I dunno. I just feel less like I’m experiencing a fun new tool for communication the last few weeks. The communities here on Beehaw are still great and fantastic and aren’t what I’m bothered by. It’s just when I venture out in the world (which I often do) that I notice conversations are much more argumentative than I remember them being.
How’s everyone else doing? Is this a minor vibez check?
I came over with the initial reddit defector wave. I loved it here. You could have civil conversations, even when you disagreed with someone else. It honestly felt like the forums of the early 2000s again. Then it started getting more aggressive, and all the “well…aksually” type replies started happening. I find myself hardly on lemmy/kbin/beehaw anymore because of it.
Have you found another landing spot?
Sadly no. I guess it’s a good thing. I’m just not on any social media much now.
That’s been me, too. I’ll pop in here sometimes, but overall the whole thing has ended up making me realize that social media as a whole just… Isn’t that great, actually. It’s a constant stream of little things, many of them things to be upset about that I can’t do anything about.
I’ve been spending more time instead on things like reading, that require prolonged focus on one thing, and damn if I don’t feel better this way.
Also… Beehaw and lemmy in general seems to have gotten even more tilted into hardcore FOSS/privacy/Linux culture, which is the opposite of what I hoped would happen. Privacy is important to me but I dislike Linux and I just don’t prioritize it in the way that a lot of people here do, such that they’re talking about it what feels like all the time to the exclusion of other topics.
Still, I remain here enough to type this comment. shrug
I want to try Tildes instead maybe but I think that’s still invite-only.
As a ‘well, actually’ style poster, sorry I’ll calm it down a bit. I’d really like to get into Firefish or something to be able to make my own blog rather than like… pruning peoples political takes, making epicly long posts that recieve little attention, and oversharing. Maybe I’m not so good at link aggregator social media.
Me too. I suppose I was too optimistic about what Lemmy could be, eh. :( Then again, maybe these are just some additional growing pains. Time will tell!
I have had this feeling too recently. One thing I did which has helped me is to unsubscribe from most news/politics except here at Beehaw.
Yeah I think it might be time for me to admit I’ve found enough communities and stop browsing all of them to find the new communities. I might designate a day once a week to visit the all feed to find something new
Your one day a week is a good idea, I think I’ll copy it.
What I really want yo do is to be more creative community member again instead of a passive content consumer. Not sure what form that will take yet.
Politics discussion seems to bring out the worst part of a lot of people
I’m not even joined to all the news, memes, and politics communities but they show up in my feed anyway? How do I get rid of them?
I have to filter to subscribed to not see them but even then sometimes they are there. Maybe its just the instance that I’m in?
As a general rule All will show them unless you block them. I block all the big politics communities.
Subscribed shouldn’t show them though. As far as I can tell the only times they will turn up in subscribed anyway is if someone you follow favourites them or comments on them.
damn, I guess I’ll just go block them all. How irritating lol
There are outright attacks of putting illegal images that have caused major problems the past few days on the biggest Lemmy instances…
Hating Reddit was not necessarily a great motivation for people to create original content here. Hating Elon Musk and Twitter to x, the introduction of Threads generated more hate. It’s been kind of hate burnout lately.
Yea … even more broadly, there’s definitely some weird psychology in the whole phenomenon of leaving a platform for another, none of which is talked about much, and which probably feels weird to talk about because for many we’re generally not yet comfortable admitting how important these platforms have become for us.
It’s probably a little bit like work where if you count the amount of time you spend there it’d force you to recognise how important it is to actually be as happy there as you can.
And so, as you say, in doing something drastic like hate-quitting a platform which was actually much more important and sentimental to us than we’re willing to admit, all to go to a smaller and different place over which we might have some decent “buyers remorse”, we end up with feelings we don’t know what to do with, and as lame as it might sound.
The scorching of previous content I also found rather destructive… people were deleting 10 years worth of posts and content.
My personal approach has been that the history of the internet is fragile enough as it is. I’ve left reddit for good. I don’t need to burn Reddit down in protest. I’m fine with it having a passive rather than active death
I understand this take. For me, though, I wasn’t willing to let reddit to continue to make ad revenue from my posts/comments (e.g. from their turning up in google search results) or sell them for LLM-shenanigans (of course, my comments can be scraped off lemmy just the same, but at least a megacorp isn’t claiming ownership over them).
I don’t regret it at all, either. It feels rather refreshing to not have that trail floating around on the internet anymore (well, mostly. I’m sure I didn’t catch everything.)
I definitely hear this, understand it, and respect it. I’m never going to confront someone asking them why they did that, or telling them they were wrong to do. But sometimes I see someone getting on someone’s case about “why are you even here if you don’t hate reddit and YouTube and twitter with all your heart” and it just bums me out
As a result of the attacks, lemmyworld temporarily turned off open sign up and switched to an application process. I saw a comment asking if this made it more likely for beehaw to refederate. 😂 They only turned off open sign up because of the mass posting of CSAM on their instance, idk about y’all but that’s not exactly making me jump to refederate…
It was mainly a moderation tools issue that led BH defederate from LW and SIJW, so I don’t think this changes anything.
If anything it proves our admins had a point when they said there was too much content coming in too fast from completely unvetted sources from Lemmy.world to keep up with
I think you’re onto something. We ran out of hate for Spez, Elon, and Zuck and moved onto hating eachother (as a collective, not saying anyone here, specifically)
You aren’t alone. Just this past day or two there’s been a big incident on Lemmyworld that Beehaw luckily was insulated from, so people are on high alert there. Also big news about Inmate #P01135809, Elon Musk, AI and stuff can put people on edge.
Definitely many Redditisms are back in Lemmy than before. I’m guilty of some of them on occassion still, but I try to counterbalance it by spreading kindness and appreciation around when I can.
What happened in lemmy.world?
I think they might be referring to the CSAM attack. Someone apparently flooded lemmy.world with CSAM images and a lot of people inadvertently saw them.
I think we’re safe on Beehaw but I’m not opening any inline image links I see on the fediverse just in case.
Yes you are correct, that is what I’m referring to. If you were on a Beehaw account at that time, you will have had no exposure to those images, since Beehaw is defederated.
Definitely had no exposure, just saw people who federate with both us and .world talking about it. I’m being cautious in case it happens to another instance, though.
I think it varies and is highly dependent on what community you are venturing into. Some are more heavily moderated than others from what I can tell. I don’t think it’s any more or less than it was on Reddit (I’d argue for the most part it’s still great in comparison), but I think it just is a lot more noticeable due to the user count being so small right now.
Well… yes.
I have to humbly admit that I just got myself banned on LW, for going berserk in a discussion I shouldn’t even have started. 😓
I’ve recently commented to someone who was making fun of Beehaw’s rules, that they’re not only to have everyone else “be nice” to me, but also to remind myself to “be nice” to others. On some instances, with other rules, it’s just too easy to forget myself and try to “one up” others until shit happens.
I’m afraid as more people join Lemmy, and they get more confident at using the platform, more of the old Reddit bad habits will seep in… except hopefully on Beehaw.
It seems to be both common wisdom and substantiated by some studies I’ve heard of … bad apples really do ruin the bunch … toxic behaviours infect and corrupt.
I think if we care, admitting that we can go too far ourselves (as you did, and as I’ll admit myself too) and then trying to be vigilant in maintaining a culture are the best we can do.
Calling out rude behavior might be a way for us to help govern the kind of behavior we want.
Sometimes I wonder whether an online community made of anonymous individuals who don’t and won’t ever know each other, nor even recognize each other, isn’t a fool’s errand. People are all-too willing to shout carelessly into the mist, as if their words can’t affect real people. At least with irl communities, there is a pressure not to insult each other to one another’s faces.
This isn’t to say social media is all bad, not at all. But I wonder if “community” is really possible in any kind of meaningful way, or in the long term.
All my favorite internet forums held on by being small and having solid rules and moderation, and then as they grow, and more and more strangers join the mix, it slowly falls apart.
If you’ve seen other posts that I have made you might’ve noticed that I’m interested in this exact problem and I have been super focused on research that shows having efficient information networks (i.e. centralized networks, a network where only one or a few voices matter, or fully connected networks, a network where everyone can see everyone else opinions) can lead to much lower collective intelligence for the group and having inefficient information networks (networks that have fewer connections, maybe 4-6, and everyone has an equal amount of connections) can lead to a group being able to solve more complex problems.
So in relation to what you pointed out big online communities actually might be making our collective intelligence weaker even though it makes us more connected.
Interesting paper. Haven’t read it all yet (saving it for later), but… are lowly connected networks “less efficient” though, or do highly connected networks end up drowning in noise?
As I understand it, each person has a certain limit on input and output transmission speeds (reading is faster than writing, but speaking sits between them both), and communication quality declines with density. So the most efficient network, would be that which has as many connections as possible, up to a threshold of desired communication quality. Different people can have different speeds, and form part of several networks, each with a different threshold for quality.
That suggests an ideally efficient network structure, would be formed by a stack of overlapping networks with different topologies and unequally connected nodes depending on each one’s in/out capacity and quality requirements of the networks they form part of. If we add different data processing quality and capacity at the nodes, each node would have a particular combination of networks with which it would perform ideally, for maximum total performance.
A further problem to solve, would be the evolution of parameters over time, which could require nodes switching to different combinations of networks and a different number of connections on each. Different types of periodic cycling over different configurations could be ideal for distributing information to maximize problem solving… and different types of problems could benefit from different setups of the whole system.
I wonder if instead of trying to run a simplified network version of a static problem on MTurk, it wouldn’t benefit more from a series of initial simulations, and only then run a static or evolving problem with MTurk, adapting the setup based on signals from nodes, networks, and a fit function for the whole system.
Interesting.
So the most efficient network, would be that which has as many connections as possible, up to a threshold of desired communication quality
I think that the individual’s ability to process information does play a role in how many connections that individual should have but the more important role in having fewer connections is to provide protection from social influence which can hinder the creativity process and help stabilize adoption.
So for example, if I had 50 connections and 4 people adopted a new behavior / shared new information I would still be influenced to not take up the behavior because so many of my other connections aren’t taking part and it could lead to negative feedback from my other connections, but if I had 6 connections instead that behavior/information would be much more appealing allowing for newer ideas/behaviors to spread in a much more stable way.
Similarly with creativity. If you have a lot of connections that are giving you answers to everything you could think of (and they are decent answers) then there is less of a need to find creative solutions to those problems meaning that new ideas are less likely to be thought of or proposed. Alternatively being surrounded by that much external information siloes you to think about finding a new solution within the things that have already worked.
A further problem to solve, would be the evolution of parameters over time, which could require nodes switching to different combinations of networks and a different number of connections on each.
This is something that they have sort of studied but not in the way you have suggested. They have allowed individuals to change their social connections over time and have noticed that the connections become more centralized and/or the connections are to people who are like them in relevant ways (This point isn’t in this paper but it is in some related research). It would be interesting to see what would happen if they actually optimized the network over time to make everyone smarter.
Interesting.
Yes, I find it very interesting too.
All my favorite internet forums held on by being small and having solid rules and moderation,
Me too. I don’t understand why some people (mostly lemmy.world) are so eager to recruit as much of reddit as possible to join. Smaller is better.
At least with irl communities, there is a pressure not to insult each other to one another’s faces.
Ugh, not where I live, but yeah.
Don’t feel ashamed of getting banned from that shithole. It’s always been a pisshole and people need to stop gravitating toward one single instance anyway.
Most of people, if not all, come from Reddit (me included). Depending on how you behaved there, that behaviour can be brought to other places, like Lemmy/Kbin. People have the right to defend their own ideas or opinions, but that doesn’t mean they have the right to be rude, argumentative, mean or whatever.
Most of communities/magazines have rules to avoid people be very out of boundaries, like no bigotry or no hate speech, and I’m happy that those rules are enforced and respected. But I think a big mistake of moderators is that they stop writing more rules because bigotry and hate speech are the real evil. What about good manners? What about being nice to each other, even when disagreeing? What about remembering the human? If I were on lemmy.world and you were on lemmy.ml, and I called you stupid because you like oatmeal… is that bigotry? Is that hate speech? What is it? How do you define that behaviour to write a rule not to follow?
Beehaw is great because there is one single general rule to all communities: be(e) nice. Other communities can put other rules to be more specific about what is tolerable and what is not, but being nice is always at the top. I wish other communities/magazines/instances did the same thing.
Even if the “be nice” moderation method flops in the long run, it is nice to see something different tried, at the least.
I’ve also noticed an uptick of reactionary content as well, which only serves to make people upset.
I think it just comes in waves, it got bad when when the reddit API finally shuts down, then it slowly calmed down, now in the last week or so it’s starting again.
Oh my god I love Margot Robbie!
That’s esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie to you! 😊
You’re not the first to ask as far as I’ve seen, and it also seems you’re not alone. Dunno how real the effect is, but I’ve seen it it or felt it too.
I haven’t noticed it. People are much nicer than on reddit. However I don’t look at politics communitys (because they think the world is the USA) so that could be it.
Mine was until I decided to exercise my block button a lot more. Certain instances have a higher proportion of trolls and jerks, so that’s been frustrating. Though, it’s still worthwhile to see all the stuff and then let me curate it.
The block button’s availability without needing to file a specific report is the very best feature here
the comments look more like the comments from reddit
bound to happen when a community is expanded out of hate and negativity. the second people couldn’t redirect all of their anger towards reddit they turned towards others.
Reddit too, since I use both parallel until the API subscription is enforced. I think it’s because US elections, people get very sensitive in that time period.
I think it also doesn’t help that we lived thru a pandemic and most people don’t have the ability to actually confront the trauma that has brought
Yes I am still grieving my dead, and grief can make it harder to connect with others I think.
there really is a need for a world-wide wake/funeral, people weren’t supposed to have contact with infected dead bodies… the whole world was connected by the event, have a positive wake party, thank all the nurses and doctors, praise that it wasn’t a more deadly disease.
Especially that which was done to them collectively by the society. The lockdowns destroyed whatever reason we had to believe human rights are actually a thing. We failed ourselves, and future generations, and its toll is such a deep, bleeding wound people are choosing to ignore because they can’t admit the lockdowns were immoral regardless of how serious the coronavirus actually was. Turns out, forcibly locking people inside their houses for years, often with abusive family members, was not wise. Who knew?
Also explicit astroturfing. Reddit is huge and has been targeted with extra helpings of extra angry politics since 2015 at the very, very latest. There’s a lot of political posting here too, but it’s possible (if annoyingly hard) to prune most of it.
That’s the magic of federation. You can curate to create any vibe you want. Since I am on a solarpunk instance, the only ‘hate’ I see is for climate change denial.
Slrpnk is where my alt is! Its a great instance and I found it because i liked the people I was running into from there. I think its notable that your instance is literally tied to your identity
Yes, I was happy to find it. I immediately found several kindred spirits and the moderators are conscientious without being overly controlling.
The message of realism combined with hope just hits right.
Yeah it frankly introduced me to Solarpunk and immediately it was an ethos I was super into
Solarpunk best instance!
And possum patio
It is still exhausting to see people complaining about that kind of stuff constantly, even if you agree with them. Like my entire existence is political and when I come online I just want to get away from that.