i can’t stand megathreads – no one reads these! no one wants their posts banished there!
When people turn a popular post into an Oscars Acceptance Speech
ETA: wow thanks for the upvotes!
ETA2: omg my first gold award?? I couldn’t have made it without my mom and Jesus through whom all things are possible
This.
ETA: thanks for one upvote!😃
ETA2: thanks for two upvotes!😀😀
ETA3: woah?! 3?!?!?! thanks for three upvotes!😁😁😁
ETA4: this is more upvotes than I have money in my bank account! thanks for four upvotes!💵💵💵
ETA5: INASANE!!! thanks for five upvotes!😍😍😍
ETA6: I’ve never had more than SIX!!! thanks for six upvotes! 😱😱😱😱😱
ETA7: thanks for seven upvotes! I want to thank my mom, my brother, Jesus, Scott, Bill Gates, and my cat!!!🤗🤗
ETA8: What? Why y’all downvoting me now? Bring it back to seven!😤😤😤
ETA9: Unbelievable. -400 upvotes now. I lost my house, my car, and my job because of this! 😔😔😣😖😖😖😭😭
/s
Best Lemmy comment so far
How do I give Lemmy gold?
Sadly, you can’t. He’s already dead.
I had my entire Oscars Acceptance Speech all ready to go in 2018 for nothing. Stupid Frances McDormand.
Haha this!!
Moderators who coddle bigots.
Bigots.
There is a decent argument historically that communism and other left movements are extremist, racist, and anti-lgbtq. When you start banning concepts, you open your communities up to several things.
- Group think
- Banning of other radical ideologies that you may agree with
- You alienate those people from exposure to better concepts
- You jump start compaction cycles for large scale propaganda organizations that could lead to actual violence
I said “bigots” and you immediately jumped to “whatabout communists?!”
I provided four reasons why this was relevant and you jumped from communism to whataboutism? Talk about being intellectually lazy (Or a state-sponsored account)
I provided four reasons why this was relevant
After starting right out the gate with:
There is a decent argument historically that communism and other left movements are extremist, racist, and anti-lgbtq.
We’re talking about today. On a relatively new community. Frankly, I see no reason to tolerate the bigots you’re so keen on coddling until they take over and make this another version of reddit’s the_donald, complete with organizing nazi rallies. Particularly not with the vague and spurious “there is a decent argument” hand wavy FUD that you didn’t explain as a justification. Are a lot of people saying it?
Moving onto your 4 points, let’s look at how they worked so well over at reddit, with all the virtuous acceptance of intolerance and nazi-coddling they’ve done, shall we?
Group think
No, reddit has never had groupthink. Not for an instant. Thank god they let the bigots in otherwise they’d have groupthink!
Banning of other radical ideologies that you may agree with
Post anything on conservative even slightly counter to their bigoted orthodoxy and see how that goes. Hell, suggest that fascism is not amenable to reason and must be opposed with force anywhere on reddit and see how that goes.
You alienate those people from exposure to better concepts
They had abundant exposure to better concepts on reddit. Look how well that’s worked so far. Clearly the answer is to let them spread their shit all over lemmy.
You jump start compaction cycles for large scale propaganda organizations that could lead to actual violence
the_donald literally promoted and helped organize a nazi rally where Heather Heyer was run over and killed by a nazi’s car. On lovely ol’ bigot-coddling reddit. The sub was not banned for years afterwards. I do not want that for lemmy. I left reddit the instant an alternative that didn’t welcome bigotry got enough users.
Not everywhere has to entertain bigots. There’s already too many places that do. A community that welcomes bigots is unwelcoming to everyone but bigots. But holy shit, does it ever drive engagement.
Or a state-sponsored account
Oh, we’re throwing around wild accusations now?
Yes, I started with the reasons why left-leaning movements have been restricted historically right out of the gate. It is not coddling bigots. It is providing context on why any form of radical idea is restricted, including ideas that we tend to celebrate in these communities. Communist propaganda has historically put fourth that anything that is not communist is inherently fascist. Is that your definition of fascism? Are folks allowed to talk about the French protests? To many they are based in fascism.
In my opinion, you are literally promoting groupthink and closing yourself off to ideas by attempting to ban content that you disagree with based on your own definitions. Life is a little more nuanced when you are not talking about specific issues by which you know the full context.
Also, is it a relatively new community or is it an established one that you want to preserve the culture of? I am getting very mixed messages from you.
Yes, I started with the reasons why left-leaning movements have been restricted historically right out of the gate.
No, you started with an unsupported allegation about all left-leaning movements:
There is a decent argument historically that communism and other left movements are extremist, racist, and anti-lgbtq.
Support it or don’t accuse me of being intellectually lazy.
Communist propaganda has historically put fourth that anything that is not communist is inherently fascist.
Why am I getting “Anyone who disagrees with you is a fascist! Everyone’s a fascist to you leftists!” vibes from this?
Also, is it a relatively new community
In the context of broader world history, which is what you were talking about when you were baselessly calling anyone on the left anti-lgbtq.
or is it an established one that you want to preserve the culture of?
It’s a new community that I don’t want overrun with nazis like you’d prefer.
Asking for proof of this is like asking for proof that the Constitution exists. It’s a very common thing I referenced. Western anarchism has a more positive history but largely linked to furtherment of the cause over actual progression of liberties.
Cuba: https://www.thedailybeast.com/fidel-castros-horrific-record-on-gay-rights
USSR: https://www.thecollector.com/harry-whyte-gay-communist-writes-to-stalin-soviet-union/
CCP: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0268580918812265
My point in bringing it up is that it’s extremely easy to craft a narrative that starts including relatively positive forms of speech in with the banning. That includes these little forums and your approach is exactly what happened on Reddit eventually leading to the current influx of members here now. The second you start restricting speech is when the forum starts consolidating power.
Donald Trump was elected president primarily because he could control his messaging and direct different narratives to different demographics. He was unable to do that as president so he lost the next election. By encouraging the siloing of information sources, you enable that behavior.
I don’t want Nazis but the best way to turn them is not by sending them into a forum where they are left unchecked.
This may be an unpopular option since I’ve already seen it across lemmy, but the ____porn communities. I’d like to browse pictures of nice landscapes or exotic cars without worry about someone around me noticing “PORN” on my screen.
At this point it seems very old internet, something that made sense when those communities were established, but now is unnecessary gratuitous and not socially acceptable.
Damn, I had forgotten how obnoxious that was on Reddit. Blocked all of those years ago because it was just unnecessary and a gross way to qualify otherwise unremarkable photos.
Using autism as an insult. And the r-word. I’m sure I’ll see both, but I wish there were a corner of the internet free of mocking people with disabilities.
What subs were you subscribed to where you saw that often? I feel like a majority of reddit and ex redditors would not let that shit fly
Are you kidding? Like all of them.
“Thanks for the gold kind stranger”
Take my updoot
Updoot sounds cute, but when redditors announce their upvotes that does get annoying.
You forgot to add the "Edit: " part because they always have to come back and edit every 2 minutes.
Edit: “Whoa my first gold! Thanks!”
Edit2: “Wow this is silly, thanks everyone!”
Edit3: “While you’re here, let me tell you my life story.”
EditAdNauseum: High pitched ear ringing
Uhhhg. Reddit award acceptance speeches like anyone cares.
Photos of people’s wives or girlfriends - often taken without their wife or girlfriend’s consent - playing video games, with vaguely condescending titles about it “only being the Sims / Animal Crossing” and half the replies being absolutely vile. As a Woman Who Plays Video Games, it was awfully annoying.
Gotta ask now… Do you play more then Sims/Animal crossing?
Please don’t let /c/asklemmy become like /r/askreddit, which had half of the front-page posts being the same sex related questions every month.
“Women of reddit, what non sexual thing that guys so makes you horny?”
“What is the sexiest thing you regret doing?”
“How many cocks have you sucked while your cat judges you while waiting for you to feed it?”
It was bullshit.
Safe spaces for fascism. Spez let The_Donald and its imitators fester for years, thus turning Reddit into a de facto Nazi Bar. Thus years of harassing non-fascists & minorities, brigading, spouting bigotry, disinformation and toxicity while the admins yawned.
Can we stop talking about Reddit? Let it go.
This
(I’m so sorry. I couldn’t resist)
/u/spez
I happen to love megathreads. When a major breaking news happens I want to discuss it with the community, not read a dozen smaller threads repeating the same.
Ads.
Fuck ads.
The ragebait fake text message screenshots that plague subs like antiwork.
Wow, your dickhead boss is stupid enough to put all of that in writing and has the exact same style of writing, spelling and grammar as you do? Isn’t that a coincidence!
/r/nothingeverhappens
This is posted in sarcasm as I always hated that kind of response
Power mods. Many of the ones who ran Reddit’s biggest subreddits like iBleeedOrange and Awkwardtheturtle were major assholes.
Major Assholes
Petty Tyrants
An actual human sex trafficker (allegedly)
I hope that the mod-user relationship will be healthier here. (Bias, I was a reddit moderator.)
Some reddit mods were crap, this is true. Powermods and sub collectors were real. They did shit up a few communities.
But these people were a very small proportion of all moderators. Most moderators I met were chill, and just wanted to chip in to their respective communities to give back, in a way. Volunteering for internet janitor duty, because no matter how much people use the term as an insult it turns out public spaces need janitors - or they get filled with shit, trash, graffiti (and not the cool kind either, mostly badly drawn swastikas). It’s not a position that should be glorified, or anything, because that’s weird, but I hope that some semblance of basic respect can be maintained here on Lemmy - both ways, meaning no powermods but also no defaulting to assuming mods suck.
I say this with the best of intentions so bear with me, but I think most of the disdain towards moderators on Reddit came from locking threads due to “excessive trolling” or “y’all can’t behave” etc. It was so visible and immediately shut down conversation which was frustrating for average users. In my opinion excessive trolling isn’t a reason to shut a thread. The only things that would really need to be shut down would be things that are straight up illegal. Obviously people saying offensive things or trolling is an issue but, again in my opinion, that’s what the whole upvote downvote system is for, and moderators can step in for things that are blatantly out of line.
I don’t approve of comments that try to make fun of the userbase while removing their ability to respond, to be clear. But here is the alternative perspective as to why threads would be locked:
When I moderated r/polls, we would occasionally lock threads because we literally couldn’t keep up. If it was a topic that particularly drew out the bigots in force, they would pile in faster than we could ban them. A thread like this could get over a thousand comments if it was one of the top ones that day. The solutions were then either:
- Allow bigotry to fester in the thread for extended periods of time
- Have one or more moderators camp on the thread in real time trawling through new comments, perhaps for hours on end
- Lock the thread
This was on a sub of about 200,000 users, with 5-8 mods. There are subreddits with many times this amount of subscribers, so I can only imagine they might have an even lower threshold for locking.
Allow bigotry to fester in the thread for extended periods of time
I know this will be a controversial opinion but I just don’t see this being a big deal. Those comments inevitably get downvoted and kicked to the bottom of the list, and if you expand a comment that’s -10 karma you probably know what you’re getting into. I created and modded a sub that now has over 2mil subs and never once have I locked a thread (granted, it’s one that’s non political but we got our fair share of weirdly bigoted comments)
Allowing bigots a platform leaves the possibility that they band together, upvote each other, and normalize their opinions on your community gradually until people stop questioning it.
Add on to that the fact the OP on reddit directly receives each comment on their post as a notification by default.
Yes, another thing I don’t ever want to see here: normalization of bigotry & fascism.
On Twitter, I saw one of the chuds saying “You’re judging all Nazis as assholes!”
Why yes I judge all Nazis as assholes! Fuck normalizing fascism. KILL IT WITH FIRE, MODS!












