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?
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”.
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.
Give it 2-3 more months, and we will have a better consensus on how Lemmy will stay for a while. I think the most important part has been solved, that being Lemmy becoming a defacto valid, sane, non-conspiratorial and non-fascist alternative to Reddit that does not need to act like a “safe space”, retaining some open discourse qualities.
In all honesty, I do not want the whole Lemmy to become a singular 100% leftist echo chamber entity, but have instances that also broadly cover the spectrum outside of rightwing lunacy. Richer discussions allow for bidirectional flow of ideas, and it is pretty much established that people eventually start to like too many leftist ideas, even if not all. I have worked for 3 years to help refine and grow Lemmy, and the more established it becomes as anti-capitalist/corporation Reddit alternative, the lesser those shithole Reddit clones and private spaces get to grow (ones where rightwing, Western nationalist, anti-LGBT, pedophilic and hateful elitist LARPer narratives flourish the most). Private spaces should be for personal and sensitive conversations, confidential stuff, or people like activists, dissidents and professionals.
I’m extremely confident that at the very minimum Lemmy will be a nice little hangout spot, but it’s seeming like it’s going to be far more than that from what i’ve seen so far. It really is unique in that different types of shittiness is isolated within instances which means people will converge where they should be and problem groups will naturally DNI with each other leading to minimum conflict in the long term.
What really makes lemmy special is its true freedom of speech approach. And actual freedom of speech, not just nazis talking over marginalized people or single individuals controlling the conversation through their star power alone. You can make a random post, good, or bad, doesn’t matter, and you’ll actually be able to get organic traffic on it. I mean for god sake I made a crappy joke about cutting the mold off of cheese and growing marshmallows on trees and it got the attention that it deserved (which, to be fair, wasn’t much)
Mastodon barely anyone will see you unless you already have a following, and that sucks. You don’t really have to worry about that here.