“The decentralized web” …so… “the web”? Do they not realize literally anyone, even extremists, can make a Lemmy instance with spare parts and a wifi connection?

Left-wing extremists have been showing “substantial activity on Lemmygrad"

“Left wing extremists have been showing substantial activity on the website that was literally built for that type of content” What’s next? They “investigate” the amount of Trekkie related activity on StarTrek.website?

I think a far more interesting research subject is looking into the number of ostensibly non-extremist instances are hosting extremist content by virtue of federation.

Funny how the platform still runs on their unpaid labor, isn’t it?

Something I learned during the Vaxxhappened protest is just how many moderators are perfectly content to do these “jobs”. I found it honestly very sad how many of these what are ostensibly “community leaders” will happily acquiescence to the demands desires of the company as long as they can continue to do the job.

Don’t get me wrong I have a lot of sympathy for many of the moderators there who care deeply about their communities and providing a welcoming experience and feel stuck to Reddit, but until more of them grow a spine and idk, move to Lemmy or something like the top r/startrek and r/daystrominstaitute mods did (not me to be clear) then nothing of substance will change there. There is a seeming endless supply of people willing to clean up Reddit for free.

Lol “theme party” is great! A vision of the fediverse as multiple concurrent theme parties is something I can get behind.

Hey Blaze I know you’re a good dude and I highly respect your efforts in spreading Lemmy, I feel I should tell you with kindness that you have fallen for bait. The OP of that post has been banned (for over a year) for multiple violations (that I won’t discuss publicly because we don’t want to encourage harassment) and was given multiple warnings beforehand.

Since being banned, OP has been left alone, but created and continues to repeat a false narrative that they are a victim of abuse by one of our admins. They have spread this lie to multiple platforms (I will not link to them) in an ongoing campaign. Yes, OP considers reporting of their posts to be abuse (which is absurd on it’s face) but there has been zero communication publicly or privately since the ban.

I strongly encourage you to read through that post you linked and try to find an actual instance where OP was “abused”. They have been left alone since being banned, but continue to repeat lies and and spread their false and defamatory narrative.

Yes very well said all around and I agree, especially about consent. I also have to assume that a statistically significant portion of Lemmy users have been banned by multiple reddit communities.

Oh wow, now that’s very interesting.

I think it was extremely positive though obviously the people who were excluded by the decision might say otherwise. That said, I think it’s preferable for online communities to have a clear picture of what they’re supposed to be (as opposed to just chasing popularity), with a mission statement (public or not) and for mods/admins to have the strength to enforce boundaries. Trying to please everyone leads to banality, and tolerating too much bad behavior pushes out the people who give a shit.

I liked to use the metaphor that internet mods are best when they behave as “party hosts”: provide the space, make sure everyone is having a good time, kick out anyone who’s bringing down the vibe, but other than that let people be messy and do their messy human things.

More instances need to be aggressive with bans, IMO. There’s no reason the average user should put up with someone being deliberately obtuse, especially when it comes to politics.

If we for once, leave politics outside of niche and hobbies communities, this place would be way way better.

I think rather than asking users to behave a certain way (impossible) or asking mods to work with increasingly long meandering rulesets, we just accept than any topic can be political and it’s in how users discuss it that makes a place tolerable. And people have different ways they like to debate. Some people do really enjoy the bickering and fighting.

We banned all image-only posts on /r/StarTrek on Reddit a long time ago, not because we didn’t like memes or because they can’t spur good discussion, but because any place that allows memes and images to be posted tends to become overrun with them and it’s hard for more intentional human-human discussion to stand out.

That decision pissed a lot of people off, but we mods felt bad for all the people earnestly engaging with thoughtful high-effort content only to be ignored because their posts were never seen. I think on the Fediverse we have an opportunity to start fresh and focus on human-human. There’s no karma here anyway!

EDIT: more to your point I would like to see more “slow” instances pop up but I think that’s going to take some time.

Get you a show who can do both

The most difficult parts of moderating on Reddit aren’t the trolls or spammers or even the rule-breakers, it’s identifying the accounts who intentionally walk the line of what’s appropriate.

IMO only a human moderator can recognize when someone is being a complete asshole but “doing it politely”, or trying to push an agenda or generally behaving inauthentically, because human moderators are (in theory) members of the community themselves and have an interest in that community being enjoyable to be a part of.

Humans are messy, and finding the right balance of mess to keep things interesting without making a place overwhelming to newcomers is a fine balance to strike that I just don’t believe an AI can do on it’s own.

Lemmy.world for instance could put the rest of the Lemmy fediverse between a rock and a hard place if they wanted to

beehaw.org is doing great, and they deferated from.world a while ago. Your point is correct though, Mastodon.social for example has half of all Mastodon users.

That said- there is little incentive to having a large instance, it costs a lot more and requires a lot more work.

“The fediverse” has no rules, if an instance wants to allow vote manipulation they have that power.

The best defense is to call them out on it and then walk away

Yes exactly, I try to just simply describe what they are doing “This account is spreading the false narrative _____ for the purposes of ___” then not replying again. They want engagement because the more back-and-forth bickering that goes on, the less likely a third party reader is going to care to read beyond the top comment (the propaganda) and seeing a lot of replies can also give the impression that the debate is legitimate. Getting into a “debate” with someone “debating” in bad faith only helps them flood the zone with shit.

Reddit mods can sniff out astroturfing pretty easily actually, but Reddit inc doesn’t do much to stop it. On the Fediverse, admins can simply ban from the instance, and if an instance does a poor job of removing inauthentic content then they can defederate.

Exactly. Block and move on. Don’t twist yourself into knots appeasing people, focus on keeping the users you want happy.

Not trying to victim blame or anything, but I find it hard to believe that someone operating a low-moderation instance would truly expect people who don’t like moderation to stay away.

Don’t get me wrong I agree with your sentiment and dislike that behavior, but what I’m saying is that asking or expecting users not to go on witch hunts or to behave in a certain way is a fool’s errand that will always lead to burnout. A more sustainable approach for admins and mods is creating space for what they want to host and not trying to control what they don’t.

I will be dead in the cold cold ground before I ever type “/s”

I know it sounds insane but I swear to god BlueSky has astroturfing accounts on Lemmy. Every conversation (including yours here) about BlueSky is met with countless Sealions either saying it “will be federated soon” or asking “Why does federation matter?”

This is very cool! Thanks for sharing.