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?
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.