Skip Navigation
Fediverse @lemmy.world
Cris @lemmy.world

The best thing you can do for the fediverse is just be kind

The fediverse is small, and thats both a blessing and a curse - one of its several blessings is that in a smaller space we all individually have a bigger impact on what the culture of this space is like.

On this comm (and on lemmy broadly) there's a lot of discussion about how to grow the fediverse, what to improve, but an easy thing you can do for the fediverse is right in front of us-

  • Be kind
  • Ask people what they think, and why
  • Approach folks you disagree with with curiosity rather than hostility (EDIT: no, this is not specifically referring to Nazis. I get it, they're the first thing that comes to mind. I'm not telling you to approve of Nazis I'm just saying be kind to your fellow lemmites)
  • Engage sincerely
  • Ask yourself if there's something nice you can say
  • Make this small space worth being in

A platform lives or dies by what's available on said platform and often we have this conversation in the context of "content" or posts - and we may never have as much content as reddit does. But content and posts aren't the only thing this kind of platform offers- it also offers people. It offers community, and human interaction.

Culture and community is lemmy and the fediverse's biggest differentiator, and we all have a role to play in shaping the culture of this space.

The biggest thing you can do to help the fediverse is make it a place worth being.

311 comments

  • I totally agree with your message.

    These days everyone who is not ultra-left easily gets labelled as Nazi, similarly everyone who brings up any rather left argument will be called a woke snowflake.

    Thus, any dialog is immediately shut down. Listen, understand, exchange arguments.

    That is what unites everyone who believes in liberal values.

  • Kinda wish we could pin this post to the top of everyones feed for a while! 😅 Lemmy has been a great place so far but think we can do even better. Especially with the points you bring up.

    Thanks for sharing 😊

  • Love your take and call to action. Appreciate it :) and I'm not surprised it's coming from you either :)

  • Completely right OP, and this is worth repeating as MUCH as possible. More than almost any UX or intake changes, Fediverse will only grow if their experience of the community is good.

    Unfortunately, some people have never caught a vibe in their life and it shows lol. A single person with a bad attitude can completely tank your experience in a small community, versus a 20,000 person subreddit where usernames are basically indistinguishable.

  • i hope the quality stays up and i guess that we're non-commercial might help with this; as we're not pushing people to use this platform; the people here are people who actually want to use this platform and i guess that in itself could do a good thing.

    • I wish too. Unfortunately, the redditors are coming here, and i've noticed a pretty big spike in racism/transphobia :D I've been trying to keep them on a leash, reporting them to other admins directly and banning them from dbzer0, but the attitude itself being there disappoints me heavily :/

  • Here are some more specific examples to think about!

    • Compliment people's art and ask about their process
    • Teach people about something you're knowledgeable on
    • Give constructive criticism on peoples projects when it's welcome
    • Thank people for posting things you're glad you got to see, tell them you enjoyed it
    • Tell people you're glad they're here
    • Tell people you hope they have a good day

    Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts :) if you have thoughts of your own, I'd love to hear them!

  • There was a movement in the blogging community ~15 years ago to leave positive comments on posts you like. It was an approach to conquer negative comments and a general destructive nature of online conversations. I still do it to this day. If I really like something or appreciate someone's work, I leave a nice comment.

    • A nice comment is worth more than 1000 upvotes, emotionally.

    • Oh neat, being younger there's a lot of how folks approached the web in its earlier years that I don't have any experience with, and think there's a lot to learn from

      I love that!

  • One thing that has been concerning me lately is that the Fediverse is being treated as a refuge for people who get banned on Reddit or other social media. Sure, sometimes those bans are based on arbitrary power tripping nonsense. But people actually do get banned for being assholes, and so I've got some worry that this is distilling the population of the Fediverse in an unfortunate direction.

    • Yeah, I think that was a big issue with the culture of platforms like Voat.

      The fediverse doesn't have it as bad but it's still definitely a risk. And being decentralized makes it easier to dodge bans and whatnot.

      You're right, and like I said elsewhere in this thread, big corporate platforms definitely have issues but that doesn't mean there aren't any unique challenges the fediverse will have to contend with.

    • Every troll server gets defederated from by everyone. And every troll gets banned on the normal servers. I think the federated nature is a blessing, those assholes have their own part of the internet which is usually far from my part of the internet.

      • "Asshole" is a broad term. It includes racists, abrasive personalities, anger-management problems, and so forth. Ie, people who have a tendency to get banned from other places. It's not just trolls.

        Being banned from Reddit is a unitary action. They can't get back into Reddit, they're just gone. Whereas in the Fediverse you can just go to a different instance and sign up afresh each time you get banned. This is part of the Fediverse's design. And so I am concerned that the Fediverse will accumulate the worst users.

  • If this is the best thing you can do, then the second best thing is be active. We're still content starved around here. If you think of something to post, post it. If you can't post, try to comment. Especially on any post that has no comments. Doesn't matter how banal your comment is. Nothing scares away potential new users more than seeing post after post with 0 comments in their feed, and nothing disheartens posters more than that "0 comments" under their post.

    People are generally scared or reluctant to do things when nobody else is doing them. They don't want to post in communities that don't already have recent posts. They don't want to comment on posts that have 0 comments. So whenever you can break that silence and be that first post or comment, try to do so.

    • I definitely agree about the importance of breaking the silence, and engaging with folks who go out of their way to post.

      As a culture we want that to be rewarding, it's something we all appreciate when folks do, so I think it's worth making sure posters can feel that it's appreciated. Make it known :)

  • I started using Lemmy just recently. I haven't seen any sexism here so far. On reddit it's a matter of minutes until something sexist appears on my feed, or other hateful stuff. That's why I feel way more relaxed using Lemmy.

    • sexism does exist on lemmy but the algorithm is less aggressive about pushing rage-bait, so it rarely shows on the front-page. also, the people here are a bit more considerate, i'd say. but that is mostly because it's a lot of nerds here (heheh).

      • Yes, that algorithm is definitely way better! I'd argue though that people aren't more considered here because they are nerds. Communities, such as the gaming and anime communities, are often one of the most misogynistic ones online. I think people are more considered here, because they are politically on the left.

  • Lemmy has a well-known reputation as being a "Nazi bar". e.g. as mentioned in this example post in r/RedditAlternatives complaining about toxicity on Lemmy, here is one of the comments therein (not from OP but as part of the overall conversation):

    If their experience is anything like mine, it’s populated by mostly far left wing Americans who were banned from Reddit for being too extreme. I disagreed with someone about a topical left wing American position and received death threats. In fact I’ve never received that many death threats on Reddit. Lemmy is extreme.

    Even if the threats came from Hexbear or one of the lemmy.ml mods who are allowed to make death threats against users without any repercussions, "we" still expose "our" users to such content when we federate with those communities. i.e., for exactly the same reason that we defederate from instances that share CSAM, if we really, truly, genuinely don't like it when mods make death threats against users, then we need to put a stop to it - by defederating those instances that are known to do exactly that.

    Otherwise we give our tacit approval, and moreover whenever we encourage people to join Lemmy instances, we willingly expose those people to this kind of content. Would you expose someone to CSAM, knowingly and without warning them first? Then why is it different when we can see the death threats, delivered by mods, who are not censured in any way, yet still encourage people to come here to Lemmy communities? Are we truly that desperate for content that we are so inconsiderate to them as to expose them to that without warning?

    If you somehow have not heard of this yet and really don't know what I'm talking about, a lot of details are offered in Discuss.Online's (successful) Petition to defederate from hexbear.net, although that particular mod in question is from Lemmy.ml.

    • I've had exactly the same experience. Lemmy has been far more hostile than I ever experienced on Reddit. Any opinions which aren't far left are called "Nazi," and users are very quick to justify violence against "Nazis."

    • I had pretty much the same experience as that user and it's why I left lemm.ee when they decided not to defederate with some of the worst instances. Was about to go back to the search if lemmy.world wasn't any better. Tankies are why I don't recommend Lemmy to my friends anymore. They are the fediverse's biggest problem

      • I am currently at 100% of the people that I've told about Lemmy irl actively chiding me for having mentioned it to them. It doesn't help that (1) Lemmy.ml is the #1 Lemmy instance in a Google search, and (2) that instance uses Local rather than All when you don't have an account. If someone told me to consider joining Lemmy.ml, and that first couple of pages of content were all that I saw - especially just before any election in a Western nation - well then now I understand their reaction perfectly, as it is the correct one!?!?

        Conversely, PieFed has a number of features that Lemmy lacks, one being the ability to actually block all users from an instance (rather than merely mute communities but not actual users on it - leaving them free to troll you in other communities, reply to your comments, trigger notifications, downvote your content, etc.). Since blocking lemmy.ml, I have had zero regrets, and enjoy interacting with Lemmy communities much better:-).

        The real biggest problem that Lemmy has is lack of users and overall dearth of niche content - which ofc wraps back around to why would someone willing come here to be bullied just for being a mainstream centrist or even "leftist" by USA standards (Reddit is based in and its largest userbase is from the USA)?

        Bullying is why Lemmy will never grow. That, and how the tools are somehow even more authoritian than Reddit - i.e. there is a modlog but no modmail, nor notification of a moderation event, instead the modlog simply says that a "mod" did something, if you go to the trouble to find out why nobody bothered to respond. And worse, on Lemmy.ml you'll find yourself banned from communities that you've never so much as heard of, citing having broken a rule that seems not written down anywhere. The lack of transparency is very reminiscent of the spez.

        Fortunately, PieFed and Mbin offer non-Lemmy options to the Threadiverse.:-)

    • The user you quoted said they would also try Piefed: https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1jqvq6k/looking_for_reddit_alts_that_are_not_lemmy/mlbvone/

      Isn't being federated with HB nowadays more the exception that the rule?

      IIRC,

      Are defederated

      • That's great!

        I was just talking with an admin of Lemmy.zip who automatically puts up a community muting of HB for new users joining that instance, but not going so far as to defederate from it. So... that surely helps a little bit? Except when Hexbears brigade a community located on a different instance.

        But the example I gave of a mod throwing out death threats to users involves lemmy.ml rather than Hexbear. Both instances are problematic in that regard, ML mostly for the admins and the mods that they choose to protect, while HB the subset of users that go outside of the instance to engage in trolling. In both, it is also entirely possible to have completely sane and normal conversations on the instance itself, which muddies the waters a bit, though the presence of sanity on occasion does not negate the presence of insanity on others.

        And I was thinking of editing my comment but instead I'll put it here, your own posts such as https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/ most definitely covers both the strong benefits as well as strong criticisms of using Lemmy, as well as solid solutions to the latter problems.

  • Upvote, comment, post! Compliment good OC content (especially if it is posted regularly).

    Bring more regular users if you can.

  • I have also noticed people agreeing with someone in a reply to another comment, but the original commenter has no upvotes. If you agree, upvote. If you kind of agree, upvote. If you don't agree, but they make a good case, upvote and then say that. Upvotes make people feel good.

  • No. Kindness is often a tool for conservatives to maintain power. It's important, but integrity is more important.

    • Kindness is a tool for conservatives to maintain power

      Uh... Complimenting peoples art and having sincere discussions about what you think and why with folks on Lemmy grants conservatives power?

      I get that lots of folks are frustrated with the constant liberal compromising but a) that's not "kindness" and b) that's not what I'm saying you do. This post isn't about telling people they should approve of Nazis. Its about building a healthy culture, here, in this online space, that facilitates positive interactions worth having.

      I wish you and the others who commented along those lines could appreciate how exhausting this is as a person literally just saying we should be kind to the people we share this space with.

      Look around. Basically every person here is left of center. I'm left of center. You don't have to be combative with me just because we don't exactly agree on everything.

      Kindness is not a malicious conservative plot, nor is that what this post was about. And on that note, I clearly need to step away because in the same way that a lot of people's emotions are high, mine are too now and I'm loosing my ability to engage with people in the way that I want to.

      Take care, and I hope you have a good night/day

    • @orcrist @CrisColor You needn't be unkind to have integrity, and if your ideas aren't at least considered without force, they're probably wrong.

    • The world is not America, buddy. Also don't make leftists & liberals seem like they're somehow above this crap either.

      You both want to crawl up in peoples ass & tell them what to do

  • Good luck with that. Volunteer moderation tends to attract some of the most toxic individuals on the planet.

    • In fairness reddit also has volunteer moderation, but you're absolutely right. I think that's why being intentional about what kind of culture we want is so important.

      In a small space bad actors in leadership roles can do so much damage, and people intentionally facilitating healthy spaces can do so much good.

      Corporate platforms have to deal with profit incentives and the way those warp what a space is about, but we shouldn't forget that our "new" fediverse model has its own problems well have to contend with.

      The issue of greater variation in moderator/hosts was a big issue in the forum days to my understanding, and whether a space was healthy varried a lot from one to another. Big consolidated platforms homogenized things a lot but that came with its own issues. In a lot of ways it feels like the fediverse will have to address a lot of the unresolved issues of the old internet.

      I can only hope we can learn by looking back at that history and build something better now

      • Well, I certainly do appreciate seeing people like yourself making an active effort to bring some sanity back to the web. Keep it up!

311 comments