I notice this especially with my Norwegian learning. People are rude, call me names, or make fun of me on Reddit for using the wrong word or “en” vs “et” or using a direct translation because I don’t know how they say it in Norwegian, like saying somethng like «Ingen av bedriften din!» instead of «Dette er ikke din sak» (according to the casual version of Bing Translate) whereas a Norwegian-speaking Fediverse member would just say something like “You’re doing good, but it’s actually _____.”
I’d say part of it is likely raw userbase size. Like how even the most positive, well-meaning fandoms turn toxic at the edges when they get large enough.
Real humans exist on Fediverse. Bots, trolls, and normies exist on Reddit.
Normies aren’t humans!?
Normies make shit decisions and don’t critically think. Your grandma who knows shit about world geopolitics but gets her news from Facebook is a normie.
Your little brother who is watching fucking skibbiti toilet and having instant access to the manosphere pipeline is a normie.
Your older sister who watches reality tv garbage and spends most of her time scrolling bullshit on Tik Tok is a normie.
Normies are humans, yes. But where normies go enshittification follows.
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There’s plenty of rude people here are you kidding? People are rude to me just because I’m on lemmy.ml lmfao…
You could always switch instance though. That’s a thing you can do in the Fediverse. You can’t do that on Reddit.
Why would I change instances because people are misinformed about MLs?
Because they don’t want to be on a server that supports/is/touts/… XYZ?
I said could. We’re comparing Lemmy to Reddit.
I only hate you because of the color of your shirt!
rude disgruntled noises
I meant less rude but I understand… that sucks so hard though 😭
first ml upvote in a very long time
now get back in your box
As long as you’re not a tankie!
Probably just the law of large userbases. The more people around, the more rude people there are likely to be. Rude people are always a minority, but they tend to be more vocal.
A large portion of fediverse users have abandoned Reddit for moral or ethical reasons. So while occasionally people will be rude here, it tends to skew more towards polite discussion.
Large userbases, and the “somebody is wrong on the internet” effect. If we like something we see we’ll possibly like/upvote it and move on with our life, if we see a problem we’re far more likely to jump on and interact. So a hundred people might read something and be neutral towards it, and it’s enough to have one asshole react poorly to ruin the mood completely.
The same dynamic works for reply guys, and sadly the fediverse is in no way immune. But hopefully there are more people on here who are aware that it’s a community building exercise, and who make an effort to leave a positive footprint. :)
“somebody is wrong on the internet”
When you know your account can and will be temp/perm banned by a fucking bot, you kind of stop caring about your account and your behavior on that account.
I was pretty careful until I had my 13 year old account perm banned without warning for saying “it’s ok to punch a Nazi”. Now I’m probably on my 40th account and I could care less about calling a Trump supporter a product of incest who should play on the freeway.
Ban me. I’ll be back in 5-10 minutes.
That hasn’t really been my experience. Lemmy seems nicer on the surface because most of the userbase is ideologically aligned, so conflict is less likely. But once you make the wrong noises about something, plenty of people show up ready to prove just how mean and horrible they can actually be.
Also, on Reddit I never had anyone follow me around trying to cause reputational damage by spreading false accusations about me.
Also, on Reddit I never had anyone follow me around trying to cause reputational damage by spreading false accusations about me.
I’ve experienced it on both, but it was much more toxic and persistent on reddit in my experience
But once you make the wrong noises about something, plenty of people show up ready to prove just how mean and horrible they can actually be.
This is true. Linux isn’t my platform of choice, and the “passion” of the responses that provokes is remarkable.
didn’t you know that Linux is the Jesus Christ of operating systems?
It will save us from our computing sins and heal the world and bring forth a computing paradise!
We have the same problems reddit does. It’s just that it’s a smaller userbase and downvoted comments don’t disappear here like they get pushed down on reddit. So you don’t get downvoted as much, but your controversial or unpopular take remains visible for opposing opinions to attack. And yeah, there are mini-brigades here too. Make a comment about a subject that has importance to a particular instance and you get insta-downvoted multiple times, but your post will probably recover as the rest of the groups view the conversation.
frankly at this point i just assume that anyone who is really obviously being stupidly aggressive isn’t a real person, it’s probably just a bot meant to push people apart.
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I hope you got squared away ok
Nah, they’re still on it - and considering how much you’ve been discussing AI here too, it’s more than likely you’ve run into them as well.
Being careful with your words helps to some extent, but then there are people like this who don’t really care what you actually say. If they perceive you to be on the wrong side of an issue they care deeply about, they slap this cartoon-villain stereotype on you and treat it as fact. It’s not about what you said - it’s about who they think says those kinds of things. It’s intentional misinterpretation and ad hominems all the way down. No point even trying to engage with their insane troll logic.
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I think it just attracts the terminally onlines, I think most people on the fediverse are pretty cool and willing to argue stuff reasonably, but the insane people are so loud that’s what you’ll see very often.
This is true. The fediverse is unpleasant in occasionally different ways but is unpleasant. Part of it is human psychology that’s hard to avoid (not that people are trying particularly hard), and then it’s amplified by the demographics here possibly being somehow even worse at the whole “alternate view points” thing than Reddit is - which I seriously would not have thought possible, but here we are.
Maybe if the goal was making “reddit but less fuckfaced”, it was a mistake to settle on the rather shoddy work of a bunch of extraordinarily angry tankies (possibly false flag although it’s hard to separate one kind of dipshit from another kind of dipshit pretending to be the first kind of dipshit), and/or extraordinarily angry whatever else these… people… are - I’m sure spelling it out would be some kind of -ist, and whoo boy - no, sorry, that’s probably sexist, damn. No, sorry, that’s probably religious persecution, shit. No, sorry, ableism again because what if people have colostomies. Oh sorry, “colostomy” is Greek derived so probably also offensive to someone. And suggesting that is probably also possible to frame as offensive somehow, if one really puts one’s alleged mind to it.
Instead of being banned arbitrarily from a sub because some shithead didn’t like you criticizing Trump, you’ll be banned arbitrarily from an entire instances because people are actively hunting for excuses to be offended, trolling, or just wildly out of touch with reality.
“I don’t necessarily think Marxist-Len-” clearly fascist. Banned.“Hey, that’s crazy, man” - banned. That’s ableism, don’t’y’know.
“Some people get tricked into voting against their better int-” can’t even tell what you were referring to, but banned anyway, just in case. Or because voting is fascist, or some other scintillatingly intelligent reasoning.
“Sometimes you can’t get away from Windows-” fascist corporate something or other, banned.
“Sometimes people get offended, or pretend to, and it doesn’t automatically make them righ-” (waiting to see how this one pans out, actually :P)
Getting a break from the (overt) right wingers is jolly nice, actually. The depressing upshot, though, is that it turns out a lot of the psychology is pretty similar anyway. The very people whining the loudest about the Reddit Gestapo get over here and immediately start the Lemmy KGB, but it’s okay because their views are the right ones. Even though one of the main guys is still a blatant transphobic asshole, which is frankly pretty suggestive of something in this bastion of hyper zealous… “tolerance”.
All to enjoy much less and shittier content… maybe it isn’t 100% worth it, which makes the FV’s hysterical self-congratulatory attitude pretty funny. Hooray, we have a deeply flawed and impractical, gimmicky bullshit architecture, thought up by someone who drinks Russian and Chinese and North-Korean (etc) flavor-aid! You even get different excuses when some dipshit abuses the moderation system, woohoo! This is like, the best thing since we ran over those protesters at Tiananmen square!
Theres something called “morally lucky” where they didn’t really think things through that much but just ended up in the “more correct” group anyway. Some more common examples than what you gave would be things like “omg Ben Shapiro is so short what a gnome,” or “trump has a tiny dick lol!!” while saying body shaming is not okay and isn’t ever acceptable.
Also, on Reddit I never had anyone follow me around trying to cause reputational damage by spreading false accusations about me.
Why would you use your real name or reveal any information about you here or on Reddit anyway unless you have to?
I don’t. That’s what makes it even more bizzare. I don’t get what they have to gain from trying to stain an anonymous account.
it feels good
Yeah ive been jumped on hard here for referring to a she as a he when she was referred to as “CEO of x company”.
fwiw i would not assume those are real complaints, it’s wholly possible that those are just bots trying to polarize people.
ITS THE BOTS, its to create divisive in every reddit it goes to, so people will overreact. Also alot niche subs will gatekeep the subject alot.
Lemmy’s lack of bot protection is just laughable.
I’m plenty rude on here, motherfucker
You haven’t been to political communities
Bruh, I’ve been called all sorts of nasty things here. Your experiences are not universal.
You just haven’t found the right counts yet.
Watch this:
Firefox sucks donkey dick.
Actually everyone on Lemmy hates Firefox now because AI
I was also kind of a cunt.
I will take the cuntiness blame here.
yep. and if you point out that firefox AI features are entirely optional and you can turn them off… you get told to go fuck yourself.
or if you recommend another browser, you get told that browser is also awful and shitty and you should go fuck yourself for suggesting it. ALSO YOU ARE CLEARLY A NAZI FOR NOT THE SAME LINUX DISTRO AND BROWSER THAT I DO.
because I am fighting facism by using Debian and Librewolf!!! And if you aren’t too then you are on the side of the fascists!
Bootlicker
🤓
I was the cunt. Took a stressful day out on Yall amazing people.
WELL I THINK YOUR BROWSER LIKES TO FELATIATE BIRDS!!
… YEAH! it sucks cloaca. How do you feel about THAT‽
WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT FIREFOX???
I WILL KILL YOU!!!
Other commenters have made really good points (like the one about us self-selecting to be here after leaving more toxic social media, or the one about engagement algorithms on Reddit encouraging hostility.)
As a smaller site, each of us holds more sway in building what this community is. There are definitely people here that see that and want to continue fostering a more positive experience. A lot of users here have interests in science, especially computer science, and a lot of users come from around the world. Both of these create a space that encourages rationality more than US-based popular social media (like Reddit.) Logical fallacies are called out for what they are, and plenty of people here are of the mindset that pointless drama isn’t worth engaging with. It’s not absolute, no, but compared to Reddit? It’s like another planet.
I definitely feel the vibe of old school computer forums. Small communities where people remember each other’s usernames and backstories encourage us to find common ground. Reddit’s near-anonymity has the downsides of any large-scale online anonymity - people can get mean because they don’t recognize the humanity of whoever’s on the other end of the argument. Here, we are still somewhat anonymous, but you run across some of the same names over and again. Like a small town where people all know each other, you end up more accountable for your shit-stirring because you’ll encounter the same people more frequently.
Oh, and one last point, the average age here is higher than Reddit. IIRC we’re mostly in our 30s. Age and maturity may hold sway in our behavior here as well.
Idk man, the first comment I made here got assaulted with hatred. It’s been fine since then but it definitely had me worried.
I have been on here 2 years. First 1.5 years it was pretty fun.
Now I barely go by 3 days without someone telling me how shitty and awful I am for having a different opinion than them, or that I’m boomer because think AI doesn’t belong in the classroom.
Your opinion is different than mine. Fuck off, shitty boomer!
;-)
The novelty wore off, now this place is just as much an echo chamber as any other dank corner of the internet lol.
there are still some pretty cool posts with interesting comments, a lot more than reddit.
but there as it grows there are more and more stupid people who are just here to be angry and hateful, who think anyone who doesn’t agree with their biased agendas is hateful and angry and who just sling personal attacks at other commenters. because they aren’t interested in the issues at hand or discussion of them, they are just interested in feeling superior to the ‘enemy’. and their post histories are usually quote pointed in regurgitating whatever grievances they have, like thinking everyone who doesn’t agree with them 100% is a Nazi, and deserve to be subjected to violence…
my first sitewide ban from reddit was 5 years ago and it was because I have an outdoor cat, and the ‘cats must always been indoors’ nutbags reported me for promoting animal abuse. was a real wakeup call to how incredibly toxic people can be over other people being different than them and how willing they are to use violence and harassment to silence others… over a difference of animal care choices. God, I own a dog now and I have had ‘raw food only’ idiots lecture me how I’m abusing my dog for feeding her regular dog food… and then they go on and on about if you can’t spend $500/mo on BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) you shouldn’t’ be allowed to have a dog…
to me it feels like the idiot nutbags I knew in college who would come into the cafeteria and scream about how they were on hunger strike and if you weren’t too you were evil, are now literally everywhere.
It’s because that is the end game of upvote/downvote communities.
All is them become whatever gets engagement. Enjoy lemmy while it’s good, but if we get big it will only be a few years until we are the same.
bingo.
already the ‘news’ communities are lemmy are full of shitty articles with misleading headlines and most of the comments never read the article. they are just ragebait being raged at, and when someone calls it out, they often get downvoted heavily by the rage addicts who just want to be angry at editorialized bullshit headlines.
and those threads have way more activity than articles that are more modest and truthful about their content. because that doesn’t illicit strong emotional reaction from the readers or play into their biases.
and often the people who post this stupid crap, go into the comments and just insult and harass the commentators that don’t agree with the raw emotional content being pushed. and if you look at their post history, they are spamming inflammatory bullshit all day. they are rage-addicts trying to promote outrage and enraged that others aren’t as outraged as they are.
