Does the reddit style format inherently make for a toxic environment? Or is it a culture of toxicity from the influx of reditors? For lack of a beter example, on stackoverflow, when someone down votes you, it comes with a comment saying how to improve. On mastodon, people can’t downvote you. These platforms are a joy to use, lemmy is depressing if you post. Its depressing because every post or comment, no mater the quality comes with downvotes, and usually no criticism to accompany it, you are left not knowing if youve made a mistake, or if its just trolls, bots, or idiots. At the end you feel insulted not improved. What do you think?
Thankfully the instance I’m on doesn’t have downvotes. I find what leads to toxic communities is when admins don’t remove toxic content or users.
This too. The main reason good mastodon instances are good is that they’re strictly curated
Exactly. No rules leads to the worst of the worst.
Instance admins can simply disable downvotes. You don’t need them.
I’m not trying to be negative here with you - but anyone complaining about downvoted will often get another downvote from me. Say what you want to say, stand by your convictions, and don’t worry about what the internet thinks about that.
I upvote anyone who disagrees with me, as long as they’re not a complete brute about it.
I don’t see the poster explicitly complaining about getting downvoted. How I read it is that they think that downvoting encourages people to be negative and weaponise their downvote. And, given what you’ve said, they’re spot on and you inadvertently proved their point.
I saw the post more as someone who is too worried about what the group will think of their comment to allow for dissent.
That being said, what I meant about people who complain about downvotes was the old Reddit trope of “edit: really? Downvote me for asking a question?” On a comment less than an hour old.
I’m not upset of complaining, I’m observing and philosophizing, this has been an intellectual pursuit, thanks for the reply
Someone praising Stack Overflow, that’s a new one. The most criticized thing about SO is the toxicity and elitism of the users. Downvoting almost always comes with no explanation there.
Well hold on there, im not tryna praise them. I think we need a free and federated alternative. I only mean to say that an answer always has some verbal feedback on it.
The incrediblely low quality of the feedback is legendary there, though.
“How do I X?”
“Do not X. - Fin”
Just post what you want to post and ignore the votes. A few downvotes is to be expected. Try not to read into them so much.
Alternative way to think about it: 10% of people are insufferable assholes. Do you want them to be happy with what you say?
Mastodon was very depressing for me, this follower centric self presentation stuff is super not my style, it don’t want it to be about me, I most likely suck but I say smart things some times, so I want it to be about the stuff I say.
Plus I don’t mind being downvoted into oblivion. I actually think that this can be a good thing. It means that there was something at least controversial about what I posted so I might be wrong or have to argue better.
Lastly, mastodon is too much safe space and filter bubble. I want to read things from people that I disagree with and I want to argue with them in good faith. When I tried this on mastodon, I got misquoted, blocked, harassed… You name it.
Yearning for affirmations via fake internet points is the toxic part, not the format of a website.
Yes, although your comment seems to me to be correct, it misses the point of the question, and the actual question has been answered quite well already by others. Surely the format is not in and of itself toxic, and I personally find it a little strange to think of a format as toxic, though I suppose one could create such a format. Rather, the question is weather the format of the website encourages or indues so called “toxic” behavior or leads to the perception there of, among groups of humans using software in the format in question. Maybe because “yearning for affirmation” is a near universal human trait and the format of the site provides its human users access to a convenient but unreliable metric by which they may measure the approval of their peers. Some of us suppress this drive for approval with to strong self awareness or self esteem or lack it entirely due to mental illness, but it is in almost every human, and of course, our need for approval is of course a double edged blade. It makes society possible, and makes us hate to take part at times.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Take my downvote.
Imo, downvotes is just a disagreement. Being offended by it sounds like a “you” problem, we all have to deal with it.
Upvotes normally give me answers I need for at that moment. Downvotes makes me reassess myself.
I dont think you must read to much into the downvotes. Understand the situation why people might have downvoted you, understand why other people get upvoted, assess the situation. And most of all, understand that not everybody will always agree with you
What? people wont agree with me? LIES! (<-- that is a joke). I’m not offended, and i agree, i here, am a truth seeker looking for insight, thanks!
Richard Seymour talks about the dangers of social media platforms in The Twittering Machine. This isn’t trifling. It leads to real harm. One factor is downvoting, as you say.
It’s so easy to click it nonchalantly because you disagree. But to the person who only sees potentially thousands of downvotes, it can hit their mental health hard. Maybe this depends on the kind of content, but idk. I’d expect someone to feel more down if they’re being genuine, giving advice about a hobby, something else that is personal in some way. This probably includes politics, as politics reflect values and can be wrapped up in a how someone sees themselves as a ‘good person’; which makes it difficult if you’re then made to think you’re wildly off the mark and, possibly, a ‘bad person’.
If downvotes are getting you down, you may want to reassess how you engage with social media. The best antidote is logging off for a while. Touch grass, get some fresh air. Don’t engage with the communities that give you grief.
More broadly, yes, Reddit is toxic af. More so than many other places. Twitter can rival it at times but the format can take the sting out of some of the pile-ons. Some of that toxicity has come to the fediverse.
It’s been especially noticeable since the API thing as new users have just seen the fediverse as a Reddit alternative. As in, Reddit but on a different server with a different brand name. Many seem not to have cared whether the culture is the same here. Or they haven’t realised that an instance might have instance-wide rules (it’s not only community rules that one must understand).
Up until the API thing, Redditors occasionally brought Reddit toxicity with them, but they were outnumbered and tended to change their ways or disappear. Now, they might get support for that kind of behaviour from other new users.
In fact, if you look at some of the user accounts of the people chastising you – for (a) being concerned out yours and others’ wellbeing and (b) for wanting to improve/maintain a positive culture – or dismissing your concerns, they’re new accounts, probably come from Reddit recently with some of that toxicity. Maybe this would have happened two months ago? I can’t remember anything like it around here, though.
Here’s hoping the Reddit culture a swift end.
Thanks for your reply :)
I would always cringe so hard whenever I saw someone on reddit talking about downvotes, lack of upvotes, or karma at all. It’s silly. Quit worrying about it.
Don’t change the way you express yourself just to make yourself more acceptable to the internet hivemind. The internet is a toxic place. Lots of people simply find joy in anonymously hurting others. Just comment and move on. And maybe reply to comments that are made in good faith.
Thanks for the advice
I don’t think the format had anything to do with it, considering it was much more like Lemmy is now when I first joined 11 years ago and I’ve seen the same decline in other social mediums that didn’t share formats as Reddit. It’s just what happens when you get enough people together in one place. The abundance of dumb fucks and bad actors simply take over.
I don’t think it’s the format. Forums generally get toxic when they’re too big. The negative influence of a toxic user is much greater than the positive influence of a non-toxic user. The bigger the user base the more toxic users. Eventually it gets to a critical mass where you’re seeing enough toxic replies to make the whole platform seem toxic.
Reddit is 18 years old. Lots of time to attract toxic users. I wasn’t on Reddit from the start, but people have said Reddit didn’t suffer toxicity until after it was around 10 years old. Lemmy is four years old now so it will be a while. Though Lemmy may attract a smaller less toxic crowd and avoid toxicity indefinitely.
I don’t have a high opinion of community at Stack Overflow as it started out elitist by nature of its policies and rules. Yeah that’s going to breed toxicity right out of the gate. I have to admit Stack Overflow has been a really good resource for technical information at times, but its community is harsh. As much as I’ve used it to find good technical information, I’ve never made an account there or had any desire to post there.
The only place on here that I’ve noticed downvotes is on comments that have been obviously social media shills (reddit or meta) or right wing type comments that are not the type of thing a community should support in my opinion. I’m not saying you’re doing either of those things and if you’re being downvoted in another context I don’t know why.
That said, downvotes shouldn’t really get you down. If you’ve said something awful then you deserve them and should reassess your outlook if you were unaware that your views or attitude were unpleasant. If you’re getting downvoted on a tech related thing then I don’t know what that’s all about but I would try not to worry about it too much because it doesn’t really affect your life, it’s just a fake internet down arrow.
Thank you, interestingly the thing that prompted me to ask was a tech joke, all (4) down-votes, I removed a jab at Apple and added a picture and the the responses was positive. The lesson must be one of these: That we have mostly strong apple fans here; jokes need a picture even if it does not add anything; or people look at the vote total to decide their mindset while reading and the first vote was down by bad luck. Or some combination of these.
Oooooh yeah people love their apple and I think you have your answer!
It is a problem of an Eternal September. Reddit was set up where the downvote was supposed to mean more than just disagreeing with people, but the influx of users, especially those only participating with Reddit by upvoting and downvoting, couldn’t be taught what you were supposed to do.
Eternal September
i genuinely love that i had to look that up, and i learned something! Thanks!
The karma/upvote/downvote system encourages engagement and gives users an idea of how others perceive their posts. It also encourages people to think about their posts and it helps keep garbage from clogging up the feed.
The problem is that posts are now “attention-centric” and that might lead to people posting stuff that’s more controversial or even “rage-bait” because it gets a reaction.
But honestly though, the toxicity was always there. It’s just that now people express it with an arrow click instead of a flame post calling out the OP’s mom.
I think anonymity or at least the perception of it on the internet breeds toxicity because it’s easier to hurt someone when neither party has to look each other in the eye.
