Or do people think that Lemmy is a neutral, open-minded, safe community? Not like evil Reddit.
EDIT: Talking about mainstream instances like ml or world.
See examples of violent comments towards me and instead of mods removing their comments, they removed mine.
The comment that the all caps person was replying to was me saying that there are non-human targets. Users were assuming I want to kill people and turns out they are the ones that want to kill.
Another day, another user gets turned on to the culture over at .ml
You don’t have to interact with them if you don’t want to.
Lemmy is pretty tolerant compared to Reddit. Having said that, .ml is a tankie hellscape that is the lefts version of maga.
It’s so bizarre. I wonder if they know that they’re pretty much the same people as MAGA.
Let’s not paint Lemmy as a whole based on .ml. It is, notoriously, the dumpsterfire of the Fediverse.
Edit: Like minded people sharing and discussing is not an echochamber, at least until you start excluding good faith points of view because they challenge your beliefs.
Ignoring, downvoting and censoring bad faith rhetoric, like most of .ml, or US Maga, Russian agitprop, Chinese propaganda and similar dis/misinformation is perfectly reasonable and logical. Same goes for domestically produced bullshit.
Yes because .world is so much better lol
Totally fair. I’ll update the post.
Let’s not paint Lemmy as a whole based on .ml
Id argue anyone that doesn’t have that instance blocked are in an echo chamber and are fully aware of it.
It’s hard to argue anyone doesn’t immediately recognize what that is.
You bring up good points… in service of denying the existence of echo chambers here. I’m calling hot garbage on you. Everyone should be on guard for echo chambers everywhere on the internet. The solution is not nearly as simple as blocking known ml and maga spaces.
You didn’t understand what I wrote.
denying the existence of echo chambers.
Never did that. I even explained the main causes of them.
The solution is not nearly as simple as blocking known ml and maga spaces.
I never said that either. Block bad faith instances and users was part of it, but you need to not self-censor either.
Edit: Are your strawmen bad faith or a misunderstanding? ;)
I feel that you actually had to work hard at misinterpreting every element of his comment.
Kudos to you.
I mean, .world is an echo chamber too. It fits that exact definition.
It feels like all of Lemmy is going the way of Voat to me, and other long-dead Reddit clones. Drowned in ragebait once all the “hero” niche community posters leave from lack of engagement.
Voat
…
The place that the first /maga reddit sub tried to go, but got ran off for not being racist enough?
That place was always a shit show and one of the worst places online.
Point being the ragebait crowded out all the interesting niche subs.
It wasn’t like that at Lemmy when I first joined, but with every passing day it feels more and more like a Voat, even if the political leaning is the polar opposite. And no one seems to want to do anything about it.
No, any rational people that stumbled over there left immediately…
I know, I was one of them.
It wasn’t like that at Lemmy when I first joined, but with every passing day it feels more and more like a Voat,
That doesn’t make any logical sense, even with your caveat.
And no one seems to want to do anything about it.
What do you want someone to “do” about it?
Ban everyone you don’t like?
Make your own instance, do what you want. If people want that, they’ll join.
I think you are abusing the term echochamber here. An online community only becomes an echochamber under two circumstances:
-
if the mods make it one. .ml counts due to the right-of-passage banhammer for saying taboo things like facts, logic, reason or calling out hypocrisy. Lemmy does not qualify because .ml is still federated despite being a dumpsterfire of bad faith.
-
If you use the self-censorship tools to simply ban people, communities or instances you disagree with. Every public online community has bad faith actors. That’s what you get for being an audience. That’s life. Humanity is also full of people with poor reasoning, varying age and experiences, a few pathologies and posting while drunk/high or masturbating. If you feel you’re in an echochamber, you might have crafted one for yourself. Can you tell the differences between someone who is objectively wrong, drunken shitposts, is neurodiverse, has come to a reasonable but different conclusion than you based a different weighting of relevent criteria or is posting in bad faith?
Lemmy provides tools to block bad faith posters, but it’s up to you to use them judiciously.
I would argue Lemmy is less of an echochamber as I see more genuine LGBTQ2S+, Anarchist, Tankie, Antifa than reddit ever had. I think the smaller population here just chopped the top of the gaussian distribution curve, and we have relatively fewer “normies”. People passionate, and articulate about their things.
I would argue Lemmy is less of an echochamber as I see more genuine LGBTQ2S+, Anarchist, Tankie, Antifa that reddit ever had. I think the smaller population here just chopped the top of the gaussian distribution curve, amd we have, relatively, a few less “normies”. People passionate, and articulate about their things.
I would argue that the open and often extreme hostility towards ideas that go against the group consensus still make it more of an echochamber. Like, for example, if you say something positive about AI and are spammed with deaththreats and other bad-faith character attacks, you’re not going to stick around, and even if you do, you’re not going to feel safe expressing that opinion, and that option will be effectively stompped out. This sort of behaviour is still very common, even outside of .ml, and just because some topics are more free than Reddit, doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist.
I find the mods heavy on banning death threats. I also consider your example of AI pile-ons to be unpopular, not an echochamber. The distinction is important.
The distinction is in the civility, not the topic. I just used AI because its one of the worst for it right now. People tend to see liking AI (or not hating it enough) as a good reason to attack people - again, not just death threats, but things like attacks on character, or other toxic behaviour. For a more mundane example, there was recently a post on the No Stupid Questions community, asking how Christians could justify not being homophobic or anti-abortion. The question itself, despite its validity, is downvoted significantly, and about half the responses are edgy, unhelpful quips rather than genuine attempts to answer the question - many of which with positive scores. That sort of thing is widespread, which quashes genuine discorse, thus, creates an echochamber.
I see. Good points all around. But I would not consider than an echochamber. That is just a diversity of respondants, many of which are poor quality and low effort.
Some because they are low intellect. Some are children. Some are edgelords and shitposters just trying to provoke for shits and giggles. Some just find the questions so obviously out of whack, that they presume OP to be a shitposter, and respond in kind. Lots of reasons, similar results. I noted a few recent ask lemmy questions where the questions were so malformed, people couldn’t tell it it was a bot, esl, neurodiversity etc and made jokes about op. That’s a case of garbage in/garbage out. While not cool, if you can’t be bothered to make a quality question, you can’t insist on a quality answer.
For reference: I go with the standard def:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)
That which reinforces bias from innapropriate confirmation or unduly limits discussion of counter views.
That which reinforces bias from innapropriate confirmation or unduly limits discussion of counter views.
The problem is that if that toxicity is widespread enough, and accepted enough, it does interfere with any discussion of opposing viewpoints. When helpful comments that advance the discussion are consistently burried under dozens of unhelpful ones, it makes it difficult to have a meaningful discussion, and incentivses those whose opinions that go against the ingrained group-think to leave. Akin to the Nazi bar allegory, allowing that sort of toxicity to fester just chases off anyone who doesn’t want to join in, leading to a echo-chamber.
-
Lemmy is a neutral, open-minded, safe community?
A community cannot both be neutral and safe. Being safe involves picking a side and pushing back against harmful shit. Being neutral involves letting the harmful shit slide, as long as it’s hate presented in a civil and polite fashion.
Which is to say, I have absolutely zero interest in a “neutral” community.
I understand this as the paradox of tolerance, but what I’m saying is neutral in bias. From responses it seems people on Lemmy understand that they’re biased.
Yep. I’m trans. I have zero desire to exist in a space that is “neutral” to me having equal rights. I actively and deliberately choose spaces that are not neutral, and I imagine many/most marginalised communities are the same. Neutrality is not a privilege many of us can afford
Here’s me just chilling in the fun parts of Lemmy oblivious to whatever the fuck that shit is in those screenshots lol
There’s a reason why .ml is defederated of many instances and so many other people have the whole instance blocked. They are… not the best of the fediverse.
Lemmy.ml isn’t widely defederated to my knowledge.
What are some good non-mainstream, non-tankie instances that have a variety of communities and decent user interaction?
I have an alt account on sh.itjust.works. It’s canadian based and they are pretty cool. For the variety of communities, you don’t really need to worry that much. The beauty of the fediverse is that we are all connected. As proof, I’m replying to a lemmy.world post from a piefed.social account while I browse the /all that shows me the entirety of the lemmy/piefed social.
For sure. I subscribe to some of their communities. What I should have asked was which instances are not tankie echo chambers, and amongst those are there enough communities and activity.
My suggestion stands then. sh.itjust.works is not a tankie echo chamber, they have activity and a good bunch of communities. Most lemmy is left-leaning tho, so you are going to see that political content tends to be left-leaning. But far from tankie-like.
Yeah I’m good with left-leaning, just not so far left that they’re the same as the right. Thanks!
I think your missing the point of federation. If some place is crappy or you feel its run by crappy folks you can go to another or start your own. You could sorta do that on reddit but ultimately it went to a single authority. Whats nice here is I can hang or places or not. This gets back to my big thing. Blocking. Instances should avoid blocking and such as much as possible but users should do it liberally. This piss you off. Block the community so you don’t accidentally engage with it in future. We literally can make the experience we want and the whole. you will put yourself in a bubble thing. thats fine. I put myself in a bubble any time I decide to hang out in place or folks in the real world or avoid places and folks. im fine with that. When the internet was smaller and not so full of trump it was maybe I wanted to see everything but now Im more looking to avoid the trumpy trump that is all over the place.
Yeah I get that and should block instances more. I’ve just found that outside of the mainstream instances there isn’t a lot of interaction or content.
I belive in blocking rather than subscribing. I look at all and see plenty of content and interaction.
i get it, but I also don’t want to create an echo chamber for myself and be blind to parts of the world.
im like 100% fine with it. As I said in real life I decide to frequent places I like and avoid places I don’t and I never worried about that putting me in an echo chamber. Plus that is limited to stuff local to me as opposed to everything available across the world. Why would I feel that way about the internet?
I just need to know what’s going on with people. the good and the bad, so I can gauge what’s going on with the world.
yeah its like after work the first place you want to hit is that one with the jerk bouncer who makes fun of you and suggests he won’t let you in and insist you go change your shirt. The one with the nazis and facists who talk your ear off on how we need solutions for some people. Good or bad its important to know. Insert whatever other crap needs to be known. I don’t get my news from here. I might encounter it but I don’t expect to be informed by randos on the internet. No offense to you or anyone else. I just don’t get how people don’t treat social media like they do real life.
i don’t get news from here either. i just don’t want to be blind to what’s going on. i’ve already blocked ml, but i’m glad i know it and its users exist and what they’re like. i wouldn’t spend my weekends in conservative spaces, but i’m not opposed to having conversations with or being around conservative people. good to have perspective for why people are the way they are instead of just the headlines read and then grouping people into buckets.
You can always create more than one account. You could have one to look at stuff you like where you block everything else and another for looking at the rest.
Getting bombarded with negativity all the time is much more destructive than choosing when you interact with it.
That’s a good idea
So, yeah, like everyone said .ml is horrific. Anyone I’ve blocked has been from there. I still haven’t blocked the instance and dont plant to. .world and every other instance I’ve seen is absolutely a left wing echo chamber. There isn’t really any conservative thought/speech here. Which is fine by me because I hear enough of that shit from my coworkers. It’s really just a scale of how far left/communist/anarchist/extremist they go. .ml is comprised almost exclusively of the lattermost but the rest are a mix. I’m a liberal so I don’t mind but I do recognize only one side has a seat at the table here.
That’s good to know. Best to be self-aware. I don’t mind the left-leaning either, but definitely not a space to have any productive conversation challenging left beliefs and opinions.
Correct
(a) In all seriousness, people, unless you’re specifically into that sort of thing, just don’t use lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, or lemmy.ml communities. Going there, having a bad time, and then coming back and reporting on other instances how much things suck there just wastes your time and wastes the time of people who are already avoiding those instances.
(b) If you specifically want to complain about conditions there, there’s a whole community dedicated to that, !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works. Or if you want to complain specifically about moderator/admin actions, !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
Thanks for the info. Even after a year or so on Lemmy I’m still figuring things out.
Fair enough, I guess, if you didn’t know. I shouldn’t grouse at you.
Fantasizing about participating in a war is pretty shitty, regardless of whether or not non-human targets exist. You could fantasize about winning a drone racing or stunt competition to surprise people with your skill instead and look way less psychopathic.
Calling for OP’s death over that fantasy is way more shitty though. And the moderators left that up.
ESH.
OP, the dude replying, and Ozma.
This question is hard to answer considering how low interactions with Lemmy.ml we try to have. The only good thing is that we can legally start mocking them with loosing a war in Ukraine once it is over.
You’re right about the bias.
I propose you look for an instance that does not federate with .ml
Thanks. I didn’t realize ml was so infamous. How do I know if they federate with them or not?
It can be handy to look at fediseer too:
https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.ml
For example, one instance seems to have blocked lemmy.ml for:
- poor moderation
- toxicity
- abusive admin
- red fash
- misinformation
- brigading
And lists evidence as:
In short: Lemmygrad-lite
– Poor moderation / misinformation: worldnews@lemmy.ml is a cesspool of misinformation.
– Red Fash/abusive admin: Mention anything negative about China or Russia and see how fast you get banned. Signups require quoting something from an approved list of communist dogma.
– Toxicity: (Gestures vaguely in all directions).
– Brigading: It may not be organized brigading, but every 3rd comment from users there is basically someone jumping in with “capitalism bad” and tearing down any discussion/ideas for improvement that aren’t complete and total destruction of the current economic modelThanks! That’s useful for validating instances in the future.
Mlem is the only iPhone client I’m aware of that lets you quickly navigate to this page for instances
The other guy had answered already, but I’ll plug my instance anyway :)
I’ll check out cafe. Thanks!
You can check here for lemmy.world, or other instances by using the same syntax.
Thanks!
Yes.
Or do people think that Lemmy is a neutral, open-minded, safe community? Not like evil Reddit.
What ? the ? fuck ?
Lemmy is better because it’s not centralised and corporate controlled and there’s a granular ability to scale and block. You can have an entire instance with only you on it if you want.
Upvote system pushes up the main opinion, so yeah… echo chamber effect is expected
Yeah that makes sense, but that has to mean that users see an upvoted post and give it credibility without thinking for themselves whether they agree with it or not.
