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 _____.”
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.
I’m not sure why people are so intent on excusing reddit with “oh people are just inherently mean” or “it’s because there’s a large userbase”…
No it’s because most of the “people” on reddit are bots lol, it’s the same as all the big platforms. It’s just a fuckload of bots trying to make people as angry at each other as possible, because that drives more engagement and politically benefits the people running the bots and who own the platforms.
(and part of it is just that more “”““users””“” means you can brag to advertisers and get more money).People who aren’t angry and aren’t made to think everyone is a miserable shithead might do horrifying things like “become friends” and “help each other”.
Or truly horrifyingly they might talk to each other and be convinced that rich people kinda suck actually, and we should do something about that, like stop using platforms owned by rich people.Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
Shitty people feel big by making others feel small.
Lots of people are shitty. Here and on reddit. And easy way to attack people is over typos and grammar.
I’m plenty rude on here, motherfucker
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.
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
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!
I was also kind of a cunt.
I will take the cuntiness blame here.
WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT FIREFOX???
I WILL KILL YOU!!!
WELL I THINK YOUR BROWSER LIKES TO FELATIATE BIRDS!!
… YEAH! it sucks cloaca. How do you feel about THAT‽
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🤓
I was the cunt. Took a stressful day out on Yall amazing people.
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.
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.
Your opinion is different than mine. Fuck off, shitty boomer!
;-)
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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.
Sadly i think thats just people. Ive also seen it on smaller places like here on lemmy
I think it has to do with community size. Even on reddit, the smaller and more insular communities are much more pleasant than the frontpage ones.
I totally feel this among small communities too. If you’re gonna be scathing and demeaning in a small community, you’re gonna run out of people to talk to real fast
yep the smaller subs feel like a whole different website. The main pages have so much political doom and rage bait in my experience.
I found that you get the biggest upvote response when you are either edgy or more black and white takes. Medium takes may be both more correct and nicer overall, but they don’t get the most engagement. I would find that after I had a “big comment” that did well, I would make edgier comments for a while after, chasing that high.
That’s not so much a problem here since a thread doesn’t have thousands and thousands of comments or is flights against for attention. Typically I read all the comments on a Lemmy post. Doing the same on Reddit would both suck away my time and my soul, haha.
When a small subreddits suddenly made it to front page (or I guess it’s /r/all now? Idk I hate new reddit), good luck to the mods
This has been my experience. Plenty if small subreddits I’ve perused where when they were small, they’re all politle (whether in humor, serious discussion, or sharing hobbies). In time as they grew it just brings in more and more uh, typical redditors. Thats when you knew either abandon ship and make /r/true[subject] or just cut it out.
I’m pretty sure the ratio of rude people in the entire user base isn’t the same when comparing the two platforms, so that plays a role too. However, I think it’s mostly a numbers game. Even if that ratio was the same, a bigger platform automatically means that you’re going to bump into a lot of rude people there. Think of it like this: If the ratio is just just 1%, that’s 1 in a small place and 100 in a big one.
On top of that, people tend to remember negative encounters very well. Even if you got only 1 nasty comment, it’s going to sting. If you got 100 comments like that, you’ll feel like the whole world is out there to get you. The human mind has this strange bias towards negative reactions.
Not disagreeing with the other comments here but I’d add that hostility breeds engagement, and for sites like Reddit, engagement equals more time spent on the site and more opportunities to serve ads.
Whether intentional or not, the algorithms push more aggressive/rude/hurtful comments to the top. Reddits business is making money off you while lemmy is just there. I expect that accounts for some of what you see
