Answer questions if I can
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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This + I like to just give people answers. I find too often online somebody will ask a question and a lot of users will often try to be helpful but fail because they didn't actually answer it.
Dumb example Q: "What's the best Indian food in this city?" A: "There's not a whole lot of Indian food but you might have luck with a burgeoning southeast Asian store"
If people would interact with others as they would do face to face. For whatever reason, we are so quick to forget the person at the other end. You'll see people complain or discuss real people with literally no empathy and it can be mind boggling at times.
This is sadly so true. I think part of it too is that text is a poor medium for expression at times. For example, it's harder to read sarcasm.
I find this to be less of a problem in less formal spaces. When typos, capitalization, and memes all get incorporated into the dialect, sarcasm and other nuance comes across much more readily. See also: Tumblr.
I suspect that sort of dialect wouldn't be as comprehensible here though, because of the greater diversity in demographics here than Tumblr or my small closed group chats with friends. Here on Lemmy, I try to mitigate this by giving the benefit of the doubt and never ever feeding the trolls.
(Does downvoting a troll count as feeding it, because it gives them attention? I don't want to risk it, so I usually pass them by, but I'm curious as to people's consensus here.)
Absolutely.
Part of the challenge of social media is that it leads you to interact with many more people than you ever could in normal life.
While the vast majority of people are delightful, there are significant numbers of people with whom I wouldn't want to interact, either face-to-face or online.
One thing I should get better at is avoiding engagement with those people online who I wouldn't benefit from interacting with.
I don't talk to the crazy person ranting on the street, why would I do it online?
If people would interact with others as they would do face to face.
Man, I'd never say anything online if I did that.
If i have something bad to say, i don't.
I block and never talk to the nazis.
- Report spam, scam, racism, hostility and clickbait
- Don't engage trolls
- Don't answer questions I'm not sure I have the correct answer for (or else point out that I'm just giving a "best guess" response)
- Try to be neutral or positive/affirming in replies. If I can't, I'd rather not reply at all.
Not feeding trolls.
It's not a life hack, but I try to be polite and open with people to a reasonable extent. I turned around several internet arguments with this attitude, even when we had a different opinion at the end there was no toxicity.
There are always the unreasonable idiots and straight up crazies and of course the trolls. Well fuck those people, just block them π
Curate my feeds so I mostly donβt see negatuve content (doomers, cynics, trolls, etc)
I do this, and employ frequent and rapid blocking on social media.
Instead of engaging, dick wads get blocked without comment.
Since switching to Lemmy I use my up/downvote in a different way than on reddit. Upvote now means I think the comment/post contributes something valuable while downvote means the comment/post is unnecessarily unfriendly or just not contributing anything constructive.
Typical Reddit voting v Lemmy voting
| Lemmy | ||
|---|---|---|
| I agree | Upvote | Upvote |
| I disagree, but it contributes to the conversation | Downvote | Upvote |
| Meh | Downvote | - |
| Trolling and bad faith arguments | Upvote | Downvote |
That's what they were originally about on Reddit as well before its gradual decline. "Reddiquette" as they called it.
Unfortunately it turned into an "I agree" or "I disagree" button.
When some nihilistic edgelord cares too much about others caring about something and screeches "WHO CARES?" or "NO ONE CARES" 
thought-terminating cliches to try to shut discussion down, I voluntarily say "I care" and that often shuts them up and whatever was being cared about usually continues.
It's a small thing, but I think it makes a local difference.
Commenting to creators with specific things that I like about their work
Radical optimism. Hell yeah! Basically anti-doomerism.
not be an asshole to everyone, and trying to explain my reasoning.
Moderate the OnlineFavors subreddit.
Disconnect.
Shit talk misogynists
Once in a while i dont respond to stupid comments....
Encourage people to leave behind toxic elements such as proprietary social media platforms and Windows. It's very healthy for the mind to have freedom regarding your possessions and not being fed rich-funded hate goop.
Probably nothing since I have no free time π
Don't participate or be involved in the most popular online communities. I find once an online community reaches a threshold it goes to shit. Finding your niche people online is the best way to finding a nice place you belong.
Block freely and block often.
Downvoted unkind discourse.
Upvote is for quality. No vote is for noise/disagreements. Downvote is for hate.
In theory, the lower a score, the less people see something. If I disagree with something that's said (like a civil political opinion), then I won't 'like' it. That takes away one potential point. But if someone is being unkind to others (mean, rude, trolling, etc) then I'll downvote, which I see as removing two votes. The one they could have had from me, and one from someone else. Hopefully, that means they won't get as much attention.
If it's really bad, then I'll also report
-Improve moderation of major social sites with more penalties for harassment. I feel like the lack of proper moderation has encouraged people to be needlessly mean over petty nonsense and sometimes even ruin lives.
-Add more privacy protections
-Force websites that allow both minors and 18+ content to have NSFW filters in place by default for anyone under 18 (looking at you Twitter)
-Getting rid of intrusive ads
-Have websites show posts in order, unless it's something like Lemmy or Reddit where the other options at least make sense
-Websites should be given legal repercussions in knowingly spreading dangerous conspiracies (such as Facebook doing nothing about posts encouraging violence against a minority group in Myanmar eventually leading to genocide)
Sometimes I'll write out a big mean comment, and then I just hit the back button instead of posting it
Remove anonymity.
Iβm not advocating for that. The internet would be a boring dystopia, but it sure as shit would be nicer if every statement could be tied back to a real person.
Post photos of beans
Stop feeding off what is given to you and look for and search for quality, informative, objective content that is not manipulated to play with you emotions.
The internet is many things other than just a place to waste away your time, energy and awareness of the world.
Provide detailed help troubleshooting people's tech problems.
My response might become helpful to many people in the future, even if it doesn't help the person who originally asked the question.
Moderate r/OnlineFavors
uBlacklist: block SEO, clickbait garbage from Google search
Shutup.css: blocks comments on all websites; I enable it on websites (such as lemmy) in which the website is dedicated to discussion. This prevents me from seeing stupid MSN like comments.
AdBlock: Blocking ads. They are slow, they are annoying, they follow you and I hate them.
Privacy.com cards: Lets me lock a card and certain amount to a website I may or may not trust, and prevents them from charging more than I state. Has been VERY useful for Amazon Eero in which they keep auto subscribing me to eero Plus and βdon't know what happened on their endβ.
This is more so related to Xbox, but:
Filtering all messages from people who aren't my friends into a separate inbox that doesn't notify me. Blocking party invites from people who aren't my Xbox friends (prevents assholes in Overwatch from DDoS).
Dns ad blocker and I don't use big tech sites almost at all.