Sentient Loom

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.

I honestly think self-righteousness pushes people away. It’s why I can barely stand bluesky. During the big exodus from reddit, all these so-called far-lefties (who I think were just reddit goons doing infiltration) were all screaming for everybody to defederate. Even now, I keep arguing against idiots posting “kill a cop” or “kill fascists” memes, like this is literally an “advocate violence” platform. I don’t expect to pull big numbers with that kind of shit.