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cm0002 @lemmy.world

It might be too late for the Threadiverse...

It was a rather sombering thread, that echoed quite a bit of what I've been saying about .ml, the Triad, general toxicity of their Tankie "ideology" for months now.

I know @ptz@dubvee.org was speaking of general toxicity, but the Triad is a huge chunk of it, the culture they create...festers it. They comprise the bulk of the hostility, I've personally seen it over and over and over again. All the "Just go back to Reddit" or "just another lib Redditor refugee" comments for someone that dared to have nuance.

Hell, I saw hex users fucking cheering .ee's shutdown because it was some sort of psyop/CIA/fed/lib/"They didn't perfectly agree with me" instance. They call feddit.org a "Nazi Zionist" instance for the crime....of not wanting to be arrested and complying with German law...

I haven't looked to see if they've started any "celebratory" posts about Dubvee yet and I also don't really want to, if they're there, I already know what they're going to say in it -_-

Unfortunately, I fear the problem was far worse than I thought.

Ptz speculated that the toxicity has "metastasized". And you know what? He might be right, it seemed to be a lot better off 2 years ago, now....now I feel we might be losing the battle against the toxicity and I don't think PieFed will be enough. Complacency has set in

My hope was that with enough instances defederating from .ml and the rest of the Triad, it would be a tad easier to take down toxic Tankies, trolls and their alts. But, few wanted to burn the bridge with the toxic main devs' instance and now it might be too late. (Cheers to @Illecors@lemmy.cafe and the lemmy.cafe instance, one of the few of note to actually defederate from the entire triad!)

Like ptz said and I fully agree with, this place started with promise 2 years ago, but it appears to be ultimately morphing into 4chan (or like I've been saying, Voat 2.0) after all

Oh well, I've got some thick ass skin so I'll probably be here till the end, till the last sane instance shuts down.

I'll see you there @dessalines@lemmy.ml

/Sadmemerant

Heck, maybe I'll do a hail Mary and start an instance on a custom fork of lemmy with "normie proof" onboarding while dumping a few hundred in ADs (Maybe even on Reddit itself, HA!). I'll flood this place with "normies" LMAO

96 comments

  • I'll repeat a few things I've been saying about this. To keep it short: less verbose:

    What people call "toxicity" online relies heavily on irrationality, from the aggressor and/or the target. And politics raises the stakes of everything, so irrationality + political engagement is specially prone to generate catty behaviour, name calling, uncalled combativeness, and all that crap.

    Now look at social media. You'll see irrationals infesting every platform. Reddit in special encourages it, and most lemmings are from Reddit.

    Why this matters: because I believe people here are focusing too much on .ml and Hexbear, without noticing the problem would still persist without them.

    • Now look at social media. You'll see irrationals infesting every platform. Reddit in special encourages it, and most lemmings are from Reddit.

      True, but on other social media, there's millions of users and it's a LOT easier to dilute the toxicity when a SMs D/MAU is being measured in the millions

      Why this matters: because I believe people here are focusing too much on .ml and Hexbear, without noticing the problem would still persist without them.

      Yea, but I really think .ml not being defederated from is causing a bit of a feedback loop encouraging similar toxic behavior in other users for their own, even non-Tankie, reasons

    • Indeed, without ml hexbear and grad those irrationals would spread without reason to other instances, turning everything into a cesspool. And luckily we have the tools to not engage with them, block them or outright defed from their host.

    • Yeah, while people can have their valid criticisms of the culture of various instances, we need to be extremely wary of the idea that the problem will be solved if we just isolate outselves from the folks we sit furthest from on the political spectrum. I've seen toxicity from folks on all sorts of instances, even if some have more (though I've honestly seen more from certain instances other than the triad)

      Literally every platform has toxicity, regardless of its political makeup. If we want to improve the culture of this space we can't just scapegoat a couple instances (that to be fair, do seem to have big issues from what I've seen from other folks, though my interactions have been mostly cordial)

      And leftist spaces seem to chronically struggle a lot with in-group fighting and toxicity because we're all driven by our care for issues of moral importance- which often lets us justify being shitty to one another if we can frame someone as the villain in the story of an issue we care about.

      I think creating a culture that is unwelcoming of anti-social, bad faith behaviour regardless of whether we agree with the stance or not would help massively. But that is a difficult thing to create structure around doing.

    • From the day those protests started Lemmy was far far worse than Reddit for anyone but further left progressives. I have fat more often been called a Nazi here for like warm takes. It's a spectrum and Lemmy is definitely a far more toxic place then reddit is if you don't agree.

  • I think it is worth differentiating between dubvee and lemm.ee on this topic. Dubvee seems to have been shut down mostly for personal reasons, and IMHO if the timing would have not overlapped with the lemm.ee shut down people would just consider it part of the normal churn of smaller instances coming and going.

    On the other hand, lemm.ee was a bit of a special case. From the very beginning they invited a lot of "defederation is bad" type of people to their instance and were also one of the few larger instances that decided to keep federating with hexbear despite having first hand experience with their toxicity. So to a large extend they set themselves up to alot of drama 🤷 In addition their technical setup was probably a bit overengineered, adding to the admin workload.

    As an instance admin myself, I can't say that things are overly stressful if you defederate the right instances and quickly ban alts of known troublemakers.

    However, I agree that the feddit.org witchhunt was very toxic, and as a moderator of /c/europe@feddit.org I was also directly targeted. But it was clearly a very small number of people that instigated most of it. Discounting alts and throwaways it was probably a single digit number of people doing 95% of the harm.

    • Uh, I'm not sure if you read a different thread, but in his formal shutdown thread in !announcements@dubvee.org he was quite clear about it being about fighting against the toxicity. He basically got to a good point, but because of the .ee wake he had to start over.

      But yes .ee was a special case, it was sad especially being the second largest instance. But a second instance shutdown in a month also citing burnout and toxicity is a red flag.

      Now I'm worried if next week SJW or slrpnk is going to announce their shutdown due to toxicity

      • We (slrpnk.net) are only planning to move to Piefed due to technical annoyances with Lemmy the software. As I wrote above, the level of toxicity we see on our instance is really not so bad.

  • Don't get too down. You're like literally my hero here. Piefed needs some work still but I'll put up a vote to move 3d printing to piefed.world when it gets sorted enough. I REALLY wish someone would implement the option in the Lemmy API to disregard down votes completely (alexandrite - lookin at you). The negativity when I am already having a bad day or week or month is often a very big deal to me that causes me to go elsewhere. I'm especially ostracized by people that are insane about AI negativity. I can now prove quite a bit about my ramblings and explorations, but that is a pit of stupidity here so I go elsewhere to talk to others about it. I'm okay with the mixed group and people of various ages and backgrounds. It is the lack of respect for people of all levels and backgrounds by others in how they interact that I do not like. Just be positive. IMO if downvotes must exist they should only exist for those that post regularly. I upvote all kinds of stuff, many times just to counter some negative fool. I'll upvote almost anything just to say "I'm happy you're here and a part of this place because it is a little more wonderful with you here," - even when I have no clue or interest in some niche scope. The world can be a terrible negative place, but your one choice and vote in this life is to be a part of the solution or a part of the problem. Fuck the problems; be a solution. What could I do to help you? – seriously digital neighbor friend.

  • echoed quite a bit of what I’ve been saying about .ml, the Triad, general toxicity of their Tankie “ideology” for months now.

    Sorry, how is his post at all about the 'triad'?

    Frankly, I think it's the constant attempts at instigating flame wars that I find to be so grating, not the users with opinions I find distasteful. I have no idea what ptz's specific experience was like, but seeing a prominent anti-tanky crusader project their personal vendetta onto this announcement is the kind of shit I find myself constantly rolling my eyes at.

    Federated social media is built to facilitate community between people of different preferences, and it's exactly this constant crusading that's likely to extinguish it. You think you're on a mission of purification but it looks more like you're extinguishing what little enthusiasm there was for lemmy to begin with. Defederation is absolutely a tool for moderation, but making it your entire mission to push for it in every space you participate in is itself a suffocating cancer.

    Let people decide for themselves what instances they want to commune with and stop pestering the entire platform into reflecting your personal tastes.

  • In the linked post, I can definitely agree that a lot of people here seem to be arguing in bad faith, and Ive seen it from various instances, not just the tankie traid (although I won't deny they are a part of it). For myself, I dont know how to tell the "subtle" trolls apart from people who are really just misinformed. I dont like assuming everyone knows everything and is purposefully trying to get a rise out of me. I do know I sit and think before I post, and sometimes I'll write a post or a comment, and sit on it and end up deleting it because I feel it isnt worth having to interact with someone who could be trolling, but I feel like I still end up arguing with people who are as the OOP put it, arguing in bad faith, talking in absolutes, and calling for violence. I dont really know how to approach it because I do use reporting sometimes, although 9 times out of 10 it feels like nothing comes of it. Just a shitty situation.

    • For myself, I dont know how to tell the “subtle” trolls apart from people who are really just misinformed.

      Based on my decades of experience anyone who could be described as a 'subtle' troll is just misinformed people. So many people expect everyone to know everything they do that malicious intent is assumed when anyone disagrees with them that accusations of trolling are tossed out like cheap bubble gum at a small town parade.

      If a 'troll' seems subtle, just assume they are misinformed!

    • I don't argue anymore, it's not worth the time and the trolls/assholes are pretty obvious so I just report them.

  • They call feddit.org a "Nazi Zionist" instance for the crime....of not wanting to be arrested and complying with German law...

    Yeah how dare we :/

    And how dare we don't want needlessly endless drama that doesn't lead to anything.

  • Now I would really like to make a deepdive and see how did blackskyweb.xyz manage to become huge moderating force in AT proto(bluesky).

    I was surprised that over those 2 years bluesky is kinda selfhostable. Maybe decision to make instances more important than people has doomed ActivityPub to become a toxic cesspool. I still remember how technology connections has resigned from mastodon over toxicity.

    I saw this toxicity at the beginning and changed how I interact with the network. No controversial topics whatsoever, no OC memes as they will be bashed. Now I just repost stuff from tumblr and comment here and there.

    • Maybe a naive question, but how does Bluesky manage user bans from different instances? Is there a way to federate bans over the whole network?

      • Bluesky's network topology doesn't work like APub's, so this question doesn't really make sense. Like, what is the 'instance' here? The relay? The users' PDS? The AppView? I suppose the PDS provider could ban a user and this would then be indexed by the relay(s). We can argue all day about how decentralised the AT Protocol is, but Bluesky the platform makes no effort to be decentralised.

        By decentralised I mean a platform controlled by multiple independent actors, a multi-stakeholder platform. Even if you use a non-Bluesky the company relay + app view, it's still centralised around whoever is hosting those.

96 comments