Lup Yuen Lee 李立源 @lupyuen@social.cleverlibre.org

@lupyuen Well, the title is a bit clickbaity since it really applies to all social media. I think we're conscious beings and should be able to control our own experience. See also https://ieji.de/@austin/108600311859836974

@gemlog @cstanhope @lupyuen That blog post probably says more about its author than the fediverse in general. The description of fights sounds just like when I was on Twitter, but gladiatorial behavior is rare here.

The fediverse is now so big that it's hard to make generalizations. There probably are corners of the chud-o-verse where it's a continuous Twitter-style scrap. But nearly all of what I see os lowkey.

I may have a better experience of the fediverse simply because there are numerous mitigations built into Epicyon. Long threads and dogpiles can't really happen on this timeline because they would be screened out automatically. And there are no local or federated timelines, so I'm only seeing what I signed up to read, plus any associated boosts.

@gemlog @lupyuen People will create multiple accounts on multiple instances to harass. Sometimes it is a group effort for harassing. It's tiring to be the target of abuse and having to deal with it all by yourself.

I don't know for sure, but I think these things have become better over time as admins have learned how to spot bad actors and kick them off immediately. This forces the bad actors to instances that tolerate them, which are more easily blocked in whole.

@gemlog @lupyuen So there are technical underpinnings, but you have to build the social muscle on top of it by doing the hard work of fostering community, keeping out the bad actors, and protecting the community as a whole from outside people just looking to come to town to get into fights.

And I think we're doing better now, but the trick is passing that knowledge and practice to new people over time.

@lupyuen I agree with everything through paragraph three, and I worry about the harmful effects of social media including on myself. But I don't think it's brought out the worst in me, at least not in the way DeValut is thinking. I've never spent time on here arguing with people nor harrassing, but I worry I do spend too much time here which should be spent elsewhere.

On the other hand, the fediverse has allowed me to be exposed to people and perspectives I'm sure I would've missed otherwise.

@lupyuen I'll stop here and just say I think these statements are too strong:

"The Fediverse is an environment optimized for flame wars."

"The behaviors it encourages are plainly defined as harassment."

Mastodon does give us tools on an individual and instance level to block, mute, and defederate, which seems to go a long way in preventing these behaviors. I'd love to hear suggestions about how the design could be changed to prevent flame wars/ harassment. Some solutions may not be technical.