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.
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.