Fediverse

This may be unpopular to say here, but the fediverse needs to be less toxic for the average user. I'm probably going to be downvoted to hell for this, but here goes: the whole tesseract situation was a clusterfuck and the dev is a jackass, but in one regard he is right - there is a toxicity problem. I mean, let's look at it:

• Lemmy's main dev is what many would refer to as a tankie. He regularly spreads misinformation, supporting fascist governments, so long as they claim to be socialist or communist - and don't belong to the west. Anything the West does is, by definition, evil.

• Lemmy's flagship instance is lemmy.ml. An instance where many communities have a "be nice" rule, but say anything against the (similarly aligned) group think and you'll be ridiculed, insulted, and banned. Meanwhile, some pretty insane calls for violence stay up. And lemmy.ml isn't even the worst in that corner of the fediverse.

• There are many other instances that aren't great, either. Wander into an instance and accidentally say something absolutely factual that someone doesn't like - ban, because some thin skinned mod sees it as derogatory. Remember the whole dragonfucker saga? Yeah, that's very off-putting to your average user.

Look, I'm no stranger to Reddit group think, I've had it turn on me, and trust me, it's no fun. Hell, I've had it on Facebook back when that was still a thing (yeah, I'm dating myself here). But it was nothing on what I've seen on here. I've been able to avoid it here (or, sometimes I've purposefully wandered into it in an attempt to disrupt an echo chamber, but then I knew exactly what I was getting into and expected as much), but what I saw happening to others - holy shit. I mean, to be fair, the instance I'm on is an instance that very rarely defederates, which I like because I like seeing different viewpoints including ones with which I vehemently disagree with (although the viewpoints are very unbalanced, that does have to be said). But it's a hell of a lot more fun to not have to keep your guard up all the time.

So, you might argue, be careful which instance you chose. OK, so I chose an instance like Lemmy.world, which as far as Lemmy goes, is definitely more on the normal side of things. But then, who are they federated with? The next rabbit hole. And how do you know which ones have less crazies? Experience. And as a saying goes, experience is what you needed just before you got it. Then many people suggest putting together blocklist and what not. Another rabbit hole. Put briefly: it involves work, a lot of it. People aren't on Reddit to work (for the most part), they're there to have fun. If you need to put in so much work, at some point it's not fun anymore. And that's what's off-putting for the typical user.

What can be done to make it more palatable for normal users? I honestly don't know. I see it as a chicken and egg problem. We need more "normal" people to drown out the crazies, but then the "normal" people won't come because of the crazies. Maybe Piefed is better in that regard - although I've heard there were/are?tesseract-style problems there, as well - I just haven't had the nerve to go down yet another rabbit hole to figure out what's actually going on. Which brings us back to square one - that's already gone way, way too far for the average user. And I can't exactly blame them. I'm "only" here because I care about open source and decentralisation. And I insist on staying here on matter of principle. But I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone I know IRL.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Maybe someone has some better ideas.