…sometimes it does feel like this.
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It took me a couple months to fully leave years of bad reddit habits behind. I didn’t realize how deeply ingrained they’d become. The toxicity had gradually snuck up on me.
It all started back in 1998, when the Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell in a Cell, and plummeted 16 feet through an announcers table.
Happens to the best of us.
this
Shit! Still happening to me.
Yeah, well, fuck you too.
Aww man, it’s still happening to me!
As you see, we’re among grownups, you can say fuck.
(this is, itself, a redditism)
We should come up with a detox program
imagine an ai that takes you through your own post history like a therapist. like some moderator can sentence you to ai therapy before you are unbanned.
I wonder how many go back when they don’t see a karma score here.
If that’s all it takes to drive them away, then we’re probably better off without them. We don’t need people who post with the sole purpose of “earning” karma.
To preface this I’m a lurker myself. I wonder what bad habits it left behind in you? After the whole API and 3rd Party Apps fiasco I just left it behind. But I wouldn’t say that I took the toxicity over from it to Lemmy. Especially wondering what exactly is ingrained in your soul that’s left behind from it. As far I know I’m still the same but as I’ve told just mostly lurking so don’t think it had much as an influence on me except the doom scrolling.
Defensiveness. Overexplaining myself because I didn’t expect people to give me the benefit of the doubt, and I knew that if I left any room for interpretation, people would assume the worst version possible. (I didn’t know what “sealioning” was.)
It’s important to remember that this had happened slowly, over a period of years. If it had been as bad as it is now back when I first signed up, I wouldn’t have put up with it. Initially, reddit just seemed like a bunch of normal (but sometimes weird) people. It wasn’t until I discovered Lemmy that I realized I wasn’t being myself, and that every time I posted, in the back of my mind, I was expecting the worst.
Good riddance.
Y’know, now that you mention it, the sealioning behaviour I’d been conditioned to expect is a big reason for why I spend so much time writing my comments and adding qualifying statements.
Well, it hasn’t been entirely bad. Constantly reminding myself to add qualifying statements is something I don’t miss, but rewriting my comments for improved clarity is good. It’s easy to forget that English isn’t the first language of many Lemmy users, so I’m in favor of being more specific about the subject, instead of using words like “they” or “it” too much.
Also, there’s a good chance that people are reading my comments while they’re on the toilet or watching TV. Maybe they’re not paying 100% attention lol. A little extra specificity doesn’t hurt!
Are we growing though?
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats shows MAU (monthly active users) decreasing - we are now at 43k, last month was 45k, the month before 47k, etc. Total servers also decreasing - now 540, was 552, 579, etc. Overall posts and comments are slightly up though - so we’re seeing increased activity from fewer users, rather than an increase in actual users. One could argue whether we’re truly “decreasing” vs. merely flat, but either way I don’t see us increasing.
And 3 of those users are myself, all active and only 2 of which I had a week ago, speaking to how alts are most definitely a thing. Also, federation issues especially staying in sync with Lemmy.World may be causing people to shift instances (or to leave entirely?). If so that would be a good thing bc 0.19.6 promises to help address that. (Although in my case, I wanted an instance that allows custom blocks of any instance I choose without needing to rely on an admin team, and that isn’t dependent upon the Lemmy codebase.)
For one thing, people might be turning away due to the upcoming USA election, in which case depending on who survives that, they could return? But every person I’ve ever recommended to check out Lemmy has looked at me in disgust and actively chided me for having recommended it when they see some of the political extremism here. e.g.:
Whenever I go looking for examples of such I usually find it in 0-60 seconds, by going to Lemmy.ml and browsing by Local.
Your instance is doing wonderful work keeping such out - I wonder if that image will even render for you:-). But overall, across the wide Fediverse, people are not willing to put up with such, and seem to be leaving us overall rather than find some other way to deal with whatever it is that was bugging them.
And with such trends, and the way we treat normies, I don’t see us ever going mainstream. Maybe PieFed and Sublinks, along with Mbin and ofc Tesseract on e.g. dubvee.org will help turn that around? That would be so nice?:-)
Btw what will we call ourselves then, if it does - will we still be “Lemmy”/Lemmings, or just general Fedizens? Either way there’s great hope for the future, but also a lot of work to do to reach that point.
In fairness, there’s still total net growth of some 6000 MAU since February
How do you see the past numbers there though, without conflating the Mastodon users that says that we have ~1 million MAUs?
This one likewise says 43k MAUs right now, though I don’t recall how many we had in February. The other site only shows as far back as June, 48k MAUs. So that’s a drop of 5k MAUs since June.
Assuming the numbers are comparable across the two sites like that - and they seem to agree as far as we can tell - it looks like the numbers went up sometime between February and June, but since then we’ve lost almost all that we gained.
i.e., the Reddit drama may have caused people to come check us out, but then the largest majority of people left, likely going right back to Reddit. Possibly bc of the deep (niche) content stores that they still have - e.g. if everyone else uses Windows, it’s just easier for you to use it too, and it takes a special mindset to buck that trend.:-)
The link should take you to the Lemmy page.
Some ~30% net MAU growth since December of last year is nothing to sniff at.
i.e., the Reddit drama may have caused people to come check us out, but then the largest majority of people left, likely going right back to Reddit. Possibly bc of the deep (niche) content stores that they still have - e.g. if everyone else uses Windows, it’s just easier for you to use it too, and it takes a special mindset to buck that trend.:-)
Most people who left from Reddit after The Great Exodus did so in the first 3-4 months, though.
Thanks, that longer view does change the narrative a bit. Yeah the Rexodus was the big influx, maybe if they finally kill off old-reddit there could be another but who knows. Then again in the OP it describes “growing”, whereas the reality seems more like at one point almost a year ago we grew, especially that sharp spike between February and March, but ever since and currently we are actively shrinking. I guess both are true, depending on whether you take the yearly or half-yearly POV.
Yeah, there’s definitely no explosive growth currently. Might be that some communities here are getting more ‘solid’, though, and feel more active.
“More activity” rather than “more users” - yeah, not explosive but definitely growth I like how you phrased that. I think it means that niche interests are not more likely to happen - that needs more users in particular - but browsing here may be more enjoyable with the higher level of engagement.
So denouncing genocide is now “political extremism”? If posts like that are scaring people away, that’s good, we don’t need them here.
don’t offend the majority if you want guests to stick around. you can denounce genocide without convicting all of western civilization.
None of the west’s enemies are afforded the same generosity. Maybe we don’t want the majority of guests to be a bunch of mindless parrots who only care about human rights when mainstream media from “their side” tell them to care (as an excuse to project power globally). It ends up permeating all discussions, even ones that aren’t directly about politics and you end up building an echo chamber. It shapes how you see the world, for example, you took a post talking specifically about western leadership to be about “convicting all of western civilization” as if the victim of the genocide is actually the west.
Exactly. The whole “everything the other side does is evil while my side can do no wrong btw” isn’t helpful or going to lead to any change at all. Worse, these attempts to “control the conversation” would (if paid attention to) actually lead to increasing those evil deeds, bc leopards always eat people’s faces off aka reveale their true spots… eventually. e.g. blaming liberals for genocide will only lead to Republicans winning who have actively and outright stated that they will do even more genocide, plus far more than that besides.
And I don’t blame normies - who wants to join a place that features such “alternative facts” and “alternative logic” on a daily basis? Yes you can go to some trouble to opt-out, but not easily, and they don’t know how, or even that it’s possible to do so.
I’m curious, where exactly do you draw the line with your reasoning? You can denounce dumping oil into the ocean without convicting all of Shell? You can denounce the invasion of Crimea without convicting all of the Russian military? You can denounce murder without convicting all murders? Why not skip this alltogether and denounce all bad things without convicting all good things, that makes the game of ethics a whole lot easier.
“western civilization” is not a majority. It’s a minority who has been dominating the discussion for way too long, and people are tired of listening to the hypocrisy.
Tact for Propagandaist Dummies is not a book I’m inspired to devote investing time into.
We’re doing our part!
And that’s important, plus all that anyone can ever do:-).
I wasn’t really looking at the MAU stats when I made this; it just felt like it’s been more actively lately (both good and bad). Unfortunate the numbers are actually trending downward.
For one thing, people might be turning away due to the upcoming USA election
Possibly. I’ve gone into self-imposed
socialmedia blackouts during election season many a time. Sometimes you just need a break.Whenever I go looking for examples of such I usually find it in 0-60 seconds, by going to Lemmy.ml and browsing by Local … people are not willing to put up with such, and seem to be leaving us
Yeah. I have felt for a while that
mlbeing the official or at least de facto flagship instance is doing more harm than good. I’m not going to tell them how to run their instance, but I am sad and frustrated that it seems to turn so many people away under the impression the whole fediverse is like that.I’m cool with Fedizens 😀.
Yeah like to label it as “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers” seems not entirely… complete in its description.
Blaze is doing amazing work advocating for Lemmy on r/RedditAlternatives etc., and these days recommends Lemm.ee, one of the largest instances that also defederates from virtually nothing so that very little to no content is missed by the user. On the other hand, some content users very much would rather have been presented to them as opt-in rather than have to opt-out of it. i.e. if one of the major things that instance does is to make fun of the capitalist democratic Western society, then it is perhaps understandable if - regardless of truth or falsehood - people, especially normies, living inside of that same capitalist democratic Western society do not appreciate the jokes? Especially those calling for literal murder, or when an admin there tells someone to kill themselves. Duh, of course people are going to be turned away by such.
At this point it’s like a rite of passage, to learn how to become a responsible Fedizen: learn who and how to block (not necessarily in that order:-).
Lemmy is FAR more toxic than Reddit.
I don’t see much negatively. But I use lemmynsfw.
Maybe, but you have better tools to deal with it. Filter out words most politics and your experience will improve a lot. For me, it isn’t a 100% filter because I still want to be exposed to that, but I want less of it. Tag anyone that looks like they’re operating in bad faith. If you see the tag again and they’re still shitty, just block them. Block whole communities if you want or even entire instances. You’re in control of what you see here.
My Lemmy experience has been perfectly cromulent since I started blocking and filtering.
You can do that on Reddit too. Obviously not at a federation level, but you can block subreddits and users. It doesn’t stop the fact that even across many instances Lemmy is far more toxic - whether you’re discussing Tech, Gaming, Politics, Sports, etc.
I use tags often, but I don’t block, I use it to track accounts spreading disinformation.
I have no problem with people sharing their opinions on Lemmy.
just as long as they aren’t wrong.
Wrong, n: Disagrees with me
Uh yeah welcome, could you leave that baggage outside tho? kthx
There are too many negative posts on lemmy. I don’t know why that is so but it do.
Agree, it do be like that
Mmhhmm
I miss bean memes
There there, it’ll be alright… have some jeans
Down voted
It’s easy to forget how bad it can get.
One day I wandered into /r/kotakuinaction over some linked comment on the Tomb Raider animation, and the Fallout TV series, and… yeah. I remembered.
And that’s a pretty mild example.
Just the other day I had to block this idiot from harassing me, claiming I was faking ignorance about Trump’s stance on Israel so I could “bait Americans into a discussion”, for some reason. I’m European, I don’t follow presidential candidate policies very closely at all. This tool was also European, and Palestinian. I don’t know why they were insisting so hard I would do this inexplicably weird thing, but maybe their emotions were running high. I’m against genocide btw, of course. ✊
Please forgive them. Many people in the USA are going to literally die depending on what happens in the next month, so yes emotions are running quite high right now. You stepped into a VERY active minefield there:-).
Oh, but definitely block them - I mean forgive as in don’t let it weight you down, but absolutely cut that noise out of your life.:-)
No joke.
But they were European too so that’s what baffled me a bit. And they were so adamant and stubborn about “calling me out” on pretending not to know Trump’s stance on Israel lol. Such a random thing to pretend…
Yeah that person was pure and utter life noise. Begone!
I don’t know the specifics of those particular circumstance, but… sometimes people on the internet lie! It’s been known to happen a few times, at least:-).
lol, indeed they do, but probably about more interesting things than this 💀
Sounds like a similar experience I’ve had. They even spammed all my posts in my history accusing me of being a Russian bot lol
It’s a small community, maybe we are talking about the same person
Might be! Maybe they were the real bot, eh.
I usually just block everyone that posts about politics in general. Shit is annoying af.
Politics is an annoying part of life, for sure, but I was engaged in the conversation so I guess I have some part in it.
I mean, you can (and should) pay attention to politics IRL to stay informed and make informed choices. But blocking out politics on social media, though, is quite understandable and often necessary for sanity.
Yeah, people don’t carry on with sane discussions under full anonymity 😞
Yea no. Try having a nuanced discussion on any (insert heated topic here) on Lemmy and watch the labels fly out faster than the ejaculate of a post pubescent 15 year old.
It seriously cannot get any worse. Bring on users from any platform. Lemmy sucks and i thank the mods of smaller subs that post diligently about enthusiast topics to add content that isnt dystopian sad sack circlejerk
Honestly I’d rather be called a lib tankie 100x than get banned because I said the wrong thing to an actual fascist. Leftists infight, none of us are above that, so one always has to remember that the vegan prick you’re arguing with will still eat the rich with you.
Like we’ll be eating some rich people and suddenly the rich guy I’m eating is not lefty halal because they aren’t organic or grass fed or some shit.
I think I agree but part of me wonders when the purity testing actually stops…
Don’t worry. We’ll make butter milk out of it lol
Is this specifically about that one guy from last week a bunch of people blocked retouch straight away after his “I’m here from reddit” post?
I never meme about individual users; that’s just not my style.
It’s merely an illustration of a trend I notice every so often.
Bro I’m not toxic fuck you
Fight me
Yeah? Yeah? I can take you on! 👊
Imma put my foot up yer turd pocket
Stop flirting with me
As an ex-Reddit I get it, I was a refugee of Apollo.
Still have that legend on my phone and is now a memorial of what used to be.
could be applied to some mods as well
A lot of users here are not Reddit refugees, they are Reddit rejects.
You seem to forget that reddit mods are nobodies, and have been compromised by for-profit and psychological warfare interests for over a decade.
I was on Reddit for 5 years before I ever got banned. I spread usage among 20 accounts since ~2010, mainly to group topics. Got banned from subs at least 10-20 times since 2015. Only a few were fair, where I was asking for it, just drunk or trying to be a dick. The rest were from conservative subs, and half of those were pre-emptive bans before I’d ever posted, commented, or referenced them — the snowflakes pre-banned me for wrong think, for calling out conservatism from afar.
So to me, it’s far more concerning if you’ve been on Reddit in the last decade and haven’t been “rejected” by fascist mods at least a few times. It’s been a battlefield of bad-faithers for most of its existence.
NOTE: most lemmy mods are no different, and are far more compromised than early Reddit. Many are tankie keyword-squatters building their own propaganda networks from Reddits exodus.
Feddit.uk admins are pretty sound fwiw.
At least not everyone is toxic online.
Source: ex-Redditor of 16 years
I think I was on Reddit for 12 (?), but I wasn’t nearly as active there as I am here.
