Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I made the mistake of replying to someone in Chapotraphouse once, something I considered fairly innocuous like Biden had done better than my initial absolutely zero expectations for him.
What followed was a hailstorm of WEEKS of replies with the most batshit insane - and more importantly derogatory and demeaning - replies, worse even than I had experienced on Reddit, which at this point is really saying something! I stopped replying, I think I deleted the original comment or edited to say that I would no longer be replying, nothing helped. My consent to the "dunking" process was irrelevant - never mind that I was not OP, never mind that I had not read the community statement prior to engaging bc it appeared as an isolated post in my All feed, I was now being used as a target to vomit their feefees (feelings) all over onto.
And then a week later I did the same in a lemmygrad.ml post. I almost left the Fediverse after that - there is zero reason to put up with such nonconsensual and unannounced shit voluntarily. However, I was not made aware bc I was relatively new to the Fediverse, and my prior instance (Kbin.Social) had preemptively defederated from them, so I had no idea what I was walking into. Fortunately v0.19.3 came out allowing user blocking of an entire instance, so I blocked them all, recently adding lemmy.ml to that list, and now I'm happy.
So go to those instances at your own risk. No, it's nowhere close to mere differences in "political thinking", it's more like if you want a polite conversation using factual statements and logical reasoning vs. the polar opposite of that where if you don't parrot the talking points precisely then you get ridiculed ruthlessly for not knowing their internal set of "alternative fact talking points". i.e., I suppose it's what passes for "political differences" these days, like Russia would like to commit genocide in Ukraine while the latter would like that to not happen - you know, a "political difference".
If you are interested, here is a link to where I previously answered someone asking why people defederate from hexbear.net, including a link to read their very own words along with my commentary on that.:-)
Yeah, I don't feel a need to block people who are behaving badly around me. Perhaps I would if I had been inundated like you were. That said, I fully support you, me, or anyone else doing what they have to to maintain perspective and mental health, and I'm glad there are tools to facilitate that even if I never feel the need to use them.
Yeah it's not just "around" but "to" me as in several tens of replies, first in Chapotraphouse, and then all that again in lemmygrad.ml.
Tbf, they should feel absolutely free to be however they want - if that's their therapy to dunk on people - but that shit needs to be labelled in my strong opinion. Like someone can drink their own urine that's fine, but don't put it in a glass and tell me it's Mountain Dew:-D. Consent makes all the difference!!
Anyway, beyond my "delicate sensibilities", this tolerance of the intolerant affects us all. People are leaving, or not joining, the Fediverse b/c of this. I used to recommend it to people but I no longer do that. We talk collectively as if we desire more content, yet we turn away the source of that content - people. This singular issue has the potential to doom this project to failure from the start. Not entirely - b/c some people will remain no matter what happens - but for it to gain wider traction, we need to get past this. Consent should make all the difference! (But right now, it does not.)
So that is why I don't shut up about it:-). Even though it happened months in the past, and I've long since blocked them all. It does affect you - and all of us - even if only indirectly.
Yeah, I get what you're saying and you absolutely shouldn't have to put up with stuff you're not okay with. That's the whole difficulty of free speech. You may have a right to be an asshole, but I have a right to not listen to assholes. And some of these places definitely have a lot of assholes, and do nothing to rein them in, then act surprised when no one wants to be associated with their space.
Disclaimer: I too can be an asshole at times, and I totally understand if people want to block me. That's the joy of freedom.
Me too:-). Anyone who says otherwise is surely lying, even if only fooling themselves. :-P
Speaking of, I found it interesting to read hexbear.net's own words as they defederated from other instances, even against the will of their users - i.e. they collected poll results, then went 100% in the opposite direction as they indicated:-P. Many of the individual users were saying similarly: that certain individuals needed to be banned bc if not then other instances were going to want to defederate from them, even if only at an individual user level.
However, they refused to do so: the individual users refused to hold themselves back, and then community mods refused to censor them, and then instance admins refused to ban them, and therefore other instances had to defederate from the entire instance as a result. It's like Russia or China irl not curtailing its own leader, thereby inflicting their ills upon the other nations of the world, near and far. Such authoritarian and nonconsensual behaviors need to be stopped, and perhaps will be eventually, but the longer it is allowed to flourish the greater number of innocents will get caught up in the drama first. i.e., it is perhaps the entire Fediverse that will suffer if content creators choose not to come here bc we are too extremist/leftist, bc we won't curtail our most excessive members - again they won't do it themselves, but also nobody else will either. i.e. it's not enough simply to block things on a personal level, if we want to entice more normal people (even those who don't use Linux!!?:-D) to join the Fediverse.
That's a good point, and I'll consider that.