General Discussion

I'm not counting on it staying that way, but that's ok. Upvote systems, dedicated channels, etc, will always promote a type of groupthink but you can always opt out of a community. Like if Lemmy gets it's own r/conservative, or something, I would likely not comment there.

That said, there are definitely malicious actors at play on most mainstream platforms, stoking anger and divisiveness. Even proof that fake news is spread for that exact reason. You won't see that here for a while but if it does come, I'm not sure if this system is setup to protect against it.

Not yet

Don't worry, give it time

Also, there's no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.

Here's why, there's no algorithm to promote certain posts unlike twitter, facebook, youtube etc

Agreed. It’s peaceful for now at least, if the Fediverse becomes a huge mainstream thing; we’ll likely be right back at square one as far as community goes unfortunately. Right now, I guess people are nicer on the Fediverse because a lot of less-tech savy people believe there’s some sort of barrier to entry even when there really isn’t, essentially making the majority of people that join more deliberate in their intent to interact with a community as opposed to people on Reddit who might sign up just to insult everyone because in their mind, it’s just that simple.

The big advantage that the Fediverse has is that due to its decentralization, instances can govern their own communities in all sorts of unique ways.

So if the Fediverse ever becomes as big as Reddit and we end up with a bunch of trolls and toxic people; there could be your general public instances, but I imagine there would be more exclusive servers where the only way you could get in is perhaps by some sort of vetting that ensures you’ll be a good internet citizen so to speak; that could be anything from proving you have a good track record on public instances to downright having instances that aren’t meant to be interacted with anonymously such as small town communities and professional networking where you just get vetted with your identity.

It opens up a whole new variety of possibilities that would’ve been so much more difficult with Reddit; especially with everything being at the discretion of a single entity; with the Fediverse. It’ll be ran by many different people hopefully and we won’t face those same problems :)

Agreed, on other platforms, as a generic trans girl, just existing there was call to action to yell at anything and everything I said or did or anything. I had boost when I was on Reddit and my filter of people and subreddits was extreme because of the hate they had.

I only had to block sp*ders because of a extreme fear. Feels nice here.

Just don't say anything bad about the Fediverse (or anything good about Meta/Threads). That's when the toxicity with appear. That's what I've noticed, at least.

So far. One the nob ends find a way in it'll not be as friendly, that's why blocking them and their instances promptly is important. I saw something on blocklists the other day and will look into that. I may be totally wrong, but to me it sounds like the filters we'd use in uBlock Origin or similar. Sounds good to me.

Reddit used to be like that too, but those people gravitate to the community eventually. I think best we can do is recognize the behaviour early and down vote it on sight.

I agree in general, however they are here as well. Already experienced it myself. Those types will never go away completely.

Yeah I've definitely found my voice here on Lemmy... And it might be for this reason.

I hope it can stay like this......ofc it won't. But I hope.

Ive encountered a few, and i think had a post deleted. Sure it was kinda low effort but i learned that old plates had lead on them so i shared. And some jesse dude got offended by it being low quality fear mongering even though its a fact the plate have lead paint. Kinda puts me off the TiL here.

I've been telling all my friends this feels like the old internet, like early 2000s. It's been great.

I'm hoping at least some younger folks are around so they can experience something they might not have before.

I just hate how “toxic cesspool” is the default. I was just watching a short video on YouTube about the US city of Baltimore, a place I heard about from an old family friend who studied at Hopkins many years ago.

The video was about the city’s decline, with the primary cause (according to the video) being the hollowing out of the manufacturing and logistics industries. The channel, Forgotten Places, doesn’t strike me as one that toxic people would be flooding to (those channels exist).

Can you guess what every other comment is about? Hint: it’s not the abandonment of productive industry. A small number of comments name more historical industrial employers that have left the city, but by far the comments with the most upvotes are “we all know we can’t discuss what happened to Baltimore 😉😉😉😉😉”

I'm surprised of how many replies I have had to my own replies with people actually adding to the conversation and being polite. On reddit I barely got any response and most of it was tangential to the subject at best.

Exactly the same here! I lurked on Reddit for yeeears (like, the pre Pao days). I made one post in a very specialized sub, and three general comments elsewhere. The post went well, I got a quick answer but it really could have been an e-mail or forum post. The general comments were absolute DUMPSTER FIRES, and so I never did engage or contribute.

Lemmy has been so different, the community is smaller, but every post interaction I've had it feels like the folks I am engaging with read what I wrote and are making a good faith effort.

After the last ten years of social media, it's a little... weird. But good weird. "Oh, this is what it's supposed to be like."

Not yet. I am working on, it give it time.