It feels like the amount of both, divisive posts and ghoulish comments is rising again.
One could argue that the world has a lot of divisive stuff going on and lemmy just talks about it. But the way people post about stuff seems more oot and hateful than it has been in the past.
Not saying it is that but if I wanted to bring the Fediverse down or at least keep my customers from going there, I would sow this stuff as much as I can.
I’m blocking ghouls left right and center atm but if I ever asked a friend to join lemmy, I’d hate to think of what they would see that I dont anymore.
Do we need stronger moderation?
- Maybe ban politics from c/memes?
- Become a little more stringent on “dont be a jerk” rules in communities?
One thing that really bothers me is the collapsing “discourse”. Trying to mend fences and keep the conversation between sides going ime leads to nothing but downvotes and shitstorm.
I feel like a little more interaction (instead of intervention, at first) of the moderators would do wonders there.
Thanks for reading this rant. Have a nice day.
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Totally true. I made a totally reasonable comment about a month ago (stated that women shouldn’t be hit on at the gym by randos), and I got downvoted to oblivion and the comment was spammed by 7 different users who essentially acted like I was Hitler. Then they started spamming my comment history and I had to delete all of my old posts.
Seemed like a real person was behind it, but may have been using bots to spam me.
That sounds insane. No idea if this was just one person but it is totally possible. I havent thought of this yet. This has happened to me on multiple occasions. Where a handful of folks immediately jumped me and a lot more reasonable peeps later chimed in confusing me even more since I though my idea was outlandish at that point.
Yeah, I think there’s a handful of toxic folks on here who are behind the bots or a series or alt accounts. I think Reddit probably had more infrastructure in place to crack down on stuff like that, but it’s happened to me (although less dramatically) in other threads here as well. But yeah, there’s no way my relatively normal comment got immediately downvote spammed and commented on by 6 different accounts. Definitely alts.
Just so everyone is aware, this is the thread OP interpreted as so abusive it would warrant banning this person across multiple instances.
In this thread, you’ll notice that another user dares to disagree with haui_lemmy. haui_lemmy interprets that as trolling, and goes on a crusade to purge the entire lemmyverse of dissent.
Nice, so now you‘re trying to discredit me somehow for disliking your way of commenting? You need help, seriously.
Maybe because I don’t use Lemmy at real bot hours, I haven’t seen them. Maybe see a spam bot every other day.
I also tend to sort by top 6 hours or top 12 hours so a lot of low effort content gets filtered out.
I also don’t consider people who make off the wall comments or hold opinions I disagree with or think are uniformed or stupid as trolls.
The other thing is that I comment with the philosophy that not every comment signifies a response and so if a reply is a troll or in bad faith, I just keep scrolling.
I agree with most of this. Some might just be my hours being spot on.
But trolls and other idiots often dont turn out to be just that in the first response. I often give people the benefit of the doubt. If they start splurging no thought opinions or such I try to understand, maybe try to debate them. But some people repeat the same stuff over and over as if putting fingers in their ears. If I point it out it gets worse quickly.
So I‘m not exclusively dealing with bots and trolls. Its also very ignorant people who very much dislike being proven wrong or get their opinion challenged.
Bots are probably increasing in number. Even without improvements in technology, people’s adeptness at using robots will continue to increase.
A lot of it depends on the instance. I think there’s a little bit of a smartest bears type of problem going on, with a lot of the bad-faith content coming from just ignorant and abrasive people being sincerely ignorant and abrasive, not anything that’s a bot or a deliberate troll.
Personally, I’ve done some rounds of unsubscribing from tech and politics subs on lemmy.ml and lemmy.world, and when I’ve done that my amount of toxic content and interactions went way down. I think the prevalence of the exact same thing on the tech subs points to it probably being just a bad-person problem in large proportion, although I’m sure deliberate malfeasance is at the root of some of it also.
I agree that some people just are original jerks. But those still cant roam free in a community. Its like making a bar and knowing that people are getting mugged in the restroom. The bar owner or personnel (even if its a coop) need to intervene.
Well… that’s why I used the smartest bears analogy. I’ve noticed the mods are usually pretty on top of removing content that’s genuinely personally insulting or racist or what have you. But there’s a wide, wide grey area of someone whose post is discussing “the issue” in a technical sense, but just comes at it from a perspective of “here’s why I am right and you are wrong and not only that you’re clearly not smart enough to see my side and I can’t believe I need to explain it to someone again” with 0 interest in learning anything on their side. IDK if it’s reasonable to try to remove comments or ban people for that behavior, but it definitely doesn’t lend itself to a good discussion, and it’s common (probably majority) particularly on lemmy.world and lemmy.ml.
Thats pretty much how I view it as well.
Being a jerk can have many faces and there are a lot of people right on the edge of getting in trouble but not quite. Those are also the worst people to work with IRL. They fall up the ladder and are usually pretty incompetent.
If they are repeat offenders, I confront them in the places I mod since I dont want them hollowing out the community by this constant low key abrasion.
Others who just have a hot temper I leave mostly alone until they really go overboard.
Thats how I do it and thats what I think is best. Obviously not everyones opinion though.
I have a dream of creating a community where people can argue about factual questions and give citations, with an AI moderator that will award points for things that are demonstrated based on solidly factual citations and no points for things that are someone yelling with increasing firm confidence that their opinion is the right one. My dream is (a) the AI moderator could be made to work and (b) it would cause people to lose the “me and my agreeing-people are right about everything by definition” mentality that’s pretty easy to develop in a forum where you can literally say anything at all without getting any feedback aside from other people telling you they agree or disagree.
Probably my dream on counts (a) and (b) both is incorrect, but it is my dream. In my dream it works.
I browse All and block any subs or users that are toxic. After a month. My All feed is enjoyable and I get the benefit of not missing any new subs or content that pops up.
Yes, lemmy.world is a mess right now
I‘m very happy that I‘m not totally alone with that opinion.
Lemmy.world is absolutely wild. I had a comment deleted that was a response saying we shouldn’t nuke innocent people, I had a comment removed saying confederates are bad. I don’t know what the fuck their mods are smoking.
Out of curiosity, can you specify the topics or give specific examples of this shitty behavior you speak of? Without examples it is impossible to determine if you are discussing behavior that is straight-up pathological (e.g. name-calling) or people having a different opinion.
Okay, I did mention it in another comment but I didnt do so in the main post. Thanks for pointing it out.
I‘m talking about name calling, ad hominem attacks, ridicule, twisting words, bad faith arguments. So, mostly abusive language/rhetoric, not disagreement or different opinions.
how do you differentiate what you perceive as bad faith vs disagreement and differing opinions?
i frequently see simple disagreement here being painted as bad faith when its just… disagreement.
Wikipedia:
Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another. It is associated with hypocrisy, breach of contract, affectation, and lip service.
Here are some nice examples. I can’t come up with a perfect example rn. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/bad-faith-good-faith/
It boils down to essentially playing devils advocate just to shut someone up.
i know what it is, i was asking for more specifics about what you see on lemmy.
I‘m not sure I understand your question. Do you want me to come up with examples from lemmy?
Yes
And to the contrary, I’ve seen people claiming blatant bad-faith behavior as “just disagreement”.
It’s been a little terrifying seeing a shit ton of supposed liberals acting like trump supporters the last couple weeks. Calling anyone who disagrees with them or questions anything about biden fascists, going out of their way to say hurtful ableist shit, calling pro Palestinian protestors Russian plants (one person even calling for them to be executed), chanting “FOUR MORE YEARS!” whenever Israeli genocide is mentioned, lots of really MAGA-type shit. Besides the last thing though, I’ve hardly seen any of this irl. I’ve just assumed liberals have taking a sharp right turn into reactionary shit, but maybe some/a lot of it is a conservative psyop or something. Idk, I still think it’s mostly authentic unless proven otherwise, but if I were a hate group on 4chan or a russian troll farm trying to make leftists not wanna vote for democrats I’d be doing exactly this
Thanks for chiming in. That indeed is scary.
Astroturfing is a very common thing nowadays btw. There are many cases that even made the news: https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movements-2011-9
Sorry for linking that site. Feel free to google others.
I will start to really pay attention what communities these shitty posts in my feed come from and both report and block them in my instance. Lets see if that helps.
I was about to left Lemmy/Kbin for good when some stupid fascists from Lemmy(grad).ml called me names and harassed me, despite the fact that I’m neurodivergent (like that would stop them from doing such actions, but anyway). And then I started blocking every community and user from those places, as well as any community/magazine about US politics or about any US topic because I don’t give a damn heck about that place. And my experience improved really well.
While I sympathize with a fellow ND, I dont think calling lemmy.ml fascist is a great idea. They might be tankies from what I hear but thats the other extreme.
Still, thanks for sharing your opinion.
Well said. Lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are malicious misinformation factories supporting authoritarian governments, namely the Kremlin and CCP.
They’re worse than garbage and I’ll never recommend the fediverse to anyone, or even admit to using it, while they’re so prominent.
Try to find an instance that bans trolls?
I am on my own instance and I ban them but if someone joins world, they’re f*cked. I feel like the communities are very lenient which is fine in normal situations but when peeps start shitting on others (be it religion, ideology or others) they should act. Just my two cents though.
Yeah.
I guess we can’t just direct friends to “Lemmy” in general and instead direct them to beehaw.org, or your instance, or wherever there is the kind of moderation we agree with. From there our friends can see a filtered view of the communities on lemmy.world.
If the biggest instance has a libertarian mod policy that does mean “more selective” instances need to put in more work but on the positive side it does provide a more diverse pool of people and content to sift through.
Half of the traffic everywhere is bots:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1264226/human-and-bot-web-traffic-share/
Holy father christmas! Thats dystopian. Thanks for mentioning it.
Nah, things seem okay. I’ve noticed more politics misinformation since it’s an election year.
That might be the reason for what I‘m seeing. Everything seems very politicised.
Toxic discourse in large Internet communities predates Reddit, even. It’s been a thing since before there was the web, becoming significantly more likely to find once you get to a critical mass of people.
It’s a good time in the political cycle to find and contribute to niche communities. I almost never come across this kind of thing because that’s where I hang out.
Yeah I’ve encountered a few accounts lately who either have mental health issues or are bots designs to stir discord. Their entire posting history is divisive shit stirring.
Funny how every 4 years the internet gets markedly nastier. I wonder why???
Yes. Exactly what I‘ve seen as well. The election year thing might be the reason though. I know a couple people with mh issues. They’re no problem. These accounts either belong to severely deranged individuals or bots.
Not discrediting mental health issues, but being “severely deranged” is a mental health issue
Yep I remember this pattern of behavior distinctly from last time.
One of the big ones that sticks out is you start seeing a lot of people claiming to be democrats or left aligned showing up all of a sudden and being big time concern trolls and talking about sitting out the election and/or claiming that there’s no difference between voting democrat or republican, which is demonstrably absolute horse shit.
And just a lot of added vitriol. It seems like even politically unrelated discussions get meaner and more argumentative. I expect it’s just gonna get worse as we get closer to November. It’s only the beginning February. Ugh.
Yeah, I‘ll just block communities now instead of people, until morale improves. :)
Thanks for elaborating. I enjoyed reading it.
One thing that makes me sad about lemmy is that if you find people with „based“ opinions, longer/more regular discussions with them seem impossible. I used to talk to folks in reddit pms a lot when i was at my worst. Helped me immensely.
Well, have a good one.
Only the wet-lipped and dry-eared are upset by trolls.
What does that even mean.
It kinda bugs me when one of the more prolific posters get shitty comments directed at them specifically in return for their contribution. Maybe it’s just a side effect of being a small community but for real just shut up and enjoy the memes, if you have nothing nice to say keep scrolling.
