On big commercial social media, people think the websites they are on are a big deal: opinions you share there, people you interact with, engagement you receive. It must matter SO MUCH to them - especially to influencers who earn some money from it.
Well, commercial Web is an obvious fodder to the Fedi but what about other alternative social spaces? These small, timy websites with barely any activity on them… there’s no place for such delusions. They aren’t changing the world and they know it.
Fediverse, in comparison… oof. You see, it is the Future. If We succeed, the Evil will be defeated. The whole world depends on the few people who ended up on here. It is a quiet place now but it will inevitably become the most popular thing. The Year of Linux Fediverse is any day now!
This feel of self-importance and superiority leads to the level of drama almost on-par with the corporate socials which is highly unusual in such small online spaces, at least in my experience.
What do you mean by “I don’t see it anywhere else where I’ve been.”? The Lemmyverse in contrast to other Fediverse platforms? Or the Fediverse versus other social platforms? Commercial (with algorithms) or free? I mean I sometimes see some destructive tendencies on Mastodon as well. And there’s a lot of shenanigans going on in YouTube comments, on Reddit or underneath half the newspaper articles. But I’d also say a lot of platforms come with a unique atmosphere. Either due to the userbase or because of how they’re set up and what kind of behaviour gets reinforced.
Lemmy in comparison to all other online social media including the rest of Fediverse. I mean, the times are tough and people are angry for a reason, there’s rage and despair everywhere but no other place is so entrenched in negativity as Lemmy.
Big socials also have lots of negativity but they are BIG: you can find so much stuff that you can completely ignore what is probably 50+% of the content on the platform.
Small socials, on the other hand, manage it surprisingly well. I don’t know why Lemmy can’t manage the negativity under control, to be honest. No other small social media I visit has a problem with not drowning in doom. My one theory is that the other small socials have a focus: creativity, technology, some kind of media, etc. Maybe having a common interest in such a tight knit community is a remedy to doomscrolling?
It would also explain why pre-APIcalypse Lemmy wasn’t nearly as toxic - the flagship instance was focused on technology.
Thanks for explaining. I’d agree with the reasoning. And it’s a mix of several factors, I think. Basically our history. We grew and that means you can get away with more (bad) things in a large group of people than in a smaller, more tightly coupled group. We attracted a wider audience, so now it’s not just a few privacy nerds, Linux users and a buch of tankies coexisting, but all ideological factions of society. We also got a few Reddit refugees who got banned over there for good reasons.
But in my opinion it’s an entire thing: The political landscape got way more extremist in recent years in general. And we do lots of talking about politics here. So with being a link aggregator and sharing news articles we get all the polarizing stuff and due to psychology, people share negative news articles because that gets you riled up and want to talk. Or fight. We also copied some social media design elements which reinforce some specific kinds of negative behaviour. Subscribing to groups does compartmentalization. And the entire philosophy of the Fediverse adds yet another layer of compartmentalization, which doesn’t always work in our favor. I think it also awakens some tribal instincts in some people. Which might not even be bad(?) unless they start to disunite and fight each other. Which some do. I don’t think that’s an issue on Reddit for example, because that’s just one central place, plus they keep a tighter leash on their mods. And Mastodon would be yet different because you can’t split up into groups/communities, there’s just people to be followed and global hashtags. And once there’s any level of normalization of drama and negativity, the internet will add more on top 😅