I was thinking about this again after reading https://jlai.lu/post/22505617 and how Tesseract shut down because of people’s inability to behave. And this isn’t the first occasion where I’ve seen people really abruptly leaving Lemmy or the fediverse because of the general atmosphere. Personally I’ve avoided most political communities aside from a few, and I’ve mostly engaged in more niche places, and I haven’t encountered too many issues with people. But I’ve definitely seen very snarky, aggressive comments from some people, and no doubt there are more of those the more political the community is. I guess it’s logical that the fediverse would attract those most opinionated, or those that have been banned on other platforms for inciting (what someone else might see as) hate, violence or other various reasons.
Do you think the fediverse has a civility problem and is there anything we can do about it?
Do you think the fediverse has a civility problem
This has little to do with the Fediverse itself and mostly with the people involved. It would be the same on any other platform, so simply switching the software stack or whatever would do exactly zilch.
A fraction of people are going to be assholes. Sad but inevitable.
and is there anything we can do about it?
You can ban the dickheads, but that’ll only get you so far.
It’s weird to talk about the fediverse as a whole having a civility problem. The fediverse is a large and diverse place.
It’s like asking “do bars have a civility problem?”. And like yea, some bars do. Other bars don’t. Depends on the clientele right?
For example, on Feddit.dk we have quite a high standard of behavior and moderation is based on that. Feddit.dk is not a large instance, which probably makes it easier to manage. I would not say that Feddit.dk has a civility problem. Maybe other instances do. But then that’s a problem for those instances to solve.
So I wouldn’t say the fediverse itself has a civility problem. To me, it seems perfectly possible to moderate an instance well and preserve civil behavior. If there is a civility problem, it lies with the specific instance that has that problem and their failure to moderate that behavior.
If it does, the mods and admin under whose aegis I abide are doing an above-average job removing it quickly.
Or maybe it’s just that I avoid political discussion communities these days.
In the end, I find the lemmy / piefed / *bin network much more civil, thoughtful, and compassionate than reddit was.
Do you think the fediverse has a civility problem?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: social media (and humans) have a civility problem. And I wonder how much of it is astroturfed. When Trump was first running for the 2016 election, social media was flooded with racism. You disagreed with one twitter egg, and five more were like “debate me bro” and they had all these stats about race-science, and rhetoric to misconstrue the nature of equality and the value of liberalism. I don’t think it was grassroots. I think it was Steve Bannon’s troll army or some other coordinated institution. Here on Lemmy I keep seeing violent leftist rhetoric, and I also wonder if it’s feds, or reddit’s goons undermining the competition. They’ll post “murder all pigs” or “shoot fascists” and get like a thousand upvotes, and their arguments are belligerent and idiotic, and they pile on you for disagreeing. Feels coordinated. Feels like 2016 honestly.
is there anything we can do about it?
Downvote, report, block. Don’t engage (trying to remember that myself). But I bet they’re still driving people away.
if you don’t think fascists should be shot, what do you think should be done with them? or cops?
My biggest gripe with the rise in violent talk is that it comes off like those commenters trying to get other people riled up into do that violence for them.
If you feel the justice system has failed and there is no other recourse, than that is one thing. But I keep seeing all these comments saying “why aren’t you out there doing anything about it?” and my first thought is always “well I haven’t seen your face on the news…” As far as I’ve seen it’s still all right wing nutters doing all the violence. If you aren’t out there doing something dangerous, why are you here telling others to go do that thing while you sit at home?
You’d call someone a hypocrite if they were on here every day telling other commenters they should feed the homeless, but you found out they don’t volunteer or donate or whatever. But I got to scroll past a bunch of keyboard warriors on every political or news thread throwing tantrums about why “nobody is doing what must be done.” Justified or not, if people start going after others, it’s going to go badly for both sides. If you won’t put your money where your mouth is, why are we all forced to read it?
If you’re serious, spouting off about it on a public forum is pretty stupid. If you’re not serious, you’re making the rest of us look stupid to anyone checking out this platform. I feel that’s a pretty fair assessment without judging your opinions or anyone else’s. We’re all wrestling internally with where our limits of tolerance are these days, but we can talk with each other productively about it, or we can rant and rave like a bunch of violent cavemen, but I know which one of those environments I’d rather be in.
and who gets to decide who is a fascist, you?
this doesn’t answer the question.
It does, because it’s implicit in “shoot all Fascists” that agreeing with the policy might one day get you shot for thoughtcrime.
It’s more civil than reddit and every other forum I know.
Probably it depends which corners you look at.
A tiny niche subreddit I would presume would be more civil than a politics community here.
It’s also a lot easier to dox people IRL here. e.g. self-host something, get someone to click, and there you go.
You are gonna talk with a tone that I decided is acceptable or you are not gonna talk at all 🤡
“A civility problem” is stupid gatekeeping bullshit. It’s not specific in any way.
You know what is an actual problem? Modern Nazis. Corporate bot accounts.
What if you’re uncivil to a Modern Nazi? Is that not OK? What if you’re uncivil to a Corporate Account spamming advertisements? Well, OP would have you castrated, then banned for it. Really? Why?
They’re power hungry, and want to control everything. The level of civility is such that they think if they took over, everything would be back to normal. It’s pretty standard narcissistic behavior. Same as “If people just listened to jebus, like I listen to jebus, the world would be a better place”. No, it won’t. It will be worse off.
All atheists are uncivil to religious people simply by existing. That’s what religious people lie about, anyway. Who’s going to protect the atheists from false accusations? Nobody.
OP’s “I would make everything better with my vague bullshit” - is just vague asshole bullshit. Is that uncivil? I don’t give a fuck. Seems like OP could use some more uncivility in response to their controlling nonsense.
Agree.
Complaining about civility is the first step toward letting morons rule.
If one is making foolish or false statements, one should expect to be humiliated. Come back when you are better educated.
If one is being an asshole for no good reason or making false accusations against another due to losing an argument, they should understand that they are now a legitimate target for everyone to dump on with impunity.
Being confidently wrong, or an asshole without cause deserves equal or greater consequences to the harm caused. Public shaming via humiliation - aka incivility - is more effective than actual punishment or moderation.
