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Be wary of spiteful Reddit users

In the past week and a half, I've noticed Reddit behaviors starting to try and poison all of the places that people are taking refuge in to get away from the toxicity, myself included. They've started to DDoS Lemmy for a while, which is a Reddit thing to do and what they're notorious of doing whenever they feel they don't like something.

And now they've been trickling in numbers, these incredibly toxic users that behave as they would on Reddit. The reckless shitposting, derailing open civil discussions with unfunny and irrelevant jokes. The downvote brigading and banding together to get you banned. This exact thing has happened to me on Lemmy, that I had to leave because the toxicity was gradually building.

We should reject Reddit toxicity in general, tell them they don't have a place here or anywhere. They know where they can dump their shit in, but they feel that because they've made mountains of it, that they've got to come over to other places and do it all over again.

I left Reddit because the toxicity levels have gotten unbearable. I really am yearning for a place where I can talk in and not be antagonized. I'm sure others are too.

108 comments
  • Let Reddit go lol, it's making you paranoid.

    • The idea that Reddit is staging some nefarious conspiracy to "poison" fediverse spaces ... is losing the whole plot.

      OP's straight up writing fanfiction trying to cast a site they just left as villains in some swashbuckling coming-of-age story. It's a nine-hour-old account, and they're already embracing the Us vs Them mentality and trying to sell it with prose.

      I don't know how OP managed to pick fights within a couple hours of signing up for their account, but I'd suggest that if they left Reddit for "toxicity" only to immediately find it here too ... maybe they're carrying it around with them?

      • I'm 99% sure OP has made multiple accounts to try to sell their 'ex-Redditors are evil" schtick. I saw a post this morning from someone with a similar name pretty much saying the same thing.

      • Painting Reddit as a monolith in general is a problem, too. "Reddit is toxic?" Some subs, sure. But certainly not the ones I subscribed to. Some of them might have had bad actors here and there. But they were usually dealt with by the mods.

        In the end, the only toxicity that drove me away from Reddit was the toxicity from the CEO.

      • Do you just love living a life, where you think you know everything and place people in some little organizer that you define people as, personally? Because you're doing exactly the same thing as you're claiming as to what I'm doing, just to make yourself look better and righteous.

        That's the kind of mentality I see all around Reddit as also. Nobody is accountable for their own behavior, it's always the other person's fault and it's always the other person who is the toxic one. Somehow. Someway. Despite condemning evidence to the contrary for all to see, how it's all of the people pegging rocks at them. It's exactly how it is in school, with bullying, only it's amplified online. Does it make you feel superior? Does it make you feel better? What is the precise reason do you feel, that you have to behave this way?

        I'm pretty confident it is some insecurity within you that you shroud so well, but I can see the cracks already just by your reply alone. May I advise that maybe you should take some time outdoors, instead of like, making up characters out of baseless assumptions to satisfy your pseudo intelligence?

      • The idea that Reddit is staging some nefarious conspiracy to “poison” fediverse spaces … is losing the whole plot.

        That's exactly what They'd say. 🤔

  • We should reject Reddit toxicity in general, tell them they don't have a place here or anywhere.

    Wait, so you're saying we should kick out all ex-Redditors?

    First they came for the Redditors, and I said nothing
    Then they came for the Facebookers, and still I said nothing
    Then they came for the Instagramians, and still I said nothing
    Then they came for the Twits, and I laughed and laughed and laughed until I vomited
    Then they came for the OnlyFans, and I think they're still coming

  • Are you the same person as this guy? You seem to keep making new accounts and posts to hide your post history and complain about redditors.

    I certainly can't know whether what you've experienced is actually toxicity or just criticism, as I can't see your post history. But any site with sufficient mass will be flooded with people like this. All the way back to 1993.

    Part of being online anywhere with open signups and free discussion is just dealing with that sort of thing. The only way to prevent it is to spin up your own defederate instance and only allow people to join who you deem worthy of conversation with.

    • Oh nice, stalkers. Cool, said no one.

      And no I disagree, the only way to prevent toxicity is for a moderation team to give a damn and maybe for the toxic users to realize that they won't be tolerated. I've never understood this stance where the "best" way to deal with something is to just find your own gathering. I don't have a following and I don't want to develop some following so I feel like I can talk. Everyone should have the privilege to talk where they want without the pressure of being antagonized.

      The problem isn't the other people. The problem is the individuals who get confrontational and pose problematic behaviors. Not the other way around.

  • you should get over yourself, and not worry about calling other people names

    • Where and who am I calling names to? What's this preemptive judgment of yours? See, you're behaving exactly similar to the behaviors I've talked about.

      Maybe it's you that should get over yourself, you know, heed your own advice. The internet deserves to be a place to interact without the likes of you. infesting it. You just don't like that idea and feel you've got to be the center of some attention somewhere.

  • Kbin and Lemmy are better built than Reddit in several ways to handle those behaviours to a certain point:

    • Karma: it's hidden on Kbin, and I can't find it on Lemmy. So, there is no pressure to post or comment something. Do you know that feeling on Reddit when you have 500 karma, you write a comment, and later you have 480 karma? That's what I'm talking about.
    • Instances with their own rules: every instance has its own administrator(s), and they can set different rules for them and apply them. Some are more tolerant than others, so in the end,your experience depends on what instance your account is. Besides, some instances don't have downvotes, so that's a big plus too.
    • People: we all, or the most of us, know how situation was on Reddit, how we struggled to make our experience be positive, with no success. Because we know that, we don't want that situation to replicate on these places. It's difficult sometimes, but we do what we can.
    • Defederation: as someone said here, if situation inside an instance is too hard to tackle, to the point that those bad entities harass users on other instances, then defederation is key, until the situation comes back to normal.

    And there are other things, like algorithm (or lack of), code open sourced to fork if you wish, etc.

    • Karma: it's hidden on Kbin, and I can't find it on Lemmy. So, there is no pressure to post or comment something. Do you know that feeling on Reddit when you have 500 karma, you write a comment, and later you have 480 karma? That's what I'm talking about.

      Eh?

      You have 3140 karma ("reputation"). It's not hidden.

      • I cannot see it unless I go to my profile page, so it's hidden to me. It's not like on Reddit, where you could see it at the upper right corner, no matter the Reddit page you where on.

    • I really don't see the purpose of karma and why places like Lemmy and Kbin feel that they have to implement. Karma isn't my concern, it has only been my concern when it comes to Reddit because they tie karma directly to your account to where it affects how much you post and where. If that doesn't happen at all in either Lemmy or Kbin - why have it at all?

      Quite frankly, karma systems across all walks of all social media platforms is it's own disease. Even if it serves no purpose, it has a hold on many people to think and act in reflection to how much karma they've accumulated. I've noticed the more karma someone has, the more narcissistic they become, the more that they feel they've above someone and feeling untouchable. Why, because their count outnumbers yours. People with low karma count don't really care, because unless you're on Reddit, no affects. However that routes back to my earlier point.

      • I can talk about a similar (karma-like) system on another site. It was a wiki-style site popular from 2006-2010.

        Their original system counted a user's creations and edits. There was the expected amount of drama around who had more creations vs edits. Creators tended to add a lot of high volume but low effort crap. Editors would get a lot of grief over 'stealing' entries because the idiots who created the site put the username of the last editor at the bottom of the entry.

        It got worse.

        Around 2008 the idiots reimagined the site and expanded the scope. They kept the shitty idea of keeping the last editor's username, but they added a points system tied to how many new features were added. For example: if you added a town you were awarded 1 point, but if you added a street or river you were awarded 1 point for each kilometer of road or river. Shit got real weird.

        It was a race towards crap. AngrySteve59 was no longer at the top of the list. He was replaced by GamerJoe84 who had racked up shit points using the new system.

        Points just seem to make people crazy. "Rate me! Evaluate my work" - Lisa Simpson

    • Most of these are very good things except the downvotes thing. Or at least if I understand correctly, it could be the same as with tutorials after youtube removed dislikes.

  • Are you OK mate? Like, seriously, are you OK? It sounds like you're very preoccupied with Reddit. Just do what a lot of us recent Lemmy joiners have done - delete your account and never visit that shithole again.

    ¯(ツ)_/¯

    • You're overshooting the problem and I really doubt you care about me so drop the act. You didn't even read a single word of what my post was about, so you're just like the few here who're running off baseless assumptions, twisting contexts and regurgitating through your own filter to come to the conclusion you've made.

  • People on Lemmy can be a bit rude at times, but it's not like they're actually toxic. A huge proportion of Lemmy (and mastodon) users have tech background, and this demographic are often very direct and don't mince their words when posting online, which can appear to be rude and unwelcoming. Just keep your head cool when talking to them.

    That being said, toxic people do exist here though, the kind of people that downvotes and do personal attacks when people post something they don't like instead of doing civilized discussion like normal people. Most people here probably know who I'm talking about lol.

  • Even if everything you have said in this post is 100% true (and in my opinion, it is not), then the good news is that both Lemmy and kbin (and really most federated spaces I've joined) have excellent blocking tools. Block freely, block safely, block often if these other posts are bothering you.

    I quickly looked at your kbin account, and it seems like every post you've made so far has to do with social networks and apps and people being mean. I know it sucks that you've just lost a very large community, but trust me, just let it go and you will be happier.

    I have no way to know if you'll do this, but just as an experiment: next time you see a post here that you think either comes from or belongs to The Old Place, block it immediately, and then open up Magazines (or channels if you're in Lemmy) and pick a topic that normally would not interest you at all. Birds, movies, books, architecture, science, stamps, etc. Browse that for a few minutes and try to involve yourself in one topic. Just one. Even if you know nothing about it, ask an insightful question. It doesn't really matter if you get any response at all or not.

    Do that a handful of times every time you see something you do not like here. I'd be curious if it helps you (or anyone else that tries this) in any way. I have done this myself, and it has helped me, but that doesn't prove anything.

    • KBin does not have the perfect blocking tool. A perfect blocking tool would be is if nobody saw my profile and I wouldn't see them replying that includes a string of what they'd be saying, that's adding fuel to the fire on purpose. That to me, is a flawed tool that needs to be fixed.

      I don't need such advice as that's what I've been trying to do. But again, the blocking tool is insufficient. All users, I believe, deserve tools to lock their own threads and block. But, that's be "bad" according to some, well, boo hoo. They wouldn't tell anyone that they'd do the same at any given time if they found someone they didn't like.

      And I'm not fooled either, I know now that I have stalkers who're going to follow me in every way. Just like they did referring to that Lemmy post, because it's not stalking when they do it, but stalking if someone else did it. And I do presume there's going to be spiteful engagements, forget about the downvoting, because that doesn't mean anything on here.

      However, I'm forever going to be the demonized one, despite the huge contrast.

108 comments