Every single platform has its own share of those, and Lemmy is no exception.
So what matters if not that Lemmy has “not-so-nice people” - it’s how much you can avoid them, and if the unavoidable are tolerable. But there’s no single answer for either, because ultimately what each person considers “nice” is different from another.
God that sub is such a a weird cesspit NGL it’s like that leaving reddit sub. I honestly can’t imagine what these people must do to seem to get banned/“silenced” so easily, I post opinions that are usually some degree of true and I think are of some value but are often also extremely inflammatory and I think it’s on purpose. Yet, I haven’t been blocked, silenced or banned across lemmy instances nearly as much as I have been on reddit, where I frankly can’t seem to post anything without that happening.
I feel like there’s some selective pressure going on: people talking in Reddit about alternatives are the ones who couldn’t find one that suits their tastes, so a disproportionately large amount of them are whiny/entitled, combative, have the “objectively best opinion” (i.e. morons), etc. The sort of person you’d show the door, you know?
Or worse. The ones who think “freedom of speech” means “I’m entitled to your ear”.
Not speaking to this person or post specifically but this is what can blight all reddit alternatives. The first wave that arrives often includes a disproportionate amount of malcontents. A lot of people who don’t play well with others, who are banned from reddit (or at least banned from lots of subreddits) usually turn up first on these reddit alternatives and disrupt the community by repeatedly showing anti-social or disruptive, attention seeking behaviour. It’s not even necessarily related to any political persuasion.
The first wave of new users on reddit alternatives are, in my experience, more likely to have a lot of problem users and since the sites are so small, and usually sparsely moderated, they are much more disruptive than they would be on reddit.
Ah, that’s true. The first wave is always a mess, with a half dozen idealists sticking to principles and a million malcontents. And since it’s the first wave, it gets to dictate the culture of the platform, that might become nasty as a result.
Lemmy didn’t completely avoid this problem but I feel like it’s a minor issue here (compared to, say, Ruqqus). Mostly due to
- timing - Lemmy grew because people were pissed at the APIcalypse, not due to some mass banwave
- federation - it’s a small barrier of entry, but enough to discourage some troublemakers
I feel like the federation is more than a barrier to entry. It’s an ability to just remove whole groups if they are like that. Defeding hexbear has minimal negative impact as compared to not being on Lemmy at all. And when people group themselves into ideological echochambers blocking them because much much easier.
Just say AI is useful and don’t back down in a sub like fuck AI or fuck cars. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fact or just calling out an insane meme, there are a lot more bans here if you have positions in the middle.
There is definitely more freedom to say things how you want here but it’s far easier to catch a ban for opposing opinions in many subs.
As someone who loathes ai, hates everything it stands for, and thinks it will have a profoundly negative impact on the world, yeah I think it’s far too easy to escalate things by just casually disagreeing with folks
I don’t agree with you, but unless you’re being an asshole you shouldn’t get banned for that. I think attracting a very specific range of people has created a really echoey idea of right and wrong that people stick to incredibly prescriptively in a way that’s often noth helpful, and simultaneously the small scale can kinda embolden people with authority in some ways, resulting in a lot of variation in how fairly folks get treated across insrances and comms.
It kinda reminds me of how moderately large businesses are pretty much always pretty crap, or heading that direction due to incentive structures, but small businesses run the gambit from really good folks, to an egregious display of humanities worst tendencies- it feels like the lack of scale removes both some of the incentives to be trend towards exploitation, and also some of the scrutiny if they’re horrible.
One of the worst places my best friend ever worked was a small family owned dog kennel. It was absolute hell while she was there. The fediverse is kinda like a lot of small businesses, as opposed to one giant one with perverse incentives but tons of scrutiny on authority decisions
Sorry, at this point I’m just reflecting on how scale and structure changes the problems we face. Hope you have a good one :)
In also dislike ai quite a bit. Im also not going to diwnvote soneone for thier toolset. I do hope people do more research than asking an llm (whoes whole job is to be as convincing as possible including confirming whatever bias you have).
But (preaching to the choir here probably) the whole idea of these platforms is to have conversations and share info. We can be civil and not downvote to oblivion people that have different opinions.
I do all of these things and I’ve not been catching bans left and right at all.
I just had a person tell me that “Piefed is horrible” 🤦♀️
They might be thinking of Pixelfed.
Well that’s just silly.
Horrible people are everywhere.
