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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Great post.
To add to this, not resorting to calling others tankies or Russian bots when you have differing opinions, especially around politics.
I came to Lemmy (lemm.ee originally) with this attitude. Tankies really made me regret trying to be sympathetic too them. It was the most vile interaction I've had on the Internet maybe? You shouldn't call people tankies if they're not but real tankies are by far the biggest problem with the fediverse and it's growth
yeah i've met some thorough tankies recently and wow are they annoying. just completely blind to reality.
My biggest worry on Lemmy is actually bots and Russian psy ops though. If centralized reddit couldn’t stop them before misinformation spread, how is Lemmy supposed to?
Instance admins have pretty good information at their disposal to identify bots.
I have yet to see any instance admin say that there is any significant amount of bots, outside of the occasional spate of spamming. I only see such theories & accusasions come from non-admins, with no accompanying compelling evidence.
well the good news is that everybody - and that includes the US - creates psyops all the time, so that makes it fair.
This is Eglin Air Force Base checking in. 
Most addicted city (over 100k visits total)
Eglin Air Force Base, FL
Oak Brook, IL
South St. Paul, MN?
What I’m saying is that Reddit is packed with US government psyop coming from Eglin AFB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglin_Air_Force_Base#Department_of_Defense
I've had the thought that if I were to design a psyop campaign, a pretty solid option for dominating the discussion would be to come out swinging and accuse everyone else of being an agent. That way, people have to either constantly defend against accusations, or they conclude, rightly, the accusations are baseless and decide to disregard the very idea that there is a psyop going on.
I could be wrong but to me it feels odd to think lemmy is big enough to be worth organizing psyops for.
Not to say it couldn't be an issue in the future, but it feels much more likely that people expressing pro Russia sentiment are just people who bought into that particular brand of propaganda.
Which like, to some extent all of our individual world views are shaped by the environment of propaganda we're exposed to. We're all products of our social conditioning, and ultimately that's exactly what propaganda is. Media designed to socially condition people to a certain set of beliefs. All we as individuals can do is be aware of it and be willing to look at our own beliefs critically.
But at the end of the day I think the folks praising Russia on lemmy are just people. People I personally think are misguided, but I don't think theyre generally acting in bad faith any more than the general population here.
At the minimum it’s worth harvesting posts, and hacķing servers to link ip addresses to those posts. That’s just one officer being assigned to the newborn Lemmy division with a couple thousand for hardware.
Honestly if anyone is doing that I really feel like it would be the US, not Russia.
Russia's goal is to sew discord and unballance the populace that drives politics, and for that to work you need a MASSIVE scale that we just don't really have. They don't really have much to gain from the IP addresses of a handful of leftists
But Lemmy is exactly the kind of hotspot for people DEEPLY angry about the government of the US to organize that if we're big enough to be on their radar, the US government would have a vested interest in keeping an eye on potential dissidents. Unlike Russia IP addresses and personally identifiable information would be useful to them, in identifying threat actors, tracking their activity and volatility online, and building cases that would allow them to prosecute should said dissidents escalate
That's how it looks from where I'm standing anyway 🤷♂️
1 billion percent agree, not everyone you disagree with is acting in bad faith
when you're dealing with fundamentalists or extremists things turn nasty very quickly because you're questioning their fantasy world
doesn't matter if they're good or bad faith, often they will just ban you
Sometimes they literally just are. Not seen it on Lemmy but on Reddit I definitely interacted with users, age under 1 year, all suspiciously pro-Putin. It's rare and I'm looking for it, but still.
It's rare and I'm looking for it
Unfortunately not that rare of a POV to find. They just generally don't do the young account thing. Some are true believers. Others likely state actors. Don't see as many bots but the greater levels of transparency and lower active population probably makes it less worthwhile of an investment.