this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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I literally just got called a snowflake in another thread for saying people should stop posting US politics in general communities. People still wonder why Lemmy has a bad reputation even in the entire Fediverse... Sometimes I wonder why I still bother here.
I don't disagree it's an issue, but what should be allowed in general communities? If any other nation's politics are allowed, then you can't really just not allow US politics (unless you make that a rule for the community and part of its purpose, which is fine).
There are just more Americans here than any particular other nationality, so you get more US content on average. You'll need specific non-US communities if you want to avoid it. Expecting general communities to not reflect the general audience is a little absurd.
It’s what’s turned me off this entire time. Everything is replied to with someone virtue signaling.
Someone called you a snowflake? Ok....uh, I'll call you a carrot.
But also, I don't understand the rules for this game. It's a snowman game, right?
Yeah, that's definitely a shame. Let's see how it goes, but I'm about to create a !usdefaultism somewhere just to list those occurrences
2024
Yoink
Grabbing that for future reference. That's the stats from 2024? Is there like a link to the actual source? Significantly more US-centered then I thought, especially since one would assume the numbers were even more skewed 5-10 years ago.
Lemmy is much more weighted towards an international userbase in my experience, which can be frustrating for the American audience at times, but also has its benefits.
Doesn't seem like a super reliable source. I just grabbed the first result I googled.
I got it from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1bg323c/oc_reddit_traffic_by_country_2024/
It lists worldpopulationreview.com on the image.
There this statista link which has similar numbers and sounds more detailed, but still doesn't have sources available. Google's AI points to statista.
So nothing definitive. But I certainly expect that most users are from the US.
You inspired me to do a bit more digging. I found the page on world population review.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/reddit-users-by-country
Which lists this site as the true source. Looks pretty legit to me. Seems to be a paid service.
https://www.semrush.com/website/reddit.com/overview/
They've got US traffic listed around 51% for December 2024, so it's actually gone up significantly compared to the March 2023 figures cited by world population review
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/reddit-traffic-report-march-2023pdf/257621808
Went from 2.32 billion US visits in March 23 to 3.17 billion in December 24, while Indian visitors actually declined significantly in the same period.
Less than half, that actually surprises me. I honestly assume most people I meet online are Yanks.
I could see the numbers being a little different for Lemmy, but I don't expect that they're wildly different.
I guess I am a snowflake too then, bc to me consent should matter. And while the USA is a part of the world, and also has an oversized effect upon it due to the size of the economy and trade deals and the like, it also can be overwhelming for some, who feel ostracized and left out as if only the big guys (and guns) matter.
But on the other hand, it is known that moderation sucks across the vast majority of Lemmy - it's somewhat baked right into the tools themselves, e.g. removing whole posts rather than merely taking them out of the community lists but allowing people to continue their discussions already begun, as Reddit does.
So you may want to take it upon yourself to either start blocking by keywords (maybe find an app that allows that - I'm not sure which ones), or user accounts that do that, or even find a better community to engage with.
Though I agree with your conclusion: I no longer recommend Lemmy to people irl by virtue of having been burned by that far too many times before. We're toxic AF in this Alt-Left (rather than Alt-Right) "Nazi bar" space, and a lot of the people here are legit those banned from Reddit for exactly that behavior.
Moderation isn't ideal, but absent moderators aren't going to moderate even with the best tools
I mean, PieFed has some really cool thoughts about doing exactly that... I'm hoping for a lot there.
As it is, Lemmy is simply a more authoritarian version of Reddit - at the low level I mean, next to the users, who e.g. have no modmail recourse to discuss anything, nor even receive a notification that their content has been removed. Even while it is also open source so allows instance admins greater freedom to implement whatever policies they choose - disabling downvotes for example.
Anyway the more the technology can do the less reliance upon human efforts to moderate. e.g. to facilitate automated community discovery, so that there is lowered barriers to getting away from bad moderators.
PieFed is highly promising, but I wish you didn't feel the need to go overboard with criticizing Lemmy. Calling Lemmy a more authoritarian version of reddit... that's a pretty wild take.
That's like calling tribal societies more authoritarian than Stalinist or fascist states. There's no such thing as low-level authoritarianism, that doesn't make any sense. The users can message the mods directly, and they can go as they wish and do as they please. It's like calling the nuclear family unit authoritarian, it becomes a nonsensical concept when applied to human-scale social organization. It refers to large scale social units such as nations and political parties, not small groups of freely associated individuals like Lemmy.
You're still stuck in the reddit mindset where there isn't anywhere else to go, everything is contained in one closed box controlled by spez. On Lemmy you can go and build your own box, and there are already dozens to choose from that are free and open to join.
I use a bridge to matrix for private messages to the bot accounts, reports for posts for which there are multiple bot accounts on different instances because federation is broken for reports, and new posts to the communities (where the last one was merged just few hours ago). We are also contemplating getting ourselves the functionality to automatically message users when we take action on their post/comment.
It's crazy how far we have to go to make moderating stuff easier/more pleasant to do. I hope lemmy improves in that by a lot at some point.
My another gripe is no ability to detect image reposts because in image heavy communities they're very common and remembering what was posted and when is a massive pita. That would fall under a bot category and not integrated feature (but would be cool if it was deeply integrated into lemmy so situations where it would tell you if it's a repost BEFORE you even post it could be possible) but it's still something that makes it harder to moderate. Same goes for posting to other communities because you need to check if it was posted recently or not if you aren't chronically online to know that already.
I’m also a snowflake, cause it’s also annoying that people assume you’re from USA.
What state are you from?
That did make some sense... at one time, on Reddit or Facebook, but damn times have changed since then. Though teenagers have not :-).
I just got called a rapist! For asking wtf she was wearing, fashion wise. (On a non rape story just to be clear). I also wonder why I'm still here. Y'all need to be better.
Looking at the comments, I can see how your comment got misinterpreted. I do believe you had no such intention, but the way it was worded (especially the last word, 'anyway') makes it sound out of context as if you were victim blaming. And from the number of votes, it's obvious many see it that way. Rather than get mad at randos on the internet, why not just reflect that you might have written that in a somewhat confusing way, and clarify it? Without escalating.
I can see. But if people have a choice to interpret something as 1) that a question about fashion is in fact an innocuous question about fashion, or 2) that he's obviously a rapist and victim blaming and I'm going to call him a rapist (when the entire tone of the thread and community is not serious), the problem that I see is that Lemmy is quick to misinterpret in the worst way possible.
And oddly enough, he was the person to escalate with that accusation, and I was the one to explain it.
Where did someone call you a rapist? Was it removed?
That's on the assumption that the reader sees both possible meanings, though. Most people don't do that, the first meaning that comes to mind is the one we go with. It's a very rare person that will, without external prompting, go 'I wonder if he meant something else?'.
From his POV, you had already escalated. Yeah it was due to his misunderstanding. But at that point you were the one with a choice as to whether to nicely explain your actual original meaning, (and maybe edit the confusing line?) or just rage about everybody on Lemmy being quick to assume the worst. Nobody's the asshole here, it was a misunderstanding, but you could have chosen to make it better :)
If someone can't see what the literal words say then... there are bigger problems. Which may actually explain things.
It's odd that you think I raged. I observed.
Yeah as expected I went and checked the comment in question and you are definitely misrepresenting it. You are omitting the context of the post, which is like…the entire fucking problem.
The amount of times I see people go “I was banned for literally no reason!” and the like only to discover they’re not being exactly truthful is staggering.
TbF I've seen plenty of wildly inappropriate bans on Lemmy too.
No one said they never happen 🤷♂️
The context of the post: 196 which is essentially a shit posting and take nothing serious community. Yeah that context. And that it was a straight question about what she was wearing, fashion wise since you really need to hear it. So thank you for demonstrating the exact problem!
You know I just read an interesting piece about how Musk deploys plausible deniability - or rather attempts to. He thinks he’s clever and he isn’t.
I know what 196 is. The context is the image. You really can’t see any reason why you got that reaction? Really and truly?
Reaction? If you see a simple question in a shitposting community, with the image of a fashion choice that is unconventional, and think "Hmm should I interpret this as a question about fashion as he asked, or should I interpret this as he's a rapist and trying to be clever about it", if you default to thinking that the other person is obviously a rapist (as you seem to have, saying that I'm seeking plausible deniability and try to associate me with Musk and trying to be clever with rape lol), then holy fuck, and frankly that's on you. That was your reaction. Like you have to really out there to default to "he's obviously a rapist". You need to be better.
Honestly this is the perfect example of how Lemmy has a ravenous need to misinterpret. You just did it yourself.
This is such a reach dude. Also her outfit is far from “unconventional.“ But I’m not gonna get bogged down in the weeds of that one.
I remember somebody tried to talk to me recently about the economics of the third Reich without talking about the war. At some point you’re just ignoring what’s in front of you to the point where it’s dishonest.
You’re having a very real principal Skinner moment here. A lot of people are telling you the issue, yet you are hell bent on hiding behind intention. Unfortunately intention is not enough. Especially when you double down in the face of valid critiques.
I know you don’t want advice from me but I’m going to give it anyway: take a beat, step away from this conversation, then come back and think about why people may have had a negative reaction to what you said. There is an important lesson here you can pick up if you want to.
It's a reach that something can be interpreted as it was stated?
I can retrospect. Hopefully you can too because I'm going to hold up the mirror. All of the following is your thinly veiled actions (plausible deniability anyone?).
First, thinly veiled, you likened me stating people misinterpreted my question to how people are banned typically after really going off on mods. Whether you agree or not on people misinterpreting a question, those things are miles apart. Second, you, thinly veiled again, likened me to Musk. Do I need to explain the negativity of that association? Third, you, again thinly veiled, essentially said I was covering making rapist comments by trying to have plausible deniability. Fourth, you, again thinly veiled, essentially said I was covering making rapist comments by saying I was trying to be clever about it. And the doozy, fifth. Again thinly veiled, you liken me to people talking about the third Reich. Like wow. If that Nazi connotation from Elon wasn't enough, you really pulled out a doozy there. That is a crystal clear pattern of you attacking people by likening them to other people. All thinly veiled connotations so that you can later say you didn't actually make the connection (you know, plausible deniability). Or maybe you were doing it so that if I said anything, you could say "are you interpreting differently??" like a gotcha. I could explain that one too, maybe next time.
You took every chance you could to provoke, slap, and escalate. You are no longer trying to have a conversation when try to liken someone to Nazis, you just want to slap. Don't worry I'm not provoked. I just urge you to think about that.
And inb4 misreading I'm saying this not because I'm provoked or mad, I'm saying this because your pattern is clear. You want me to reflect, and I want you to reflect.
You were just joking around, right? Well, perhaps they were too. If you want it assumed about you, perhaps go ahead and assume it about then. That way, even if the former does not happen, at least you will definitely have the moral high ground regardless. Now, what was it that Obi Wan always says about the high ground...? :-P
LOL no I wasn't joking around (about rape or anything else). It was a legit, straightforward question about fashion. And no he wasn't joking, it was a pretty clear accusation.
I'm so confused.
This place just needs better moderation. I've said this multiple times before but there is a serious lack of moderation and most admins go dark for long periods of time. Make it clear this behavior isn't okay, ban people who run their mouth, and remove low-effort posts.
I personally have seen much worse overmoderation than undermoderation.
Strong agree. Maybe we should start calling out communities with inactive mods. Like a spring cleaning of communities.
Could be a pretty easy flag to be displayed on any community. Basically last time the mod logged in or was active (should be available).