I’ve been seeing more often (and others have posted the same) that some of the elements of “Reddit etiquette” seem to be taking over here. Luckily I can still find discussion comments but it seems the jokes and general “downvote because I disagree” are slowly taking over.
So the question becomes is it the size or the functionality of the site? The people or popularity? What’s your thoughts?
edit: should I change it to Lemmy-hivemind? Exhibit A: the amount of downvotes without a single explanation (guessing it’s anything to do with Reddit being talked about).
The universal problem is that there’s no shared definition of what a downvote represents. Is it “this is spam and should be removed”? “I don’t like this”? “This doesn’t belong here”? “I want to see less of this”? “I disagree”?
That’s not even a Reddit problem - it’s innate to any social media voting apparatus. Extend it to Facebook, even. Does the laugh reaction mean I’m laughing with you or at you?
Most comments and posts I’ve downvoted have been because I accidentally swiped too far right and my upvote changed to the downvote action and I didn’t even notice. So those downvotes don’t even mean anything!
I think the right answer is to stop worrying about votes. Even if they all mean the same thing they’re still meaningless. It’s better to change your post and comment sorting setting than to try to social engineer a way out of it.
+1 and -1 is not representative of the full of ways you can feel about a content. This is what happens when convenience for the system outweights human expression.
+i
-1/12
Giving someone 1+2+3+4+5+… votes seems excessive
Normal humans would understand that by amplitude, I probably meant a x/10 score. And then the algorithm would put that in context of every other score your account has given out to properly weight relative to your baseline. Then perform sentiment analysis on that specific post relative to all the other posts you’ve passed judgement on as context and isolate your relative score with respect to that specific sentiment.
Dude, it was just a maths joke and I wasn’t even replying to you
-1/12 is the result of putting the sum of all the natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc) through the Riemann zeta function.
Get off your snarky high horse and treat people with kindness.
“Normal humans” good gracious.
OK sorry but it sounds like your saying “votes with values other than +1 and -1 ? Ridiculous ! What next ? downvotes of amplitude -1/12 ? Cats and dogs living together ?”
Which I assume the reason the designers of these platform only give us binary +1 and -1 expression and that’s IF they don’t take away the negative option entirely.
In my defence I plead reddit brain
Thinking scores are “added” is part of the problem. 5000 people voting 1/10 is not equal to 500 upvotes.
One thing I always liked about slashdot is the ability to tag votes with things like “funny” or “informative”.
Ultimately moderators do not wish to cede any discussion shaping power to the unwashed masses.
Someone replied to you with the expected use is the downvote button, but contrary to your comment, I believe there is a de facto use of the button and it more or less corresponds to your “I don’t like this” interpretation.
Now, they could have done something to address this issue, even completely eliminate the downvote button. I don’t think they will do it any time soon because it would affect their profit.
It makes me wonder—would the dynamic change if there was only an upvote? So you could choose not to upvote, but the default action would be a neutral one, and if you liked/wanted to support/etc you could signal that.
I see tons of posts on here now that are downvoted to oblivion, because they are a legitimate article that says something a group doesn’t like. There won’t even be comments on the post. So like a Reuter article that discusses Palestinian casualties and no comments and like -20. This doesn’t seem like a super useful mechanism. Or at least, it’s just functioning today as a content preference “I don’t want to see this typed content” as opposed to “this is bad info, out of line with the community, etc.”
And despite ranking my list by either hot, or top day/six hours, I still see the downvoted posts regularly so the mechanic doesn’t even really do anything in terms of visibility. Or possibly there’s just too little content on a given community for it to get filtered out.
Not sure if you realize, but a lemmy instance can turn off downvotes for the entire instance. So we’ll see if instances with downvotes disabled will do better.
No I didn’t know that, would be interesting to see more of them try it, just for curiositys sake.
Blajah doesn’t have downvotes, so I can’t downvote anyone and also can’t see if anyone downvotes me. It has helped me break free of the Reddit hivemind and truly be myself.
I think the difference is when you have a small group everyone sort of considers themselves co-custodians of a space—lifting each other up and helping people integrate. But get enough people and it starts getting exhausting constantly trying to enforce norms against an ever growing community of people who don’t understand or respect them. It’s like social enshittification.
It’s the eternal September.
Too much growth too fast for sure! Much harder for Lemmy to create its own culture and maintain it. Much harder to discourage toxicity. Notice how healthy communities are often smaller.
Sucks for niche communities but they’ll get slowly spun up over time, and in the meantime they can be found in other places including Reddit. I don’t personally need everything to be a one-stop shop.
I’m old enough to remember the start of eternal September. It hasn’t stopped yet.
I don’t recall when I first started using the internet. Late 80’s or very early 90’s. No WWW back then. It was all IRC and gopher and newsgroups and other things I don’t remember. I lived near MSU, so I could dial in for free because it was a local call.
And then once you got in, it was hard to find anything to actually do. It kinda felt like exploring Mars. But eventually I found things. Very exclusive club and very good times that I miss. No advertisements. No one trying to make a sale.
It kinda felt like exploring Mars. But eventually I found things
Even the world wide web felt like that until shockingly recently. I remember circa 2005 just typing in random words .com and seeing what you’d find, or discovering a cool new website by word of mouth at school.
I remember vising pig.com and discovering a delightful page consisting of nothing more than a giant picture of a pig and the text “this domain is for sale” that lasted years. These days it’s probably one of those shitty for sale landing pages.
Whenever I saw someone complaining about the “hivemind” over there, they were invariably whining about people not liking their unpopular opinion on something. When you say “hivemind” you are equating anyone with that opinion to insects/drones/NPC etc. Just because you’re different doesn’t mean you’re right.
fair point, using negative language while looking for engagement and conversation isn’t the best start. Do you have a better descriptive I can use and possibly edit the post with? (genuinely asking, I would enjoy everyone’s opinion)
I think your premise is flawed. There’s no such thing as a “hivemind” or what it implies. Opinions will exist on a spectrum of popular to unpopular depending on the community they’re posted in. I would say that those descriptors are perfectly adequate as they are.
I’m finding it difficult to respond because of the “popular to unpopular” description you’ve applied. I feel like by definition that in itself is a “hivemind”. So maybe like you said the entire premise is flawed. For someone wanting lemmy to succeed as a place where discussions and opinions can be shared and open, whats a positive aspect that you feel could encourage that type of engagement?
I don’t really understand what it is you’re after. Do you want a place where people only get positive reception no matter what they say? Maybe that exists in a group therapy session, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking for. Is it?
Is it about getting down voted? Who cares? You can’t control how other people react to your opinions and you shouldn’t try. Lemmy is diverse and it is federated. Each instance and community has its own rules and culture. If you don’t find any of the communities to your particular liking, you can always start some of your own.
For the first part, no not a group therapy session lol. “thoughtful reception” is probably a better apt description. You can definitely have a level of control for how your opinion is received with your attitude and how you engage in a conversation. A space and how conversation is conducted usually sets a precedence, the tools available to you with how you interact with that content is another part of it.
I was just looking for conversations about this style of social platform and the known problems that seem to inflict it. I want Lemmy to stay diverse and federated, I’m seeing a concerning trend of tribalism revolving around instance membership or interaction. As you said I can start a community if I’m looking for something else, which I have done. Starting a new corner of lemmy to stretch out in has been a wonderful experience and has helped me focus on something I want to be creative and engage with instead of wandering around Lemmy “all”.
But, I can’t help but wonder if that’s the downfall. I’ve been instance hoping a lot lately, it’s amazing to see what’s been hidden that I’m not seeing and as spaces become more condensed or closed off through defederation the stark contrast between instances is only going to grow. Basically mini-reddits (the negative parts of it), instead of spaces being smaller to allow more chances to not drown out a differing opinion. So am I contributing to this or refuting it by making my own community? Do I have a chance to avoid the main opinions becoming the mindset that others want to follow when engaging or is it just an uphill battle because of the format of this social platform. A lot of really interesting and thoughtful responses in this post, exactly what I’m looking for in community discussions and there’s been barely any hate or downvotes. It’s been refreshing and given me plenty to think about.
Moderation and mods being accountable.
Public modlogs help a lot
I was thinking the same thing. Reddit is a cesspool because communities shut out anyone who dissents with a group’s opinions, allowing the group to continue thinking “everyone” believes the same thing they do. Sure it’s a good thing for mods to be able to quickly block obvious troublemakers, but there needs to be an unbiased review process in place when someone is kicked out simply for disagreeing or asking legitimate questions. Echo chambers are bad.
Telling someone they’re disgusting for being POC or LGBT+ is a good example of an action that deserves an immediate ban. Asking someone what policies a political figure implemented that benefited you should NOT be a reason for a ban, especially if you’re only banning them because you can’t answer the question.
I’m not quite sure how the process works on Lemmy, but I feel like moderation should include incremental periods. Like the first time you get blocked for a day, then a week, then a month, and finally a permanent ban. And a person should be able to request a review of their ban, which would be judged by a panel of mods from random groups and instances to limit people of like minds all piling on for the same butt-hurt feelings. There should be ways to make things more fair than just reddit’s policy of an invisible admin making decisions based on their mood that day.
On Lemmy the safeguard to mod abuse is instance admins. On Reddit this can take place, but rarely does. The only time admins on Reddit really step in is when mods are allowing illegal behaviour on their sub, or when mods are protesting against their own shitty behaviour. But on Lemmy it’s much easier to reach out to an instance’s admins if something is going wrong. Mod actions are all public, so you can create a post explaining what happened and it’s not just a “he said/she said” situation.
If they aren’t being responsive to feedback, the appropriate response is to start up a new community, preferably on a different instance. Or, in the extreme case, to block that instance entirely. You can even build a consensus to doing this with a “panel” consisting of…every user on the platform. That’s essentially how !tenforward@lemmy.world became the de facto Star Trek meme community, rather than !risa@startrek.website, after the mods of the latter community were shown to be abusing their powers and the instance admins refused to take remedial action.
if we can avoid Lemmy’s most active city being Eglin Air Force Base, we just might be able to avoid the hive mind
Shills bots and feds haha
When you got no friends, you can count on them to provide healthy engagement every single time
Literally nothing can be done to avoid it. The “Reddit hivemind” is the human hivemind. When enough people start contributing to a certain community, certain ideas usually unanimously shared between individuals get boosted up to the top and become general consensus.
There’s 3 facets.
- Being “in” on the joke.
This is the meme comments, whether they are internet lore (a way to signify that you were there) or simply just in on the joke.
- Community expectations.
Some communities are made to be in on the joke. Some communities are made to be informational and analytic. Even the latter communities will eventually have some jokes that occur, which over time will create a caste of those who are “in” on the joke.
- Ethics and morals.
In smaller, usually hobby communities, this generally isn’t problematic. However in the wider internet, it’s not uncommon for hate to be the joke, and spreading it being “in” on the joke.
Therefore, the hivemind is not inherently bad, as it is just a nature of community expectations that are connected through shared experiences over time. But just like we’ve seen through history, this can be pretty easily manipulated and people who don’t have humanitarian beliefs in mind perpetuating that rhetoric.
In any case, to combat this, I think the community just needs to set specific expectations. GameFAQs forums would be a great example of having mostly problem-free hivemind, as video games have a specific meta-game that is developed over time and jokes from that shared experience (git gud, don’t get hit, etc). The whole point of these forums was to talk about the game, from meme (before memes) to painstaking min-maxing, and the discussions of the community would revolve around this. The rules of the forums made it pretty hard to be overtly mean or engage in discussion that wasn’t centered around the goal of the community.
It has to be down to the moderation. Admins and Moderators have to step up and stamp out what they feel is infecting the community.
Too many times I’ve seen in history where, if you do not have an active mod team and allow people to run the asylum, you effectively have failed that community.
Lol… Mods enforce the hivemind.
Any critical analysis or questioning of the mods narrative leads to comment removal and bans.
If users were able to migrate their accounts that could help against centralization
What is that you care to preserve? Can’t you just register a new account and kill the old one? (genuinely curious)
Many users have stated they would like to keep their comment history and subscriptions. Move their account to a different instance. Having to start from scratch is a big hassle.
The fediverse concept is great but users are locked into the instance they create their accounts on. With so many instances it is better to just start somewhere and figure out what’s what later.
So far I am happy with my instance. But if I ever change my mind it would help if migration was simple.
Stop over-policing people. Just because you disagree with something someone says, doesnt mean you have a right or duty to shut them down
We talk about it as a hive mind, but I think it is actually a problem of large numbers of users and an algorithm that needs tweaking, plus some shady mods.
You post but you’re too late, or you have a legit opinion that needs a few sub comments, but it’s too late.
Or you get trolled, you respond in a similar vein, and the mod bans you but not them, because the mod likes their opinion more. And I don’t blame mods for being soft in general, because it is a shit job. But sometimes it’s frustrating.
Tildes is a good example of a healthy community that allows for differences while encouraging good faith discussion. They police for tone instead of wrongness and it’s been working out over there. People are generally happy with the discourse.
A lot of it is in site design, too. There aren’t downvotes, because they’re not needed. There’s a lot of proactive moderation coming from the community by using comment labels. Labels help push comments up or down, and some require you to type a reason why, which encourages thoughtfulness instead of knee-jerk hivemind reaction and pile on. The only publicly visible label is the “good” one, so it keeps things positive. The “bad” label alerts mods and has a cooldown time limit, so it’s less likely to be abused. I believe once it’s used on a comment, the person can no longer reply to it, which helps avoid negative back and forths.
Policing just tone is how you get very polite and nicely-worded conversations about
exterminating untermenschen“human biodiversity”
Getting policed on tone sounds like hell. God forbid someone be angry at injustice.
The hivemind comes from people caring too much about their votes or karma. Nobody likes seeing their post or comment downvoted to oblivion so they’ll play things safe and just post something they know everyone will agree with. I’m not sure you can have a voting system without having some kind of a hivemind.
Isolated communities sharing rigid points of view are a problem, but I think the voting system is to blame. When someone disagrees and downvotes as a consequence, it changes the way that comment is read by the next reader, this will likely generate inertia over the way the message is read in general through time.
I can’t explain why I do like to read other people’s comments. Most of the time I do not bother to engage in conversations with strangers, but Lemmy has several advantages over Reddit just because it doesn’t count or publish people’s “karma”. It’s a blessing that some instances of Lemmy can also hide the voting system altogether, which is the only way I can beat the anxiety of putting my thoughts out there. I think these elements make Reddit more addictive, because a “good” number in your comments and profile confirms your membership to a given community. I believe it also shapes a “correct” way of thinking.
We need proper platforms for discussion. Reddit isn’t such a platform.
The reddit mechanic of using upvotes and using a sorting function optimized for engagement leads to unfavorable second order mechanics.
I’m not gonna share my thoughts on how to fix this. There are certainly experts out there who know more than me about game theory and rhetoric.
I think one advantage lemmy might have is the possibility of expanding the number of sorting metrics allowing users to sort things the way they choose rather than a few monolithic sort options.