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?
The biggest one is we have to get rid of engagement algorithms. All the major platforms show you content more like that which you interact with, which is usually things that piss you off or things you heartily agree with. This creates bubbles and prevents exposure to new ideas and different thinking people. And when you have that for a few decades, it greatly reduces empathy for your fellow man.
Go back to like the '90s or so and politics was dinner table conversation, the sort of thing that would be discussed in friendly company. Because it was understood that while you and I might disagree on what the best path for America is, we both understand that we both want America to be great.
But go forward to the early 2000s, 24-hour cable news, internet, echo chambers and bubbles started to form. And both sides politically took advantage of this, drummed up the rhetoric and no longer was it ‘we are better for America’ it became ‘the other guys don’t believe in what America stands for and anyone who supports them is not American’.
This killed the discourse. No more respectful disagreement, no more opponents shaking hands, it became a fight to the death for the future of the country in the eyes of many voters.This is not just politics. It’s every issue. It’s how we have our discourse now. Respectful debate is dying. Whatever the issue is, you either agree with me or you’re awful. And that is what we need to fix.
We need to promote empathy, mutual understanding, and respect for those we disagree with.
I like what you have to say, but I will be honest. Hate radio is what started this journey for me back in the 1980s and there was no mythical time you could have a polite conversation in the US about politics. The whole politics ruining Thanksgiving has been going on since the Vietnam War and the concept probably dates back to before the Revolutionary War in the US.
Before Vietnam the US literally purged everyone that was too left with McCarthyism. Before engagement algorithms there was constant propaganda on all TV channels, radio, and print designed to do everything from break up unions to reinforce the Christian Nationalist movement. Think adding In God We Trust to all money in 1955.
I see where you are coming from as I was once there long ago. When you unravel the propaganda/lies you begin to see the bigger picture and understand why the forces that control us work so hard to misinform and create an alternative reality where America is the good guy.
The reckoning of what the US has done and continues to do is truly insurmountable for a typical human being. Mutual understanding easily becomes a tool of oppression where we are expected to forget all of history and culture to compromise with people who are selfish and misinformed.
You can give someone who wants to destroy you all the respect in the world and it won’t change that they want to destroy you and will given the chance. This is the reality we face and harkening back to an imagined time of mutual respect is not the panacea we would like to think it is.
You’re so right with all that you say. Except your admirable self deprecating US exceptionalism. US peeps shouldn’t beat themselves up about the crimes or horrible acts their countrymen are/have done. Where and when any other country is in the same position individuals of those places act in the same ways. Cue every powerful and not so powerful civilisation in history. The rest of us it seems have to clean up their messes as best we can. It seems its a natural animal response that we as a species haven’t been able to adequately address socially or civilisationally.
I don’t really know enough about the subject and how it relates. But these awful group dynamics aren’t confined to humans alone, i feel like this article, Chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park wage lethal ‘civil war’, relates in an important way to the point you make in your comment.
I can’t really speak to other countries but from my understanding the entire world is varying degrees of fascism at this point.
The US is exceptional, just not in the way most people think. No nation comes close to the suffering the US has caused and will cause in the future.
You can see parallels to modern US imperialism like with Britain costing countless lives in places like India. Also, a little further in the past with the Spanish treatment of Native Americans which the US then repeated.
We of course have the privilege of looking at this through a modern lense. What really strikes me is the level of enlightenment in Europe in regards to native rights and the practice of slavery before the US was formed.
It is clear that people knew better at this point and this shows the malfeasance that defines America. The people that went on to found America knew better than to do what they did. This animus against humans is what makes people in the US arguably unique. A kind of modern day barbarian if you will bringing back what was supposed to be lost.
The heart of the US is a republic founded on deception, terrorism, greed, and murder. Even our first President was a murderous land baron well on his way to becoming the world’s first billionaire adjusted for inflation.
I think your point centers around if anyone else would have done it the way these depraved manipulators did. I really don’t think so. The ruling class of the US are really in a league of their own.
Exceptionally depraved, cruel, and greedy amongst their peers around the world with near limitless resources at their finger tips. Imagine any single European country having access to the empty landmass that is the United States.
This is the real reason behind the myth of American Exceptionalism. It is like having near limitless wealth compared to everyone else who has a fixed income. The US is the equivalent of a trust fund baby. A psychotic mass murdering nepo baby that spread its shit all over the world.
Remember all that land, well you see it wasn’t really empty. Que the first genocide which the US still carries out to this day with boarding schools. There was of course plenty of room for the Native Americans and the whites to coexist. Hell, most of the US is still pretty damned empty to this day.
It was never even about the land. It was about a desire for systematic extermination. This ties in with your point about chimpanzees and also back to your original point that anyone else would have done the same thing.
Have you ever heard of the bonobos? They are another Chimpanzee that doesn’t fight and kill each other. If a male gets too aggressive the females hold him down and have sex with him until he chills.
Living up to your name with this comment doomsider ;). I like your bonobo example, shows theres often other ways to handle things. Theres a lot to that comment, so i’m going to try to pick the key ideas in each area and directly address them.
Fascism used so broadly becomes woolly. Certainly you could describe MBS’ Saudi Arabia as a fascist regime by following definitions. But it doesn’t get at the whole picture of that Authoritarian Monarchy. For example because there is no organised ‘opposition’ as such to suppress. Be it trade unions, opposing political parties. So calling everything fascist hides useful differences that helps understand how people across the world have freedoms or are oppressed in different ways.
The suffering the US has caused? Its a lot, but USAID saved millions as well, always weigh in good things done by a people, it may amount to nothing, but its intellectually dishonest to ignore. The key is were the US actions that caused suffering more or even with Mao’s Great Leap forward, the Bengal Famine, many more examples abound. The only unique suffering the US has ever caused is the nuclear attacks on Japan, and that was chosen in part due to the perceived larger loss caused by a US and allies ground invasion. What could have happened to the East Asia region if Stalin’s Russia were more involved? I think more suffering.
Europe is an interesting case from the 1700’s, and certainly earlier than that, to compare to. Because its there that you have the most well known to the Wsstern mind progenitor to the Nation State model we live in today. Its not really the enlightenment that changed attitudes, plenty of people couldn’t give a fig about a lot of the enlightenment ideas, and went on their merry way suppressing, murdering and extracting the wealth of other parts of the world. Every European country is guilty of this througout that time, just like the US. The key point though, is they didn’t do it in Europe. Because there was a rules based society between those peoples, war was ongoing but organised, this is why the European Aristocracy completely freaked out when the French Revolution then Napolean happened, because it threatened to flip that rules based system the contolinent worked on.
Systematic extermination has happened in many societies, the sack of the city of Troy might be a famous old example, the Rwandan Genocide is a new example. So systematic extermination of a population isn’t unique to the US.
So hopefully the violence and greed of humanity can be put to rest as a uniquely US trait.
The real reasons for uniqueness though, you are right, come from the scale and abundance of the US.
But its not ideological, its what I touched on with the French Revolution. The worst of crimes happen when the rules guiding the society are somehow suspended. And this is what happened with the US over and over again in different contexts.
Below are some examples of the worst crimes where the rules guiding a society have for some reason been suspended, in this vacuum of instability is the most dangerous moment.
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Bengal Famine 1943, in the course of the British total war effort (suspension) Churchill directs the required food supplies out of India.
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Rwandan Genocide 1994, assassination of the President and resulting power vaccum and disarray (suspension) led to militias hunting down the Tutsi minority.
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French Revolution, Estates General (suspension), storming of the Bastille (suspension) ,King Louis flight to Varennes (suspension), Thermidorean Reaction (suspension), Coup of 18th Brumaire introducing Napoleon (suspension), the White terror (suspension). The whole period from 1789 to the restoration is littered with suspensions of varying degrees, and like with all historic comparisons France makes an excellent comparison to the US.
The suspension of the guiding societal rules is why canny commentators looking at the US are so intent upon the court system. If that breaks, then all bets are actually off. But the Orange Babboon’s regime has been knocked back significantly more than they’ve won, so its hard to argue the courts are pliant, even with the Supreme Court’s favourable ideological bias.
Conclusion:
Its not a barbaric ideological group of elites, although they may be there and present, its the moments in time and place where a suspension in the guiding rules of people are suspended.
Fascism comes in many flavors and in varying degrees and the US has lead the way evolving corporatism into its logical conclusion the corportocracy. Think the military industrial complex itself lobbying for military action or proliferation. A sick partnership ensuring future death.
The fact that I can be critical does not mean I don’t recognize some of the good things. The US did help prevent spreading of disease in countries despite overthrowing 70 plus countries and killing uncounted millions of civilians.
China has raised close to a billion people out of abject poverty even if its policies killed millions of its own citizens.
The British Empire did bring modern technology to the colonies they brutally oppressed. Always look on the bright side of life?
I have to disagree with hand waving away what the US has done. Certainly you might compare it to history, but this isn’t ancient history with the Mongols or the Romans.
These are modern times and intent matters in culpability. The propaganda used to draw people to the Americas is another great example of the knowledge of what is right. The founding fathers of America loved to write about their virtues.
Is it fair to hold them to a higher standard? As I said we get to look at all this from a modern lense. The answer in unequivocally yes. We debated and decided on genocide. It was not a happenstance or an unfortunate externality.
Hitler was inspired by the genocide of the Native Americans and modeled his eventual extermination of the Jews after it. Ford and other wealthy US industrialists helped bankroll the Nazi Empire.
When Hitler approached other nations to take the Jews in the US refused and these wealthy lobbyists made sure to stroke anti-jew sentiment throughout Europe to ensure no one else would.
Nowhere to go the Jews were sent to the ghettos only the Nazi didn’t have a way to track them effectively. None other than IBM comes to the rescue and develops a census system that was used for those cool looking WWII arm tattoos.
IBM then helped with the computing power to figure out just how many Jews to load onto the trains per day so the deaths camps wouldn’t back up. You know, just typical logistical stuff.
That is another genocide the US participated in. That is what makes all the pro US WWII propaganda so ridiculous. Fascism was never defeated, a chapter was just closed for the moment.
As I stated the ruling class that calls the shots for the US are unlike anything before and they are not just what anyone would do. I am sure some people would describe it as evil and I think it was and is criminal in nature.
Playing both sides of conflicts and eventually turning this apparatus against US citizens in a third genocide known as The War on Drugs. Resulting in no less a third of all US citizens having some sort of criminal conviction, millions of families destroyed and millions of lives lost and still going strong to this day.
Almost everyone in America has lost a loved one to addiction. Crazy amounts of people overdose because the government tries to criminalize them in its genocidal efforts.
Out of control gun violence. I know several people in my lifetime that have been shot and killed. Being shot and killed is the number one child killer in America. It really does boggle the mind to realize there are more guns than people in the US.
It is not normal, I am trying to explain this to you. US technology has been unbelievably devastating to the world and has ushered in our AI apocalypse of mismanaged dysfunction.
US is responsible for so much suffering just through their technology alone. From the extremes like the Nuclear technology to the environmentally devastating like leaded gasoline. Just leaded gasoline alone has killed hundreds of millions of people and was estimated to still kill five million per year.a couple of years ago.
I don’t think anyone can truly comprehend the destruction that the the US has brought. Insane things like poisoning every human on the planet with both forever chemicals and plastics.
Back in the 1950s petroleum scientist knew about global warming. The US have fought tooth and nail to discredit the information they knew from the start. This purposeful campaign to deny or minimize reality will lead to the inaction that will displace a billion people with no plan which will likely become the greatest loss of life from a man made event in history.
It will be in the billions of dead before it is all said and done and that is if we don’t face total annihilation with the possibility of a nuclear winter.
This is not the future that humanity deserves. The list goes on and on and no matter what horrors you learn about, there are several more afoot. More research reveals more atrocities that would all take a lifetime to truly research.
I really wasn’t looking for a counterpoint to everything I said. Thanks for the effort though.
We won’t agree of course. Everything you’ve said other people in other countries do as well. The point about the monkeys and history is to show that these are underlying social factors, not something unique to US people alone.
For a better future the US should see themselves in and of the people of rest of the world. Recognising aspects of themselves in others, then seeing how things are done differently is a primary way to making a better world, exceptionalism, even if virtuous, threatens to get in the way of that. I don’t believe for a second you don’t already know this though our conclusions are just different.
Anyway, you’ve an interesting perspective. In your sharp critiscism of the US leadership I feel like theres also a demand for things to be done differently, and a genuine outrage that these people committing the atrocities we’ve been referring to in your homes name.
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Don’t be afraid to block users.
This is great advice for Lemmy.
Removed by mod
Today’s internet sucks arse. 90s internet was where it was at. It was mostly just nerds and everyone had their own little section kid the web. Now it’s tiktwat this and faecesbook that. It’s so fucking commercialised now. When I was a wee kiddo, it took a week to download a movie, but at the same time I would love if we could go back to that time :(
Sorry to digress :/
Agree.
I mean, you can still hop on gophernet and use http only sites with HTML only if you wanted.
If you stay off of the corpo sites, install mullvad, use a different DNS, use ublock with waterfox, also Usenet, somehow, exists still. you can still have a good internet experience. The bots haven’t totally poisoned it yet.
Now in 5 to 10 years, it will truly be destroyed by slop. And nothing left. Thats when us nerds will start having our own underground web thats difficult to access and unknown to many.
Example. The Dreamcast is back online. The community is full of true nerds because its too complex for a normie (but it’s really not that hard actually) to get them up and running.
Also use more open source software. Youll enjoy computing far more.
I agree, everything was truly better then and mostly sucks now, but hey we can at least make the best of it.
People here in the fediverse seems perfectly happy to downvote factually correct arguments. Or to upvote blatantly invalid or false arguments. Just because they prefer the fake conclusion. It seems much worse than on Reddit.
So I think part of the solution could be to somehow enforce against people arguing in bad faith. Timeouts or blocks, or whatever.
Votes don’t really matter here. Some instances dont even have downvotes! Just don’t worry about it. If you do want to worry about it, then just accept that not everyone is bound by your ideas about the purpose of the down vote.
Given that instance admins do not run communities on their instances necessarily, and that they don’t control other instances - I don’t know how you would expect to do this. Nor appreciate of the negatives of embedding such power into the threadiverse structure.
There’s an easy solution to that: I’m pretty sure on Lemmy (not sure about Piefed) admins can see who downvoted. So it’s just a matter of mods/admins having and enforcing rules that facilitate conversation.
Just report it when you see it happening!
Some things we could encourage: Design social spaces with more repeat interactions. Many toxic people feel they can just move on to another part of the crowd. But if everyone knows them, and that they’re an asshole, It’s not so easy. See the example of “beep”, a user in the comics community who repeatedly cropped out the artist of comics.
I could also envision ways to reinvent forum moderating. For instance, one idea I had for moderating toxicity in a video game is that bans would not last a very long time, but for them to be lifted, the offender must upload a video, or present themselves live on webcam, of themselves describing what they did and apologizing.
If it’s too much, there’s more subtle approaches; like that old study on DOTA 2 where they’d present a post match survey, asking people to rank their teammates - then their own level of team contribution - and it would lead to reduced toxicity in their next match.
Post nice comments under good posts. It really makes a difference to the active posters and generally lifts the mood of this place.
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.
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.
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!’
Your posts are really great. Just wanted to say it’s super cool to have someone thoughtful contributing and articulating a realistic approach.
Thank you very much. I’m just sharing what I think.
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.
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.
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’m not talking about engineering a problem away. I’m saying it can’t be engineered away and requires human adults in the room (moderators in this case) to handle bad behavior.
Accepting the presence of toxicity as a fact of life does nothing more than attract more toxicity.
Couldn’t agree more! People should be more tolerant and stop hating on people having different opinions
…What’s the different opinion Anakin?
Be the change you want to see in the world, online and IRL. it’s the philosophy I live by
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.
with a few exceptions reality tv is so bad. I don’t see the appeal except for a few (alone, ice road truckers) and even those it annoys me when they try to make the false drama.
I heard somewhere that the appeal of reality tv is that in it social norms negotiated. People always tend to “update” their understanding of what’s socially acceptable behavior and what is not. Reality tv to many people is just a means for them to rate what behavior is good and what’s bad. What they often dont unerstand, is the extent to which these shows are scripted and that the writers and media channels are the ones who predetermine the roles and morals.
So what you percieve as “bad” about reality tv might be that the framework in which norms are being discussed is extremely flat and homogenous.
Or in other words the characters and the writing just sucks.
the false drama is the point.
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.
clearly those need addressed wherever they come up.
I agree with this, I usually talk past the trolls, so to speak. I start with “this is not a response to you, but to anyone who might be reading” or something like that. Bonus points if I can ignore/mute the person I’m replying to, I’ll mention that as well in the response so that they also know that I wont be hearing whatever they want to scream at me.
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.
downvote the 3rd post about the same
Isn’t the problem with this that there are different communities which might have valid reasons to post very similar things, and the order they’re displayed to you may result in you downvoting the original?
Sort by new and pick your favorite community. If you are fed up with the particular news it probably doesn’t matter anyway.
We stop talking about assholes and instead tell them they’re assholes and ignore them.
we learn the difference between things that can be disagreed on and things that are universal.
we stop thinking that if we just step on enough faces, we’ll eventually get to the top.
we actually give recognition to good people instead of rich people and especially show that to kids.
Lemmy hasn’t gotten worse. Lemmy has become more popular with all of the Reddit fuckery. When more people show up more problems come with them.
Same thing with big cities. More people = more assholes and crime, and more expensive. More people moving into my town is destroying all the land (ripping out forests for row after row of shit apartments) all built by the same company. More crime now because of more people coming in.
Never understood the lemmy circle jerk for megaopolises. I’m sure its just because most have never been out of their 13 sqft apartment and don’t realize how awesome wide open spaces are. Sad really.
