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?

  • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    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. I don’t thinknit was grassroots. I think it was Steve Bannon’s troll army or some other coordinated institute. I also wonder if the violent leftist rhetoric is 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 coordinates. Feels like 2016 honestly.

    is there anything we can do about it?

    Downvote, report, block. Don’t engage (trying to learn that myself). But I bet they’re still driving people away.

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        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.