Obviously, the internet has always been a toxic place, (the phrase “flame war” has been around for decades,) but it seems to have gotten so much worse over the last few years. I used to think decentralization of the internet would fix the worst of it, but Lemmy seems to have gotten worse alongside the rest of internet culture, proving me wrong. How do we fix/improve this culture of toxicity?
You can’t.
Most people love it, even if you don’t. That toxicity was always there… just look at how incredibly popular day time toxic TV and reality TV was before the internet and social media…
That said, plenty of people who posted here are barking up the right tree. Be what you want to see, and block/don’t engage with shitty toxic people and their toxic ideas. Support other users by upvoting and interacting with them when you see good content, and if the mods remove those posts, then stop using that community.
Way too many mods give into the toxic BS on social media due to the pressure that toxic people create.
One thing is to ensure that people understand you won’t take their bullshit anymore. Mass muting, banning, and deplatforming helps get rid of a lot of toxicity because said people are only interested in it.
it consists of people too mad to be on reddit, sad trans people, and people who try to deal with linux everyday, and me…so this stress will eventually come down as toxicity with the lack of moderation. im not saying moderation is the solution, im saying this is how we are, let us be.
Actually do downvote posts if you would have preferred not to read that and it isn’t of note.
I.e. downvote the 3rd post about the same tragedy when nothing has changed and not much time has passed. Downvote negativity. A neutral vote is for things that are mid and don’t matter.
You’re only in control of yourself. Write thoughtful and positive posts, replies. Up/downvote based on how thoughtful and positive you think posts are.
You don’t have much power but what you have you can use.
And report content you don’t like to your admins!
the best possible answer.
Post nice comments under good posts. It really makes a difference to the active posters and generally lifts the mood of this place.
The first rule of the internet I ever encountered back in the mid-90s was “don’t feed the trolls”. We’ve lost that piece of philosophy along the way, and now we all actively engage with cunts instead of just blocking them and moving on. Oblivion is the ultimate tool for dealing with anonymous people who behave like fuckheads. It’s a win for them if you respond to their provocations, so just don’t. Don’t be posting shit like “I know you’re trolling, but…” just don’t even acknowledge them. Block/report/move on. It’s really that simple. The simplest remedy is also the most effective. How cool is that? We just have to tell our limbic systems, because the urge to engage is overwhelming sometimes. But take pleasure in sending these bastards into the abyss, enjoy hitting that block button and growing your blocklist. Look at your blocklist from time to time, and bask in the glory of it. Delight in how many people have been stopped dead in their tracks from ever bothering you again. Get excited when you see a new cunt emerge, and how much fun it will be to add them to the list.
As for ‘reply guys’ and general pissiness from curmudgeons (that is, people who are dickish but not actually harassing you) you can simply think of whatever anger or displeasure they’re expressing as being very much their problem. If they talk to you like you’re stupid, just know that they’re struggling with their own issues and that’s why they’re behaving like a stone in everyone’s shoe. Talk to them normally and without emotional language (if you need to talk to them at all), and keep in mind that anyone else who happens upon this interaction will see that you’re a reasonable and cool person and the other guy is a wanker.
If you knew the other person had a brain tumour that made them behave like a prick, you’d be much less bothered by them, but the thing is, that “brain tumour” exists in everyone. No one is really the master of their own behaviour, we’re all dragging millennia of other people’s genetic shittiness behind us, and our individual capacity to introspect and reflect on our shittiness and try to do better is also something we don’t create within ourselves, we’re all pretty much stuck with what we have, with our wiggle room for improvement being as preordained as our circulatory systems. So think of everyone as a tumour-riddled victim of circumstance and they won’t be able to hurt or annoy you anywhere near as much. Be happy that your particular tumours aren’t making you behave like a dickhead in public. It’s all about framing, just don’t let the other guy do the framing and you’re good.
“Don’t feed the trolls” can be good advice; I recently (one or two comments back!) made such a suggestion myself.
But it seems like there are times when we have to engage. Trollish behavior is behind phenomenons like fake news, incel culture, etc. - clearly those need addressed wherever they come up. The correct response seems to be situational.
How do we fix/improve this culture of toxicity?
We don’t because:
- it’s a wider issue than ‘the Internet’. Haven’t you noticed how even politics in general, which was supposed to be the epitome of our democratic societies, has morphed into an hate-filled shit show at best, when it’s not effing openly celebrating murders and assassinations of people we don’t like?
- we’re part of the issue. It’s not a ‘them’ vs ‘us’. It’s us. And most of us, no matter what we believe in, are acting like morons, at best.
but Lemmy seems to have gotten worse alongside the rest of internet culture, proving me wrong.
Lemmy has not “gotten worse” in my opinion. It was worse to begin with and when I arrived a few years ago, the first thing I had to urgently learn is how to filter out what I call its ‘noise’: that constant (and self-celebrating) hatred for ‘the other camp’, the hatred for those who dare not think like ‘us’ (I certainly don’t put myself in that group). I then moved from Lemmy to Piefed, mostly because back then at least it offered me simpler/more efficient ways to filter out that noise.
How do we fix/improve this culture of toxicity?
Like mentioned in other comments, the only way is through changing (civil) society itself. Aka through education.
As long as our respective public educative systems (I’m from France, but I know it’s as shitty in the USA if not worse) are allowed to not do their job of actually educating and teaching kids some common values and principles (next to some actual knowledge and know-how), toxicity will thrive.
It thrives because it has been normalized and because those who benefit from it are being regarded as role models. But it’s even worse than that: just publicly discussing this issue and its causes would expose anyone to being… punished by an angry toxic crowd of people that don’t want to hear they’re being toxic (or that their ‘ideology’ they want so hard to believe in have morphed them into assholes). That is a huge loss for any freedom respecting society, and a huge win for those benefiting from that hate/toxicity.
edit: clarifications.
Your posts are really great. Just wanted to say it’s super cool to have someone thoughtful contributing and articulating a realistic approach.
I don’t buy this narrative that toxicity is inevitable. That’s the narrative pushed by Reddit/Xitter/Meta because toxicity causes engagement which makes them rich. They don’t want to delete it. It’s only inevitable if admins allow it to be.
That “rule” don’t apply on Fedi where we can simply join an instance that actively bans all the bs.
Why?
toxicity is inevitable in real life such as much. toxic people are everywhere, and they drag people down with them.
i’ve had toxic family, friends, and co-workers. sometimes you have no choice but to live with it, sometimes you can ignore it, sometimes you can boot the person from your life if they cross certain boundaries. and sometimes the toxic person tries to get you removed.
the false tech bro assumption I’ve seen since forever, is the idea you can engineer out people’s negative behaviors and impulses… you can’t. they will find a way to exploit whatever system you set up. that’s what they do… that’s what makes them toxic. you cannot create a social media network that is free from toxic people, unless you make one with no people involved.
I don’t buy this narrative that toxicity is inevitable.
You’re more than welcome to buy what you fancy, I don’t recall saying it was unavoidable. I even think I mentioned why we somehow manged to make it as… present as it is, and how we should try to get rid of most of it (hint: through education).
Can we get rid of all of it? Nope, unless one is to pretend we’re perfect? Don’t know about you but I’m certainly not perfect.
My belief is that toxicity online is like building a six lane highway through a residential neighborhood. If you build the infrastructure to support more cars, and the law allows speeding you’re going to get more cars (and more car accidents).
If you build platforms that don’t allow cars/limit their behavior where people are trying to have a polite conversation, you’ll see quiet more thoughtful modes of transportation and fewer innocent bystanders get hurt.
Wow that analogy worked pretty well.
My opinion is that toxicity can be found in every little gesture in our daily life, no need for an highway. It’s also not somethign ‘external’ to us that appears because of poor decisions. It can and often thrives even in the most ‘humble’ or humane ‘infrastructures’, to use you image. Suffice to look how two people, say two neighbors, can literally hate on one another for petty reasons.
If you build platforms that don’t allow cars/limit their behavior where people are trying to have a polite conversation, you’ll see quiet more thoughtful modes of transportation and fewer innocent bystanders get hurt.
People can have a fight on the street, or in a pub, in a shop, at work, or wherever, even at home, within a family circle, because “he looked at me!” or because “I don’t like the way he dress” kind of reasons. Do you really think tech is the issue?
But once again, you’re more than welcome to believe what you want to believe. Just don’t try to put words in my mouth that I did not say.
I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but it sure seems like you’re saying that toxicity can inevitably be found in every little gesture in our daily life, including internet platforms, which is a narrative I disagree with.
People can have a fight on the street, or in a pub, in a shop, at work, or wherever
Pretty much all pubs and shops I know quickly expel and ban people who fight there. If those places allowed fighting (as many internet platforms do) users looking for a fight would eventually gravitate there, and people looking to discuss peacefully will go elsewhere.
Do you really think tech is the issue?
No, I’m saying people are the issue. Toxicity is not something that can be found everywhere, it only pops up where it’s allowed to flourish.
2 reminded me of a saying. You’re not stuck in traffic, you ARE traffic.
and sometimes you have no choice but to submit. and that’s OK
it’s also not your fault if a drunk driver or similar crashes into you and causes a traffic jam… it’s the other person’s fault.
way too many toxic folks on lemmy are apologizing for the drunk driver and blaming the victim constantly. especially when they identify with the drunk driver or start thinking ‘he had no choice!’
Couldn’t agree more! People should be more tolerant and stop hating on people having different opinions
…What’s the different opinion Anakin?
Block .ml and don’t engage with .ml users
Wait do they have a reputation? I am on ml … Should I switch lol
And hexbear and lemmygrad
- Shun the toxic people. Block them and don’t look back.
- Seriously, block them. They’re still gonna toxic whether you’re there to observe it or not.
- Find a well moderated instance that isn’t afraid to show toxic people the door
- Block
.ml,grad,hexbear,dbzer0, andquokk.au - Block any other instance or person that centers itself around identity politics
- Block all the news/politics communities. Just get your news from actual news services. The comment section for most news/politics posts here is worse than an entire garbage dump on fire.
And you’ll end up with like 3 federated users left which is basically my /all feed now 😑
Identity politics derails everything into a toxic soup.
It sucks that the founders of it thought it would bring ‘justice’ to the world or something, and it just made everything so much worse.
One of the reasons I left my PhD in 2010 was because I could see the tide of ID pol alreadying ruining academia… I never thought it would become mainstream though and that everyone would start thinking that way. Thanks tumblr!
dbzer0, and quokk.au
What’s your issue with those instances, he asked quizzically.
they are full of hostile angry people living in alternative version of reality
We are not angry or hostile, we just want to have some freedom and equality in the world.
yeah and you see no issue with murdering people to get it done.
My coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, so this is as diplomatic as I can phrase it under current conditions:
Both are entrenched identity politics instances (“aNaRchISM!”) and a good chunk of the calls for violence around here are from users there. You’ll be over here trying to have a rational discussion, and someone from there comes in like the world’s dumbest parrot who can only say “Bawk! Guillotines! Bawk! Luigi”.
dbzer0was aight when it was just the piracy instance, but they’ve shifted more to far left politics and re-federated with Hexbear, so they’re basically Hexbear-lite these days. Quokk turns a complete blind eye (or tacitly endorses) several power users who do nothing but call for violence, doxx, and/or do nothing but spread anarchist propaganda.Thanks for answering!
I don’t have much problem with “anarchists,” altho the term can mean a lot of things, and some of the typical core ideas are pie-in-the-sky to me. I certainly don’t think of tankies as leftist, either, so it’s troublesome that anyone would want to align with Hexbear.
Regardless, bad actors and toxic users will always get the gas face* from me. I’ll keep my eye on that stuff, thank you!
* semi-obscure rap phrase from ~1990 I suppose, i.e. a jaundiced look
No idea about quokk, but for db0: from what I read here, the blocking of the tankie triad seems too be pretty effective, so in order to be able to still bother the rest of us, some were looking for alternative servers. And Db0 had the problem of being very open, so they went there. People then complained that more and more db0 users are tankies that can’t discuss faithfully.
I think alot of users also moved to dbzer0 due to a certain Adobe software community moving there from reddit so I would assume its either a loud minority or the instance was already a dumpsterfire before it grew.
Nonetheless, if its not properly moderated or if the entire purpose and ruling of it creates the issues then it should just be defederated IMO.
Oof. One of my community’s moderators and an FV buddy is also an admin on db0. Absolutely no trace of tankie-ness detected there, as yet.
So far I just haven’t needed to block any particular instance. I just have zero participation with .ML and Hexbear /c’s, and that seems to work just fine. I don’t see any trace of them in my curated feed. I also want to make sure that if their users happen to post / comment in my community project (and they have in the past), I want to be sure I can see them doing that.
Piefed.social is defederated with Hexbear and lemmygrad, so you aren’t exposed to their content or users. Your instance is federated with .ml though.
Ah whoops, I think I remember that now. Thank you.
I also haven’t experienced it myself, so I should have added that I don’t support that view due to my own lack of evidence.
Seriously, just block them. It’s not a punishment, it’s a curation tool; you’re allowed to block people who haven’t done anything wrong just because you don’t want to see their content. If you don’t like women’s sports, block me! It’s fine — you should have the social media experience you want, and you can use the block button to get it.
Well fucking said!👏
We really need to grow beyond the idea that blocking is “censorship”. That only (arguably) applies to large centralized platforms. The fediverse allows all voices to speak but it doesn’t force everyone else to listen.
The fediverse gives us huge individual and collective power and we can use it to grow beyond the constraints of the old platforms.
Block and report. We’re all in this together!
Oh yeah? Well your finger looks like a finger. Boom, take that sucka.
lemmy/piefed have been getting a surge of users from reddit. i can’t imagine algorithmic brainrot fades overnight.
People are a little bit toxic so people gathering place will be too.
I don’t think it’s a massive problem as it mostly seems to take care of itself with some effective moderation.
I’m not positive that you can do much outside of simply (temporarily or permanently) banning people who are acting shitty.
On the flip side, banning people because they disagree with you is how we end up with the kind of echo chambers that breed other socially toxic problems like strict partisanship, and cults of personality… so it’s a fine line.
Generally I don’t see a lot of people on Lemmy acting like straight-up assholes. I don’t always agree with people, and I think there is a potential for “flame wars” and arguments, but as long as everyone is acting in good faith and being reasonable about what they are expressing I feel that’s generally an acceptable level of conflict.
I’ve never wanted someone banned because they said something I didn’t like. Like… If someone wanted to come here and make the case for why Donald Trump is a great president, I would love to see them try. The real problem is when people resort only to trolling and forego any attempt at having a real good-faith conversation. That’s when the relationship breaks down and the conversation is no longer conducive to running a real community. When people start acting like assholes, making personal attacks, or continually arguing in bad-faith, then I think it warrants at least a temporary ban.
The goal of the internet should not be conflict avoidance or group-think, but mutual respect and treating each other like human beings. For the most part, I think the Fediverse is pretty good about that.
I’m not positive that you can do much outside of simply (temporarily or permanently) banning people who are acting shitty.
You can also ask that your admins defederate instances where shitty-acting people are allowed to set up shop.
Downvoting just gives trolls the negative attention they want. Ignore, block, and/or report. That’s it. We can’t change human nature.
Its not so much the outright tolls I’m concerned about (voting alone filters most out), as the general toxicity in the culture. Things like increasingly widespread personal attacks, decreased etiquette and consideration for others, and just the general death of discourse.
Oh, I see. In that case, I think the best we can do is set a good example. For example, I try not to let myself get drawn into childish arguments.
