Reddit culture (and lemmy by extension) changed so much in a short time. Just a few years ago you weren’t downvoted just because someone disagreed with your opinion. The polarization and culture war turned reddit users completely dogmatic and as immune to arguments or facts as magats.
The same is true of lemmy. Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”. Which really shows how right wing “limbrols” have become. They hate socialists with a different viewpoint on US empire more than they hate fascists. The fascists have succeeded in utterly destroying reddit and lemmy as a platform for useful political discourse.
We now have the vast majority of “liberals” on lemmy upvoting comments using racist slang terms for Russians to dehumanize them, just like they did for enemies in Japan, Vietnam or Korea. The fascists have made massive inroads.
The OP meme almost seems quaint to me now. The real culture war is elsewhere now.
Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”.
I would advocate for defederation based on idiotic politics but calling tankies socialist is disingenuous. Since when is genocide denial and or worship is an acceptable behavior?
The problem is that the mainstream is simply declaring historical events one way and any other dissenting viewpoint or evidence is suppressed. And there IS evidence.
The fascists (and Putin’s propaganda trolls) have been successful in disruption any dialogue between people from the actual left: socialists. Not the neoliberal “democrats”.
And now you do their work for them: You censor the socialists (marxist-leninist, maoists) because some “dirtbag left” troll once was mean to someone. You probably can’t even link to an example of what you accuse entire group of. But this tankie slur gets repeated and amplified more and more. People simply call you tankie, downvote and everyone piles on without thinking.
The problem is that disinformation and post-truth doublethink on the so called “left” (=neoliberals) is almost indistinguishable from MAGA like OP.
If you check out lemmy from an instance that hasn’t defederated from the socialist instances you’ll see that basically half of lemmy activity is invisible - the socialist half. The result is rather predictable.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/13653122
here is an example of how these “socialists” behave check modlog for the actual convo.
Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”.
To the degree that people bother to defederate from anything (most users don’t) I would assume its because apologists for Putin and China are about as odious to talk to as MAGAs
Basically any anti-imperialist and anti-US empire critique is stamped as Putin/China apologism and downvoted or outright banned. You don’t even have to be a socialist to be “odious”. And of course the big instances have already defederated from the major socialist instances.
This is simply incorrect. It’s true that they now evolved completely to that, but you are wrong stating that it was always like this. It’s still in the reddiquette: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddiquette
Vote. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.
This used to be understood that people often treated it as agree/disagree but that you are “supposed to be better than that”. And that made a difference.
It’s historic revisionism to say it was always like this because clearly there was discussion about this if you go just 10 years back: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/search/?q=downvote
Post from 13 years ago, basically agreeing that everyone ignored the “rule” and used upvote/downvote as glorified agree/disagree buttons:
Excellent references!
Btw, this article seems to perfectly describe the effects you are mentioning, e.g.:
That same attitude contributed to the development of an appallingly toxic and hostile culture online: As more people – many with silently held prejudices – flocked to a place where allegedly nothing mattered, they let themselves loose, flinging typo-ridden bigotry at any target that they could find. While the sentiments were occasionally decried and the writing errors were sometimes corrected, the retort of “It’s the Internet! Nobody cares!” was wielded with nearly constant frequency. There were certainly oases of reasonable and well-composed discourse… but as their populations grew, so did the volume of posts and comments that were offered from positions of apathy and ignorance.
… Before long, accuracy, quality, and correctness became optional requirements, and online audiences learned to expect mostly low-effort content instead of refined assemblages. …We ignore thoughtfully composed “walls of text,” but we electronically applaud memetic image macros and single-sentence references that aren’t inherently entertaining or insightful (yet are somehow still poorly written). When we amplify these things – using our likes, upvotes, retweets, and shares – we encourage the creation of more low-effort content, and in so doing, we send the message that higher-quality offerings are unwelcome and unwanted. That above-mentioned message isn’t necessarily what we intend, but it’s nonetheless what we say: Positive responses of any variety communicate more than just “I like this;” they also serve to mean “other people should see this” and “more of this, please.” The other implication, then, is that things which receive less attention – if only because they would have taken more effort to consume – aren’t as deserving of it. We may even state as much directly, downvoting or dismissing submissions that irritate us by either asking for too much of our time or challenging our expectations. In the end, the unified statement which arises from all of our indirectly expressed preferences is that only low-effort content will be accepted.
It is a fantastic article and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Edit: also it helps explain why this isn’t a problem seen merely with Reddit, but also Twitter/X, Facebook, Threads, and yes Lemmy (+Mbin/Piefed/Sublinks) too - it’s apparently rooted in human nature, thus would require enormous pushback to try to counter, while in contrast monetary profits tend to go along with whatever most easily aligns with our most basal natures. Sex sells, greed moar so, but laziness most of all.
I was there. It was real. You’re not crazy, a lot of us went by a kinda honor code for downvotes. You had to say something very irrelevant for me to downvote.
It was the best of times for internet forums.
Better discussions and the gags were limited and not belched out repeat jokes. Yes there were inside jokes but it wasn’t like broken arms jackdaw molly rancher every damn thread. It got too popular and with that you drew the youtube comment types all trying to get the “funniest meta joke” per thread which translates to “most likes” for people not interested in genuine discussion. Couple that with echo chambers and astroturfing and well, now we’re here.
Just a few years ago you weren’t downvoted just because someone disagreed with your opinion.
Lol what? What year did you join Reddit? As someone who’s been there since 2008, I promise you that this is nothing new.
Not sure what year but the culture definitely changed somewhere around 2008-2016. A big part was trump of course, but before that the rise in android and iphone and becoming more popular to a broader segment of the public (e.g. “boomers”). Before it was tech enthusiasts all on desktop PC. This was also before toxic gamer culture.
If you don’t think it changed you must have trauma induced amnesia.
So you claim that people are too hyperbolic, then jump straight to accusing the person you replied to of brain damage, and this after jumping straight to the assumption that the majority of said problems were due to Boomers finding Reddit, not e.g. Millennials or Gen-Z or Alpha or merely a less technical audience. If you were attempting a joke there, that was not clear - and yes I saw the “e.g.” but you only listed one, so really, this seems to be the best example that you had to convey? Boomers, who are well known for their toxic gaming culture, I suppose.
As mentioned by others, I for one do not user block instances bc “tankies”, but rather bc they are an enormous waste of time. Although the very meaning of that word could also be phrased as “denier of historically accurate facts”. I for one don’t care if someone is a Boomer or a Millennial or whatever physical age, if they don’t know or care that 1+1=2 and keep insisting that it’s =3 instead, I’m blocking them and moving on with my life. Hopefully they’ll open themselves up to the Truth one day, but I’m not waiting anymore, that’s entirely on them to go at whatever pace and direction they want, including straight backwards if they so choose - but I am not going to entertain the notion that “all directions/facts are equally valid”, they simply aren’t.
Reddit was very monoculture in the beginning. The neckbeards upvoted each other because they generally agreed on the same opinions. That gets mistaken for adherence to reddiquette.
It became a rhetorical tool to prove whatever an individuals political or social adversaries are dummies because they don’t use reddit properly in current year unlike some glory day that never existed.
If they really did use reddit back in the day as they claim then all of the self referential satire about reddits pseudo-intellectualism must have gone over their head. It was like the second most popular type of content. Second only to the actual circle jerking.
Reddit was taken over by the right wing a long time ago. This person is out of the loop
I get the feeling that the Admins and management are pretty right leaning, but the mods and users are left.
It depends heavily on what sub you’re in for the mods and users,
But yes, the admin team is very right leaning.
I would have been so confused if I was still on reddit. Back then, downvotes were proof you were right and you triggered the woke hive, and upvotes meant you said obvious information, woke opinion or funny not offensive jokes. No upvotes/downvotes meant you said something either really thoughtfull or really boring.
Using “woke” unironically and getting downvoted means you are, in fact, a dumb ass.
Lol, you are talking about irony, yet you completely missed the point. Point that you are the perfect exemple.
Spot on, buddy, and im a dumbass? Lol, pathetic… 🤡
Not sure how I am an example. Please explain.
And I also don’t understand how up and downvotes can form an opinion for you. If that’s all it takes for you to make a decision, then you aren’t being very critical of what you are seeing. Surface level understanding plagues right wing nut jobs like yourself.
1 day old account and already ousted yourself as a right-wing nutjob, good job! You’ve been tagged.
Lol, wow, i dont even know how stupid you have to be to think that im right-wing from my post. Or maybe you think every left-winger is woke? Which would be even more stupid 🤡
LMAO, you use “woke” unironically. “Woke” is nothing but a right-wing dog whistle against everything they don’t like, like the LGBTQ+ community
You can’t be “anti-woke” and left wing at the same time, it’s paradoxical.
“Our opinions are wildly unpopular to the point where even if a bunch of us showed up we’d struggle to make a difference so we’re gunna need to buy upvotes!”
Like…c’mon.
Have you seen the content there?
Yeah they’re gonna need lots of money to get any attention
Dumb enough to fall for a Facebook lie about Tim Walz, but smart enough to use a crappy image editor?
The right may not have good ideas, organizational skills, charm, ethics, understanding of economics, history, or politics, or strength in numbers, but they do have the one thing more important than all of these.
Money!
Eric Trump says “what?!”
And this after his father would have made 8 times more money by simply leaving it in the bank than all of his variety of hotel and Sharper Image steak sales businesses - he’s literally the only one I’ve ever heard of who managed to lose money running a casino!
“The system” is what makes wealth, not individual people these days. Obviously not solely, but the above example shows how it is the primary determination factor.
People have gotten sick and tired of r/pics having loads of political content, and while some candidates are better than others, many people are sick and tired of seeing “orange man bad” yet again. The people who were supposed to be propaganda targets immediately knew this was propaganda and the rampant election posts didn’t make Harris more popular. If this plan is enacted, people will see the astroturfing straightaway, and more people will see Trump supporters as bothersome cultists than as freedom fighters. It doesn’t help that, if pro-Trump people can brigade the sub, so can anti-Trump people, and the whole debacle will just get shut down.
