this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Isn't that something that mods need to take care of though? Why should that burden be on the community members?
The word "community" goes a long way in answering that question imo.
If we look to the mods take care of everything, we're a group of content consumers, not a community.
And then we have to deal with the community collectively adopting shitty or evil ideas and enforcing them, shutting down victims or anyone who opposes them. So who checks the community? Who protects the individual?
Does the individual need such protection?
Am I supposed to be spoon-fed only those ideas that some nameless, faceless entity deems appropriate for me to receive? Do I need someone to hold my hand and guide me around the fediverse, like a toddler in a grocery store?
If a community collectively adopts shitty or evil ideas, why would I want to continue to associate with that community? Why would I not simply leave that particular community, and focus instead on the dozens of others of which I am already a member?
Who better to protect the individual than the individual themself?
Exactly!
I left Reddit because I felt it was toxic and I really didn't like the direction the platform was going. If a community here on Lemmy goes bad, I can leave for another. It's not hard.
Moderation, IMO, should largely focus on removing trolls and reminding people to be civil. That's really about it. It's not their job to police a community, it's merely their job to respond to consistent complaints from users. I.e. it's your job to report people and posts, and mods should only step in if there are multiple complaints for the same thing.
There's a reason I'm here and not on Reddit, and that's one of the biggies.
I want to be somewhere where the community takes responsibility, not one where they just dump it all on unpaid mods.
Well yeah, I'm describing what I want.
There are certainly instances (like Beehaw, Lemmygrad, and Exploding Heads) that are managed in a way that I'm not interested in, so I don't associate with them. If others want to, that's completely fine, and it's completely in line with other forums and whatnot.
I personally think that if lemmy is to truly succeed, it needs to be different from those other SM sites. If we're just a poor copy of Reddit or an overly complicated alternative to forums, what value does it truly offer? It needs to be different in some meaningful way, and imo that meaningful way is through community investment in the platform.
So that's what I try to do. I have contributed code to lemmy-adjacent projects, I have contributed constructive posts and comments, etc. I want this to be a real community instead of just another place to argue about pointless things. We probably won't get there, but that's what I want.
So please, if you just want to post memes and whatnot, Reddit is probably the better option. If you want to argue, go to Twitter. If you want to promote yourself, go to Facebook, Instagram, or Facebook. But if you want to help out and build something special, please hang out here on lemmy.
Sometimes mods are asleep or not locked to their desks. Downvotes help get shit like that (pun fully intended) out of most peoples feeds unless they are browsing by new or are way way way down on the hot scroll list.