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!
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.
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 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.
Can you link to examples?
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.
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 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.
Hatred drives engagement on any and all social media. Even ones where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
Your perception of lemmy has been tainted by the kind of communities you interact with. You and I have wildly different experiences on this app.
Part of the reason you feel this way may be caused by you being subscribed to unpopularopinion, an inherently contrarian community. If you’d like to be happy, stop following that community.
I also encourage you to avoid engaging in political conversations with non-rational people: It is extremely unlikely that they will change their minds, and even if you do reach an understanding, that conversation is really likely to leave you with a sour feeling.
In comparison, the communities I’m in are mostly about memes, IT, privacy and LGBT stuff. No news about the war, and no political arguments with random, possibly deranged, users.
The instance I’m in doesn’t even have downvotes! Depending on how you use lemmy, you can have either really good or really bad experiences. I recommend u to try to avoid conflict, and maybe even switch to a downvote-less instance.
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.
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’ve seen very little negativity on Lemmy in almost a year of using it.
Ignoring all the pro genocide posts I guess
I think it just correlates with leftism in the US and Lemmy was leftist before the Reddit exodus increased the population. I say this as a US center-left liberal (and I get annoyed with it myself).
The leftist movement is very anti-establishment, very pessimistic about their future under capitalism, very pessimistic about the US political establishment, very pessimistic about climate change, very pessimistic about the Israel-Hamas situation, very pessimistic about police, very pessimistic about health care, very pessimistic about both Biden and Temp, very pessimistic about … pretty much every major issue (except maybe weed).
Edit: I don’t mean to “rage against the leftist” either, I think y’all have some good points from time to time and there are definitely things I agree with you on (e.g. the health care system needs major changes). Some of y’all give a real “you must be fun at parties” kind of vibe though and some are about as bad as the Trump supporters in terms of using personal attacks.
are about as bad as the Trump supporters in terms of using personal attacks.
Russian, trumpist, moron, bot, Chinese, tankie, fascist, Republican, child, shill.
This is a selection of things I’ve been called for saying that Biden should stop supporting genocide.
Tell me how bad the left is about personal attacks.
If you opposed genocide you’d support Israel, who is fighting an explicitly genocidal opponent that did in fact commit acts of genocide against israel, as per international law.
I don’t think Lemmy is all that negative. Pessimistic as another put it, sure. You are just having the classic experience of someone that’s an asshole so see’s assholes everywhere. Reflect on your own behaviour.
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.
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.
I didn’t call them an asshole. I was evoking the asshole rule with regards to the negativity he’s seeing everywhere.
Maybe you just have some real shit hot takes.
Looking at their post history, they were banned from unpopular opinion after multiple posts just slagging off the platform. So yeah, some real shit hot takes.
