this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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Fedigrow

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I noticed today an occurence of a user complaining about Lemmy being worse then Reddit. The modlogs shows how toxic they are. When this was pointed out, the user deletes their account

https://web.archive.org/web/20241217101003/https://sopuli.xyz/post/20276017?scrollToComments=true

Deleted account: https://kbin.melroy.org/u/Pyrin

This seems to address the question that comes up once in a while "a public modlog is only useful for mods" (https://feddit.org/post/4920887/3235141), while we can see from this example that it can also be useful for toxic users.

As you may know, !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com is a community dedicated to calling out power tripping mods.

Should we consider having a similar community for toxic users?

There is already !fediverselore@lemmy.ca, but I feel like the "lore" is more about large-scale events (like the cats wave recently) than specific users events.

Edit: Updated the title, and put the emphasis on creating a community to call out toxic users rather than "dunking" on the users that was banned.

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[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So someone downvotes twice as often as they upvote?

What's wrong with that? I find it much easier to downvote than to upvote, but most threads or comments I don't vote at all. It's like me reviewing my Steam games. I barely ever do it, but usually I do negative reviews, because you see all what is wrong in a game and want to voice your frustration about it.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Just in general, it's considered more polite Netiquete to make a comment explaining why the content was not deemed acceptable to you - enough to downvote it rather than simply scroll downwards, the latter of which costs you nothing.

As for why: how would you feel in return if like 50 people simply downvoted your comment here, while offering zero explanation about why they did that?

Anyway, it's just a label, much like a new account gets a label until it's not new anymore. What people DO with the label is up to them - perhaps they'll skip over everything you say, but more likely they'll simply ignore it (that's what I do:-P). What we do is up to us, but how people choose to receive it is up to them...

[–] aaaa@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm sure I'm one of these folks you would "just ignore" but that seems like a weird position to take.

So let me ask you, which scenario is better for social media: a) a group of people who hate to see AI content habitually downvote the content they don't think should be in the feed, b) this same group comments on every AI post, complaining that it's bad content, or c) telling these users not to express their opinion at all

While I'm not against AI content, I do think the crowd that is aren't wrong to feel that way and to want their votes heard. But rehashing the same arguments on each post won't help anything.

In short, the social media landscape has changed since old school "netiquette" rules. Usenet and bulletin boards didn't even have a voting system. We can express opinions without derailing the discussion already taking place. This is a better scenario.

Votes are a part of how we as a (larger) community decide what content is good or bad. We shouldn't be discouraging voting, just like users shouldn't be weaponizing votes.

It's the only way Lemmy is going to get anywhere close to a default feed that is appealing to new users. This "spend anywhere from an hour to a month curating your feed" is not working for most social media users, just us technically inclined folks who don't mind that.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Sorry to be unclear though: I did not mean that I ignore those users but that I choose to ignore those labels on the users. They aren't ready to be used to ignore people yet - if ever that day may come.

If it helps to go deeper: imagine the following scenario. A moderator is tasked by a community to uphold certain standards, like let's say it's an "art" community and some people very much dislike AI, while others like AI. Having a label (e.g. PieFed allows people to place "hashtags" onto posts - Mbin can do this too but I forget if that's just when federating with Mastodon or if it can also do it for Lemmy as well) allows the people who strongly dislike AI to not have to receive such. By placing the decision away from the moderator into the hands of the individual users to set up their block lists, this represents a "democratization of moderation". Power to the people! Why would that be bad?

An example I more commonly use is porn: should it be removed, or allowed? Moderators can only do either one or the other - never both. Whereas if there is a label, rigidly applied, the end-user can switch it on or off at will, even while at work without fear of losing their jobs.

But back to the democratization issue: the idea is that "moderation" is an authoritarian-style concept, where the Power (like shit) flows downhill. In contrast, allowing the voters to carry the day is democracy in action.

And as such, it can be abused - e.g. if people could create 1000 accounts, and thereby have 1000x the voting power of a common singular person, or even just 2-5 accounts and thereby have 2-5 the power of 1. All the benefits, and all the detractions too, of democracy, applied to Lemmy.

But we can also have the best of both worlds: moderation and user-defined thresholds to show vs. not show certain content. If I want to see more contenious content, I can relax the thresholds, or even get rid of them entirely (as I actually have done), but if someone else chooses to curate their view more tightly, then why would I judge them?

One potential reason for the latter is when people duplicate content, b/c they don't see each other's. Thus, the "label" concept shows through even more clearly there: what if instead of "showing" vs. "not showing" content, we could have a whole entire spectrum like "here's content we think you'll REALLY like", "here's some other content that, fair warning, you've not much enjoyed in the past", and also "here's other content that, whoops no you aren't allowed to even see this b/c it's gone at the moderator's behest". Since 3 > 2, and choice > no choice, hence isn't labeling "better"?

I honestly do not know. But it's a grand experiment to find out, nonetheless!:-)

The scenario you described though, might just need a schism to form 2 separate (sub-?) communities. Btw, not to toot its horn too awfully loudly, but PieFed also has "categories of communities", so that if they both were placed into the same overall Category, people wouldn't even have to so much notice precisely which Community the content was in, except when posting. And side-note: that also dramatically speeds up the onboarding of a new account: you can simply subscribe to "Memes" for instance, rather than each community individually, although you can always leave individual ones - such as memes@lemmy.ml, for political extremism - at anytime later, or subscribe to new ones.

And ask for commenting rather than merely voting: that much I agree - and at that point, why bother with the downvote even? Also, if a conversation should be happening, then shouldn't it rather be UP-voted, for relevance rather than "I (dis-)like this"?

Which reveals one trouble with voting: not only did it used to mean (I am told, though I was admittedly not on Reddit myself yet at the time) that "this content is less relevant", but moreover, some people think that, while others simply use it as a "Like" button. The discrepancy between those two uses causes confusion - as you say there are conversations that should happen, yet they keep getting buried by using the "dislike" button (or worse, mod removal that likewise can be used to suppress dissenting viewpoints rather than content that is truly not worth seeing).

So I am not sure that I agree with you in all aspects. But I am upvoting your comment for relevance all the same:-).

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Just in general, it's considered more polite Netiquete to make a comment explaining why the content was not deemed acceptable to you

Well, that's usually where I clash with people, because I add a comment a lot of the times under a comment or thread that I downvote. It's a bit of a juxtaposition when you're faced with repercussions for not agreeing with the "hivemind" or bubble or whatever.

As for why: how would you feel in return if like 50 people simply downvoted your comment here, while offering zero explanation about why they did that?

This already happens every day to week depending on the news cycle and what weird shit people here are cheering for next. As for how I feel? I don't really care, or rather at this point, knowing this platform, I just feel justified when a comment calling out things like Hamas cock sucking getting downvoted, because I know full well that its all the people who feel addressed by that comment.

And to draw a parallel to the modlog, as a user, you don't even know what happens to your comments or bans, unless you specifically look for it, and even then you can't tell why things happened as they happened.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's a bit of a juxtaposition when you're faced with repercussions for not agreeing with the "hivemind" or bubble or whatever.

Believe me, I KNOW that feeling - I have made posts that are among some of the most heavily-downvoted in an entire community's history:-).

Yeah in that case, downvoting AND commenting is fine. I didn't want to be too long-winded (although I did type up a MUCH longer reply, but then I deleted it all in favor of the above simplicity:-), but definitely there are cases where downvoting is appropriate: e.g. what about polls that say like "upvote if you agree, downvote if you disagree" - voting is mere participation there, not a sign of unfriendliness? And in Reddit there were certain communities where the voting metrics were SUPPOSED to be flipped from the norm.

In general many downvotes means that you might not be a "fit" for what the community is trying to do? I dunno.

because I know full well that its all the people who feel addressed by that comment.

Not necessarily - some people may even agree with you, but not like the language (especially more puritanical folks), or some may prioritize the process over content, like react to your tone over your statement, or whatever.

as a user, you don't even know what happens to your comments or bans, unless you specifically look for it

But that's what I am trying to tell you: perhaps it is that way on Mbin, but it has not been that way for people on Lemmy for months now. Well, tbf it is for those on Lemmy.World that is still running 0.19.3. This information is now ONE SINGLE CLICK AWAY when you are at the comment. I'll try to see if I can dig up an example, though it will come from one of my Lemmy alts.

Anyway, do as you want, I guess I was saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but I don't want to actually tell you what to do, just provide that as a thought so that you don't feel so powerless: YOU can control what OTHERS think, to some degree, by altering HOW you state something. It's a thought to consider anyway (e.g., did I just encourage you to think that, by stating it like that?:-).

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But that's what I am trying to tell you: perhaps it is that way on Mbin, but it has not been that way for people on Lemmy for months now.

So you get a notification now if a comment of yours gets removed, or if you get banned in a community?

do as you want, I guess I was saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar,

It's not like I can't be nice. I am nice the majority of times. If I'm not, it's usually because of the comment I'm replying to. I'm not gonna kiss people's ass if they hold disgusting opinions and I won't stop speaking out against that either. If that makes me unpopular here, so be it. I just wish there was more things on here that wasn't this political extremism so that I could spend more time on that instead.

As for altering peoples opinions... I don't see the point anymore. I tried this for many years. Now that we're almost certainly going to face a climate collapse and all its repercussions for humanity I really don't see the point. Extremism will rise even further with all the challenges that will arise in the near future. Me wasting time and energy on trying to get people to be nicer on some fringe internet platform is not going to change that.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

I'm still trying to figure out the other comment - I wrote out a long one but it won't let me send it, and anyway people don't want to read that much. So just responding to this one here:

DON'T do that. You are better than this. Nobody "makes" you do anything.

Also, you lead by example, not by arguing at people.

A few days ago I took a break from social media. It was... much more difficult than I expected, even for just one day. That dopamine addiction is real yo. Be careful. When I say that you might want to take a break, I don't mean that bc I actively want to shame you or whatever, but bc I legitimately think it may help. When you return, you will have a different focus - it will be fun again. Make sure to do something else in the meantime, like read books, touch grass, converse more with people irl. You won't regret it - at least, I never do whenever I've tried. Use social media - don't let it use you.

[–] OpenStars 1 points 1 week ago

Example: being at the post you want to look up (you can still search the modlog the old way too, though this is a new short-cut), click the hamburger menu and you can see either the user's or the individual post's full moderation history:

img1

and then this is the result for that one, so note that it's the full history, not just the latest action or current status whatever:

img2

So I mean, yeah, you do have to click once if you are interested, but you don't have to do all the convoluted filtering in order to find it, as you used to.

Here's a second example for you - you see that it is removed, and let's say that you desire to know why:

img3

I guess it's 2 clicks b/c first the hamburger menu, then scroll to the last option, but after those 2 clicks, here's what you see - the answer that you wanted to know!?:

img4

I don't know the rules of that community, but the mod claims that you violated multiple of them, plus used abusive language in particular - e.g. not stating "I disagree with your thoughts" but calling someone "a dumb baby" specifically.

Again, you can do whatever you want... but so too can mods, and that's a tough thing that they have to do btw, to enforce the rules that their community wants and demands that someone do for them. Start up your own community if you wish, and then you can be your own mod, but then people will end up disagreeing with you and you will experience first-hand what it is like to be in that moderator position: it is not always, nor even usually, fun - it's WORK, and most people (the kind with a conscience) feel that it's a heavy burden (though some do abuse their role, I definitely concede that point as well).