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’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.
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.
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.
Can you link to examples?
I’ve seen very little negativity on Lemmy in almost a year of using it.
Ignoring all the pro genocide posts I guess
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 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.
Looking at your post and comment history, it looks like you are, yourself, part of the problem. I see a number of pessimistic (or shit-stirring) posts, posts that appear to be in favor of “ancap”, and commenting in piracy comms. Sorry to say it but, you may want to examine your own behavior before pointing at others.
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 ?
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.
I see it too
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.
Removed by mod
I’ve noticed some instances being very nice overall (hence I’m here) and some being nothing but negative (feddit stood out to me). And occasionally I see a post copy-pasted across a whole bunch of instances with different newly-made accounts sharing misleading news articles.
fortunately, a well oiled block button, and a regex instance filter makes short work of that. I really like lemmy, but just like reddit it’s messy
