Just curious, what does “some automation” entail? I thought LLMs could only work with text, like summarize documents and that sort of thing.

Calibre-web Automated is even better

There’s an easy solution to that: I’m pretty sure on Lemmy (not sure about Piefed) admins can see who downvoted. So it’s just a matter of mods/admins having and enforcing rules that facilitate conversation.

Just report it when you see it happening!

duck.com is great and I’ve only ever had a few times where it wasn’t accepted.

I’m not talking about engineering a problem away. I’m saying it can’t be engineered away and requires human adults in the room (moderators in this case) to handle bad behavior.

Accepting the presence of toxicity as a fact of life does nothing more than attract more toxicity.

I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but it sure seems like you’re saying that toxicity can inevitably be found in every little gesture in our daily life, including internet platforms, which is a narrative I disagree with.

People can have a fight on the street, or in a pub, in a shop, at work, or wherever

Pretty much all pubs and shops I know quickly expel and ban people who fight there. If those places allowed fighting (as many internet platforms do) users looking for a fight would eventually gravitate there, and people looking to discuss peacefully will go elsewhere.

Do you really think tech is the issue?

No, I’m saying people are the issue. Toxicity is not something that can be found everywhere, it only pops up where it’s allowed to flourish.

My belief is that toxicity online is like building a six lane highway through a residential neighborhood. If you build the infrastructure to support more cars, and the law allows speeding you’re going to get more cars (and more car accidents).

If you build platforms that don’t allow cars/limit their behavior where people are trying to have a polite conversation, you’ll see quiet more thoughtful modes of transportation and fewer innocent bystanders get hurt.

Wow that analogy worked pretty well.

Beehaw’s admin and mod team is a great example of how strong moderation encourages, not discourages, good conversation.

I’m not positive that you can do much outside of simply (temporarily or permanently) banning people who are acting shitty.

You can also ask that your admins defederate instances where shitty-acting people are allowed to set up shop.

Well fucking said!👏

We really need to grow beyond the idea that blocking is “censorship”. That only (arguably) applies to large centralized platforms. The fediverse allows all voices to speak but it doesn’t force everyone else to listen.

The fediverse gives us huge individual and collective power and we can use it to grow beyond the constraints of the old platforms.

…What’s the different opinion Anakin?

I don’t buy this narrative that toxicity is inevitable. That’s the narrative pushed by Reddit/Xitter/Meta because toxicity causes engagement which makes them rich. They don’t want to delete it. It’s only inevitable if admins allow it to be.

That “rule” don’t apply on Fedi where we can simply join an instance that actively bans all the bs.

And report content you don’t like to your admins!

Block and report. We’re all in this together!

As you said, decentralization is key. Highly active human moderation is the only known solution to keep communities free and tolerant, and human mods have a relatively low limit as to what they can handle without making it a full time job (or burning it out)

The Lemmy network is still centralized enough that many smaller instances make the calculus that it’s better to be federated with the large weakly moderated instances than to lose access to the many small communities on those instances.

But increased decentralization makes more granular defederation possible. A weakly moderated instance can simply be blocked.

I think we’ll get there in time.

Commercial software can outrun open source temporarily but it rarely ever wins the race.

oh hell yeah

I read it twice and it still doesn’t make sense

Yes exactly. Within the MAGA universe loyalty is paramount. What the do looks strange and contradictory to us, but in the universe where one man decides reality, the more you can make that reality a well, reality, the more valuable you are. Even in defeat.

This may be a dumb question but isn’t OTA TV still basically exactly what you describe?