Rule #2 is possibly our most important one:
Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
Learn to disagree without being rude or disrespectful.
It can be difficult sometimes, since western social media thrives on collective outrage, and they knowingly ingrain this into us for years. But please do adhere to this rule, and it will make this place much more enjoyable.
We will not hesitate to issue temp bans (usually a day or two) for those who make everyone’s experience unpleasant.Hit the report button if you see this behavior.
Thanks!
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Lots of redditors are coming out of echo-chambers. In fact most of reddit has become one starting from a suffocating top-down control.
They’ve forgotten how Reddit used to be and so are astounded at how “uncomfortable” Lemmy is given its NON-pyramid like structure.
The discomfort is how the world and free speech needs to be and I’m a non-white Muslim typing this.
None of us is 100% right so we should always be exposed to other POVs and question ourselves to keep ourselves in check and evolve in objective ways.
I hope Lemmy keeps it this way and the money doesn’t corrupt things as it always does. Believe you me, advertisers and nefarious actors are already reaching out to Lemmy authors to do exactly that.
First thing I read on Lemmy and it’s like I’ve found emotionally intelligent people finally.
I saw the same thing on Mastadon, just normal people capable of handling their emotions.
Western social media (and television) is promoting the worst in people and it can make users believe everyone is insane. So it’s very nice to see this being posted.
Thanks!
It’s nice to have a place where I can ask genuine questions without being called a complete idiot just for asking.
Good advice for life outside in the real world as well whenever possible. You can disagree without going thrermonuclear.
I am like a veteran to this site because i joined 3 years before new people moved to here
I agree with this post and I think that its important to have a post like this to remind people.
“YOU” are not your argument. Disagreement is not an attack on you as an individual and should not be taken as such.
this! I hope we stay such a friendly and open-minded community where one doesn’t have to fear to say/write their thoughts.
Good luck with that. Knowing were the exodus has come from. We can start vetting the new users but this is not proven effective.
Malicious reporting can also become a problem if we start being trigger happy on banning users.
I’ve encountered some people who are not so… respectful with disagreements. I’ve made use of the report feature, however, it doesn’t seem to be of much use.
you haven’t been entirely respectful in your disagreements either come on now
Sounds pretty fascist to me /s
Tone policing is classist and is the reason I stopped using this instance. It’ll be popular with the liberals who will weaponise it against those saying things they dislike but it’ll cause situation after situation where leftists get punished ultimately driving away the base of people that supported the site and platforming up to this point.
Tone policing is classist
Apologies if this is something that you think should be obvious to anyone, but I’m genuinely curious what you mean by “classist” here.
I occasionally encounter assholes from all walks of life and prefer to avoid them all the same. I’m actively in favor of reasonable moderation on social media sites to filter assholes out because it’s better for my mental health.
Nobody’s saying we can’t have differences of opinion and disagreements. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable that we should be expected to engage respectfully or not at all. This is a standard that should be applied equally to all. It’s difficult to do, but we should also strive to hold people we otherwise generally agree with on principle accountable if they’re being aggressive/hostile/antagonistic because, at best, they’re being a bad advocate of our own positions and, at worst, they’re being an asshole.
Alright I’ll bite.
As you move down the wealth ladder you eventually reach a point at which there is a culture change. There are significant differences in the culture of the average middle-income anglo with guilt about their privilege compared to the people who are really, genuinely struggling. Once you cross a certain threshold, I’ll call it the poverty threshold for the sake of this reply but it’s not really a strict line but more of a broadly intersecting spectrum where there are many people who can blend into both groups, you reach a behavioural change point. This behavioural change, both in speech and in attitudes, is generally driven by those of us below a certain income level genuinely not giving a single fuck about how someone speaks but rather what they are saying.
Take for example my home of Liverpool. If I go down the council flats I’ll find myself hundreds of people who will speak in ways that the middle-income liberals of america would find abhorrent. They will cuss you for a minor thing that makes it seem like you just killed their dog. This is normalised culture for them, and among their peers it is perfectly fine behaviour - but to the sheltered middle income person who sees it as an overreaction? It’s shocking, and they don’t like it.
This trend occurs towards the lower income groups because frankly their is less and less incentive to ruin relationships with people over social policing. Far more is put up with and accepted because everyone’s got it rough and nobody’s interested in making someone’s life harder by getting overly emotional about a few swearsies.
I fit into one of the blending people, seamlessly transitioning between the two and speaking both ways. I grew up in squats, but I also got a very fortunate break that led to me getting an education in what many would regard as the ruling class side of our education system, which is split between schools for the workers vs schools for the bourgeoisie.
Anyway. The point is that the tone policing has the effect of shutting out these people from participation. The reason you don’t see the majority of these people in participation online isn’t because they don’t have access, it’s because they’ve had the experience of getting banned everywhere for not speaking like a cultured middle income liberal, and they’ve frankly got bigger priorities in their lives than learning how to speak like the people they fucking despise.
It is classism because it explicitly shuts out this class of people from participation. Almost everywhere online the tone policing functions as a tool of class discrimination that bends internet culture towards privileged middle-income groups over the poor. It’s not explicitly intended to do this, but it is the outcome of it. Much like for example having a “no hoodies” rule in a shop doesn’t function to keep out middle-income people but keeps out the “chavs”, if you’ll forgive my use of a classist slur for effect.
You wanna get aggressive and go at it? Go ahead. Do it. How something is expressed is not important compared to what is actually being said. The issue with this form of classism is that a section of society goes completely unrepresented online because of it, people whose politics almost always align with my own socialist views once they’re well educated in what their interests are.
I disagree. Reading content online is inherently different from listening to someone speaking out loud. Internet discourse must be different in order for us to better understand each other. Tone and emotion do not come off well in text posts so we adjust our way of communicating accordingly.
I don’t know why I bother though, you clearly have a problem with a large portion of society that has done nothing to harm you. The average person is not out to get you. Your anger at the middle class is exactly what the super rich want.
Could we also have a rule saying that downvotes should not be used for disagreements? Downvotes should be meant for off-topic, or factually incorrect content. Disagreements should be debated in the comments, respectfully of course.
While I personally never downvote anyone for disagreeing, I don’t think it’s possible, or desirable, to try to create rules around how people use their preference buttons.
But I def suggest going into your settings and hiding vote scores, as that’s psychologically better for most people.
I don’t think it’s possible, or desirable, to try to create rules around how people use their preference buttons.
I also don’t think it’s possible to actually end mean-spirited disagreement in internet comment sections, but it’s a valuable thing to strive for as a value and emphasize, like you did in this post.
I think the same can be said for group-downvoting and stalking threads to downvote people based on what side they take without engaging with the substance of what is said. Minority viewpoints that add information are probably the most needed thing, and if anything I would say group downvoting is worse here than reddit on certain topics, unfortunately.
I think the attention spans are better here, and many/most things are better here but this is a sore spot.
