I mean, I'm glad we're growing here, but...

Hey, we left cause of the enshitification of Reddit itself, toxicity of the users was always part of the package deal.

You'll find that anywhere. Not just on the Internet, either. Literally, everywhere.

Yea no. Try having a nuanced discussion on any (insert heated topic here) on Lemmy and watch the labels fly out faster than the ejaculate of a post pubescent 15 year old.

most of the toxicity I've experienced on lemmy has been from established users so idk.. but I should add that it's way less toxic than reddit so far

It took me a couple months to fully leave years of bad reddit habits behind. I didn’t realize how deeply ingrained they’d become. The toxicity had gradually snuck up on me.

It’s worth noting that some users might be attracted to Lemmy due to its smaller, more niche communities and the sense of belonging that comes with being part of a smaller, specialized group. Others might be drawn to Lemmy’s technical aspects, such as its use of ActivityPub and its potential for customization and modification.

Some users might also be deterred from Lemmy, but please do not let this distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

Hopefully the absence of an algorithm pushing engagement at all costs will dispel some of it.

I think any real user from Reddit that isn’t a bot is an asset these days. I hate Reddit as much as the next person, but giving people shit for coming from there to here feels hypocritical.

A lot of users here are not Reddit refugees, they are Reddit rejects.

Block instance and block community buttons are your friends.

Are we growing though?

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats shows MAU (monthly active users) decreasing - we are now at 43k, last month was 45k, the month before 47k, etc. Total servers also decreasing - now 540, was 552, 579, etc. Overall posts and comments are slightly up though - so we're seeing increased activity from fewer users, rather than an increase in actual users. One could argue whether we're truly "decreasing" vs. merely flat, but either way I don't see us increasing.

And 3 of those users are myself, all active and only 2 of which I had a week ago, speaking to how alts are most definitely a thing. Also, federation issues especially staying in sync with Lemmy.World may be causing people to shift instances (or to leave entirely?). If so that would be a good thing bc 0.19.6 promises to help address that. (Although in my case, I wanted an instance that allows custom blocks of any instance I choose without needing to rely on an admin team, and that isn't dependent upon the Lemmy codebase.)

For one thing, people might be turning away due to the upcoming USA election, in which case depending on who survives that, they could return? But every person I've ever recommended to check out Lemmy has looked at me in disgust and actively chided me for having recommended it when they see some of the political extremism here. e.g.:

Whenever I go looking for examples of such I usually find it in 0-60 seconds, by going to Lemmy.ml and browsing by Local.

Your instance is doing wonderful work keeping such out - I wonder if that image will even render for you:-). But overall, across the wide Fediverse, people are not willing to put up with such, and seem to be leaving us overall rather than find some other way to deal with whatever it is that was bugging them.

And with such trends, and the way we treat normies, I don't see us ever going mainstream. Maybe PieFed and Sublinks, along with Mbin and ofc Tesseract on e.g. dubvee.org will help turn that around? That would be so nice?:-)

Btw what will we call ourselves then, if it does - will we still be "Lemmy"/Lemmings, or just general Fedizens? Either way there's great hope for the future, but also a lot of work to do to reach that point.

Lemmy is FAR more toxic than Reddit.

Head over.to Hexbear and say you like south park or something. You're welcome.

It's easy to forget how bad it can get.

One day I wandered into /r/kotakuinaction over some linked comment on the Tomb Raider animation, and the Fallout TV series, and... yeah. I remembered.

And that's a pretty mild example.

I ended up getting permabanned from reddit for saying that Lebanese people don't blame all their problems on Israel, just the the problems they do deserve blame for.

People will be toxic no matter what. I don't think making prospective new users feel unwelcome is a good idea when we'd like to see some growth.

Uh yeah welcome, could you leave that baggage outside tho? kthx

tfw somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep

Just the other day I had to block this idiot from harassing me, claiming I was faking ignorance about Trump's stance on Israel so I could "bait Americans into a discussion", for some reason. I'm European, I don't follow presidential candidate policies very closely at all. This tool was also European, and Palestinian. I don't know why they were insisting so hard I would do this inexplicably weird thing, but maybe their emotions were running high. I'm against genocide btw, of course. ✊

tf you talking about, lemmy is 10 times the shithole reddit ever was

Welcome! In my biais view we're less toxic but still far from perfect.
Don't hesitate to post on smaller communities. People will be so happy to see a post they will forgot to be negative.
I look forward to read from you again (^_^)