The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind
The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind
The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.
On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there's a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-
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Be kind
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Ask people what they think, and why
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Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility (EDIT: no, this is not specifically referring to Nazis. I get it, they're the first thing that comes to mind. I'm not telling you to approve of Nazis I'm just saying be kind to your fellow lemmites)
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Engage sincerely
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Ask yourself if there's something nice you can say
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Make this small space worth being in
A platform lives or dies by what's available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of "content" or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren't the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.
Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse's biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.
The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse is make it a place worth being.
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Highly upvoted comments like "Elon Musk should commit suicide" or "X group of people are all mentally retarded" or even popular posts themselves make me feel uncomfortable.
It feels toxic like X. Or what Voat (an older Reddit clone, albeit not a federated one) turned into. So much of y'all upvoting posts like that, normalizing it, does not make me want to stick around, as that culture of hate will only get worse.
I can definitely understand that. I think in a lot of ways that problem is driven by how much of a political echo chamber lemmy is. Any time there's a narower range of beliefs I feel like you can see those beliefs getting more extreme, or expressed in more extreme and toxic ways.
I honestly don't really know how to improve it given the state of the world. It feels like the range of political beliefs keeps getting compressed into two groups and it makes it harder and harder to tolerate the beliefs of those further from yourself. And for valid reasons.
And the more justified the contempt for people of other political views gets the harder it gets to figure out how, culturally, we manage the justified anger that comes from how deeply broken everything is.
Elon musk is doing actual literal Nazi salutes and peoples anger about that is justified. And at the same time I'm not sure what way of acting on that anger (and acting on the problem) yields anything other than radializing people teetering on the edge of extremism.
I'm glad I don't really see actual Nazis on lemmy. Its nice that there's less debate about the legitimacy of people's humanity.
And at the same time anger is deeply toxic to healthy interaction and drives behaviors that I genuinely don't think make the problems prompting people's anger any better.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts candidly, a lot of this thread is a love-fest and that's wonderful and puts a smile on my face, but it's at least as important to talk about the unhealthy aspects of the fediverse's culture
Yeah don't get me wrong, I love Lemmy. But I don't like, well, that sort of thing. Or straight up disinformation being posted along the lines of that vitriol. It makes me worry about the Fediverse, as that culture only goes one place, and I feel like we shouldn't stick our heads in the sand and only talk about the love if the culture is getting radicalized to an extreme.
Great comment
It may not do much depending on the mods/admins, but it never hurts to report and downvote comments or posts like that.
Emphasis on reporting there, as I think sometimes that stuff lingers around because people have made a habit of only downvoting and blocking those doing that regularly. I realize in your examples it's more likely bias or bigotry respectively, but still.
Report first, then downvote and block. Doing only the latter only makes your experience a little better, the former may help the community.
I do report them, but some communities seem to encourage it and leave it up.
I guess I can block the community, but it's still affecting the "Lemmy culture" at large...
people are very emotional rn because of everything that's happening but i agree with you that violence for it's own sake is never good. the discussion must stay positive.