Compassion ~ Thought

  • 2 Posts
  • 567 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 24th, 2024

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  • Sigh… yup.

    Though Lemmy is still in beta (almost out though) and PieFed barely that as well. We of the “early adopter” mindset are helping polish the interfaces so that “one day” non-technical normie users can enjoy coming here.

    At that time, availability of content will be crucial. But for now, I understand why they do not bother to do so. Anytime I want to know about some worldwide or local event that is happening, I end up having to go back to Reddit to have even a ghost of a chance at learning about it - and note that REAL normies don’t bother with Reddit even, as it is too niche and nerdy for them.

    Only protest communities have a strong need to get out from under the authoritarian boot heels, but those should not be on the open clear web to begin with, leaving the Threadiverse as a tiny side project offshoot of Mastodon’s wider Fediverse. For now, but the tools are getting better all the time… PieFed practically weekly! 🥧🍰😋


  • A lot of people on Reddit are from the USA, and are centrists to right-wingers by their standards. Ironically these often think of themselves as left-leaning (e.g. critical of Republicans locally) but without realizing that they are actually solidly on the right in comparison on the global stage. e.g. Bernie Sanders supporters.

    So that can be quite a rude awakening for the uninitiated, to be told (truthfully) that you are right-wing. Also, some people - including those on the Threadiverse - sometimes just want to shut out politics for like 10-30 minutes a day, which is extremely difficult here as it pervades just about every single corner, without EXTENSIVE and ongoing efforts to keep it at bay.

    And those factors interrelate, like if you disallow politics then you end up having next to no content, whereas if you allow it then a good fraction of the viewers stop engaging.

    I am not saying that we need to be more welcoming to right-wingers, I am saying that it is a choice and we should honestly acknowledge that. We choose to make Redditors feel unwelcomed here, for the most part. If that desire were to change then it would require much effort to enact - a lot more than current moderation capabilities support. Hence those people will elect to remain on the likes of X, Meta, Facebook, or X where they feel welcomed. The toxicity that you know how to deal with, rather than a new brand of it that you don’t, and all of that.


  • Yeah Ada is pretty amazing, ngl that is likely why for you - not many spaces have such a fantastic person looking out for them. There is occasional drama like the 196 situation in the last year but even that she handled with grace and class and a deft hand.

    About Reddit, there’s a lot there: mainly it’s a network effect, and so people are just looking for any excuse to justify not having to move, and go somewhere with less content that is “different”.

    Also a big part is that while the main subs are toxic AF, the niche ones there are mainly free of toxicity (people say? I haven’t been back to see personally since the Rexodus!), so it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison - but on the other hand, the niche subs here have barely any content, like after you spend 5-10 minutes reading every single comment even across every cross-post for the 1-5 daily posts (or worse, weekly, or worse still, monthly) posts, then there’s nothing left. So remaining in the niche subs here might leave you with zero to a couple upvotes mainly per comment, and almost no to possibly 0-3 mainly critical replies to a post.

    So here, people - especially new users - really are going to be drawn mostly to the largest communities, which ofc are going to be those with the most toxicity. Especially since Lemmy does not federate moderator reports so there is such a small pool of mods who are on that exact instance where the community is and willing to absorb that burden - and even then we keep chasing them off, saying how “we” (in terms of the Threadiverse as a whole) are better off without such, but then a new user takes a look at a mostly unmoderated 4chan-style discussion and nopes right back to what they are most comfortable and familiar with: smaller, niche subs on Reddit that have good mods, even despite how Reddit admins control things from above.

    I wish we had more like Ada here. But we don’t, so please just enjoy having her where you are at and don’t take her for granted:-).


  • No? Life is rarely binary.

    For instance PieFed.zip both does not defederate with hexbear while at the same time not exposing new users to them unawares by placing a user-level block (which unlike Lemmy’s actually stops showing all content from those users) upon new account creation but then explains to the user how to remove that at any time. This makes interactions with them opt-in rather than have to discover it and be opt-out, so I consider it ideal. (Although I haven’t tested how that would show up to users browsing without an account - that might be a loophole.)

    Or, a true opt-out solution could place a message underneath every post from that instance explaining how users are known to be combative, arguing in bad faith for “the dunk” and extremely likely to break your own instance’s rules and not conform to generally accepted standards of behavior. Something similar is done for Beehaw on PieFed.social, using that community’s own exact wording and linking to their ToS that differs greatly from the norm. However, I would wager that virtually all 3rd party apps would ignore this.

    Defederation is not a first resort, it is rather the last one and for Lemmy, literally the only one provided when instance admins refuse to enforce both the rules of others and even their own stated ones (to keep trolling inside the community yet do not spread it to others WITHOUT CONSENT). Defederation from hexbear is not punitive - even members of hexbear have expressed a desire to defederate themselves from the outside world, to avoid all this drama - but rather protective of the wider Threadiverse overall, for new members to feel more comfortable joining us here.



  • They are free to have whatever kind of vibe they want, but yeah their rights should end where mine begin and all of that. Except they don’t, as even outside of their local communities they constantly violate the rules of other spaces, then their admins refuse to police them, even going so far as to be caught lying to the admins of other instances.

    At that point, defederation remains the only available option, except even that is not the end of the matter when so many instances choose not to do that. Leaving the vast majority of the moderation burden to be placed upon the end user causes people to flee the Threadiverse like the 4chan-style place that we legitimately are.


  • Agreed.

    It does not help that moderation reports do not federate among Lemmy instances. They do in PieFed, I don’t know about Mbin, but between Lemmy instances they do not, making the level of effort placed upon moderators really high by limiting the available pool to those on the same instance as the community.

    It also does not help when instance admins protect those doing the bullying, such as hexbear admins that have even been caught lying to the admins of other instances, and refuse to police (i.e. ban) their own account holders as they constantly violate the rules on other instances. At that point, defederation becomes the only option left, except that many instances including yours are so high averse to defederations that instead the behaviors in question are essentially given carte blanche to continue without any means at all to stop it.

    A fact that new visitors very much see - even if we old hands do not anymore, after having set up personal blocks aka blacklisting or otherwise view only Subscribed content aka exclude such via our whitelisting procedure. And new users that see what we have chosen to forget exists here go back and tell others about how unfriendly this place was to them.

    So long as we leave the vast majority of the moderation burden on the individual user themselves, the Threadiverse is not going to grow and instead will continue to shrink. i.e. all the weeds are choking the garden.


  • Tbf, most don’t seem to realize what they want, and some are literally and actually children. It hurts the Threadiverse that upon having a bad experience here, they go and talk about us there in that highly negative light. And it helps us here to know what is being said over there - i.e. it’s not solely the onboarding experience being difficult (having to choose an instance, getting through the sign-up process, then community discovery, which never ends, nor does the need to continually block new toxic users), but even for people that remained here for months to a year did not stay, and it’s good to know why (mainly lack of niche content plus toxicity).



  • Every single person that I’ve told about Lemmy has outright scolded me for having mentioned it to them. I may have lost a couple of acquaintance connections even as a result.

    When people Google search for “Lemmy” or otherwise get taken to lemmy.ml (didn’t someone say that the so-called “random” instance picker chose either it or hexbear like 90% of the time?), see the content calling for murder of Westerners and the demise of Western civilization, is it any wonder that they choose not to come here, or if they create an account, to not remain?

    Their preferences matter - to themselves at the very least, even if not to our instance admins that do not want to block it out so that potential new joiners won’t have to see it presented with zero warning or any distinction at all that it may differ from any of the other content in this place.


  • Regarding the Threadiverse in general, it seems that (1) many people find having to choose an instance first to be very confusing (not applicable to your situation I guess), (2) upon arrival these primarily Western people immediately see content proposing the murder of Westerners and demolition of the entire Western culture, whereupon they nope right back out (can you blame them?) and then complain bitterly about their toxic experiences here on other platforms, including Reddit and Bluesky and X.

    Most of us forget how extensive our blocklists here have grown to be over time, and how much effort we put into Linux levels of tinkering to discover communities we like while blocking content we do not.

    If I am wrong then please ignore me, but it’s a thought to consider.

    Of course mostly it’s a network effect, so I am speaking about issues that we might actually be able to do something about.