I have accounts on various Reddit alternatives and have also had accounts on now-defunct sites. However, none have exhibited the same level of negativity as Lemmy.
Huh. Maybe it’s the communities/posts I’ve visited but I wouldn’t agree with your assessment of an inherent negativity/hatefulness. Do you have examples we can discuss?
I agree, Lemmy doesn’t feel especially negative to me. That said, I use the Subscribed view instead of All, so I guess it’s just about curation.
I also immediately block users who are obviously just trying to wind people up.
This post as an example?
There is for sure great comments, but then there is the rest of lemmy.
But… It’s your post taking about negativity, so you’re saying your post about negativity on Lemmy is evidence of negativity on Lemmy? Or the fact the current vote count is negative?
Read the comments and tell me, is it postive or negative or netural And compare it with any reddit alternative general vibe.
You will come to the same conclusion.
Also, here is a second example: https://lemm.ee/post/30511698
If you’re referring to the comments as your example, you should link to the specific comments which you consider hateful or negative.
I don’t find this post’s comment section to be hateful and negative. What comments are you referring to?
Fuck you I am full of love
Oh fuck off, Im way more loving than you dipshit.
Both of you are idiots, I’ve been a caring and empathetic person my entire life!
People on Lemmy have bailed from Reddit because they have principles. Stuff like Linux. The value of science/education. Lefty-ism (or whatever it’s called in their region). FOSS. They are willing to cut themselves out from a larger community to foster one that is compatible with their principles.
From your comment history you seem to be posting stuff outside of Lemmy’s core beliefs. That’s great! But the people here really believe in those principles, so they react negatively to the comments.
I dunno what else to say. If we want Lemmy to be viable, we need to allow people with other views build communities here. We feel pretty close to a monoculture at the moment.
I hadn’t really noticed that Lemmy is any more or less negative than Reddit used to be. I have noticed that most people on here are a lot more polite aside from the occasional trolls. Maybe the negativity is more of a trend in the specific communities you’re visiting?
I’ve seen very little negativity on Lemmy in almost a year of using it.
Ignoring all the pro genocide posts I guess
I’ve seen the same thing and I think it’s a conversation we need to have.
I think it’s because Lemmy is populated by people who did not like Reddits changes. We are malcontents by definition, and holy cow does it show. And of course all the people that have had their Reddit accounts banned too.
I think everyone needs to take their tone down quite a few notches.
I also feel it’s something that should be examined before too much more time goes by, as it was not like it is now right after The Day the API Died.
Everyone was very polite in a way I haven’t seen since before everyone had useful Internet on their phone.
But it didn’t take long to change. There was a small but vocal group that hated in Beehaw constantly for wanting to keep their space polite. There was another bunch that seemed offended that nobody was swearing and started to encourage it.
Just more and more things like that have crept in over the months. I get why mods have wanted to avoid the criticism of harsh Reddit modding, but Lemmy seems to have accepted that only being 3/4 as rude as we put up with in Reddit is still good enough.
As someone dedicated to carving out a hospitable and relaxing community for everyone here, it concerns me that there does not seem to be much curation of how Lemmy is growing.
We are technically decentralized, but certain groups are essentially operating out of specific servers. Much like the growth of real world communities, people come to where the action is and those servers will be the de facto Lemmy community which will spread our reputation.
I think World, ML, and other significant servers should start to actively take a stance on who we want to be. We can still welcome strong and dissenting opinions , but there isn’t a need to treat each other poorly. Anywhere you’d go in person has varying rules of decorum, and I wouldn’t mind seeing that take effect here.
It needn’t be rigid or all at once, but we can work toward something we feel comfortable with as a collective user base and decide when to stop or roll back.
I just don’t want to see the group of us as a whole turn into what we just left is all. I feel that would be a shame to squander what we’ve spent the last year building up.
100% agree. Disabling downvotes might be a good idea, since it removes one psychological hammer we can use against each other.
If what you are describing is the case, then why none of the alternatives have the same level of negativity?
What alternatives are you using? I’ve only tried Lemmy after Reddit. I don’t find it overly negative here either btw, but I’m interested to compare.
Discuit.
They might not have the volume of users that grants some level of peer protection. Lemmy is big enough for the biggest asshats to find likeminded individuals, while other sites are struggling to reach anything remotely close to critical mass, so individuals stand out more and might hold back.
Or they all belong to a certain subgroup or subculture already, which makes it more harmonious.
Maybe the existing user base? (before the reddit exodus.) It was hardcore left, and now that their echo chamber is being opened and challenged they don’t like the new discussions. And being so used to the old ways they think they can continue bashing progressive as not progressive enough.
Can you link to examples?
I haven’t found that at all. I have blocked a handful of communities, but most of them weren’t particularly negative, just stuff I didn’t want to see.
My previous experience is reddit, and I’ve found Lemmy to be far more positive, with exceptions.
Interactions with mods here are far less demanding and nitpicky. It’s more like interaction and less like being told off.
Interactions with other users vary, but I’d say it is a net positive experience here. On reddit, other users were a net negative.
The exception is the reaction when you disagree with the consensus built up between a post and its comments. Whether it’s reddit or Lemmy, you’re going to have a bad time.
Removed by mod
Exhibit A. Calling people assholes is exactly what OP is talking about. You ramped up the negativity.
I mean, ops comment history is there for the reading.
What is wrong about my comment history?
You have a tendency to get into protracted arguments that revolve almost entirely around semantics.
Classic reddit
I didn’t call them an asshole. I was evoking the asshole rule with regards to the negativity he’s seeing everywhere.
No, you called him an asshole. You’re trying a song and dance to do it, but you did. That’s the exact behavior that’s the problem.
The whole point of the fediverse is that you can do it yourself if you don’t like the way existing instances operate.
But here it seems you’re not interested in putting forth any effort at all: https://lemm.ee/comment/11445877
If you want to join someone else’s community, expect to have to abide by their rules. You wanna make the rules, put in the effort to make your own community. Nobody’s forcing you to be here. Bye now, don’t let my block hit you on the way out.
It’s always a laugh to see users like this. Nothing like joining an established group and then whinging about how “toxic” it is when they get rebuffed for repeatedly breaking the given rules.
What rule did I break ?
Rule 3. Thou shalt not post thy IQ on the internet.
The guy who scored 167 at IQ test when he was a kid? Sadly logic does not follow emotion. If you want to argue back, then you need reason to be on your side.
Rule 26, If thou criticize communism thou needeth to do more then just question it.
Can you give me examples of socialism working?
Can you name at least one socialist nation that seek equity?
I’m just as guilty of this as the next person sometimes, it sometimes seems like a struggle not to be your worst self online. I’m trying to be better, I think that’s what we can do to combat it.
Personally id argue that i have experienced the most toxic behaviour by the mods of some communities. Overall i wouldn’t say that Lemmy is more or less toxic than the rest of the internet or even that the mods are stricter. I’ve just gotten a few comment removals by communities that i never visit but that ended on my feed and i commented on something.
I find Lemmy to be about on par with the popular (Front Page) Reddit subs. I tended to stay in smaller, more niche subs than Front Page subs and found them to be more polite and well-written, generally.
Lemmy isn’t so bad, but we do clearly get some people who are here because they were banned from Reddit (and sometimes for immediately apparent reasons).
I think there’s far more negativity in the comments of YouTube, Instagram, and especially Facebook.
But more than anything, I’ve seen more posts about negativity on Lemmy. So to me, it almost seems like the people coming to (or on?) Lemmy are more sensitive to negativity, maybe?
Hatred drives engagement on any and all social media. Even ones where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
It doesn’t seem that way to me. What specifically are you seeing that gives you that impression?
I worry that merely accepting this as presupposed fact will make it more likely to become fact.