People care about their identity on Reddit? I always used it as a sort-of anonymous forum, except with usernames, less likelihood to get told rancid things than on a truly anonymous platform with no accounts to ban, and if you were reading some original stories on Reddit you could recognize the author’s name.

Instagram was something I used under my real name to keep up with real life friends, so yeah I care about my identity there, but I’m aware some people use it less as a real life social media and more as a content platform.

Turned up my nose at TikTok, which has proven to be the correct option for online approval years after I made the decision to ignore it.

Kbin used to try to do this. Not so sure about Mbin, maybe it does. Glad to see a Fediverse option trying to implement something other ones implemented.

Although I am curious how many people take the approach of clicking a random active user online—I know I come to these thread-based forums to discuss common interests, and would never use the feature myself because 1) no guarantee the active user has common interests 2) I would feel like a weird stalker. Curious about the mindset of those who do—and not trying to accuse them of being stalkers just because I personally would feel like one taking that approach.

Yep, I made sure Elevator7009@lemmy.zip and Elevator7009@lemmy.world do not have overlapping subs with Elevator7009@ani.social. Although I admit sometimes any of them may weigh in on Fedigrow, only one is actually subbed there, and I do take care to avoid upvoting or downvoting the same post twice.

Everything I specifically saw from Alice seemed fine, but a lot of the communities on there seemed questionable. Don’t remember details, it has been awhile. It’s also possible I missed things, I never looked at her profile, just remembering a huge glut of hilariouschaos communities getting advertised on !newcommunities@lemmy.world. I don’t remember bad behavior from her but I would not be surprised if it happened.

Somehow I get the feeling you would have attracted less people being nasty if you just did not mention it, though I understand your intent was to get ahead of these people. I think it’s better to join hands with people who are not 100% pure on their tech usage but align in attitudes and goals for what you want the world to look like, than to go “hey have you stopped using this platform, dipshit?” It feels less like actually trying to help and get you off a bad platform, and more like finding an acceptable target for ad hominem attacks. Just because someone has high minded goals to try to stop enabling bad companies does not mean they are immune to wanting someone they can vent anger on and treat badly while not getting pushback for it.

Especially if work forces you on a shit platform, it is harder for most people to get a new job than it is to tell them to use a new platform and actually get listened to instead of being deemed “not a team player” and fired for being a dissident. Sadly people need to eat to live, so taking an ideological stand on avoiding WhatsApp completely is not always possible. Bend the knee or starve, and most people do not want to starve, especially if it seems as small an issue as being one person propping up a bad company by using it. Some people have dependents. People have to pick their battles on what they’ll risk. I get it, I turn my nose up at TikTok and Facebook and find myself feeling worse towards people who are voluntarily there, but I make my stance clear and then try not to bug them. Nobody’s perfect. No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that.

Anger can cause a dopamine response too—I assume this is why it’s so easy to doomscroll on political content even if you yourself aren’t fighting. I specifically went and cut out all the online fighting by only using Subscribed and being very strict about what I subscribe to—not just the obvious “delete if you don’t want to fight” places like Politics, but also many meme communities where a political meme or “haha I’m so depressed” meme will be posted, and then anger-filled analyses of what’s causing the bad politics or depression (which ends up looping back into politics) in the comments. (My first cut was leaving Reddit for Lemmy once I realized they auto-sorted my homepage by Controversial and I couldn’t stop it.)

I also try not to downvote unless someone is just being plain rude and mean to others. I know I’m commenting late here, but wnated you to know you’re not alone and you have one more agree-er.

Real life is picking up, but I did find some time to post enough to keep my communities out of the “no posts in a month” box :)

• One of my only other posters on !otomegames@ani.social seems to be a bit inactive just looking at the communities we share, but hey, I also wasn’t on that much for a few weeks, so no problem, so long as I come back enough to tend my posts and make some more.
• !bunnies@lemmy.world would probably manage without me as there are a few regular posters besides myself, which is really nice.
• Delighted someone else posted on !videogamesuggestions@lemmy.zip. If you check my pinned thread in that community that shows video game suggestion posts from other communities, people have been asking for video game suggestions a decent amount on Lemmy but few of the posts actually make it over to that community.

I certainly hope the comments stay wholesome too. Too many times I have seen posts in communities meant to be uplifting that talk about a bad thing getting stopped or repealed or what have you (fitting), and then the comments being super negative by talking about how the bad thing will just start again, or going super into how the bad thing got passed and in less of an informative tone than a doomer one (unfitting). They might be factually correct so I never downvote that unless positivity is actually in the rules, but it’s still disheartening and counter to what I believe (but the rules don’t say, so I don’t report or downvote) is the purpose of the community, so I end up not participating.

Although I understand “then why not go make your own,” I don’t because I mod several communities already, don’t want to go all Reddit powermod by adding even more (though I do think it would be a bit more forgivable on this newer social media where someone has to start the thing in the first place), and I’ve had less time for Lemmy as life picks up so adding even more Lemmy responsibilities doesn’t seem smart for me.

Also more of a commenter than a poster. Making myself post, but I really feel all my posts are way less high-quality than my comments usually are.

As a gamer who mostly has no idea about the relative popularity of different genres it is interesting to learn this from your comment on Fedigrow.

What do you mean by this?

I do sometimes see a link post on Lemmy (often on some general community like !games) and copy it to (usually more-specific, like gaming genres: think copying from !games to !rpgs) communities I am active in (or sometimes ones I am not but am aware of: if I see a strategy game post I’ll put it in all the relevant strategy game communities I know of), and figure it is alright because I always see a little “cross-posted to:” and the community I got it from, so I figure that is good enough for credit. Probably obvious I got it somewhere else, and easily clickable to find out where. (Or sometimes the little communities are just the communities I myself already posted it to.) Is this a bad assumption and I should stop?

I do it because I want conversation in the specific communities, and for things that could go in more specific communities to not only get talked about in one giant umbrella when the smaller niches already exist on Lemmy. Especially because I think there is a valid reason to not be on !games. Maybe you are not interested in most posts there, just some subgenres, or like me, you are sick of the ragebait-but-also-probably-true-news-so-not-off-topic-and-allowed posts.

I am fine stopping though, less work for me, and as life gets busier I have less time for Lemmy anyways.

I admit I exclude .ml from my crossposting bonanza because of all the political drama I hear about but never bothered to look into, because I feel I’ll end up drawn into a political slapfight. Just look at all the comments here about .ml, whether justified or not (not sure and not about to try to figure out). I do not sub to anything on .ml and mostly look at Subscribed though, so I know I am not taking any of their content and copying it elsewhere, unless it was first copied from .ml to something I do look at. I also don’t really look at the instance someone is commenting from unless I suspect trolling or we interact a lot though, so I am not being nasty to .ml users for just being on .ml, either. I know a lot of people who do not have anything to do with the political drama are there too because it is recommended as the Lemmy dev’s instance, and I do not expect everyone to litmus test every social media for political drama before joining it.

I am insanely guilty of the content dump, figuring it’ll prove a community active, but aside from “awww!” comments on !bunnies@lemmy.world where there just is not much to build off of, I also reply to almost every comment I get because I also want to have conversations.

Hey you are right, thank you!

For any other mods unaware of this feature, it only works on posts in communities you mod.

Wait, we did? I’m a mod and had no idea I could see peoples’ votes. How do I do that? I say, as I probably will never use it until I start seeing my communities consistently getting downvotes on inoffensive posts that have no misinformation and are clearly on topic.

!meta@ani.social

All the communities I mod are niche enough that I don’t think every 24 hours is strictly necessary, though I am active enough to hit that requirement. Something big like !games@lemmy.world definitely needs that kind of requirement, but my quiet little communities are probably okay with twice a week, although I do check Lemmy about everyday anyways—more active users tend to be more likely to be mods.

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On one hand I did often see toxicity downvoted on Reddit, and the very few times I saw spam it was correctly heavily downvoted.

I also often saw subs with “be civil!” as a rule frequently let comments that made good points but just had to throw in an unnecessary insult at the end, even when the person they replied to did not bring any kind of aggression at all. Or comments that were nothing but an insult, as long as the person they were insulting expressed an unpopular opinion. And I often saw unpopular opinions, expressed politely; that weren’t “well it’s just my opinion of course, you are free to disagree :) but I think it would be best for everyone if the Jews were all gassed,” that were not obviously hateful opinions expressed in polite wording but that actually added to the discussion, get downvoted. I often hold majority opinions online so I am not usually the victim of this, but man did it feel bad seeing a reasonable, friendly person who maybe wasn’t as anticorporate as everyone else or as informed about things get punished and shown disapproval in a way that should have been reserved for comments of “fucking idiot :)”. Which actually received upvotes for being said to someone expressing a non-hateful opinion politely and reasonably.

I also see all that unkind behavior on Lemmy, though less often. Poke your head in enough “bad news” posts, especially “company does anticonsumer move” posts on !gaming@lemmy.world and you’ll probably see some of what I am talking about. I have since learned to either just read the title, or click to the news article and avoid the comments like the plague if I do not want to be upset by “amazing explanation of a point you agree with followed by mean words to someone who wasn’t being offensive,” or “people online fighting again” or “comment whose only content is insults gets upvoted”

Saw someone promoting Lemmy Federate again, something they said in their promotion made me wonder:

What happens if a user is the first to follow a community, so their instance’s bot unsubscribes, and then the user unsubscribes?

I guess I am just used to seeing very negative interactions online, especially from two opposing positions, and like to make it extra super clear I’m not trying to be an asshole to you or shit on you, given just how many times I’ve seen “I disagree” expressed alongside insults, or at least an aggressive tone even if there’s no explicit name calling. Call it the pendulum swinging too hard the other way as backlash from it, and a product of me desperately trying to ensure I’m not being misunderstood (it happens!). Thaanks for the details!