Honestly, the insistence that Lemmy has better discussions than Reddit. Mostly even popular posts have too few comments to constitute any in depth discussion. I won’t be going back to Reddit but I miss the vibrancy.
This but about how almost everything about Lemmy is spun as either good, or better than reddit’s equivalent.
Like the other day I saw a post about how Lemmy’s active users were on the decline, trying to claim that was somehow good for Lemmy. Or back when Lemmy had its /r/place copy, there were plenty of people saying it was better than reddit’s. Basically anything about Lemmy that’s somewhat lacking has people desperately trying to defend it as actually superior.
It borders on delusional at times. Yes Lemmy is good, but reddit is still better in dozens of ways, almost all of them related to user count. And this is coming from one of the people who deleted their reddit account and replaced it with Lemmy cold turkey - I haven’t been back there (except for porn) in almost 8 weeks.
I half-agree with this. I think that this depends a lot on the topic and, while the smaller amount of comments does hurt discussion depth, the individual comments themselves partially offset this by being more thoughtful.
And, while anecdotal, I think that there’s a considerably lower ratio of comments with negative discussion value here in Lemmy than in Reddit. I’m not even talking about the out-of-place jokes (although they add noise), but shit like this:
- “waaah, TL;DR!!” discouraging in-depth explainations
- feigned lack of understanding as ad nauseam tactic
- context illiteracy
- unchecked assumptions towards other users, for the sake of ad hominem
- “trust me”
Don’t get me wrong; you do find this crap here, but IMO it’s way less than in Reddit. And they hurt discussion because they either waste the time of the more thoughtful and knowledgeable users, or outright disengage them.
I still use both Lemmy and Reddit and I honestly think Lemmy is in a sweet spot where there are enough comments for a discussion but not enough to go off topic.
Reddit discussions are never about the OP, they’re always riffing on an off-topic joke that someone made in a reply to the already off-topic top comment.
This platform is almost 100% idealism and politics. Any hobby/technical community goes completely inactive.
Tankies.
You can’t have a discussion about anything without some tankie blaming it on Ukrainians / the west / capitalism, etc.
“Oh you stubbed your toe on the table? See, tables are oppressive furniture of the bourgeoisie. The Chinese government wanted to make all tables toe-stubbing resistent, but that would affect IKEA’s bottom line and the pharmaceutical industry’s profits. I have a source from tankiepeoplesmagazine to back this up.”
I made the mistake of mentionning social democracy once. This was followed by the most pedantic, insufferable and useless argument I have ever had on the internet. I had better discussions with wall. This was first and last time I was replying to those comments. It is easy to ignore anyway. Sometime you learn the hard way.
I almost never see this, but I see complaints about “tankies” all the time. I’m not even sure what a tankie is, but it seems about as stupid as the term “woke”.
Have a look at comments in any news article regarding Ukraine. They will simp for Russia just because they are not US allies.
A tankie is commonly used to refer to someone who blindly defends the actions of the USSR, China, North Korea, etc. Going as far as denying human rights abuses and genocide.
It’s not the same thing as woke.
I know it’s not the same as woke, the word just hits the same level of annoyingness for me.
I’m all for shutting down those who support Russia right now, I just feel like using buzzwords makes it more difficult to take people seriously.
The term goes back to the 50s and 60s, hardly a buzzword.
Sorry to tell you, but you’ve been living under a rock.
I never saw that word used until I came to lemmy. I had to look it up and found that exact same wiki page for it.
Just because its a real word with a wiki page doesn’t make it any less annoying to constantly see on here. And only here. I see that word on NO other sites I ever visit.
I’ve seen “tankie” in leftist discussions on multiple sites for ages before I joined Lemmy.
Just because its a real word with a wiki page doesn’t make it any less annoying […]
And just because you first encountered a word in some place doesn’t mean that word originated in that place.
It’s a very common word in leftist circles. So if Lemmy is your first contact with leftists (beyond center left), then that explains it.
Being annoying is your opinion, but it’s not a buzzword that someone from gen z invented recently.
I didn’t say it was a buzzword.
I’m in the US and “lefty” might mean something different for me than it does for you. Where I live and the sites I go on - have leftys on there but no, they never use the term tankie.
Annoying is an opinion yes, but I’m saying its annoying because of how often it is brought up. Not that I’m siding with tankies or people who are against tankies.
Anything that gets repeated over and over is going to come across as annoying. Unless you like redundancy.
What’s equally annoying is people who won’t shut up about “tankies.”
Honestly, everyone across this argument sucks. But I wold like to point out, that not a single “tankie” has complained about anything in the comments here.
You, however….
this is a thread specifically for complaining about stuff you don’t like.
don’t be so butthurt about it.
The funny thing is that u/Pratai@lemmy.ca is in lemmy.ca which defederated hexbear and lemmygrad so he won’t see the annoying tankies.
Wouldn’t care if I did. Because I don’t care what other people are into.
Yea, I’m with you … the most “annoying” think about tankies is all of the noise about them as though they’re some degenerate scum bringing down society.
It’s not hard to move past a political opinion you don’t like, or a big and hairy political debate you don’t have time/energy for. But it doesn’t mean a whole bunch of people have to be shunned/exiled because they happen to trigger your inability to do so … or that you have to whine about their presence all of the time.
People who support the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the CCP’s violations of human rights ARE degenerate scum bringing down society.
I am never going to stop whining about their presence.
It’s not hard to move past a political opinion you don’t like, or a big and hairy political debate you don’t have time/energy for. But it doesn’t mean a whole bunch of people have to be shunned/exiled because they happen to trigger your inability to do so … or that you have to whine about their presence all of the time.
Funny, you sound just like my uncle. Do you have confederate flags hanging up in your room too, like he does?
If they’re in your comments saying it’s a good thing civilians are being tortured to death and bombed because they were born in the wrong place then that’s not just political differences.
Their goal is explicitly to silence others by sheer volume of bullshit.
saying it’s a good thing civilians are being tortured to death and bombed because they were born in the wrong place
I mean, who disagrees with you here … that’s the sort of stuff moderation and blocking is for.
But I can’t help but suspect (perhaps naively) that that’s your read of someone else’s opinion and not what they actually said or even intended to say, largely because it seems you’re projecting consequences onto a difference of principles/interpretations.
I have an entire conversation on here where the majority of Lemmy users told me democrats should start killing people.
Also, what fucking moderation?
It is kinda bs that republicans kill people constantly but democrats never do. The solution is ideally that republicans stop killing people though. I don’t think suddenly becoming just as murderous is a good idea unless we break out into literal civil war.
I have an entire conversation on here where the majority of Lemmy users told me democrats should start killing people.
I gotta ask for receipts for that one. Also … what do you mean by “democrats should start killing people?”
Also, what fucking moderation?
Well however ineffective some may find it, moderation does occur on lemmy. But beyond that, my point was that an awful statement is an awful statement and should be dealt with accordingly. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that an entire political position thinks the same way and to infer as much without more would really just be prejudice.
No they’re actively supporting it in a literal sense. Tell them Russia needs to stop killing civilians and they’ll say something about corruption needing to be purged (as if killing civilians will do that), or something about denazification (implying all Ukrainians deserve to be killed), or deny it’s happening despite all evidence
Some of them have a real thing for saying the Tiananmen Square massacre never happened and there’s no evidence, too. I guess I just hallucinated those news reports at the time with screams and gunfire in the background.
Hmmm … I think I might have seen a statement or two like that. Though, in my cases, it seemed a lot more like moving the goal posts or not arguing so well their general anti-western sentiment … I don’t think I’ve seen anyone go so far as to support the killing of civilians (in fact, I saw opposition to the deaths of civilians).
Do you have any receipts?
And, FWIW, my general position here is that I’m not a “tankie” or whatever and don’t necessarily like everything they have to say around here, but, by default I lean toward having access to a wide set of opinions so long as I have the option of walking away or ignoring them when I need to. The thing that disturbs me about a lot of the “anti-tankie” sentiments is that it looks a lot like an aggressive enforcement of a political bubble against any hardline critiques of the west. I, for one, am happy to hear said critiques even if they are off-base most of the time, in part because I have no doubt that we are all living in sometimes petty political bubbles.
That, of course, doesn’t excuse being awful … it’s just that I haven’t encountered the degree of awfulness that many speak about and whenever I’ve gone looking (which, admittedly isn’t deeply or often) I have struggled to find what has been accused. Because of this, I’m always curious to see what “anti-tankies” are talking about.
I have zero problems with critique of the west. The problem is those people only want to allow criticism of the west and nothing else
Shrugging off extremist views as “just a political opinion” that should be ignored if you don’t like it is like the #1 way to normalize and spread extremist views. You do not, and should not, politely ignore extremist. Doing so is explicitly allowing and inviting more into your community. Tankies can fuck off and I will continue to say so.
Well, the way I see it is that tankies are pretty much a minority without any power in the west, and, at least the ones I’ve seen around here, aren’t actively organising any sort of violent revolutionary behaviour or anything … which means their views tend to always be critiques of the powerful western governments and mainstream cultures form the perspectives of minorities, and often in ways that many in the mainstream find unpalatable, and therefore unconvincing. So, even if “extreme” (whatever you mean by that exactly) in some way, it’s a “punching up” kind of “extreme” that I’m open minded to hearing, however agreeable or disagreeable I tend to find their opinions.
Do you really think tankies are convincing? This thread, at least, indicates otherwise. So much “extremism” are they going to be spreading? IMO, the sort of “extremism” much more likely to spread is the sort of stuff driven by hate of some sort of “other” weaker and smaller than the mainstream as a scapegoat, not least because it’s more amenable to the worldview(s) of the larger and more powerful majority.
The “extremist views” I’m talking about is the support for authoritarian regimes that use draconian laws and excessive military force to enforce the law. Tankies often do support the subjugation of people they deem “lesser”, but unlike extremist on the far right, they often keep that part quiet.
The fact that you’re downplaying the extremity of Tankie talking points is a perfect example of how they are able to normalize their opinions by being allowed a voice in groups where their opinions should be shunned and shamed.
This is a great breakdown of the exact thing I’m talking about.. The video focuses on these tactics and how they are used by the alt-right, but this is not something exclusive to the right and is exactly what tankies are doing on lemmy.
Political extremists. So about the same as Reddit, though they seem to be a little more frequent/outspoken here. Also funnily enough the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Used to get called a dirty commie because I believed in Nationalized healthcare, but now I’m apparently a facist for not worshipping the CCP.
This goes not only for the tankies, unfortunately…
I see 1000 more posts against tankies then actual talkie posts… so like… get off it.
The sheer amount of pro-communist/pro-china comments is insane here. Plus the number of giant emojis that spam up the whole comment feed. Honestly, most of my real issues come down strictly to Hexbear users. A lot of their behavior completely ruins the platform for me.
That and the lack of fanbases for the things I like. There’s very little Star Wars or Halo fan presence here. Feels like Star Trek is the only fandom with any presence here, so I have to go back to reddit for those things.
Lemmy.world is defederated from hexvear if you’re looking to be totally free of them. Obviously you would have to join lemmyworld and some people don’t want to do that for various reasons, which is totally fine, but you’ll get a ton of content without the spam.
It’s VERY noticeable when I’m on an alt account (either to view c/piracy or because the DDOS attacks have .world down) and a hexbear user is in the comments. Defederation was 100% the right decision and I’m eager to block the instance on all my alts when it becomes possible to.
Bots copy pasting content from Reddit.
There are community filled only with that, no upvotes, no comment, no nothing.
When you finally block the bot those communities disappear as the bot is the only active user.
Linux supremacist and the wannabe commies are pretty annoying.
Other quality of life features would be nice. Like searching for a specific post
Extremism - Reddit as its share but also has millions of “normies” to balance things out. Here there doesn’t seem to be any moderates.
The platform itself is dysfunctional and will prevent any real growth in average users.
Just TOO many Linux fanboys/martyrs, it is a good OS but damn stop trying to go full on religion with it.
I’m left on the political spectrum but by and large y’all fuckers are over the deep end.
especially lemmygrad
I have seen people praising North Korea there lol
The wannabe communists and those trolls from Hexbear.
I’m a socialist but the level of communism here gives me a headache. Wish I could block the whole hexbear instance
Some apps for Lemmy support blocking whole instances. Both Connect and Sync does.
Blocking hexbear has made my Lemmy experience much more pleasant
Start up your own private instance and defederate hexbear.
I would if I could but unfortunately I’m way too lazy for that
Lol not sure why you’re downvoted, it’s a legit concern. Running a lemmy instance is a lot more work than “just set it up once”
It’s really not. Run it in Docker on your home PC. You don’t need to moderate any users because you don’t need to have any users on your instance. It quite literally is “just set it up once,” defederate instances you don’t like, and occasionally upgrade the software like you do any other app.
That being said, a few Lemmy apps now support blocking entire instances, so that IS more simple than it was even a few weeks ago.
The bot spam is quite a bit worse, even when turning bots off
It’s really goddamn preachy. There’s a real sense of superiority a lot of users have that I don’t recall as much on Reddit.
There’s also the fact that small communities are dead and it’s next to impossible to grow them, so you’re stuck with the same people on the front page every day.
The pro china/Russia stuff is super weird. Also the hex bear goons brigading everything.
It’s very easy for bots and fascists to have a voice here unfortunately
Everyone should have a voice to be honest. Shutting them out completely won’t help, it just creates a bubble. As a human species it’s important for us to communicate.
But yeah there’s definitely more of them here unfortunately.
Deplatforming harmful ideologies is shown to create a reduction in hate speech and harm overall.
Because of this, I am pro-defederation of hexbear. They can have a voice, sure, but it’s my choice if I want to listen
I believe it to a degree, but I think it’s also a problem because we can’t ever change their minds if we’re not talking with each other. If they’re stuck in a hate-filled bubble, they’re only going to enrage each other further and accept each other’s biases.
It’s a different story if they’re attacking other people based on their own beliefs, then they should absolutely be banned from the platform. And if enough of that happens, then at that point de-federation should be the option (which I guess is probably the stage we’re at)
I mean good luck changing any their minds. They are heavily entrenched and quite overly aggressive.
Regarding your first point, I think there’s more harm mitigated than rehabilitation opportunity lost by quarantining and thus limiting the outreach potential of extremists. The saner, less edgy parts of the Internet are easy enough to access and these people will come across them in due course if they are in a receptive mindset. Whereas I am completely comfortable making their weird little dens of groupthink harder to stumble upon by default.
All the empty communities without any motivation from the creating user to actually be involved in their own community. I honestly think they should be deleted if they’re not active. Inb4 “be the change/create your own”. No, I don’t want to run a community so I don’t create a community. Neither should you. Nobody benefits from all these empty reservations of space. It might actually hinder the people who have a need for a community. It’s like showing up at an empty store. “Oh I guess I’ll go somewhere else for this then”
