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The internet is neutral.
Corporate social media is definitely toxic.
Can be, but is not inherently.
The algorithms are toxic. Negativity gets more engagement so the algorithms push that content more.
Negativity get’s more engagement on Lemmy aswell. The vast majority of content on the front page is about the world being on fire.
This is too simple, groups of people radicalizing themselves is a very well known phenomenom, it has existed since humans started forming groups.
A good example are the terrorist groups during the cold war, Baader-Meinhof, Japanese Red Army and similar.
The groups may start as a group to work towards a new political system through peaceful means, then someone starts an informal competition about who is the “best” and more “pure” member, starting to subtly put other member’s down for not doing as much as they are.
Then it becomes a feedback loop, and soon you have a group that condems their own initial goals as counter revolutionary, and constantly moving the goalposts.
The algorithm itself doesn’t introduce this behaviour, but turbo chargers it by making people self radicalize mich faster by showing them an endless stream of people telling them how to be even “better” and even more “pure”.
There is one feature of the internet that inherently encourages toxicity, and that’s the barrier anonymity grants between online actions and real life consequences.
In real life if you walk up to someone and start talking shit, you can experience consequences from that. Online, you can do something very similar and seldom suffer anything. This allows the internet to be used to vent bottled-up emotions that are otherwise difficult or problematic to express. It also gives young’uns a chance to fuck around without really getting in trouble for it, which can be somewhat intoxicating at that age.
These two factors contribute to an enhanced toxicity that would not be commonly seen just walking around some town somewhere. Most towns anyway. That said, it similarly depends on where you are online. Communities, both online and irl, are unique in their environments and cultures, so one should not expect standardized behavior beyond the very basics when going from place to place.
You get out of algorithms what you put into them.
My Facebook feed is full of web comics and memes. My twatter feed is full of information security because that is what I follow.
If someone is posting crap you don’t like unfollow/unfriend them. Nothing says you have to have them on your feed.
This is the only way. Ruthlessly blocking everything you’re not interested about seeing.
By blocklist on Lemmy is 1200+ users and communities long and even though I still see plenty of toxicity the difference is still noticeable. The only issue with it is that it’s quite blunt tool. An user might be making inflammatory comments only on threads about a certain topic and then get blocked for it but then I’m not seeing any of their other content either which rarely is all toxic.
You’re doing the right thing for your mental health, I think. The only reason I don’t do the same thing is that I want to be aware of how prevalent the toxicity is. It’s pretty easy to wave off fringe stuff as being insignificant only to find that you were in a bubble and that fringe shit has grown really big. And it gets to grow bigger without somebody there to challenge it.
10% of people believe that the moon landing was fake, the earth is flat, and covid vaccines contained tracking microchips. 10% isn’t the majority or anything, but it’s significantly higher than I would’ve thought. With the habitual defunding of education, increased misinformation and disinformation in media, reduction of in-person interactions with strangers due to online shopping and streaming, and encouragement by algorithms that show people only what they want to see, we’re driving people deeper into echo chambers. We’re forgetting how to respectfully disagree and discuss thoughtfully. We’re backsliding societally to solving problems with our fists. As much as I think Nazis deserve to get punched in the mouth, I think proper discussions would prevent them from becoming Nazis in the first place.
Fascism is on the rise globally, and part of it is because fascists can find fascists and radicalize people into fascism more easily than ever, and part of it is because it’s easier to ignore fascism than it is to publicly challenge it. Even outside of fascist moderators who will ban those who challenge the ideas in the first place (my ban from r/conservative was a badge of honor when I was on reddit).
I’m glad you’ve found a way to keep it as a palatable experience. I still have some fight in me, but I’ll probably need to filter some of this garbage out soon.
The only reason I don’t do the same thing is that I want to be aware of how prevalent the toxicity is.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with the logic here. I did a similar thing years ago by pretty much stopping paying attention to the news. You’d think that would lead to me not being aware of what’s going on in the world but turns out one does not simply just turn off the news. When something actually newsworthy happens I’ll hear about it just the same way as everyone else. It’s effectively impossible to avoid even if you try to. The only kind of news I more or less totally insulated myself from is celebrity gossip and other similar entirely meaningless trash.
Also I don’t block people to create an echo chamber for myself. More often than not it’s not what people say that get them blocked, it’s how they say it. I’m more than willing to engage an actual nazi on a debate as long as they’re approaching it in a good faith even to some extent. It’s people that are just throwing shit that I’m trying to get rid of. I’m basically just trying to improve the signal-to-noise ratio but the noise will only get quieter but never dissapear completely.
Gotcha, yeah that’s the best of both worlds then.
I didn’t mean that you will be in an echo chamber so much as that they will be in an echo chamber because if everybody ignores them then they have nobody left to challenge them. There are a ton of lurkers reading but never or rarely posting or commenting, so I’m mostly challenging bad faith arguments for their benefit. Without challenge, somebody casually reading might just accept that bad faith argument as fact or at least valid. Idk how effective it is, but I’m doing what I can to reduce the radical right wing incel neckbeard population. 🤷♂️
The internet is fine, it’s social media and the people using it that are toxic (aided by algorithms pushing people to give their own worst for all sorts of reasons)
Not me. I think popular implementations of social media are, but they don’t need to be.
Also the internet is definitely not toxic because it’s basically a set of protocols that can be used for innumerable things that aren’t social at all. For example: the experience of using ftp to transfer a file has never been toxic.
It’s not inherently toxic but I’d argue the experience is a net-negative. Social media rewards all the bad and inflammatory behaviour that makes it so. The incentives are not aligned with being nice to each other.
One of the culprits in my mind are visible like counts. The ability to up- and downvote messages is a good one but the scores shouldn’t be visible to anyone. Comments like “ACAB” or “eat the rich” bring zero value into the discussion but rather are just meant to fish likes from your own team and annoy the opposition. I doubt that removing that feature now would no longer solve the issue but it’s one of the main things that trained us to act that way.
Personally I’m hoping for more powerful tools for curating our feeds. It’s probably going to have to be AI based as I can’t imagine how else you’d do that but on top of just simple word and domain filters (which even lemmy doesn’t have) we need smart filters aswell that you could enable which filters out topics you don’t like seeing. Kind of like with enough people using adblockers it would discourage ads-based bussines models and incentivices companies to come up with alternatives. With enough people using similar blockers for toxic content the people creating would quickly realize they’re shouting into the void.
Properly moderated it doesn’t have to be.
If you thought it was, you need to ask yourself why you are here because Lemmy and Reddit are both forms of social media.
I’m on Lemmy because I wanted to switch from Reddit after being scorned by the people there.
Before that, I posted regularly just fine even though people were rude and disrespectful.
The internet by itself is not toxic.
The people that use the internet are toxic.
The people that use the internet have made the internet toxic.
The internet got a reputation for being toxic.
Your average person doesn’t even wanna bother anymore.
And I’m a person who always stands out from the crowd. Because I hate toxic.
Amen.
It depends on the place, but sometimes a relaxing video helps.
Yes, grass is green and the sky is blue too.
Only toxic people
So are people.
DarkHexad intent { Narcissism / Machiavellianism / Sociopathy-Psychopathy / Nihilism / Sadism / Systemic-Dishonesty } is significant a fraction in human-nature, itself,
and the internet does represent that,
as does the last few millenia of human history, tbh.
The only way to have a clean space, is to force break DarkHexad grip on that space.
It’s exactly the same with your body’s health:
IF you want to break the pathogens from sharing your body’s life,
THEN you have to BREAK them from owning any territory in your body’s life.
Pretending & “making nice” on them won’t break their grasp/control of all they own/control.
Exactly as Western Medicine holds that whole-health isn’t a valid condition, but illness, injury, & death are,
therefore one treats illness, injury, & death with drugs or procedures,
there simply isn’t ANY method for producing whole-health in a paradigm which axiomatically prohibits that that could be valid.
You want whole-health?
Become a true yogi.
Harness/yoke ( “yoga” means “to yoke”, or “to harness” ) your entire life to whole-health, & discover what drugs & procedures cannot make.
The same is true of clean spaces, online ( I mean places where machaivellian evil gets auto-broken from them, there’s no requirement that “clean” mean “all spaces are child-friendly” ).
IF you want clean social-site,
THEN you need combined arms ( all dimensions of force, convergion to enforce victory ) making that, against the machiavellians & corrupt-values people.
That requires easy server-setup.
That requires easy administration.
That requires easy moderation.
That requires easy community-management.
That requires easy onboarding for good people,
AND easy step-by-step breaking of the malevolent ones, with proper powerlaw escalations.
That requires accountability ( machiavellians consistently disappear any evidence that would threaten them with accountability, while trying to drown others ) that is both automatic & unbreakable.
etc.
Without a cat’s skeleton, no matter what musculature you put on your non-cat skeleton, you can’t make it be a cat, in how it moves.
You want a cat’s liquidity-of-motion?
You require, then, skeleton, musculature, AND nervous-system of cat, for your animal…
You want clean/healthy portion-of-internet?
ALL dimensions, technological, legislative, admin, moderation, users, processes, EVERYthing needs to be “combined arms” breaking the pathogen-intents from possessing it.
And because of the neverending arms-race between corruption/malevolence vs good, that needs to keep continually adapting, agilely.
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