Mostly the context here is that it is something that people report as their reason for giving up on the Threadiverse. In that sense, it even being true or not is irrelevant in that it is a problem that substantially hinders growth either way.

That said, I do sadly think it is true. I often block communities where this happens but whenever I take a peek at them anyway I see daily calls for actual murder even in like meme communities. Separately from the utility of such actions, it becomes wearisome to always have to read or be forced to block the vast majority of the Threadiverse in order to avoid such. Case in point: 🌽 (an effort to fight against all the doom and gloom USA politics posting).

Edit: but here is a test that you can do. Imagine you are a mainstream normie user, scroll through All or better yet just go straight to [email protected] and reply to a comment there something to the effect that things were slightly better under Biden’s presidency than under Trump. When I said something the tiniest bit positive (something like at least he lowered gas prices and that was something), I got replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, long after I stopped responding. And then I did the same thing in a community on lemmygrad.ml. After which I nearly gave up on Lemmy entirely, because it simply wasn’t fun (or worthwhile to me).

Now arguably that is not so much my fault, nor theirs either as that is the purpose of that community and they should be free to do as they please? The issue there - setting aside for a moment the most major considerations of an echo chamber effect where edgelords are encouraged to spill their vitriol rather than speak in a more measured capacity - seems to me to be a mismatch between the usual expectations of someone new coming over from the likes of Reddit, Threads/Facebook, etc. Getting dunked on when you never had an opportunity to read the community sidebar text (Lemmy won’t show it, if you arrive at the post via All, plus many apps seem to go to some lengths to actively hide it behind like 5 clicks in various sub-menus) is not a pleasant experience, and when you see that >90% of posts on Lemmy, if they are not Linux or anime or furry, are related to politics especially USA politics, then I can well understand why someone new does not want to dig through all that trash just to find something worthwhile to read.

Face it: setting aside a superior protocol, what actual content do we have here, that would entice someone to come her from Reddit? We are toxic, and the tools are not easy to use. (… YET! Though PieFed is changing all of that, e.g. the introductory wizard for new users, yay!) Which is why defederating from places like Hexbear is something I strongly support, thereby making it opt-in rather than forcing people to try to find a way to make it opt-out (which on Lemmy is impossible - there is no true instance block, only a horribly misnamed community muting option, which blocks only the tiniest portion of the content from an instance, i.e. it does not in fact block it at all.)

What happened to jeans 👖? Do they lie forgotten in the dustbin of Lemmy history?

I almost left the Threadiverse entirely, for being far too toxic.

Thankfully, PieFed exists, with the capability to block whole entire instances (Lemmy’s is not a true block - users can still comment, vote on your content, DM you, which triggers notifications, etc. - that “community morning (edit: muting, for those who enjoy proper spelling)” is horribly misnamed as an “instance block” that barely “blocks” anything).

That will never happen, and if you want to find out why, listen to the complaints that people make over on r/RedditAlternatives.

Chief among them are (1) tankie devs, (2) too political, and (3) too toxic. To see what they mean, try Google search (what a typical mainstream normie would use) for the word “Lemmy”, which nowadays takes you to Lemmy.world but for the longest time went to Lemmy ml. Which by default to a user without a login shows Local posts rather than Global.

Now imagine what that looks like just before an election in a Western nation… and you can entirely understand why members of Western capitalist, democratic nations, do not feel welcomed in a space that constantly jokes about murdering or at least cheering on the mass deaths of people that fit exactly that description. No I don’t (just) mean billionaires - I mean anyone who participates in usual society.

We who use blocklists forget what the experience looks like to an outside, traditional mainstream user.

Lemmy will continue to shrink, and the user base mostly seems either outright pleased or at least resigned to that fact. If you are not, then good luck being a part of the change that you want to see - which you already are, just by having chosen a PieFed (rather than Lemmy) instance!:-)

Edit: to add one more point, it is the Paradox of Intolerance, or another name for it is the Nazi bar effect. Imagine asking your Jewish friends to join you in the corner of a known Nazi bar where you hand out. Yes you can walk past all the actual, literal Nazis and enjoy your little corner apart from them… but do not be so surprised if your friends refuse to join you there?

Correct:-). Though the person you were replying to might not have pursued the issue quite as far to determine that fact (or there could still be other issues going on besides that?).

There is this post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/51085128

…“clean”? Well shit, I have some work to do then!:-P

anyone can send them a message about it.

Not if the modlog merely says “mod”. Note that the ability to hide the username of the mod is not universally utilized - it is a community setting that can be turned on or off as the mod sees fit. When on though, someone would have to DM every single mod in the entire list in order to get an explanation for a ban that was surprising to them. So yes definitely a highly anticipated feature to offer a modmail.

Of course participation in any Fediverse communications is all optional. That said, many people complain in r/RedditAlternatives that Lemmy is too authoritarian for their liking, so addressing their concerns may help enhance the Threadiverse by welcoming a wider variety of people. Which is now being done by PieFed more than Lemmy. I am not trying (anymore) to convince you to make an account on a PieFed instance, just relating that fact as part of the wider conversation about matters happening in relation to the Fediverse, because I think it is good to know about and an interesting subject!:-)

Oh it’s definitely not on the same level, agreed. Just authoritarian and to be avoided by those not wanting to be constrained by having to exist inside such an echo chamber.

Edit: I want to add another point about the first post (https://lemmy.world/post/18414833). Even if it was merely someone throwing a fit, the response by the admin to ban people who merely downvoted one of their posts still seems inconsistent with democratic principles and rather 100% aligned with fascist authoritarian ones where Seahorse does whatever Seahorse wants to in that moment, rules and standards of conduct be damned. He can do as he pleases of course… and we can avoid that instance too if that is how he wants to run it.

I definitely recall multiple posts about that instance (and Seahorse in particular) in [email protected]. One example is the downvoting one (https://lemmy.world/post/18414833), another even more authoritarian example is https://lemmy.cafe/post/10511187 where Seahorse banned the person who reported a comment calling for violence, stating “someone please kill [this person]” - mind you, he did not ban the person making that comment, but the person who REPORTED it. Making reports is apparently a bannable offense, mind you with no text in the sidebar stating that, and subsequent apologies to the admin going un-responded to (according to that post).

Know thyself

Midwest.social - the admin Seahorse famously banning people for downvoting them. Yeah definitely less well-known than the usual 3.

Originally I meant that the Lemmy ecosystem is generally speaking more authoritarian than the PieFed one. This is in large part due to the preferences of the devs.

I will now also add the new related point that I think the coding design of Lemmy lends itself more to authoritarian control. It seems geared and marketed more towards instance admins, then mods, then users only last. Tbf PieFed is the same way here, but with a different focus due to the preferences of the main designer.

Lemmy is even more authoritarian than Reddit itself in many ways: Reddit at least sends a user a notification whenever their content is removed, plus users (and anyone who commented or otherwise has a direct link) can still see their content even after that. Reddit users may also contact the moderators via mod mail. In contrast, despite how Lemmy has the modlog, again there are no notifications for removal, and the modlog just says that the action was done by a “mod” (it used to always have the username, but now it can just say “mod”, so over time Lemmy has actually moved in the direction to become MORE authoritarian than it used to be, not less).

To be fair, PieFed also lacks a mod mail or notification upon removal of content, but I feel like for Piefed it is simply because it is new and new features being added monthly, even practically weekly. Whereas for Lemmy it gives an impression at least that it is a design choice that seems unlikely to ever change towards more democratic principles. We will see how they each develop over more time I suppose.

For now, many Lemmy instances are very free and open, subject to the software constraints, while others are extremely closed down, most especially lemmy.ml that the main Lemmy developer seems to spend an inordinate amount of time moderating rather than tweaking the codebase. That’s fine btw, it’s his code and he can do whatever he wants with it, although for me I choose PieFed instead, for all the above reasons and so much more.

Speaking of, none of what you said sounds to me like it should result in someone receiving a visual icon due to poor reputation. I’ve had some massively downvoted content myself, but if the system is implemented properly then it will consider more like a median downvoting rather than maximum or even average. Theoretically someone who only made 10 comments and >=9 of those were downvoted heavily, yeah they would get that icon. However, the icon does not cause filtering of their content (there are other things that can but those are entirely separate and not based on the user account), it’s merely a visual display. I’ve upvoted, downvoted, and replied to people’s comments even when I can see that icon - so it in no way blocks me from doing so or from seeing it in the first place. But it does (helpfully imho) label it, so that I have a better indicator going in what I am getting myself into.

I doubt that a normal user would get themselves flagged with the low rep icon though. Even receiving twice as many, triple as many, quadruple or quintuple as many downvotes as upvotes would not do it. To receive ten times as many downvotes as upvotes is someone who is entirely ignoring the consent of users to have to read their crap ahem “offered opinions”. That is Reddit-level hostility there, and something that your average conscientious Threadiverse participant will never experience - except unfortunately on the receiving end, as some very few people seem to take great pleasure in absolutely flaunting the rules in every community that they visit.

It would also take a MASSIVE vote-altering campaign to counteract that effect. Something which if only due to its sheer scale might be noticed. And at that point it would be easier to create a new Lemmy account - some instances require nothing to make that happen - or even spin up a new instance in order to skirt the effects of downvoting.

In short, reputation is a part of the normal human set of interactions. PieFed acknowledges that and exceedingly gently places an icon next to the usernames of the most egregious offenders. I for one do not think that is a bad thing, even on purely theoretical grounds. We aren’t trying to recreate a new 4chan here (we already have Hexbear for that - seriously! 😐)

Skavau already covered the point about lemmy.ml being authoritative whereas Lemmy.today is not (in general there are 4 well-known tankie authoritarian instances and Lemmy.today is not one of those:-).

I found this here https://join.piefed.social/features/ :

Note how that link points to PieFed.social. Yes, those are defederated at the instance level, so a user cannot work around that - Lemmy defederation works the same way. However, PieFed.zip is a separate instance from PieFed.socual, and does not defederate from much at all.

Low Reputation Indicator

I find that feature very helpful. It’s merely a visual indicator placed next to the username, which is very different than the software making decisions for me on what content to show or not, and that indicator helps clue me in that responding to e.g. an argumentative person is unlikely to enhance my day. Also while I don’t recall the details on how it is set, imagine if you will that someone receives 10x more downvotes total than upvotes. Such an account is usually a troll. Most people get downvotes occasionally, but that would not trigger the indicator to be shown (and again, even if it somehow did, it’s just a visual icon, not a block or anything).

Lemmy is FAR more known for authoritative censorship than PieFed. Particularly those instances mentioned like hexbear and the infamous lemmy.ml where you cannot criticize Russia, China, or North Korea without being banned from every community on the entire instance including those you’ve never even heard of.

I also don’t see Taylor Swift’s jet… wearing jeans.

Oh, nvm.

It’s like NSFW or even more relevant NSFL (also spoiles) - perfectly fine for some recipients but not for all, so best to LABEL IT. Labeling is compassion.

Then again, people who post AI slop against the wishes of the recipient communities tend not to be the most conscientious?

A relevant rule #1, above even the one about NSFW and another one about spam:

AI Art: While we appreciate AI generated art, there are more appropriate communities to post that type of art to. Please keep posts to non-AI generated art only. This rule includes AI art that was then manually manipulated (e.g. drawing on top of something generated by AI).

That reads pretty clear to me?

Only $9.95 _{for the first hour, then $39.99 thereafter.}

The Tom Hanks one was really good.