Is it just me, or have the comments on Lemmy become extra aggressive over the past 3 months?

I feel like things on Lemmy were pretty chill several months ago, and that’s started to change.

People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor. Now I get the sense that people have become quick to be negative, attack, and not be constructive.

Am I crazy in feeling like the vibe has changed?

Balinares ,

Yeah, definitely the vibe has changed. It's kind of sad.

TexMexBazooka ,

Hexbear federated

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

sicko-yes

ProdigalFrog ,
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net avatar

At least in the communities I'm subscribed to and interact with, I've still seen it mostly be positive interactions.

Omega_Haxors ,

It's been my experience that it's a couple problem instances where most of the toxicity comes from.

Fudoshin ,
@Fudoshin@feddit.uk avatar

Lemmy.ml users are the worst by a long shot. I hear they're mutants who live underground!

Omega_Haxors ,

Well i'm here to put the allegations to rest: I do in fact live above ground.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/4c941c88-54c8-4107-bad1-d76e105123c9.jpeg

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Which ones, if you don't mind me asking?

Omega_Haxors ,

  • Hexbear: Similar to lemmygrad they have their strong convictions, but don't have the maturity to back it up.

  • LemmyWorld: Users are a mixed bag but the admins seem dead set on turning the place into a nazi bar.

  • sh.itholefor.nazis: The only thing you need to know about these guys is they have a c/ for conservatives

  • feddit de: Literally every user on this instance is dead set on reminding you that Germany never underwent denazification

  • discusstchncs de: same story but to a much less extreme extent

TheAnonymouseJoker ,

From my experience I think tchncs.de is fine, and lemm.ee is a victim of large userbase. You have few iffy people on slrpnk and sopuli at times, but things like that are best ignored.

As long as the political takes do not start to become obviously stupid or have evil moral intent, a basic level of the hot takes should just be ignored. One needs to tolerate a bit of this stuff just for mental exercise and to "know the enemy".

Omega_Haxors ,

I still remember that clash I had with an ecofash on slrpnk. Thankfully they were quickly taken care of but even some of the gold star instances can have problem users from time to time.

exocrinous ,

Remember that time the World admins removed the rules against discrimination from their terms of service and got rid of the code of conduct? Racism was legal for a while there.

.ee is my favourite instance because I trust the average user more than the average admin.

Omega_Haxors ,

To be fair anything is a step up over LW's antimoderation. They wanted to be reddit and I think they succeeded in the worst way.

sunaurus ,
@sunaurus@lemm.ee avatar

lemm ee: The owners don’t really moderate and its users reflect this fact. Universally unpleasant userbase.

This is categorically untrue. You can find our administration policy here, and we frequently ban users for breaking our instance rules. At most you could make the claim that we are lenient when it comes to things like heated arguments, as we often give warnings or temporary bans to users in such cases, but on the other hand, our "no bigotry" rule is very strict, and violations have consistently resulted in permanent bans.

We of course don't screen all posts and comments which our users write, so we can only respond to reports, but I assure you that our admin team is constantly going over and responding to the report queue (which is a big effort, and clearly a thankless job).

By the way, I just want to point out that we have ~3000 active monthly users on lemm.ee, I find it very unlikely that you can make an accurate universal judgement about such a huge group of people.

Omega_Haxors ,

That's what the owners of feddit de said too and it didn't stop their users from constantly leaving harassing messages on anything left of hitler. In fact, it was one of your members leaving a shitty comment that spurred me to add ee to the list, it wasn't even included initially.

EDIT: You do realize that modlogs are public right? I went through them and was less than impressed with what I saw. It seems your idea of "moderation" is to remove when people call you on your shit, which is especially convenient that someone just so happened to call out that your conservative c/ (why is there a conservative c/!?!) is being run by an actual pedo. So yeah, sums up what I expected from you guys.

sunaurus ,
@sunaurus@lemm.ee avatar

I am not really interested in discussing this with you, as you already have an opinion about lemm.ee and seem intent on spreading false rumors about us. I've learned several months ago that no matter how much you give to people for free, there will always be users demanding more, so I don't think there is any chance of you being interested in what I have to say. I am just responding here, so other users who may end up reading this thread don't come away with the impression that what you are saying is true.

First of all, no user has ever been banned from lemm.ee for criticizing the admin team. Our admins have banned nearly a thousand users in the past ~7 months (just think about that for a second - that is a massive amount of bullshit our volunteer admins have had to wade through in the span of less than a year), and indeed the mod log is public, so you can easily check the ban reasons, which are consistently related to violations of our basic instance rules.

If any moderation team on any of our communities does not follow our instance rules, then such communities are closed. We have in fact had to do this several times before with some conservative-type communities, mainly because they wanted to push the ideas that some people, based on their identities, are less valuable as humans that others. The current conservative community on the other hand is consistently moderating based on our instance rules, and they have incorporated the no bigotry rule into their community rules as well. If this ever changes, then we will take action, just as we have done previously.

Regarding the allegations against one of the mods, I'm not sure if you've seen the event they were referencing, but I think it's safe to say that this event was extremely misrepresented by the accuser. In any real cases of CSAM, lemm.ee has taken drastic actions. We have purged, banned, defederated, reported to authorities, we have implemented some technical safeguards, and we will continue to take action like this in the future as well.

Let me just finish off by saying that we are a volunteer team giving up our time for free. I realize that users want admins to be perfect and moderate exactly in line with their preferences, but we are humans, we miss things, we make mistakes, and we can not possibly be available 24/7 or read every single piece of content posted by other lemm.ee users.

Omega_Haxors ,

Letting it get just bad enough that it doesn't cause problems for you isn't how anyone should moderate. You have to be proactive and get rid of problem users before it gets to that point, make it clear that isn't welcome, which is something your instance has routinely failed to do.

Also for the record I know that you're full of shit when it comes to the owner of conservative c/ not being a pedo because conservativism is at its core a pedo ideology, just like all right-wing ideologies; it always comes back to child abuse with those types. CSAM attacks don't happen in a vacuum, they happen when you foster the kinds of people who are into that shit and you make them feel welcome, which is exactly what your "we're going to do the bare minimum of moderating" is attracting.

I've already made it clear that i'm not going to fold to any of your tricks, and you've made it clear you're aware you're wasting your time on me, so why you even bothered to besmirch your reputation by even engaging in the first place is beyond me, but definitely speaks to the lack of experience and borderline negligence that you carry about. I sincerely hope shit gets better for you and the mod team and hopefully an actually competent moderation policy can go a great step in ensuring you never have to deal with more attacks going forward, because that shit fucking sucks and nobody should have to go through it. I hope whoever did it is rotting in a jail cell and that's coming from a prison abolitionist.

Oh and BTW just going forward, don't tell someone whose complaining about your instance members being harassing little shits "nuh-uh disinformation" unless you're prepared to get a fatal dose of all that fermented spite unleashed right into your face. Making it about you is the single worse thing you can do in that case and really tells everyone in the room where your priorities are.

EDIT: and there go the downvotes, well I think that's a good of a place as any to cut the thread.

areyouevenreal ,

You think being a conservative is a pedo ideology? Are you serious? Wow.

Omega_Haxors ,

Party of lowering the age of consent.

areyouevenreal ,

Which country is this?

Omega_Haxors ,

All of them, really. Conservatism has its roots in upholding systems of oppression and child abuse.

areyouevenreal ,

Definitely has roots in systems of oppression because conservatism by definition supports the current system which is oppressive. The latter part you are gonna have to prove.

Omega_Haxors ,

Conservatism doesn't support the current system which happens to be oppressive, they support the current system because it's oppressive. The original Conservatives formed because they wanted to defend the monarchy, which was a system of oppression which makes even capitalism look tame by comparison. The only reason they jumped ship is because socialism became the greater threat.

As for the ties to child abuse that's a case of just look at the connections and the people they choose to align with.

KrasMazov ,
@KrasMazov@lemmygrad.ml avatar

I'm only gonna comment on Hexbear and you're completely wrong. They do have less patience with libs comming there saying shit, but everytime that happens, there's always people actually engaging and backing up all of their claims. It's not only dunking.

WanderingVentra ,

It's usually buried under the dunking but I think that's because hexbear doesn't have up and down votes, so they have to comment to make their opinion known. It leads to a lot of annoying brigading looking behavior on comments, but at least their good comments tend to be pretty good. Sometimes it's not worth digging through all the sarcasm, pig poop balls, and picture posts to find it, though lol.

ProdigalFrog ,
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net avatar

If you're talking about the two that I think you are, I agree. I suspect my pleasant experience is due to my instance defederating completely with those, which is pretty swank.

TheAnonymouseJoker ,

Reddit exodus effects. Reddit did not have the best kind of people on the internet. It just has had a bit more tamed 4channers.

Also, it is way too clear how there is political animosity that practically threatens real lives of non-white people, or ruins their job/career lives, in the current situation that went from Ukraine side picking to Israel apartheid support vs opposition. All this as we came from COVID pandemic, horrific mental health and fucked up socialising abilities.

Omega_Haxors ,

Lemmy is one of those places where you're expected to be kind, but not necessarily expected to apply that to neo-nazis like on Reddit.

Ilovethebomb ,

What's funny about this is .ml is one of the nastiest, most toxic instances out there.

OurToothbrush ,

Nah, most of the extreme racism or genocide denial/advocation I moderate comes from lemmy.world and shitholefornazis. .ml users are generally tame, especially the old hats.

mortrek ,

Aggressive yes, and more people deliberately misinterpreting what you say just to feel smug. Also people that don't understand that a Lemmy comment can't have the exhaustive detail and context of a Wikipedia article, and they take any omission of such in a comment as ignorance by the op.

Omega_Haxors ,

A couple days ago someone was trying to debatebro me I told them to eff off and that I wasn't going to humor their bad-faith ass.

Was expecting to get hate for it but instead woke up to 20 votes on the comment. It's awesome.

zelifcam ,

It's true that when lots of people join a place online, things can change. What I'm really noticing is that a lot of posts are just trying to get attention. They ask questions or say things that are pretty obvious.

It's normal for places online to change as they get bigger, but it's kind of sad to see so many posts that aren't really about sharing cool ideas or having real conversations. Kinda like this one.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

I honestly don't feel much has changed. There was perhaps a bit of a "new" feeling in the start and some excitement about the project, but I don't think people have gotten more aggressive or anything.

But I think all this probably depends what circles you hang out in. Probably also depends on what instances you federate with.

corsicanguppy ,

People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor.

Careful. I'll correct my neighbour's spelling, too . :-)

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

You mean comments like this one?

https://feddit.nl/comment/6215624

Yeah, it's getting worse.

starman2112 ,
@starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

My god. I sit here couching my thinly veiled calls for civil disobedience in "in minecraft" and "this is satire," and here's someone openly calling for a murder. Maybe next time I want to make a joke about billboard burning being a fun pastime for the whole family, I won't be as afraid of getting a visit from the fun police

Kolrami ,

And it's upvoted

HerrBeter ,

I don't think people thought about it too much. But it shouldn't be allowed, even if it's a joke

exocrinous ,

You can just say whatever you want on the internet. Watch this:

People who eat meat are murderers and deserve to be killed. It'll reduce the number of murders overall.

See? It's easy.

dessalines ,
@dessalines@lemmy.ml avatar

We can absolutely do better than reddit on this one. If someone is breaking rule 2 (be respectful), report that comment and we'll get to it as soon as we can.

dylanTheDeveloper ,
@dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world avatar

Are reports anonymous? I don't want to report a user that breaks rules only for the offending user to be friends with an admin and get me kicked from a community as payback

Hubi ,

No, the mods of the community can see who sent the report.

WanderingVentra ,

That can be a good thing, too, to find out if someone is abusing the report feature, as was common on Reddit when people didn't like someone's comment.

dessalines ,
@dessalines@lemmy.ml avatar

Reports are not anonymous, but they also aren't public. Only visible to admins and mods of that community.

It's a tradeoff, anonymous report abuse was a big problem on reddit that I didn't want to replicate here. If the admins or mods aren't trustworthy on your server, you should pry move to another one.

schizoidman ,

I feel the mainstream lemmy instances have attracted the reddit mob mentality where any deviation from the groupthink is treated as radicals or bots.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

I feel like its hit and miss with lemmy. Depending on the topic, your way of thinking and the community, you can either get folks to be agreeable and helpful or get dogpiled on, called names and other childish things.

The internet is still a place where being a jerk has no major consequences so folks may let loose ok someone they deem lesser than themselves, dumb or plain offensive.

IRL this doesn’t break through as much if you‘re no longer in school as most workplaces at least have some restrictions against bullying or mobbing and a lot of peeps have good lawyers these days.

So, from someone who polarizes since being born (not by choice): it’s just circumstances imo.

negativeyoda ,

Strap in. It's an election year

NigelFrobisher ,

Every year is an election year somewhere.

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah but this is an AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR!!!

that's like the super bowl of elections

Sent from my freedom phone motherfucker

nitefox ,
@nitefox@sh.itjust.works avatar

What the fuck is a superbowl

Fur_Fox_Sheikh ,

A really nice owl

nitefox ,
@nitefox@sh.itjust.works avatar

Can I pet it?

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

On a related note. Is there an Android Lemmy app that allows me to view my subs as a homepage? It's only local and all in Voyager.

ji17br ,

I have voyager and I have home, all, and local. Home being my subs. I don’t believe I’ve done anything extra to get the “home” option.

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

Cheers, thanks for the tip. I'll like around and see if it's a pebkac on my end.

ji17br ,

Those ID-10T issues are the worst haha

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

I might as well have support escalate it. Obviously the UX and UI teams aren't overworked enough.

ji17br ,

If you go to settings > General > Default feed do you see home there?

If you visit your instance on a browser do you have a home option?

Maybe for some reason your instance itself doesn’t have a home.

Good luck sorting it out!

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

That's absolutely where it was at. Thanks friend! Now I have a more curated approach and can avoid the stuff that makes me have global warming, totalitarian regime panic attacks. Haha

ji17br ,

Happy to help! Definitely much better for the mental health to avoid all the doom and gloom

vulgarcynic ,
@vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works avatar

Agree completely. I had a well curated feed on Reddit developed over years and years of careful pruning. I miss a ton of those communities and forgot what the open funnel of Internet sewage was like. Even just a few minutes on the front page of any social media network is enough to send me back to books and blogs. Lol

exocrinous ,

Before it was toxic positivity. The veneer has broken down now that people aren't trying their best to bring over reddit refugees, and the ugly underneath is visible.

Drewfro66 ,
@Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml avatar

I know this is a bit account (nothing against you btw I think the bit is great) but honestly this is 100% correct.

Lemmy was nice when it was just FOSS enthusiasts trying to build a better social media. Now new people have joined who are using it for its intended purpose, instead of just trying to roll a snowball.

All of those FOSS enthusiasts have the same horrible opinions and attitudes that everyone else does, once you get them talking about something actually important and contentious rather than their treats and toys.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • asklemmy@lemmy.ml
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •