’t actually want people like that in our communities and simply hiding it means that they silently remain.
This place is an echo chamber in places like fuck cars and the socialist subs
What aspect of fuckcars do you consider an echo chamber?
There’s over a dozen socialism communities, if you find one to be an ‘echo chamber’ then I’d suggest seeking another. I’d imagine the socialism community on Beehaw would have a completely different vibe to the one on Lemmygrad, as an example
Was banned for what I can tell was pointing out that lemmy instances do not protect privacy at all
This is common knowledge though, wouldn’t be surprised if the mods were sick of the same discussion being created over and over again by various users. Something federated - designed to be open, decentralised, unrestricted, cannot be inherently privacy friendly.
If your privacy threat model brings you to an ideological disagreement with federated networks, it would be reasonable to consider moving to an alternative platform IMO.
I’m perfectly happy with it being harder to find new content. Finding new content online usually just results in more scrolling and more consumption from me. If I try something new/expand my horizons into something that isn’t just trying a new game or watching a new video, if I do something new to me that isn’t just consumption, it’s usually as a result of talking with people in the real world. For me, finding new content online tends to give me zero benefits and more wasted time. I assume you are not the same and new content is actually useful for you?
I will say that Lemmy and the like aren’t the most useful unless you curate it, although this may vary per instance. I had to go out of my way to block Politics and similar communities here on Beehaw, and am about to go block the Technology community too. I usually spend more time rabbitholing into doom than I should as a result of what I see on Technology.
Wouldn’t they just move to whatever the new Community is? I think you either need to convince your instance to defederate, join something like Beehaw, or create your own instance if you don’t want to see those comments.
Safe spaces are places that help build community and support between people that are marginalized in wider society (like LGBTQ+, African/Native/Asian Americans, autistic people, etc.)...
I agree with your general premise that safe spaces are necessary for allowing ideas to develop. I think they’re also necessary for giving people a place to simply exist without their existence being questioned or threatened.
However, I don’t know that I agree with your proposal to avoid echo chambers by encouraging “yes and”-style responses. The sort of person who accepts the core premise of these ideas and wants to improve them can probably already communicate their ideas/criticisms without violating the safe space.
A bad faith actor could always use “yes and” as a means to promote a slippery slope argument that seeks to invalidate the original idea. And there are certainly some ideas that would be dangerous to add on to.
A side note, if you’re interested in discussing how to create a supportive online space, you may want to check out beehaw.org if you haven’t already. They’re a lemmy instance that defederated with lemmy.world, but I believe they’re still federated with your instance. Before they defederated with us, I was able to read a series of lengthy posts by one of their admins describing their moderation philosophy- specifically how it evolved over the years as they tried to create a safe community in other sites and what they settled on for beehaw.org. It was really interesting, and their conclusion was that the only way to create a safe community was to proactively moderate, warning and banning users before they cross a line. Reactive moderation (removing/banning posts and users after they do something offensive) still allows for the negative post to impact the community before it’s removed. They also believe that having clearly defined rules doesn’t work since trolls just learn to work within them while still achieving their goals.
Their moderation style requires a lot of work to implement, but it definitely achieved the results they wanted. The beehaw communities were very friendly and users seemed more open with each other.
I was never extremely active on Mastodon until recently but I followed it’s development relatively closely from its infancy. And I will say that it’s really strange to watch lemmy face nearly identical issues that Mastodon did when it was in a similar development stages. (Though, some of the drama thus far have been...
Isn’t mastodon basically centralized under mastodon.social? I’m not participating in microblogging part of fedi so I genuinely don’t know the situation there, but the statics on fedidb.org shows that mastodon.social has almost 4 times more users than the second largest server.
On Mastodon there are quite a bit of smaller instances that silence (basically opt-in federation per follow, one step before full defederation) .social/.online/universeodon and similar large instances. With the centralization we have wrt lemmy.world you cannot do something of that scale without significantly hurting your view of the threadiverse (and there are instances, most famously Beehaw, who have found that an acceptable compromise)
The community/group aspect of Lemmy also amplifies this centralization even more compared to Mastodon which does not have that functionality (without external bridges such as a.gup.pe) (yet).
basically opt-in federation per follow, one step before full defederation
Sounds neat! I think as Lemmy grows we’ll see better solutions than plain defederation.
With the centralization we have wrt lemmy.world you cannot do something of that scale without significantly hurting your view of the threadiverse (and there are instances, most famously Beehaw, who have found that an acceptable compromise)
I think cases of Beehaw and hexbear shows that instances can be defederated from .world and still be successful.
I myself won’t lose much if my instance for some reason would defederate from .world, since I follow only a handful of communities and their users aren’t that active outside their instance actually. The problem with .world is that most of communities hosted there are clones of subreddits, and people are pretty toxic there too.
The community/group aspect of Lemmy also amplifies this centralization even more compared to Mastodon which does not have that functionality
We still can have many communities of the same topic though. It would be neat to have the ability to ‘merge’ communities in my feed.
Does the threadiverse (Lemmy + Kbin) seem ruder the last few weeks?
I dunno. I just feel less like I’m experiencing a fun new tool for communication the last few weeks. The communities here on Beehaw are still great and fantastic and aren’t what I’m bothered by. It’s just when I venture out in the world (which I often do) that I notice conversations are much more argumentative than I...
Lemmy probably feels like Reddit when it first started, all warm cuddly and friendly to newcomers eager to discuss and collaborate around central topics.
I joined reddit on the tailwind, so it was all echo chamber, we hate newcomers, gatekeeping, automod frenzy, too many rulebreakers, too many rules, etc I could be wrong, but thats what I imagine it used to be like.
Defederated by Beehaw, no idea why
I just noticed my private instance, derp.foo, was recently defederated by Beehaw. Thing is, I have no idea why. Was my instance accidentally included in some bulk defederation to get rid of spammers, or is there something specific to my instance?
has beehaw gotten more argumentative as of late?
When I first joined this community I saw it as a respite from reddit where I was free to chill with people without being constantly expected to debate or defend arguments or anything. Just a forum where people are nice....
Political Compass of the Lemmyverse (lemmy.basedcount.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.basedcount.com/post/114721...
So, what led Beehaw to decide to use Lemmy?
Given the approach/philosophy of Beehaw, I’m kind of confused and surprised by the choice of Lemmy for building this community space. Not that I disagree with it, but it undeniably complicates administration/moderation in a variety of ways thanks to federation (as has become apparent with new Lemmy instances & the population...
Sibling communities: A middle way
There’s been an ongoing debate about whether communities should combine or stay separate. Both have significant disadvantages and advantages:...
deleted_by_author
Should we decide to have a main fediverse community or should we keep posting everything twice?
Hello everyone,...
Remember me comrades! (lemmy.ml)
How did you find a healthy balance between staying informed and not despairing about the world?
I don’t want to be totally uninformed about what’s going on, but I also don’t want to fall into doomscrolling....
The ongoing survival of Beehaw may NOT be what you think
Hello there and thank you for being a part of Beehaw!...
Pick your Lemmy instance wisely... (lemmy.world)
Russian soldier admits proudly his comrades were killing POWs (euromaidanpress.com)
Is defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works still necessary?
This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion....
Safe spaces are important
Safe spaces are places that help build community and support between people that are marginalized in wider society (like LGBTQ+, African/Native/Asian Americans, autistic people, etc.)...
I know that recent drama has caused a bit of uneasiness in the community for this platforms future, but I am optimistic for lemmy. It might be helpful to look to mastodon to learn how to move forward.
I was never extremely active on Mastodon until recently but I followed it’s development relatively closely from its infancy. And I will say that it’s really strange to watch lemmy face nearly identical issues that Mastodon did when it was in a similar development stages. (Though, some of the drama thus far have been...