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?
I agree with others, it’s where you hang out. Like reddit or any large group of people online, there’s always a subset of trolls. Lemmy was quiet and nice, as it grew so did the troll count, it’s just natural with online communities. I’ve found some tech communities here are toxic as hell, others are very welcoming
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.
Hello,
Thank you very much for your comment, I wholeheartedly agree.
At first we wanted people to join, so we were more lenient. I guess it is now time to protect the space, and not be afraid to take sanctions for people who are straight up rude.
Exactly. I’m not out to crap on anyone’s good time, but like being a decent person in real life, it ends when it starts to cause other people a bad time.
I don’t feel we’re gaining anything of value by allowing ourselves to behave poorly. I’d like to see things in News and Politics for example focus more in direct action and campaigns we can take part in than posting ragebait type articles that get everyone mad. There’s no shortage of other places we can go for that.
Say, instead of saying the president is allowing oil drilling in a supposed protected place, let us know who is supporting or opposing it, what groups are doing what to fight it, etc. All we get now is “it’s Republicans doing it again” or “this is how Democrats are getting nothing done again,” the same comments we’ve heard a billion times that don’t do anything but work us up, no matter who we support.
We don’t need to pretend we’re happy all the time or spend all day watching our every word, but we could put our energy to better use.
I don’t think it helps that most of the content and communities on here are primarily doom scroll content. I don’t even look at the all feed because it’s just depressing and upsetting to go through.
100% agree. Disabling downvotes might be a good idea, since it removes one psychological hammer we can use against each other.
Definitely
Exhibt A of unnecessary downvoting.
If what you are describing is the case, then why none of the alternatives have the same level of negativity?
But are they more positive or just more ideologically aligned with you? I looked through your post history and most of the conflicts you had seem to be ideological in nature. Much as I wish it wasn’t so, strongly negative reactions to ideological differences are a prominent feature of culture right now, particularly in online spaces.
So, to give a relevant example, posting about how socialism is bad on Lemmy.ml (which is a Marxist-Leninist instance in case you did not know) is going to generate a strong negative reaction. But I don’t know that this is because of something inherent to Lemmy. This would likely happen any time you criticize socialism in a space where most people agree with that ideology. If you made the same post in a fascist online community, you might get a more positive response, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that community is more positive, just that you align with them on that issue more so.
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.
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.
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.
I think it’s this in large part. Lemmy’s users are by and large migrants from Reddit for various reason.
But also, this place exists as an ideological alternative to Reddit more than a technical one. The API-pocalypse (API-calypse?) and enshitification and shameless money grabs to inflate stock prices were the final straws for a lot of people but it’s no secret that there are a series of positions and interests that are (assumed to be) shared by all the current Lemmy users.
As Lemmy grows its instances will continually have to determine who, what, and what beliefs and practices are welcome there
But also some people are just jackasses and need to argue, and they come into contact with people who want the same thing.
Can you link to examples?
There is !casualconversation@lemm.ee for positive or at least neutral conversation.
If you see too much negativity here, you are probably hanging out in toxic communities.
I saw your last post about Kaspersky on the Piracy community, sorry to see the comments you got.
Each community has its own vibe and moderation policy. A few of them are quite toxic, a few are very nice, the rest is in between.
I took a look out of curiosity and most comments are just saying don’t use kaspersky and their reasoning. If he was personally attacked it was way down and I missed it. All the stuff I saw was a bit incredulous perhaps but hardly vicious or anything.
If you’re going to a technical community and propose a technical solution that a lot of people disagree with, that’s just what’s going to happen. People aren’t going to just sit there and not say something.
Calling someone a moron seems quite agressive to me.
https://fedia.io/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/746768/-/comment/4900650
most comments
1 comment among over 100 comments calling folks “morons” on a technically-minded corner of the internet over what they saw as bad advice is enough to indict the entirety of lemmy as “inherently negative and toxic”?
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.
I think it’s a facet of the largest Lemmy servers feeling (being?) more ideologically homogenous, itself in part because of how niche Lemmy still is compared to Reddit.
Many of the users came here after the API died and so made joining here an explicitly ideological choice.
People aren’t here because their friends are here. Not really. Not yet.
They’re here cause they want to be, because this is important to them or their beliefs or their identity.
That’s totally valid and good and fine. But u should know and expect that when posting here, especially on the biggest or most general or politically volatile communities.
I’ve got negative interest in trying any Unix/Linux based OS on my home PC and I’m ambivalent about FOSS, but i recognize that being here will mean that putting up with a certain amount of “Windows bad” that i just have to laugh and shake off or stop coming here
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.
Agree
Lemmy is a nice place if you share the same values, but once your opinion differs even somewhat, you won’t have that good of a time.
Yep. No different to Reddit on that. I’ve posted reasonable comments that were maybe a personal anecdote under someone else’s anecdote and I got downvoted and before the pitchforks come out because I mentioned downvoted, I don’t care about the points, it’s that the comments that seem harmless are being downvoted instead of someone actually saying what’s wrong with it. Sometimes I’ve been an ass and I’ll hold my hand up to that and those comments deserve negativity but something that’s personal experience that’s being shared that gets a negative reaction is shitty. In a recent example I commented under someone on ADHD that I don’t like cold leftovers, I’ve ADHD and I have autistic traits, I would get tested but the waiting list on the NHS would be near a decade and private which I can’t afford is no better. I was tested again 7-9 but it was inconclusive at that time my ADHD symptoms were a lot more prominent. I mentioned maybe it’s a sensory thing for me as I don’t like the texture of cold leftovers and that comment was downvoted. ADHD people can have sensory issues too. Sucks because on the ADHD subreddit I wouldn’t have been downvoted and would’ve had comments in reply that detailed others experiences.
Sorry to hear this.
Ehh. You get used to it when you have ADHD. The irony being that many people with ADHD experience RSD. I liked the Reddit sub as it was always supportive, that was the first time I commented in that ADHD community and I won’t again.
Have you considered switching to an instance that disable downotes? https://lemmy.blahaj.zone is nice for that
I might move to blahaj. I’m a queer person and the fact it’s a queer focused instance that seems to have strict rules about respect seriously appeals plus Lemmy worlds stance and defederating from a few communities over piracy has annoyed me a bit.
:(
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.
Idk, because redditors came here?
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?
