Why does the culture surrounding Lemmy seem to be inherently negative and hateful?
Why does the culture surrounding Lemmy seem to be inherently negative and hateful?
I have accounts on various Reddit alternatives and have also had accounts on now-defunct sites. However, none have exhibited the same level of negativity as Lemmy.
Huh. Maybe it's the communities/posts I've visited but I wouldn't agree with your assessment of an inherent negativity/hatefulness. Do you have examples we can discuss?
I agree, Lemmy doesn't feel especially negative to me. That said, I use the Subscribed view instead of All, so I guess it's just about curation.
I also immediately block users who are obviously just trying to wind people up.
This post as an example?
There is for sure great comments, but then there is the rest of lemmy.
I agree with others, it's where you hang out. Like reddit or any large group of people online, there's always a subset of trolls. Lemmy was quiet and nice, as it grew so did the troll count, it's just natural with online communities. I've found some tech communities here are toxic as hell, others are very welcoming
Fuck you I am full of love
Oh fuck off, Im way more loving than you dipshit.
Both of you are idiots, I've been a caring and empathetic person my entire life!
People on Lemmy have bailed from Reddit because they have principles. Stuff like Linux. The value of science/education. Lefty-ism (or whatever it's called in their region). FOSS. They are willing to cut themselves out from a larger community to foster one that is compatible with their principles.
From your comment history you seem to be posting stuff outside of Lemmy's core beliefs. That's great! But the people here really believe in those principles, so they react negatively to the comments.
I dunno what else to say. If we want Lemmy to be viable, we need to allow people with other views build communities here. We feel pretty close to a monoculture at the moment.
I've seen the same thing and I think it's a conversation we need to have.
I think it's because Lemmy is populated by people who did not like Reddits changes. We are malcontents by definition, and holy cow does it show. And of course all the people that have had their Reddit accounts banned too.
I think everyone needs to take their tone down quite a few notches.
I also feel it's something that should be examined before too much more time goes by, as it was not like it is now right after The Day the API Died.
Everyone was very polite in a way I haven't seen since before everyone had useful Internet on their phone.
But it didn't take long to change. There was a small but vocal group that hated in Beehaw constantly for wanting to keep their space polite. There was another bunch that seemed offended that nobody was swearing and started to encourage it.
Just more and more things like that have crept in over the months. I get why mods have wanted to avoid the criticism of harsh Reddit modding, but Lemmy seems to have accepted that only being 3/4 as rude as we put up with in Reddit is still good enough.
As someone dedicated to carving out a hospitable and relaxing community for everyone here, it concerns me that there does not seem to be much curation of how Lemmy is growing.
We are technically decentralized, but certain groups are essentially operating out of specific servers. Much like the growth of real world communities, people come to where the action is and those servers will be the de facto Lemmy community which will spread our reputation.
I think World, ML, and other significant servers should start to actively take a stance on who we want to be. We can still welcome strong and dissenting opinions , but there isn't a need to treat each other poorly. Anywhere you'd go in person has varying rules of decorum, and I wouldn't mind seeing that take effect here.
It needn't be rigid or all at once, but we can work toward something we feel comfortable with as a collective user base and decide when to stop or roll back.
I just don't want to see the group of us as a whole turn into what we just left is all. I feel that would be a shame to squander what we've spent the last year building up.
If what you are describing is the case, then why none of the alternatives have the same level of negativity?
But are they more positive or just more ideologically aligned with you? I looked through your post history and most of the conflicts you had seem to be ideological in nature. Much as I wish it wasn’t so, strongly negative reactions to ideological differences are a prominent feature of culture right now, particularly in online spaces.
So, to give a relevant example, posting about how socialism is bad on Lemmy.ml (which is a Marxist-Leninist instance in case you did not know) is going to generate a strong negative reaction. But I don’t know that this is because of something inherent to Lemmy. This would likely happen any time you criticize socialism in a space where most people agree with that ideology. If you made the same post in a fascist online community, you might get a more positive response, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that community is more positive, just that you align with them on that issue more so.
Maybe the existing user base? (before the reddit exodus.) It was hardcore left, and now that their echo chamber is being opened and challenged they don't like the new discussions. And being so used to the old ways they think they can continue bashing progressive as not progressive enough.
I think it's this in large part. Lemmy's users are by and large migrants from Reddit for various reason.
But also, this place exists as an ideological alternative to Reddit more than a technical one. The API-pocalypse (API-calypse?) and enshitification and shameless money grabs to inflate stock prices were the final straws for a lot of people but it's no secret that there are a series of positions and interests that are (assumed to be) shared by all the current Lemmy users.
As Lemmy grows its instances will continually have to determine who, what, and what beliefs and practices are welcome there
But also some people are just jackasses and need to argue, and they come into contact with people who want the same thing.
I hadn't really noticed that Lemmy is any more or less negative than Reddit used to be. I have noticed that most people on here are a lot more polite aside from the occasional trolls. Maybe the negativity is more of a trend in the specific communities you're visiting?
I've seen very little negativity on Lemmy in almost a year of using it.
Ignoring all the pro genocide posts I guess
There is !casualconversation@lemm.ee for positive or at least neutral conversation.
If you see too much negativity here, you are probably hanging out in toxic communities.
I saw your last post about Kaspersky on the Piracy community, sorry to see the comments you got.
Each community has its own vibe and moderation policy. A few of them are quite toxic, a few are very nice, the rest is in between.
I took a look out of curiosity and most comments are just saying don’t use kaspersky and their reasoning. If he was personally attacked it was way down and I missed it. All the stuff I saw was a bit incredulous perhaps but hardly vicious or anything.
If you’re going to a technical community and propose a technical solution that a lot of people disagree with, that’s just what’s going to happen. People aren’t going to just sit there and not say something.
Calling someone a moron seems quite agressive to me.
https://fedia.io/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/746768/-/comment/4900650
My previous experience is reddit, and I've found Lemmy to be far more positive, with exceptions.
Interactions with mods here are far less demanding and nitpicky. It's more like interaction and less like being told off.
Interactions with other users vary, but I'd say it is a net positive experience here. On reddit, other users were a net negative.
The exception is the reaction when you disagree with the consensus built up between a post and its comments. Whether it's reddit or Lemmy, you're going to have a bad time.
I haven't found that at all. I have blocked a handful of communities, but most of them weren't particularly negative, just stuff I didn't want to see.
I think it's a facet of the largest Lemmy servers feeling (being?) more ideologically homogenous, itself in part because of how niche Lemmy still is compared to Reddit.
Many of the users came here after the API died and so made joining here an explicitly ideological choice.
People aren't here because their friends are here. Not really. Not yet.
They're here cause they want to be, because this is important to them or their beliefs or their identity.
That's totally valid and good and fine. But u should know and expect that when posting here, especially on the biggest or most general or politically volatile communities.
I've got negative interest in trying any Unix/Linux based OS on my home PC and I'm ambivalent about FOSS, but i recognize that being here will mean that putting up with a certain amount of "Windows bad" that i just have to laugh and shake off or stop coming here
The whole point of the fediverse is that you can do it yourself if you don't like the way existing instances operate.
But here it seems you're not interested in putting forth any effort at all: https://lemm.ee/comment/11445877
If you want to join someone else's community, expect to have to abide by their rules. You wanna make the rules, put in the effort to make your own community. Nobody's forcing you to be here. Bye now, don't let my block hit you on the way out.
Idk, because redditors came here?
I'm just as guilty of this as the next person sometimes, it sometimes seems like a struggle not to be your worst self online. I'm trying to be better, I think that's what we can do to combat it.
Looking at your post and comment history, it looks like you are, yourself, part of the problem. I see a number of pessimistic (or shit-stirring) posts, posts that appear to be in favor of "ancap", and commenting in piracy comms. Sorry to say it but, you may want to examine your own behavior before pointing at others.
Maybe you just have some real shit hot takes.
Looking at their post history, they were banned from unpopular opinion after multiple posts just slagging off the platform. So yeah, some real shit hot takes.
I find Lemmy to be about on par with the popular (Front Page) Reddit subs. I tended to stay in smaller, more niche subs than Front Page subs and found them to be more polite and well-written, generally.
Lemmy isn't so bad, but we do clearly get some people who are here because they were banned from Reddit (and sometimes for immediately apparent reasons).
I think there's far more negativity in the comments of YouTube, Instagram, and especially Facebook.
But more than anything, I've seen more posts about negativity on Lemmy. So to me, it almost seems like the people coming to (or on?) Lemmy are more sensitive to negativity, maybe?
A lot of comments seem to disagree with you, so define Negativity? ( what do you consider to be negative behavior )
I am saying that as a former reddit user and current Discuit user and multi lemmy instance account user:
Rude people comments and downvotes for any type of post and bad mods who are going through power trips.
Admins are not involved in the site like the other reddit alternatives.
Edit 1 : Admins are not involved.
I've seen a pattern where a lot of comments on links are about what the user thinks of the topic, and not about the actual article or video specifically, and more often people only care to comment if they are opinionated, and often times that's a negative opinion
I find that the communities I follow to be mostly positive. Unless the conversation is about Israel because there always seems to be someone with a terrible take on that gets a ton of down votes .
Come hang with the Lebowski fans and kick back at !achievers@lebowski.social for all your Big Lebowski needs.
I think it just correlates with leftism in the US and Lemmy was leftist before the Reddit exodus increased the population. I say this as a US center-left liberal (and I get annoyed with it myself).
The leftist movement is very anti-establishment, very pessimistic about their future under capitalism, very pessimistic about the US political establishment, very pessimistic about climate change, very pessimistic about the Israel-Hamas situation, very pessimistic about police, very pessimistic about health care, very pessimistic about both Biden and Temp, very pessimistic about ... pretty much every major issue (except maybe weed).
Edit: I don't mean to "rage against the leftist" either, I think y'all have some good points from time to time and there are definitely things I agree with you on (e.g. the health care system needs major changes). Some of y'all give a real "you must be fun at parties" kind of vibe though and some are about as bad as the Trump supporters in terms of using personal attacks.
are about as bad as the Trump supporters in terms of using personal attacks.
Russian, trumpist, moron, bot, Chinese, tankie, fascist, Republican, child, shill.
This is a selection of things I've been called for saying that Biden should stop supporting genocide.
Tell me how bad the left is about personal attacks.
You being personally attacked for being an (evidently) leftist does not invalidate the numerous personal attacks that leftist have made against me on this platform and others.
All of these roll off my back except for the one slur that leftists use against leftists: "liberal"
It's not pessimism, it's criticism. The fact that you think hope/pessimism has anything to do with these issues would be extremely telling if you hadn't already described yourself as a liberal.
There is a point where persistent criticism of any and every action (even actions that align with stated goals like tackling the climate crisis) rises past the point of criticism to outright pessimism, negativity, or even the more recently coined "doomerism" term.
Edit: Here's are some examples:
- https://lemmy.world/comment/2950617
- https://lemmy.world/comment/2239194
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1847620
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1851530
They're really not hard to find.
Gestures vaguely
No shit we are lol
Im pretty sure many of my subscriptions are on lemmy and I have not noticed it. I mean there is negativity but its certainly no worse than reddit and not even sure if I can say its way less but I find things more authentic overall.
Hatred drives engagement on any and all social media. Even ones where everything is made up and the points don't matter.
Your perception of lemmy has been tainted by the kind of communities you interact with. You and I have wildly different experiences on this app.
Part of the reason you feel this way may be caused by you being subscribed to unpopularopinion, an inherently contrarian community. If you'd like to be happy, stop following that community.
I also encourage you to avoid engaging in political conversations with non-rational people: It is extremely unlikely that they will change their minds, and even if you do reach an understanding, that conversation is really likely to leave you with a sour feeling.
In comparison, the communities I'm in are mostly about memes, IT, privacy and LGBT stuff. No news about the war, and no political arguments with random, possibly deranged, users.
The instance I'm in doesn't even have downvotes! Depending on how you use lemmy, you can have either really good or really bad experiences. I recommend u to try to avoid conflict, and maybe even switch to a downvote-less instance.
I would say that lemmy is just more realist then naive optimist, since more intellectual people probably use lemmy or even try to fund Reddit alternatives.
I've noticed some instances being very nice overall (hence I'm here) and some being nothing but negative (feddit stood out to me). And occasionally I see a post copy-pasted across a whole bunch of instances with different newly-made accounts sharing misleading news articles.
fortunately, a well oiled block button, and a regex instance filter makes short work of that. I really like lemmy, but just like reddit it's messy