I feel like things on Lemmy were pretty chill several months ago, and that’s started to change.

People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor. Now I get the sense that people have become quick to be negative, attack, and not be constructive.

Am I crazy in feeling like the vibe has changed?

  • spaduf@slrpnk.net
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    5 months ago

    Worth noting, the number of people who come here “to escape authoritarian moderators”. Nearly all of them were moderated for good reason.

    I also don’t think the presence of places like hexbear are doing us any favors.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 months ago

      You can see them jumping from Lemmy server to Lemmy server as they get banned from each.

      Eventually, they’ll just set up their own instances so they can bother people with impunity.

          • Mom Nom Mom@nom.mom
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            5 months ago

            It became a thing in Lemmy 0.19 - as long as you’re on an instance that has updated to that, it should be available to you. At the bottom of the settings page in the web ui, but if you use an app they might not expose that to you yet.

          • seathru@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            You can on instances running .19 or newer. Settings -> Blocks -> then at the bottom is an option for blocking instances.

          • Traegert@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Connect has been able to do that from the get go. As well as individual communities within instances.

              • seathru@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                It’s under Settings -> Blocks -> then down at the bottom is the block instances option.

              • Mom Nom Mom@nom.mom
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                5 months ago

                If the apps don’t have instance blocking yet, the webui does (in 0.19)… I haven’t tested it, but it’s there, at the bottom of my settings page 🙂

              • ShittyKopper [they/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                5 months ago

                the 0.19 implementation is so half-assed I genuinely think the Lemmy devs just don’t want that functionality but expected quite a lot of backlash if they outright said as much, so they decided to implement something that ticks the box in the “wanted features” list without having any effect

                afaik it only blocks communities and explicitly lets users from blocked instances through

                • nutomic@lemmy.ml
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                  5 months ago

                  Feel free to make open an issue to improve instance blocking. Or better yet a pull request. We are only a few devs with limited time, and hundreds of issues to work on.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 months ago

          …and then they spin up a new instance with a new domain…

          Domains are unfortunately fairly cheap and it’s not impossible to get a different IP assigned to a server box.

          • psud@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I don’t mind costing them the effort or $10 for a new domain

            Incidentally I have several domains with DNS provided by freedns.afraid.net, which allows sharing domains. Everyone who asks for a domain under any of mine just seems so very sketchy. Now I have to worry if they’re a nazi looking for a new domain to get banned

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldOP
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      5 months ago

      The thing that actually worried me a little bit more was people upvoting the aggressive comments to be top comments.

      I was reading some thread over at !politics@lemmy.world today, and a lot of stuff advocating for political violence were the top comments. Mods yanked it, but nevertheless, people were vibing with some comments about dragging people through the street. I felt like I was on X/Twitter.

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        Yeah, I think it’s a legitimate and growing problem. I think a lot of folks don’t realize, but since growth has slowed from Reddit more broadly, the people who feel they have been “unfairly silenced” are the fastest growing subpopulation around here. If I’m honest, I think the only real antidote is to reestablish growth from communities with kinder dispositions.

        • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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          We don’t need to take from nicer communities, we need to build nicer communities. Right now there aren’t any left wing instances, which is a big problem. It was nicer back when lib.lgbt existed.

          • spaduf@slrpnk.net
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            5 months ago

            Right now there aren’t any left wing instances

            Bro what

            Also it doesn’t have anything to do with political distribution. It’s an issue of habit and disposition.

            • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Left wing people are disposed to helping others. Right wing people aren’t. Nobody’s cultivating left wing spaces where kindness is a habit.

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
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        5 months ago

        I was reading some thread over at !politics

        There you go, that’s your problem. Political topics always gets heated and brings out the worst in people, no matter the platform. The first thing I did is block all politics (and general news + sports) communities, and it’s been a fairly pleasant experience so far for me, except for the odd troll or fanboy that shows up every now and then.

      • kromem@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        People like to fetishize revolution.

        Even offline I have friends that talk that kind of way and just reveal themselves as being poor students of history.

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        5 months ago

        You read my mind. It’s the same feeling I got when a reddit sub would degrade into a toxic circle jerk, and I’d have to unsub. Except it feels like it’s a lot of lemmy communities lately. I feel like I can’t respectfully disagree with anyone without being met with ad hominem attacks. I don’t think something like changemyview could survive.

        Also reminds me of those anti-moderate subs, which is a sentiment literally synonymous with radicalization. I’m all for free speech, I would just rather they state whatever take they have with a calm, measured demeanor.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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        5 months ago

        Well remember that any instance you federate with also gets to vote. If you feel like votes aren’t matching your values, perhaps you should try an instance with more of the “aggressive” stuff defederated.

        • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldOP
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          5 months ago

          Possibly, although those instances also have less content. I remember starting out with a BeeHaw account like many of us here. Trade off was often less content, no ability to create your own communities, but less people lashing out at each other.

          • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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            5 months ago

            Beehaw is very selective though (and that’s fine). There is a middle ground between lemmy.world and Beehaw though.

            But you said elsewhere that you go on American political communities. I’m not American but from what I’ve seen, it is hardly surprising that those places would be toxic. I think at this point, arguing US politics online seems like a lost cause. You’re probably better off discussing politics IRL.

  • june@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    People have been asking this for as long as I’ve been on lemmy.

    It depends a LOT on which instances you interact with. It’s a challenge of the fediverse in that every person has their own unique experience, some bad others good.

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    5 months ago

    The vibe has gotten much more negative, to the point that I don’t really want to post anymore. I came here in early June with the Reddit API stuff, and was shocked at how communal it was. It actually got me to start posting again (I hadn’t posted on Reddit since the early to mid 20-teens because it had gotten so toxic).

    My last three posts (nothing inflammatory) have gotten flamed. Someone actually hunted me down based on my post history and I had to take the time deleting most of my old posts.

    So from my perspective it’s not just you. I’m back to being a lurker.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    No you. /j

    What I found is that hot topics come with the season, in June/July about Ukraine, in July/August about Meta, in October/November about Gaza, in December about Biden. There’s been plenty of charged discussion on these topics, and internal Lemmy dramas.

    However, one thing I see more often here on Lemmy than other places is people updating their comments, being willing to admit they’re wrong or that their comment came off as hostile, and open negotiation in general. Consider the near defederation of programming.dev and lemm.ee, it was resolved amicably to everyone’s benefit.

    I also see people thanking others for softening their tone and being kind, to them I say, keep doing that and encouraging good behaviour and ettiquite online!

  • forgotmylastusername@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Lost among the “internet sucks now, it used to be better” discourse is that the old internet was heavily moderated. The laissez faire parts of the old internet were known as the seedy corners of the web. Social media and its modern derivatives like lemmy take on that latter philosophy.

    It’s no wonder it’s chaos every where. The libertarian tech bros have really impressed their world view on everyone. So the prevailing philosophy is these “digital town squares” should be absolute free speech zones. Except town squares in real life do not work like this anywhere. At least not in most liberal democracies. In real life there is bureaucracy. There are police, fire, ambulances. There is the simple matter of neighborly social contract. You cannot go into a real life town square and do whatever you want. You cannot just up and fight strangers, engage in lewd acts, set up encampments or what have you without permits. In the same way internet requires structure. Counter intuitively it used to have a lot more of it on account of sites being run by a real human being. Not the mega conglomerate investor groups feeding off ad/engagement profits.

    Those users unfamiliar with the old internet yet pine for the good old days would have hated it. Power hungry mods is a meme as old as the internet itself. It’s a necessity of the internet. Hardly anybody gets banned for being an asshole anymore. Sometimes (often more like) people need to be forced offline so they can go outside.

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    My suspicion is that a lot of redditors migrated over here about 7 months ago when certain apps shut down, including myself. At first, they were polite in an unfamiliar environment, but they’ve grown comfortable and act out, or speak less thoughtfully, like they originally did on Reddit.

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    5 months ago

    Trigger warning on this. Can’t get the spoiler thing to work at all.

    Definitely not imagining it.
    Since I first joined I went from having nice conversations with strangers about the weirdest things, never having a single negative interaction, to nowadays saying I think women deserve a baseline level of respect and being told I should die giving birth to a rapists baby.
    To be fair, the dude who said that did get banned from the instance I’m on for that, but it happening in the first place would have been unthinkable to me a few months ago.

    • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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      agreed there is a definite influx of misogynistic incels lately. Feel like I’m spelling out how women are human beings a lot more than I ever had to here before. Conversations are more on the de-evolutionary side.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        There’s no need to debate misogynists here. Downvote and report them and we’ll ban as soon as we can.

        • Nom Nom@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          This. Most of those guys probably got banned on reddit and drifted here and they’ll do the same after getting banned here. No point in wasting brain cells arguing with people who can’t think for themselves about right and wrong.

      • vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        It’s amazing how quickly the Internet ruins the Internet. Hopefully we can work together through defederation and as a community that doesn’t just let shit slide to keep that 00’s era chat and forum feel alive. Either way, good luck out there!

    • CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago
      test, spoiler test

      eueaouaoeuaoeuaoe

      The syntax is a bit confusing. You need to leave the first “spoiler” untouched. You can delete the second “spoiler” to set the title, and then replace the three underscores ___ with your text:

      "

      ::: spoiler my-title

      my-text

      :::

      "

      Edit: Looks like most apps don’t support this and this spoiler markdown only works in the browser.

        • Galaxy@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          From what I understand it doesn’t work on any of the mobile apps which is unfortunate, but I guess that is the price we pay for not wanting to just use the web browser

        • spaduf@slrpnk.net
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          I’ve noticed a lot of app developers have been slow to implement this. Just got it in the latest beta version of Thunder

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    We can absolutely do better than reddit on this one. If someone is breaking rule 2 (be respectful), report that comment and we’ll get to it as soon as we can.

    • dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world
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      Are reports anonymous? I don’t want to report a user that breaks rules only for the offending user to be friends with an admin and get me kicked from a community as payback

        • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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          That can be a good thing, too, to find out if someone is abusing the report feature, as was common on Reddit when people didn’t like someone’s comment.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        Reports are not anonymous, but they also aren’t public. Only visible to admins and mods of that community.

        It’s a tradeoff, anonymous report abuse was a big problem on reddit that I didn’t want to replicate here. If the admins or mods aren’t trustworthy on your server, you should pry move to another one.

      • Urist@lemmy.ml
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        Maybe you should take care to follow said rule yourself? Looking through your recent comments in this thread it seems more to me that you are going in hard with bad takes and get hurt from getting dunked at. The question is really: Do you consider yourself respectful when you use ignorance to spite leftists?

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        For the first time in a liberal’s life, your viewpoints are being the least bit challenged. Must be awful, we socialists can’t imagine what you’re going through.

      • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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        Being pro something you are against does not break the “be respectful” rule.

        You really shouldn’t go around trying to silence people with different opinions than you.