From my perspective, the best way to deal with toxicity (whatever that might be for a given individual) is to have multiple accounts and to have regular "time out" periods where you only use the non-politics accounts. This is of course not viable if you are a single admin.

From a user's perspective, yep, that can and does typically work.

I'm looking at things from a higher vantage point, though: The health, safety, and reputation of Lemmy and the Threadiverse as a whole.

As it stands, I'm embarrassed to tell people what I do in my spare time (run an instance and interact on Lemmy). You get a "normie" coming in off the streets, and what are they going to think jumping into this place? Are they going to want to stick around? I genuinely feel this place is on track to becoming the next 4chan, and that's with me being largely (though not entirely) desensitized to much of this stuff. I can't imagine how fresh eyes would interpret the atmosphere here.

And like one of the linked comment threads mentioned: We need the normies. If we want this place to succeed, we need them. Otherwise, it's going to continue distilling down to the most extreme views as more and more of the rational people call it quits. And I just can't see normies wanting to come here and stick around the way things are. Not without a LOT of work curating things, but I can't see them wanting to do that either.

On the other hand American social media is an intellectual, moral and even economic (I am actually serious about this) dead end.

Agreed.

That's why I use use the Threadiverse, although I am trying to slowly move off Lemmy to Piefed for obvious reasons.

Having tired to have rational discourse here about anything related to the outside world (without things immediately devolving to extremes), combined with the demographic overlap between Piefed and Lemmy, I strongly disagree lol

Just sharing some thoughts in context of your very justified comments on the Threadiverse. I am not necessarily trying to change your mind or prove anything. :)

Same.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (5 children)

As it stands, I'm embarrassed to tell people what I do in my spare time (run an instance and interact on Lemmy). You get a "normie" coming in off the streets, and what are they going to think jumping into this place? Are they going to want to stick around?

I don't think telling anyone you moderate a community on Lemmy and interact on Lemmy is somehow more embarassing than telling them you moderate a community on Reddit (for comparisons sake). People who would mock you in some way for that would do so whether or not its Reddit or Lemmy, and likely would just view all of it as inherently nerdy anyway.

Lemmy, from my observation has more of a reputation to outsiders as being a lefty-safe-space (closer to Bluesky) than anything else. It's really not that close to 4chan at all given the sheer gore and overt racism and hatred on there. I know what you're getting at here, but the dredges of 4chan and Twitter have outright open nazi apologetics in front of everyone. Also, given how unpleasant Reddit can get at times (at least just as bad as here) - I don't think the type of conduct you're referring to is inherently a problem for budding social media sites. Not excusing it, but just that it doesn't seem to be an existential factor.

What "normies" want, if anything, would be non-political communities taking more of a focus. Which I am certainly trying to do.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (4 children)

Lemmy, from my observation has more of a reputation to outsiders as being a lefty-safe-space

Truth be told, I don't want this place, or the Threadiverse, to be considered a lefty safe-space any more than I'd want it to be considered a right wing safe-space. Honestly, I just wish people would leave their political ideology at the door and just interact as people.

Though I'm not naive enough to think that will ever happen on any platform - it's just a wish lol

But the problem with any ideological safe space is the extremes. That's what I feel is not being addressed.

I know it was buried in one of the longer comments I linked, but one point I made was this:

Take some of this rhetoric from Lemmy, replace the proper nouns, and it's indistinguishable from what you'd read on an extreme right-wing board.

That's just not the kind of atmosphere/environment I want to be associated with.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Truth be told, I don't want this place, or the Threadiverse, to be considered a lefty safe-space any more than I'd want it to be considered a right wing safe-space. Honestly, I just wish people would leave their political ideology at the door and just interact as people.

Sure, I'm just noting its wider reputation.

It's not considered extreme really (*excluding some instances). I know you're referring to calls for violence to certain political figures but it's as nothing as to what you'll see on Twitter or 4chan.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Fair enough; 'extreme' is as relative a term as "hot" or "cold" is.

I guess I'm just using "would the average person say this in polite conversation?" as my reference point.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Well I don't know of any social media platform that's somehow free of that.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Right, but we had the opportunity to be better here.

While Lemmy and the Threadiverse existed before the Reddit API exodus, it really took off around then with dedicated, passionate people working together to build something new, something better. I was one of them and was in real-time communication with admins of many of the popular instances today. There was passion, drive, and determination to make something great. And for a while, we did.

Somewhere along the line, though, the old toxicity started creeping back in, it was left largely unaddressed, and eventually metastasizing to where we are today.

So while there can be debate as to whether that means Lemmy ultimately succeeded or failed, in my view, still holding on to the original desire to make something better than what we crawled out of, I see it as a failure.

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