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Is it just me, or have the comments on Lemmy become extra aggressive over the past 3 months?

I feel like things on Lemmy were pretty chill several months ago, and that’s started to change.

People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor. Now I get the sense that people have become quick to be negative, attack, and not be constructive.

Am I crazy in feeling like the vibe has changed?

478 comments

  • Lost among the "internet sucks now, it used to be better" discourse is that the old internet was heavily moderated. The laissez faire parts of the old internet were known as the seedy corners of the web. Social media and its modern derivatives like lemmy take on that latter philosophy.

    It's no wonder it's chaos every where. The libertarian tech bros have really impressed their world view on everyone. So the prevailing philosophy is these "digital town squares" should be absolute free speech zones. Except town squares in real life do not work like this anywhere. At least not in most liberal democracies. In real life there is bureaucracy. There are police, fire, ambulances. There is the simple matter of neighborly social contract. You cannot go into a real life town square and do whatever you want. You cannot just up and fight strangers, engage in lewd acts, set up encampments or what have you without permits. In the same way internet requires structure. Counter intuitively it used to have a lot more of it on account of sites being run by a real human being. Not the mega conglomerate investor groups feeding off ad/engagement profits.

    Those users unfamiliar with the old internet yet pine for the good old days would have hated it. Power hungry mods is a meme as old as the internet itself. It's a necessity of the internet. Hardly anybody gets banned for being an asshole anymore. Sometimes (often more like) people need to be forced offline so they can go outside.

    • Say something dumb in an IRC channel? Get banned.

      The good ol' days when I was young and irresponsible and got banned for it. I learnt how to converse with people online through this. Talk shit, get banned. I also feel like I forgot some of this on later platforms.

      I hated it at the time, but like most learning experiences, grown to appreciate it later. I can't believe I had free and unmoderated access to the internet's back in the early 2000s. Shout out to those mods for putting a teenager in their place!

    • TL;DR - A millennial goes on a tangent about the good ol' days.

      I remember being permanently or temporarily banned as a kid/teenager with simple messages like "go outside". Mostly for being too rude or annoying, or edgy. As teens and kids often are.

      Idk if it's a thing on Lemmy, but I'm all for extended temporary bans for simply repeatedly being a dick to others.

      The "old internet" for me was something like 2006-2012. And I agree, people who pine for it probably couldn't hack it in 2024, it was racist, it was homophobic, and threads went off the rails with people giving unsolicited advice on how to please your gf, but it was fun, it was dynamic, often complete strangers behind phpBB nicknames felt more real than your closest friends on Instagram do now.

      I yearn for those days. Not because I particularly want to deal with racist, homophobic idiots, but because I miss the dynamic internet before mega social network sites. I miss the nuance, people knowing each other on forums and whenever someone who's known in the community would post something that on surface level is banhammer-worthy per the rules, the community would talk it out and the hammer would fall when people call for it, not always strictly adhering to the rules. And yes, that did produce the power-hungry mods. But it's not like much has changed.

      I feel like I'm going off on a tangent. I just miss the randomness.

      I recently had a chat with a new colleague about how you can't joke with a lot of Zoomers about race/nationality/sex because they don't perceive nuance. I think it's a cultural thing imprinted by the internet content coming from America. We're both from Eastern/South Eastern Europe and people don't immediately get their panties in a knot over offensive jokes because they realize that a racist-sounding joke does not make the person racist. And I feel that's the state of the internet now too, and it's ok, but I miss the sharp edge that it used to have.

      I also miss the weird smileys.

  • My suspicion is that a lot of redditors migrated over here about 7 months ago when certain apps shut down, including myself. At first, they were polite in an unfamiliar environment, but they've grown comfortable and act out, or speak less thoughtfully, like they originally did on Reddit.

  • The 80/20 rule applies to toxic Internet behaviors as well, 20 percent (or less) of the user base is responsible for 80 percent of the toxicity.

    It's always the same people being awful here, if you are taking notes, you can quickly identify the worst posters on this platform after a week. People always complain about how they are unfairly banned by reddit moderators, but you have to remember, sometimes the bans are really justified.

    I think the ony real (and unpleasant) solution is to moderate very aggressively whenever there is bad behavior (although, I must add, permanent bans should be rare and reserved for extremely bad behaviors)

  • Dunno. I still think Lemmy is better by quite a bit. I still participate I reddit occasionally, and I think it’s become far less engaging as a place of discussion. It’s just the same old reposts and tired old comments over and over. It’s rarer to find insightful comment chains.

    Lemmy is starting to attract some of the Reddit tropes. Dumb sex questions in asklemmy or any of the other retreads that we’ve all seen a score of times. But as far as discussions go, if one can get into one, they’re good.

  • Yeah, probably a little, but this same change was 1000x more noticeable like half a year ago when reddit banned third-party apps. I think it's reasonable to lament the change, and I kind of miss the tight-knit community from the first three years I was here, but it's still worth celebrating the platform taking off. Ultimately all you can do is be the change you wish to see in the world.

    That said, if we start getting heavily astroturfed with bots and spam I'm going to be a little less zen about it.

    • That said, if we start getting heavily astroturfed with bots and spam I'm going to be a little less zen about it.

      The spammers aren't here in custom full-force software_dev_lemmy_bots mode yet, but when they come, moderation tool development will increase in effort tenfold.

      The nation states are already using their "play Guess The Bot and lose" games. It's the ones who post often and with clear lines in the sand you need to worry about. Problem is, there is a sea of regular people just like that.

      Lemmy needs to go through a fork or three before it becomes viable to the mainstream. Currently Lemmy users produce much less legitimate worthwhile information on far less subjects than reddit, and even Quora shudder thinking about it.

      Granted, I've only been here for about a week before reddit disabled 3rd party apps. Maybe the first 3 years were the golden years. I'm only speaking as to the bot infestation I see currently.

    • How do you know the bots aren't already here? What security fortress does Lemmy have that reddit doesn't which stops bots from being here?

      • I don't anymore, but it definitely still doesn't feel anywhere near as bad as reddit is.

        In the past, the security fortress Lemmy has had that reddit doesn't is the userbase being too small for organizations to feel astroturfing is worth their time.

  • I feel like its hit and miss with lemmy. Depending on the topic, your way of thinking and the community, you can either get folks to be agreeable and helpful or get dogpiled on, called names and other childish things.

    The internet is still a place where being a jerk has no major consequences so folks may let loose ok someone they deem lesser than themselves, dumb or plain offensive.

    IRL this doesn’t break through as much if you‘re no longer in school as most workplaces at least have some restrictions against bullying or mobbing and a lot of peeps have good lawyers these days.

    So, from someone who polarizes since being born (not by choice): it’s just circumstances imo.

  • I honestly don't feel much has changed. There was perhaps a bit of a "new" feeling in the start and some excitement about the project, but I don't think people have gotten more aggressive or anything.

    But I think all this probably depends what circles you hang out in. Probably also depends on what instances you federate with.

  • Vibe has changed but it's because of more users. The original users picked Lemmy because they were tired of reddit, so they were naturally nice people that didn't vibe with the shit that was going on at reddit. They wanted something else. We wanted something else.

    That's why we shouldn't wish for exponential growth. This place will lose its charm quickly if we end up arguing with the trolls.

  • Idk why, but I feel like I'm starting to associate this kind of behavior with people who used to be on Reddit and moved over here when all the third party apps got Thanos snapped.

    I first got here around July 2023, and it was pretty cool. Nowadays it's probably a little less cool.

478 comments