I didn’t mean for this post to cause a bunch of arguing in the comments =(
I thought this was just some gallows humor (e.g. “Everything’s lovely except that I have to fear for my safety all the time”) type of shitpost that sounded similar to comments I’ve heard from women irl a lot.
This from a user on an instance that’s known for their open villification of any opinion that goes against the moscow and beijing dictated groupthi–
Wait, wait hold on. Could it possibly be that we both have deeply subjective views of the other large instances, because humans fall to tribalism faster than a kitten on a sock full of catnip? Maybe there’s a vested interest on every side to keep the early adopters of a decentralized social media platform infighting over meaningless stereotypes based on the letters that come after their username, making value judgements based entirely on dictated preconceptions instead of experiential conclusions and honest interaction?
… nah, probably not. And besides, it’s way more fun to just sling mud. Screw u, u commie scuzbucket.
I’m the last one to defend a tankie… But go fuck yourself.
Nah.
nope, it’s because your instance is operated by people who refuse to moderate disinformation under some naive belief that enough debate bro-ing is all it takes to defeat it, failing to understand that the effort it takes to proliferate hate and disinformation is much smaller than the effort it takes to refute it. as such, lemmy.world is becoming overrun with some of the most toxic motherfuckers on the entire platform because all the sane people are being driven away.
Ah, a blanket denial of everything I said. How glad I am that I’m above petty things like pointing out the comically stereotypical behavior of users from other instances. It’s nice up here, on the Mountain of Sarcastic Moral Superiority.
As an actual counterpoint, the primary way that new users get onto lemmy is always going to have the highest concentration of toxic users. Society is, if you haven’t noticed, incredibly toxic. Commonly espoused ideas like trans people being human or civil rights being important aren’t commonly supported by society at large (source: the entire world right now). The easiest way for people who support those things to find their way to instances where those ideas are popularly held is to join the most popular instance and see both the need for other instances with heavier moderation, and what those instances are. How many people hear about blahaj or sh.itjust.works before signing up to lemmy, vs. sign up there as their second account? Personally, I’m pretty grateful that the most toxic opinions are largely self-segregated into a place where people aren’t required to interact with them. It’s less pleasant, sure, but it’s also the best place in the fediverse to get an accurate idea of what the real societal opinions are. And if it gets to be too much, I can always just flee .world (or .ml, I mean seriously guys) like a base coward and spend time under one of my alt accounts on a more heavily moderated instance like .blahaj instead.
that isn’t necessarily true though: you don’t see other popular instances of fediverse platforms having these problems when they actually put effort into enforcing rules that protect the community and discourage disinformation and hate speech, and it doesn’t make them any less of a gateway for new users.
the staff on lemmy.world promote disinformation, and that does not benefit any of us, especially when disinformation has a way of spreading that the separation of instances alone isn’t enough to prevent. most are still either directly federated to lemmy.world, or federated to instances that are federated to lemmy.world.
toxicity itself isn’t inherent to society but a consequence of how our current society is set up, and social media platforms that deliberately proliferate disinformation play a role in that. if you want to actually counter hate and disinformation the first step you should take is to stop outright encouraging it and fight it at the source.
also, implying people are cowards for wanting to flee your hate instance is despicable and privileged-ass take. fuck you.
That was pretty clearly self deprecating. Who in the hell calls someone else a ‘base coward’, anyways? For that matter, who would even take seriously being called a base coward? I think you might genuinely be treating everyone else as hostile as a means of self defense, which while understandable is in itself incredibly (edit: exhausting is a much better term) to interact with.
I have real comments here, along the lines of what you mean by promoting disinformation and the moderation standards you would prefer to see, because those are sincerely interesting. But come on, what’s the point in trying to have a discussion when you treat everything like an attack on you & yours? I’m not even trying to be hostile here.
it’s self-deprecating but has hostile implications toward the many users who really did leave to escape ill treatment toward them. marginalized people get enough of that in real life after all. i don’t think they should have to endure it at all, nor do i think it’s cowardly to want to avoid it. if i’m reading too much into this and that wasn’t your intention, i’m sorry. though i’m really not sure how else to interpret that.
when i say lemmy.world promotes disinformation, i’m referring to their recent announcement that they would require community moderators to entertain disinformation in the name of having open debate. they redacted that announcement following the backlash if i recall correctly, but it is nonetheless reflective of how they have been moderating things on their instance, which is apparent in threads like this one that stir the pot and bring out all the rabid misogynists that have been tolerated and continue to be tolerated on here. the lack of moderation toward these things aligns with what they stated in that announcement, that these are ideas we should be open and fair to.
the problem of course is that being open to disinformation alienates the marginalized people affected by it, harms the people who would be deceived by it, and only serves to benefit the people who would spread it. it’s a lot easier to fight disinformation and bigotry by stopping it at the source rather than letting it fester and then trying to take it down with debate. we all know how difficult it is to argue in good faith against those arguing in bad faith. it takes no time and no effort to just make something up, but more time and effort than most people even have the energy to give to refute it with fact-based evidence.
we’re in the midst of a social crisis with the rise of the incel movement and MRA influencers. those who follow these things are more emotionally invested in them than logically, and near impossible to get through to. you might be able to convince a few undecided readers if you put sufficient effort into your replies, but ultimately the spread of these movements are much faster than the handful of individuals who make an effort to stand against them. a lot of us just don’t even have the time. we need support from those who are in the position to actually take preventive measures against them.
SJW here and I just wandered in, but now I’m grabbing the popcorn and a seat
This from a user on an instance that’s known for having a large amounts of transphobic, homophobic, misogynist and racists users and a mod team that doesnt do the bare minimun to deal with them
… Then why are you here, participating with that which you revile?
because unfortunately lemmy.ml federates with lemmy.world. even if we were to block lemmy.world on an individual level, the toxicity and hate coming from it affects and influences users of other instances. better to push back against you dweebs whenever you try to incite misogynistic hate than just cover our ears and pretend you aren’t here fucking things up.
Oh good, we agree then. There’s a certain necessity to engage with opinions counter to our own instead of pretending they don’t exist, even if it’s personally uncomfortable to do so.
i counter them out of necessity, but ideally i’d rather the lemmy.world admins do that since that’s supposed to be what they’re for.
So you’d prefer the admins allow you to pretend they don’t exist? I know that’s not what you’re trying to say, but its not an unreasonable extrapolation of your position from the comments you’re making. You feel the need to fight for what you believe in because it’s right to stand up for what you believe in, but you would rather you didn’t have to. I think that’s probably the most universally agreeable statement I’ve ever heard, sincerely. I would, too, like for this to be the case. We just disagree on how to achieve that happy state of affairs, though it’s nice that neither of us prefers a solution like “round up all the .ml/.world users in a big camp” unlike, you know, real world opinions…
yes, and i wouldn’t have to fight the losing battle of stopping the proliferation of disinformation through debate if the mods used their position of power to prevent the proliferation of disinformation in the first place.
I think the crux of the issue then might be what I am / you are calling disinformation. I see very little true disinformation on .world, and what I do see I either counter, or someone else beats me to it. It seems likely that our own ideas of what constitutes disinformation are quite different.
Where are you going where you see that much of it?