For context: I was a much more ignorant person back in 2014 than I am today. My views then do not reflect my views now (tw: Fatphobia, Sexism, Sinophobia, transphobia, Z-propaganda)
This isn’t my first rodeo dealing with a reddit migration. My first attempt to leave the site happened back in 2014 when several subs got banned, including several shaming subs when Ellen Pao was CEO of reddit.
Back then, there were a lot of unfounded rumors of the site being taken over by the Chinese government (cause Ellen was Chinese American), and being an ignorant person, I fell for it hook line and sinker.
So around that time, a few reddit alternatives started getting passed around, including a site called Voat. It was basically just like reddit, but the bandwidth and UI wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as reddits, thus the site constantly crashed. I spent a bit of time on there before heading back to reddit and never looking back. And the main reason I left was because the overall culture there was mean spirited, unhinged, and basically a reactionary version of reddit (which looking back makes sense considering this reddit migration was basically a reaction from trying to protect people)
Fast forward to now, and I’m starting to get de ja vu from the fediverse. At first I was on kbin, which seemed promising at first until I noticed that any article involving trans issues had a slew of transphobic comments that had a lot of traction. Realizing there was very little moderation being done there, I gave lemmyworld a try, but same issue, plus it seemed any article having to do with Ukraine had a lot of pro-Russian posts. And whenever I bring up this fact, I get a lot of pushback from users and mods. Part of the reason I ended up here is because one user told me “If you need a safe space, you should go over to beehaw with all the other snowflakes.”
At this point, I already have a fairly negative view of the fediverse. I hate what is happening to reddit right now, and yet it feels like the alternatives aren’t much better in providing a safe environment for its users.
Maybe my problem is with redditors, but at the very least reddit was equipped to keep the dumbest of dumbasses out of visibility. Here, even in supposedly more open minded communities and instances, such dumbassery has just as much weight as thoughtful, upvoted posts.
I don’t know. I can’t see myself staying involved with this project for long, if it’s just going to remain as unpleasant as it is now.
Also, sorry if this isn’t the right community to be posting this in. I’ll gladly move this where this needs to go if its the case.
Edit: riveting discussion example: @Cat_of_the_Round fuck philosophy. unless you reeeeelly care that much. your behind a kb for christ sake. Oh no. Someone had an opinion. I’m assuming you can in the very least ignore them. Othewise who the fuck cares?
yeah, I think I’m done here.
The defining characteristic of these failed Reddit alternatives like Voat is that the communities that drove their growth were very polarized and often hateful. If your hate sub gets banned and your community moves somewhere else as a consequence, your platform is going to end up with a toxic core audience that are not inclusive and make it impossible to grow.
The growth of Lemmy (and Beehaw) being a reaction to Reddit’s shutdown of third party apps is exactly why it has a chance of taking off. It’s not a couple of fringe Reddit subs that moved to Lemmy, but rather users from all sorts of subs. The polarization isn’t there because 3rd party app users are a diverse audience that are probably representative of all Reddit users. This could actually be a huge problem for Reddit in the long run. If Lemmy and Beehaw end up having better vibes and communities with less astroturing, they’ll continue to draw more people in.
Voat was always designed to be a refugee for the lowest type of scum of Reddit. It never turned into anything that it wasn’t meant to be from day 1.
If you see transphobic comments in trans positive communities then I’d just report them. All instances of the fediverse, especially the major ones like kbin and Lemmy, have seen a very large influx of new people, postings and comments, as well as the odd performance issues. Those things will settle down with time. So far I cannot really say that I see kbin to be particularly hateful. There’s a lot of lgbt friendly magazines popping up on the main page and generally the tone has been overall friendly.
Maybe my problem is with redditors
Yeah, probably. That site has a problem with racism/sexism/queerphobia because the admins have consistently refused to properly deal with the site’s problems for basically its entire existence. I still recall CNN having to goad Reddit into banning the jailbait subreddit.
but at the very least reddit was equipped to keep the dumbest of dumbasses out of visibility.
lmao, I wish mate. It’s less of an issue in smaller niche subs, but the defaults/large subs have been garbage for a long time.
At this point, I already have a fairly negative view of the fediverse.
The Reddit-like portion is dealing with a bunch of bullshit right now due to the protest and exodus bringing in tens of thousands of users from a website that has a fairly reactionary baseline in the first place. The rest of the Fediverse has largely not been impacted, though. You should try Calckey; it’s a Twitter-like platform, but it also has threaded comment replies (it displays differently than Reddit’s, though). It’ll give you something to do while the dust settles and content moderation on Lemmy/kbin can get sorted.
I don’t disagree that there are evident growing pains, but I think a lot of people leaving Reddit have their head screwed on ass backwards about what “leaving” implies and demands.
Many of the redditors trying the fediverse aren’t trying the fediverse. They’re looking for Reddit, and nothing is ever going to be more Reddit than Reddit. You have to accept that the technology, terms, and culture may be different.
Many people are leaving Rome expecting to arrive in Carthage. What we have instead is a camp. The fediverse is still very small, new, and under developed. The moderation tools and culture are not established. Reddit went through years of growing pains to get to where it is now.
So yeah, you left something people put a lot of time and energy into, of course it’s going to suck a bit for a while. But it comes back to why you left - was it because of the interface changes, or the implied constitutional changes?
If you left because of Interface changes alone, you will not last. You want to consume, and not build.
Otherwise, If you’re like me, you’re sorta tired of putting effort into communities that get dumped on by corporate interests, and who are only willing to work towards safety so long as it furthers the bottom line. The fediverse kinda sucks right now, but it offers the promise of building something that may actually serve its community rather than a VC.
Like fixing a house you own versus an apartment you rent. Reddit will always be limited by what its share price demands. The fediverse will not be. I think it’s worth fighting for here rather than Reddit or other mainstream platforms.
Very great analogy, too bad op already checked out and rage quit.
Completely agree. Rome is falling and we decided to leave before it’s in crumbles. We’re sitting outside its walls now in our camp, and some people may look back there and ask where are the theaters, the shows?
But for us we know what we left, and for now we’re content with our stories and small band of people making each other laugh. Because we’re looking towards what this camp will become.
It’s not going to be a 1:1 parity. If there was a clone of reddit everyone would know about it, they’d have a similar valuation. Every alternative is going to be small, until it isn’t.
Many people are leaving Rome expecting to arrive in Carthage.
Now I’m thinking about Reddit as England and the Fediverse as North America and wondering what the world would be like if people decided “Shit, this is nothing like home and it’s too hard. I’m going back.”
Native culture would have thrived. Those who came and made the effort to integrate would have been welcomed and found a place. And maybe the real treasure would be the friends they made along the way.
Couldn’t have said it better. Let’s actually build something for ourselves this time around!
One of the first posts I clicked on lemmy was about AI or something like it in the technology magazine on beehaw. It’s was a normal text but underneath the text illegal images popped in. That was a harrowing first experience. I just reported it and it was purged and the user banned. I wont the trolls win, I’ll rather help keep communities clean.
It was my fear as well when I came over to Lemmy. Which is why I was seduced and ended up applying for Beehaw. It’s just the way it is on internet right now, when there is an alternative platform to something that is mainstream, it is most likely to be filled with the worst people on earth.
Remember Bitchute? Remember Odysee? Those YouTube alternatives? Well, who’s on there? Nazis. It’s just Nazis. Especially the first one. On the second one, Odysee, it’s Nazis and Linux people (not saying there is an overlap between the two).
Back when I was still down the alt-right pipeline on YouTube years ago, I remember going over on Bitchute because lots of people were talking about it. And, once I did, all I was met with, were people who were banned off of YouTube. You know, because YouTube had a anti-conservatism bias… so they said… Well, in a truly shocking twist: there were good reasons why these people were banned.
I went there and I remember thinking that these people were fucking nuts… And that was quite something, because I would later realize, that the people I was watching on YouTube, were Nazis too. The difference is, they were still pretending not to be, they were trying to catch on a larger audience and also trying not to get banned. Moderation kept them in line. Kind of. But on Bitchute? With basically no moderation, all pretenses were dropped and you could see people being openly Nazis and as antisemitic as you can imagine.
But I believe this time is different.
Until now, a ton of those alternatives to websites, were designed with free speech absolutism in mind. You can come on here, and say anything, and we won’t do shit about it. Which basically means, there is no fucking moderation. Which of course is going to result in a bunch of troglodytes saying horrendous shit. Kind of like when Elon, the Muskrat took over Twitter to restore free speech, and the whole site was just spammed with the n-word.
And those types of alternatives still exist, look at Kick, the Twitch
ripoffalternative. Who’s on there? Nazis. Crypto scammers. And xQc, now, apparently. Is it going to turn into a shit show? No. It already is!Now, what makes places like Mastodon and Lemmy different? These aren’t just alternatives. They’re frameworks. Bases on which communities can be built. With their own rules and moderation. Which is why I came here, to this specific instance. It is not just a place to read stuff and that’s it. No, the idea is to build an actual community, it isn’t just another “Free speech, come say all of your favorite racial slurs” zone.
Beehaw has a clear vision of what it wants to be, and enforces it. The defederation from Lemmy.world is a perfect example of this. “It is turning into a shit show, we don’t want that here, therefore, we are branching off and separating ourselves from it to ensure a safe place for our community.”
I understand where you’re coming from. And I too have worries. However, I do believe in this one. Is it going to be the new Reddit? Absolutely not, it is always going to be somewhat of a niche platform. And you know what? I don’t mind it. I don’t want this to be Reddit, I want it to grow beyond this and be its own thing. Let it grow into what it wants to be.
I think we are making a huge mistake by coming over from Reddit, and trying to build a new Reddit. It is very much Reddit-like. For sure. But it doesn’t have to be just another Reddit. I chose Beehaw specifically for the vision it has for what it wants to be. I didn’t pick it because it sounded nice and the other instances were full, I chose it because of it’s rules and ideals, and what these meant to me.
To me, this is something new. Not just an alternative platform. And I think you should look at it this way.
You got my thoughts on the question worded pretty well.
OP’s mention of Voat and your mention of additional platform alternatives that have gone sour remind me of a key thing: there’s often more to why and for whom these platforms were made for. Even if these platforms have some broad thread along the lines of “independence from [established company],” the devil’s in the details.
What prompted the migration to Voat around 2014? It was an issue with content restriction, but what kind of content was being restricted? Likewise can be said about Bitchute and Odysse: they cater to issues around content restriction, but what kind of content was being restricted to encourage their development in the first place?
This might be a big strong of a comparison for the subject, but it kind of reminds me of arguments around what started the American Civil War, of all things. Sure, some may frame it incorrectly as solely caused by restricting state rights. But a state’s right to do what? There’s probably a name for this kind of logical issue that’s not coming to mind.
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One thing that makes me more optimistic about this recent Reddit Drain is the nature of it. The previous drains that I can immediately think of stem from less than admirable root causes. I’d be willing to wager that a substantial sum of those who left and stayed out in those circumstances were not good company, to put it politely. But this latest intrigue seems to be casting a wider net and it seems to be appealing across sensibilities. Hopefully that averages out the demographic inclined to leave Reddit, and hopefully that’s for the better. Worst case scenario: the Toxic Sludge of the drain is turned off by instances like Beehaw or even lemmy.world and naturally corrals itself to instances more receptive to their company.
One of my Linux people left Odysee recently. Can you guess why? He got sick of all the Nazi shit.
Not condoning bigotry, but it kind of sounds like you are saying you prefer echo chambers. It is healthy to see opinions you disagree with, even from bigots. Seeing opinions you disagree with allows for critical thinking about why you disagree. Even though ignorance is bliss, it is still ignorance.
I also think the sample size fallacy may come in to play here. i.e. comparison of billions of users (reddit) to tens of thousands (lemmy - post migration, if I understand correctly, previously lemmy was in the thousands user pre migration from reddit).
It’s healthy to see good faith opinions you disagree with from reasonable people… It’s not at all healthy to see opinions from bigots and trolls. There is a big difference there
There’s a limit though. It’s dangerous to approach nazis, tankies, fascists, etc in good faith. I don’t think anyone making pro-Russia posts deserves a seat at the table. Personally.
It’s the classic paradox of tolerance. Tolerating everything equivalently is just a recipe for disaster.
Whilst I agree in principal to “healthy to see opinions you disagree with”, I don’t want to see things like “trans people are mutants” (which is disgusting rhetoric).
I don’t think this necessarily brings around “ignorance is bliss”. News articles of Trump blaming “mutants” are enough to remind me why I formed these opinions, without having to debate it with people of dissenting opinion.
Yeah, there is a huge difference between level-headed differentiating of opinions versus those who basically push their opinions as facts.
For example, in the dev world there’s always “language wars” of which programming language is “better” - I’m okay with people advocating for a language and giving their reasons why they believe this to be the case. Sometimes in those instances I learn something new about a language and it motivates me to learn more about it and consider using it in a new project.
What I’m not okay with is if I say “I like to use Java, as its one of the first languages I started with” and am just told “Why would you ever consider such a thing! Java is horrible!” and then provide either no reason why, or its just complete nonsense.
Or, I personally do not like pineapple pizza - but that is just my preference. I don’t go around telling people that pineapple pizza is awful, and I surely do not condemn those who do like it.
Nuance is usually the missing thing when it comes to this sort of thing.
That being said, there are some topics where I do not think there could ever be anyone who can (and its very rare that I see things as absolutes) convince me there will be a genuine opposing opinion for, such as trans rights. There’s not a single force that exists in our universe that would have me believe in anything but the rights of others. If there are bigots who want to believe that I’m evil because of this, oh well, I won’t lose any sleep over that. Those topics are just not up for debate, and never will be.
It’s only healthy to hear opinions that you disagree with when those opinions don’t include the dehumanization of others.
Either you are misguided or you know what you want to say would be considered bigotry and expect to have your voice heard by everyone.
Trans people don’t need to “think critically” about why they disagree with anti-trans comments. It’s not “healthy” for trans people to be constantly reminded that there’s a % of the population that want them gone. It’s not ignorance, it’s a done debate. It’s a waste to debate people who’s aim is to open the dialogue up to extremist viewpoints.
I wrote up a long thoughtful response that seems to have not made it through (prob growing pains) and don’t have time to rewrite, so here is a shorter version; as best I can.
Not sure what your first paragraph means. I am not trans so hesitate to speak on the trans experience, but will do my best.
Others pointed out good vs bad faith, which I did not specify, but I was thinking of good faith discourse (even from bigots). “Trans are mutants - full stop” comments are not what I’m thinking. “Trans are mutants because they mutate their body” comments are more what I’m thinking. I do not jump to assume that person is trolling or (intentionally) pushing propaganda, but moreso full of, and operating off of misinformation and don’t understand the difference between “mutant gene” and “body mutation”.
“Piercings, tattoos, and really all surgeries are body mutations. Are you saying you think that women with breast cancer shouldn’t be able to have breast removal surgery, if necessary, just so that trans men can’t have breast removal surgery?” is the thought path I go down for a comment like that. I think it is important to say those things to the person, so they also have a chance to critically think about the topic, rather than have Fox news tell them what to think. Pretty easy to discuss and defend the pro-trans side of that IMO.
It’s a done debate
If the debate was done, we wouldn’t still have anti-trans legislation being shoved down our throat. Debate being done in one community (leftists - which, is it really over in the broad leftist community?), does not mean the debate is over. Acting like the debate is over is ONLY detrimental to the trans community, as this can lead to the trans community not having a spot at the debate table, and you can be guaranteed the bigots WILL BE at the debate table. The trans community should have a spot at the debate table.
I was raised in a cult, your second paragraph is almost exactly what they teach their youth as a means to silence facts about their history and dissenting opinions, keeping the echo chamber what they want.
To be very clear, I am comparing echo chambers, not saying trans community = cult.
Here is your second paragraph slightly edited:
Mormon people don’t need to “think critically” about why they disagree with anti-mormon comments. It’s not “healthy” for mormon people to be constantly reminded that there’s a % of the population that want them gone. It’s not ignorance, it’s a done debate [look at all our official Mormon church resources which say so (echo chamber)]. It’s a waste to debate people who’s aim is to open the dialogue up to extremist viewpoints [like separation of church and state and approval of anti-family communities (this is what they call LGBTQ+ to sound less bigoted)].
Dangerous game.
I am all for safe spaces, as long as the people participating in them don’t act like the content in the safe space is the only content/opinions/facts that exist, as does the Mormon church.
Trolls and propaganda bots should be curtailed, I consider this part of growing pains. However, dissenting opinions (in good faith), belong and deserve proper discourse to give the OP the chance to see facts and context that would NEVER come through Fox news.
Helping everyone according to their needs and letting them live as they like vs using any means necessary to establish hegemony over people not in your group, isn’t a difference of opinion.
It’s a quite literal life vs death struggle.
I was concerned about entering an echo chamber but then I remembered that I wouldn’t sit and drink in a skin head bar, or hang around a nazi rally. There’s something to be said about looking around the local environment and thinking “this isn’t for me”.
I can’t say that I’ve had many issues on other instances but there’s been a few posts where I’ve wandered in, then promptly noped back to the main feed because it was beyond “dissenting viewpoint” and more akin to walking into a room full of wasps.
If I want dissenting views I can go anywhere on the internet, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to discuss something you care about without being called names and dog-piled on. Kinda like walking out of the religious rally and into a library. It’s just a different environment.
Beehaa literally defederated from other instances because of negativity so I think this has the best chance of working in terms of positivity. Also most people switching to voat did so due to “free speech” which was just another way of being mean. Voat was also a mere copy, the fediverse is a completely different tech
Oh god I remember voat… Like OP I had an account there, but it was full of racists extremist! Far right.
Lemmy ml are Marxists Leninist, the other extremists, far left…
Beehaw is cool and the right place
The Alternative Social Media version of the Goldilocks story.
Transphobia on kbin? Certainly some, just like everywhere, but I don’t think I’ve seen a ton. Most people are rightly raging at Elon and the like today for example.
You sure you weren’t seeing federated posts from other instances?
yo what am I missing with that edit? you tagged yourself and then engaged the Universal Reactionary Pushback Defense. What were you trying to do with that?
I believe that edit is the now deleted comment deleted
I agree with most of your post and can relate to the sentiment but I’m very lost on why you actively looked for a negative comment in a sea of positivity just to say you’re leaving? no one is forcing you into these spaces, if you wanted to use reddit that is ok 🫤 but beehaw so far has been overwhelmingly positive in comparison and I feel that edit is doing it an injustice (again just my opinion)
Yeah I agree with your comment too. I feel like most communities are really pushing for positive interaction even in the case of disagreement. I’ve seen only positive interactions so far.
Either way OP appears to have just posted this and left Lemmy unfortunately.
Voat became such a garbage site. It was (barely) tolerable in its early days but with the influx of the reddit refugees from the FPH and “Chimpire” subs, it started down the path to trash fire. My favorite (sarcasm) part was how the racists even attacked the Voat creator & original boss because he was Muslim. Yet the owner was such a tool that he shrugged it off with “Free Speech.”
By the time it failed – and yes, I know that there’s a version of Voat still around but it’s like 300 white supremacists all doing a giant circle jerk – there wasn’t a place on Voat that wasn’t a toxic cesspool.
I recently told this tale but I’ll tell it again: There was a short lived Reddit alternative that closed down for, as best as I can tell, mostly trying to run at just the wrong time. They sounded a lot like Beehaw: Open communication but no hate speech allowed.
They started growing around the time that Reddit was cracking down on the alt-reich subs that were doxxing people and making actual threats of violence, like the_dondon (You know what I mean) and its ilk, plus stomping out the incels. Both groups went crying to Voat. Voat, amusingly, called them all poseurs and downvoted them off the site. So they - especially the alt-reich kids - went to the new site.
The new site handled them with such grace it still boggles my mind. They told them all, basically, “Thanks for coming! It’s so nice you want to be here, but, sorry, you’re breaking our rules. Here’s your hat. So sorry you can’t stay with us! We wish you all the best. Bye bye, now!” and deleted all their accounts and the communities they created, and that was that.
It was a cute site and it could have been something nice, but it just didn’t fully get off the ground. I feel bad that I cannot remember the name of it.
Are you referring to Imzy?
Personally I don’t think social media must be safe. I actually enjoy more diversity and freedom of speach more than “safety” however you define it.
FYI some people are transphobic and they still should have the same right to use social media as you and me. That’s why I love fedi. If you want to make your own transphobic server you should be allowed to do so but also accept that other servers won’t connect with you. It also work the other way around.
If you want to have healthy fedi communities you need to moderate and educate them what is allowed and not allowed. You can also create your own instance and moderate it yourself.
But that’s just my opinion. I understand that not everyone agrees with it.
I haven’t seen anything like that, I don’t even see whatever response you’re quoting
If having a grand old time on vacation from negativity and bigotry makes me a snowflake, I’ll be a snowflake. Beehaw is the bee’s knees thus far.
Heheh, I recently just realized that whenever someone says “gone woke” in a sentence, you can substitute that phrase with “doing the right thing” and it genenerally forms the antithesis of their mean views. Similar example here.
💯 I’ve never understood how it’s a bad thing to be kind to people.
