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The rest of the internet is bad, like real fucking bad, this place and lemmygrad and trueanon (when they're not saying shitty stuff) are like the only good normal healthy places left online. (hexbear.net)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/chat@hexbear.net
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Just putting that out there. While we might have struggle sessions over bullshit, the larger internet zeitgeist is putrid and rancid.

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[–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

I don't know what kind of places you moderate, but there plenty of factors involved, and a big one is the medium itself. Compare a chatroom or forum (incl imageboards) to reddit-like sites, and I'm sure you can already think of a few ways each pressures people to talk a different way - forum posts get more attention when they bumped with replies and that makes troll bait posts powerful. On Lemmy, those will get sunken to the bottom with downvotes and on Hexbear a troll doesn't even get the validation of downvotes. On the other hand, on these kind of sites, bland agreeable neutral posts tend to get the most upvotes/least downvotes, so the default front page will be contantly plastered with banal twitter platitudes and cute funny animal pictures.

These trends can and have been overcome, but it's tough without careful site design or an unusually disciplined userbase. (As in, won't respond to trolls)

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Compare a chatroom or forum (incl imageboards) to reddit-like sites, and I'm sure you can already think of a few ways each pressures people to talk a different way

    Even in chatrooms this occurs after your room crosses a threshold where it's large enough to start making people behave that way. They stop having conversations and start behaving more like they're in a sports stadium crowd. This is particularly annoying to deal with because overflow spaces don't work either, some people use them because they like a quieter space but the original space still typically stays above that threshold and so remains a problem.

    These trends can and have been overcome

    Yes and no. The different spaces produce different behaviours. But Trueanon, Hexbear and CTH all existed on spaces that overwhelmingly suffer from the problem and yet... The userbase does not. The userbase is different. If a userbase can be different despite being on spaces that would typically produce the problem, then conditions can be created in order to create that userbase. The issue is one of finding the correct method to produce those conditions, as owner of the space.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    You make a good point that Trueanon and CTH exist/existed on reddit and yet were able to resist the structural tendencies of reddit's format.

    Even in chatrooms this occurs after your room crosses a threshold where it’s large enough to start making people behave that way.

    Definitely. In fact, I don't think I'm in any chatrooms of more than a dozen people because I want conversations or to help make things, not just yelling into a river.

    The issue is one of finding the correct method to produce those conditions, as owner of the space.

    Exactly. It's not easy, I've seen it done well and I've seen it devastate sites.

    I also think it's surprising that those places emerged since, to put it bluntly, CTH pod is a prime example of 'dirtbag left', and in my experience many dirtbag communities are where trolls can have a great time and attempts at strong moderation (like forcing an ideological tendency, shutting down drama, censoring language) tend to dampen the community. Sometimes owners can't force conditions upon a community once it has an identity, if those conditions go against that identity, like imagine if a rogue moderator or even the whole staff wanted Hexbear to become a serious theory-focused community and banned what they saw as low-effort bits. It just wouldn't work without destroying the place, there are still ways for the owners or regular users to encourage education but it won't be done through moderation.

    That's the kind of thing I mean about site culture and site design helping to overcome the format. What are the first things a new user sees? What values do the pinned sticky posts promote? What values does the sidebar impart? Will they even read that? If a moderation team is too overwhelmed with moderation duties, there's no real time to get much feedback or to design a good space, it's just reacting as crises come up.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Exactly. It's not easy, I've seen it done well and I've seen it devastate sites.

    The issue I run into is it's like stacking blocks, except the blocks you stack at the start can't be removed later to change them if they were the wrong blocks. Once a community moves down a certain path, you can't really undo elements of its growth towards what it becomes, you can't pull out a block and install the block you should have originally installed.

    So in trying to reach the same endpoint those spaces have, you can try something, but if there's a mistake along the way you're shit out of luck, you can't force a community built with the wrong blocks to become something different. It collapses a community.

    I say that tentatively of course, I have had success in changing communities through force but only in the ideological sense. Mass baiting of liberals to purge them and build a communist community is totally viable, but the behaviour of those communists will still be shaped by the original blocks. You are limited in what you can and cannot force to happen.

    What are the first things a new user sees? What values do the pinned sticky posts promote? What values does the sidebar impart? Will they even read that? If a moderation team is too overwhelmed with moderation duties, there's no real time to get much feedback or to design a good space, it's just reacting as crises come up.

    Yes this is what I mean with building blocks you lay down.

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