It is objectively a lot more male than Reddit or other social media. Reddit has many issues, but lack of women is not one of them.
The fact that it’s mainly just a FOSS and Politics forum.
I love what the technology is trying to do but the thing is, the platform’s main selling point being the liberatory potential of it’s technology, is that it’s mainly used by people who are interested in politics and technology.
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Upvote / downvote counts: these should be yeeted into the garbage pile of history.
Still not exactly sure what “yeeted” means, but I like how upvotes & downvotes tend to bring quality content to the fore, and I even like them as a permanent record. They’re not very useful of course, but having the motivation to permanently increasing my totals is useful for sharing good content and communicating in good faith. At least for me.
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Nah I think you’re on the money. As someone with ADHD, those worthless little updoots and infinity-scrolling are almost as bad as any algorithm!
ICBW and YMMV
YTMND. 👍
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Okay, thanks. I can never seem to remember it, maybe because it feels so unnatural. Maybe it would help if I knew where it came from, though. *shrug*
Pragmatically, they’ve end up being more a social proof / opinion suppression / brigading tool.
That seems exceptionally pessimistic to me, but maybe you have more insight in to all that than I do. Personally I think multiple things can be true about upvotes / downvotes, some useful, some harmful perhaps.
In any case, there is no debate that upvotes are useful and valuable to me when it comes to posting and commenting.
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Well, I remember ye olden days of Usenet - we mostly got along without them, and without some of the issues they seem to cause.
Things change, though. Upvote/downvote was one of the many things Reddit and other places trialed over the years, and based on the success, stuck with it. Me, I barely spent any time on Usenet, but it occurs to me that the userbase was probably smaller. A much, much larger userbase probably fits better with upvote/downvote, so the comparison there is likely skewed, methinks.
‘Dopamine rush’ is exactly right, and I think it’s useful and informational, similar to the way that people react to your statements and ideas in real life. I do think they can have an ‘echo chamber’ effect and help promote the problem that a popular thing or opinion can be completely wrong, but to me that just means that upvotes/downvotes aren’t perfect, not that they should be completely discarded.
https://jacobdesforges.com/you-should-quit-reddit-distribution-wide/
Not sure what you want me to do with a link to a book, but I don’t even agree with the premise of the title sentence. Reddit is still very useful to me, and I know of no other place that replicates the variety of content, there.
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Ok, but I think you’re conflating two separate things
I feel like they’re distinctly separate things, and I thought I’d communicated as much. Oh, well.
…the voting system consistently produces pathological outcomes at scale.
That seems like… a little much. I do agree that upvotes/downvotes indeed gamify the system, but on the whole would say that the end-effect on Reddit results in a big bunch of hoomons acting in typical hoomon ways, which is with deep undercurrents of fickle, ignorant, selfish, feel-good behavior.
The Usenet comparison wasn’t really about scale. It was about the incentive structure.
Yeah, I get that, but I do observe that there are advantages to upvote/downvote that indeed work better on a larger scale. I’m not sure they’re really needed on a smaller scale.
I’d say I agree with most of the things you wrote, but remain unconvinced that upvote/downvote is so absolutely toxic as to merit tossing. And of course, I don’t think it’s going to happen, anyway.
Aggregate behaviour amongst naked apes? Yeah, I would tend to agree. Now what?
The AI hate is almost like medieval witch hunting. Someone says, “It is AI” (which translates to “witchcraft and the work of Satan”), and the rest seem to run and grab their pitchforks and torches, ready to burn the author at the stake.
I got piled on recently for using AI. I was clear about it and it wasn’t in my opinion “slop”. Slop is when you use AI to generate something that should have been created with real human creativity. In this case I asked it to recognize what a widget was in an image. It’s a simple matter of fact. The alternative to using AI would be to not know or settle for the other answers from humans, which were wrong.
Attack me for using a calculator next time, why don’t you!?
Interesting equation. Yes, AI is like an evil spirit. It promises to help you with your homework, and then helps you plan your suicide. It offers you knowledge, but at the cost of your intelligence. It tempts you with sloth, greed, lust, it says it’ll make your job easier, earn your company more money, be your girlfriend. And then it takes your soul. It saps your independence and creativity and isolates you from your family and kills you.
Tankies and anarchists.
What’s a tankie?
The lack of people. We need more people on the Fediverse.
yeah it feels like everyone on here is me
I don’t remember being you
you mean: WE don’t remember being US
Tankies, no niche subs; no gearheads here either.
Also you annoy the hell out of me with your constant anti-AI and pro-Linux bullshit.
Yes I use Linux. Yes I understand why you don’t like AI. I’m not the biggest fan myself. I just don’t make it my entire personality.
This! I think twice before commenting because of blowback. And everything is _ so_ dramatic. Also, consistently, if my world view and lived experience doesn’t align with the group think of the post and comments, then I’m automatically disqualified as a “bot” or “fedposting”. In all honesty, it’s not the most welcoming community. Diverse discourse is discouraged.
Just got called a bot in this thread xD
Relative to Reddit, probably the number of users. More users means more posts, more comments, more expertise on various areas, and more niche communities that become viable.
Somewhere down the list:
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Extremely determined negativity. There are a lot of…I don’t know how to describe it. People who actively try to take the absolute, most utterly-pessimistic read on anything possible, to the point of having to make crazy assumptions to keep some kind of negative perspective on the thing. I don’t know if it’s people suffering from depression — which I understand can produce that effect — or doomerism or what, but it’s exasperating. I haven’t run into that sort of phenomenon, certainly not to anything like that degree, on other social media environments that I’ve used.
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The low-effort “capitalism bad” venting comments. I’m not really into far-left views, but that’s not what irks me. I’ve seen people on here who you can at least talk to about left-wing positions. Like, some random user who is interested in, I don’t know, adopting universal basic income and wants to talk about different proposals. But about 99% of the comments I see that contain the word “capitalism” don’t amount to that. They’re just venting. They aren’t constructive. They don’t reference any material. They aren’t proposing any improvement or ideas or anything. All they want to do is to vent. I mean, it’s like someone wanting to complain about their ex or how their sports team lost or something like that. And not only that, but a substantial percentage of those comments are complaining about something that has little to do with capitalism. Instead, it’s virtually anything to do with the political or economic world that they don’t like relative to some sort of idealized paradigm that they hold. You could use that “everything I don’t like is woke” meme about the right, swap “woke” and “capitalism”, and I swear, it’d apply to a lot of the comments. And I get that, yeah, one purpose of talking to people is to vent, and so you’d expect that occasionally when people talk to each other, sometimes they’re gonna vent. That’s human nature. But holy cow, as low-effort venting goes, the “capitalism bad” comments show up as a high proportion here.
Occasionally I do talk about things, write larger comments about communal ownership. Like…okay, I know that on at least a couple of occasions, I’ve talked about the fact you’ve had communal ownership work at small scale, like families, say, or that there have been smaller organizations that have practiced communal ownership of property, and that maybe it’d be interesting to try working up in scale from smaller organizations to try and identify where any issues might crop up. And I have never had anyone actually respond with discussion when I do write something like that. No engagement. Like, it’s not as if people have some raging unmet desire to talk about any of that. They just want to complain.
I don’t even see people who are writing “capitalism bad” comments engage in discussion with each other. Like, this isn’t Marx and a bunch of activists in a London cafe throwing around ideas with each other. It’s just one-off complaints, leaf comments in the thread.
I agree with the politics part. I AM leftist but sometimes need an escape from politics because everything is just so bad all the time.
But it’s not even overwhelming politics (though I can understand people being tired of politics, as a separate concern). I’m pretty sure that @LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net or @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com or a few other users I’ve run into could probably carry on a constructive discussion about left-wing politics. I occasionally see, on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works, good-faith, well-meaning left-wing users who are actually trying to go talk about left-wing issues on lemmygrad.ml or lemmy.ml and are off trying to have a serious conversation. Usually auth-left-versus-non-auth-left, but that’s just what gets submitted to MeanwhileOnGrad, and I imagine that there is probably other conversation elsewhere. It’s just that the “capitalism bad” comments that I’m talking about aren’t from those users and don’t fall into that category. They’re just the largest source of low-effort comment stuff that I see.
Meanwhileongrad is some of the lowest quality slop on here, nowhere near ‘good faith’ or ‘well meaning’
In my experience tankies are very closed minded and ironically against collective action; given how much effort they put to avoid building coalition and elections.
They also like to assume that they are driving change when its not clear where they are outside of the internet.
thank you for providing an example of what I’m talking about
Not everyone is privileged enough to be as apathetic to the election results.
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Definitely the amount of politics, it gets brought up in far too many places where it is unnecessary, I avoid political communities and stuff like that, yet I keep getting it in communities with 0 relation.
I’m glad there aren’t many apoliticists here, I hate talking about politics with apoliticists. They always want to complain and demand that policy change to ban the things they don’t like. I’m sick of all their political activism.
You can still keep up with politics while wanting the occasional break. If you don’t take breaks, all you’ll accomplish is burnout or straight up losing your mind. Neither of which helps anyone except for the fascists.
No, I don’t believe in that, I think everything is political. I have lots of fun with politics. Lately I’ve been watching Babylon 5 for fun and playing Subnautica Below Zero. Those are political. One’s about the politics of peace, one’s about the politics of capitalism and environmentalism. If I thought My hobbies weren’t political, I’d be far less aware of the interconnectedness of the world around Me. You need to know that everything’s connected. Everything has an impact. Everything matters. I don’t ever forget that, I don’t ever act without thinking of the consequences. I don’t go to the shops and buy some mincemeat without thinking of the cows that died to make it. I think of the cows, and so I don’t buy the mince. I don’t forget about politics. It’s in everything beautiful around Me. It’s in nature, it’s in love, it’s in identity. I’m goddessgender. That’s a gender defined by politics, defined by My relationship with others, just like the genders of man and woman are. I’m gay, and I love politically. When I caress My partner’s head, I take extra delight in how I’m committing an act of defiance against the patriarchy. That’s what recharges My batteries. I don’t agree with living the kind of lifestyle where you can forget that what you’re doing is always political.
You’re right that everything is political, but you don’t need to analyze the details 24/7. Sometimes it’s OK to just be too tired to think right and want to watch some mindless cat video. Also you might be able to recharge thinking about politics, but for most people it’s very draining, especially nowadays. Taking time for self care is the only way most people are able to engage without burning out or going insane, which once again, helps no one.
I don’t believe that. I think most people have a fun time and recharge their batteries watching a political movie like Star Wars or Jurassic Park or K-pop Demon Hunters. Don’t you?
Sometimes I don’t really want to get into a conversation about trans issues. I find the topic very prevalent on here, as if I’ve strayed into a sub by accident. Live and let live, and absolutely respect everyone’s right to be whatever they want, but it’s not a topic I can contribute to - and I certainly I don’t want to upset anyone by wading into an emotive topic I have no experience, interest or knowledge on, so I’d rather just leave it.
I’m just saying that it’s up there with LINUX as a prevailing topic, which I’m similarly disinterested in.
Then don’t get into a conversation about trans issues. You can also replace ‘trans issues’ with any other topics. Curate your own feed if it bothers you so much to see other people’s conversations.
Indeed you can, and that was my point. If a significant portion of posts here were on Basketball I’d make broadly the same argument. This is hardly an insanely busy place as is, so if a specific topic that I’m not interested in is frequently posted surely you can see how that impacts the experience from my perspective. I’ve neither the time nor inclination to curate a feed. Did that on Reddit when I had to, but we’re not there yet. I’m simply answering the question.
Sorry other people existing is such a problem for you personally.
Where are you getting that?
I mean, FFS my comment literally said “Live and let live, and absolutely respect everyone’s right to be whatever they want”. And now I don’t want other people to exist? How do you even get through a day?
Not necessarily saying that this is what you’re doing, but there is a sort of bigotry against trans people that clouds itself in nice sounding language of “live and let live”.
Like when people used to say, “Oh, I don’t mind gay people, they can do whatever they want! …I just don’t want to see that kind of behavior in public”.
It’s a moral prop. Sort of like pedophilia is for the right, for the left trans issues lets them concern troll and beat everyone over the head with how noble they are for supporting it and how evil anyone is who doesn’t agree 110%. Most of the comments I see about trans issues on here are not even positive, they are mostly ‘if you don’t support trans rights 120% and believe in the removal of heterosexuality, you’re a bigot/nazi/genocide supporter’. It’s insane. but I have no doubt people genuinely think that way because I know ones like that IRL. They tend to be deeply insecure and fragile people who’s coping mechanism is just being insanely irrationally angry. They are just the leftist MAGA types of people.
How is it concern trolling when there are actual concerns about trans people’s continued ability to exist in public life?
believe in the removal of heterosexuality
LMAO No one believes this, but I might start spouting it as a joke, if it’ll make you feel better.
What would “the removal of heterosexuality” even look like? Please, go on! We’re all sooo curious.
Nobody believes what you claim they do, many trans folk are heterosexual. Supporting trans rights is a good thing, and opposing it is bigoted. “Left MAGA” doesn’t exist.
I’ve seen people get downvoted and banned for posting actual scientific research on puberty blockers, detransitioning, links between autism and trans.
The last one is undeniable for a subsection of transfolk. The “neurodivergent, isolated kid on 4chan that gets programmer socks and starts their transition” path is well known.
Autism and trans has a huge overlap. Explanations and Interpretations for this vary.
Discussing this and the pipeline you describe will quickly get you banned from many places around here.
I’ll leave this comment in place in order to debunk it.
You are misquoting the study you have referenced. A read of the abstract showed zero consideration of whether there was any correlation between autism and trans.
Please don’t post misinformation!
The common overlap between autism, elevated autistic traits, and gender identity diversity has been reported in both clinical (de Vries et al. 2010; Hisle-Gorman et al. 2019) and community (Strauss et al. 2017; Walsh et al. 2018) samples. In the largest study to date, the odds of an autism diagnosis were more than six times greater among transgender (or broadly gender-diverse) individuals than among those who were cisgender (Warrier et al. 2020).
These links support your assertion. Thank you.
This is like an echo champer of tech people, hard to find non-tech aware people here.
That was reddit when it first started it just takes time the problem is reddit people want to speed run this and created a bunch of communities then abandoned them or filled them with AI Slop. Only making it harder for stuff to grow organically. I do wish Lemmy and Piefed had a network global name space for communities like how IRC does channels.
