It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it’s generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there’s no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
I think it’s healthier this way.
It also comes down to what instance you happen to visit. Lemmygrad for example is a legit tankie cesspit. There’s currently a popular post about Greta Thunberg and it pretty quickly devolves into calling her a traitor, because she met with Zelensky: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/902175?scrollToComments=true . Among other things you will find plenty of justification for the Russian invasion and their war crimes. And the admins openly support trolling outsiders. I’m on the left and I don’t have an issue with Marxism or the concept of communism, but fuck that instance.
I had no idea what “tankie” even was until recently. The internet is so weird.
I think the broad problem with reddit and the like, which will leach into Lemmy with time unless we change things, is the slicing and dicing of the topic that is to be talked about.
When you do this (“oh sorry this is r/typewriters, you should post in r/typewriter_repair instead!”), you treat people as vehicles for content. We make echo chambers and don’t communicate as whole individuals.
So far Lemmy doesn’t have this divide. So far…
When I was on Reddit, I responded to a guy in latestagecapitalism who was talking about how Stalin wasn’t that bad, and how everything we hear about the Soviets is fake information, made up as Western Propaganda.
I chimed in telling him I’m Romanian, and how my grandpa was in WW2. I told him that my grandpa would always tell us anecdotes about how the Russians acted vs everyone else, and if anything it was worse than what we usually think of. Then I said that Stalin is too well known for it to all be fake.
Well the response I got was the guy called my grandpa a liar. Then like 10 minutes later, I got permanently banned from the subreddit.
That is when I learned what a Tankie was lol. And that the subreddit was infested with them.
I took one look at Lemmygrad, and oof.
Didn’t Romania fight on the Axis side for the majority of WW2? Wouldn’t fighting against the Soviet Union potentially colour someone’s thoughts on them?
I can’t stand lemmy grad and I hope every instance defederates soon. They’re absolute scum of the earth edgelord contrarians and nothing more.
I haven’t seen them until this was mentioned.
I hope users one day have the ability to block entire instances on their own.