Ikr? However that is not politically expedient hence major pushback exists to even do much as diagnose that issue much less deal with it. Even so, I (successfully);petitioned Discuss.Online to defederate from Hexbear.net, although in that I also asked for this instance to be removed from lemmy.ml as well, but that portion was rejected. Lemmy.ml is STRONGLY anti-Western, so whether its philosophies are correct or wrong (they are wrong imho:-P) either way it is a barrier for specially Western people who check us out and then nope out back to Reddit.
Even after that partial success though I basically gave up that idea since Lemmy does not allow for true blocking of all users on an instance, so nowadays use PieFed (which does offer that ability, as well as SO MANY other additional features) 99% of the time and only occasionally check my old Discuss.Online Lemmy alt. So at this point I’ve lost any hope whatsoever for “Lemmy” to become mainstream, but if there is even a sliver of hope left for that then I am putting it all in on PieFed rather than Lemmy. Perhaps I am wrong but I doubt it.
But it too moves slowly to catch up to being something that mainstream normies will want to use. I am making codeberg requests to try to help it along, even if I cannot contribute code directly. I understand the position of a mainstream person though: we here are fairly (and sometimes even extremely) toxic, especially to newcomers, and all the more so if they are non-techical. It would require much more extensive moderation to kick out people being mean to newcomers, which actually PieFed offers some great tools for that, and yet at the same time a level of traffic that makes coming to the Threadiverse worthwhile. Those two goals seem incompatible though, so realistically I don’t expect it will ever happen. Still we have to try!?
Unfortunately sdf is still federated with Hexbear. The other day I asked a user not to use language dating back to the Roman Empire which has been used as a justification for two thousand years of imperialism, and I got dozens of replies from Hexbear users angry that I asked them to actually behave like leftists, and quite a bit of racism, and a picture of a pig pooping on its testicles. This is a brand new account I made to spread the good word of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ (who was black), so I don’t know how anyone who’s new to the Fediverse is supposed to put up with those people. I guess they just go back to Reddit.
I took a quick look and it seems that SDF is not defederated from virtually ANYTHING at all (just one instance that as it was dying got taken over by spam) - not even the known CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) ones, nor the most controversial triad across the entire Threadiverse: lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and the one that the main Lemmy software developers also run, lemmy.ml.
One time I said something in hexbear.net along the lines that Biden, who was then President, at least lowered gas prices, so at least there was that - and my inbox just BLEW UP with replies streaming in for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. Then I did something similar at lemmygrad.ml with the same result. They are purely engagement trolls, enjoying their argumentation style of… well, as you said it. They are basically 4chan.
And it is not like I am on a campaign to wipe out their very existence, but neither do I want to recommend the Threadiverse/Fediverse to people if that is the kind of experience that those people will receive - and then look weirdly at me for having recommended it to them in the first place. There are stories aplenty on r/RedditAlternatives saying exactly as you: they came, they got disgusted with what they saw, and they immediately noped out, heading right back to Reddit. People here can be kind - whereas on Reddit that is extremely rare, especially in the larger subs. Traffic here is low and you can feel like you will be heard - on Reddit you are buried beneath an avalanche of thousands of comments, some of which are proven bots (repeating identical patterns of messages spaced years apart, just from different account names but they are word-for-word and it is beyond any rational thought of credulity to think that they could be otherwise - e.g. if you repeated this, my entire message here back to me, not even just this sentence or paragraph but the entire thing, then I would surmise that you had copied and pasted it, not responded organically, and would not believe you if you claimed otherwise, especially upon finding out that you literally could get paid irl money $$$ for having done so, to increase “engagement stats” and therefore advertising revenue).
I doubt you will remain long on SDF - the Lemmy software has very few features to help you deal with such trolling, although you can help reduce the clutter a little bit by blocking the instance. Unfortunately this does not “block” the “instance”, instead only muting the communities on it - leaving the users there free to reply to you in other communities, triggering notifications, blowing up your inbox, and otherwise wasting your time. You will convert nobody there as they exist in their own artificial echo chamber realities, and instead you will become more like them.
I recommend checking out PieFed - the list of features that it has that Lemmy lacks is long and it is FANTASTIC! e.g. polls, flairs (both user and post), Topics/Feeds that are both user-customizeable and shareable, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc., but most importantly the ability to block all users from an instance, which that one feature alone silences I am not even kidding basically 99% of all trolling negative experiences on the entire platform. See more at join.piefed.social e.g. a list of instances at join.piefed.social/try/. Or if you want to stay with Lemmy (but… why though?) and are in the USA then discuss.online or if in Europe then feddit.org - neither of which defederate from lemmy.ml nor allow you to personally do so unlike PieFed, but both of which at least defederate from both hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml.
Unless you are also a troll:-P, but the above is still sound advice imho.
OpenStars@discuss.online 3 days ago
Ikr? However that is not politically expedient hence major pushback exists to even do much as diagnose that issue much less deal with it. Even so, I (successfully);petitioned Discuss.Online to defederate from Hexbear.net, although in that I also asked for this instance to be removed from lemmy.ml as well, but that portion was rejected. Lemmy.ml is STRONGLY anti-Western, so whether its philosophies are correct or wrong (they are wrong imho:-P) either way it is a barrier for specially Western people who check us out and then nope out back to Reddit.
Even after that partial success though I basically gave up that idea since Lemmy does not allow for true blocking of all users on an instance, so nowadays use PieFed (which does offer that ability, as well as SO MANY other additional features) 99% of the time and only occasionally check my old Discuss.Online Lemmy alt. So at this point I’ve lost any hope whatsoever for “Lemmy” to become mainstream, but if there is even a sliver of hope left for that then I am putting it all in on PieFed rather than Lemmy. Perhaps I am wrong but I doubt it.
But it too moves slowly to catch up to being something that mainstream normies will want to use. I am making codeberg requests to try to help it along, even if I cannot contribute code directly. I understand the position of a mainstream person though: we here are fairly (and sometimes even extremely) toxic, especially to newcomers, and all the more so if they are non-techical. It would require much more extensive moderation to kick out people being mean to newcomers, which actually PieFed offers some great tools for that, and yet at the same time a level of traffic that makes coming to the Threadiverse worthwhile. Those two goals seem incompatible though, so realistically I don’t expect it will ever happen. Still we have to try!?
JesusChristLover420@lemmy.sdf.org 3 days ago
Unfortunately sdf is still federated with Hexbear. The other day I asked a user not to use language dating back to the Roman Empire which has been used as a justification for two thousand years of imperialism, and I got dozens of replies from Hexbear users angry that I asked them to actually behave like leftists, and quite a bit of racism, and a picture of a pig pooping on its testicles. This is a brand new account I made to spread the good word of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ (who was black), so I don’t know how anyone who’s new to the Fediverse is supposed to put up with those people. I guess they just go back to Reddit.
OpenStars@discuss.online 11 hours ago
I took a quick look and it seems that SDF is not defederated from virtually ANYTHING at all (just one instance that as it was dying got taken over by spam) - not even the known CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) ones, nor the most controversial triad across the entire Threadiverse: lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and the one that the main Lemmy software developers also run, lemmy.ml.
One time I said something in hexbear.net along the lines that Biden, who was then President, at least lowered gas prices, so at least there was that - and my inbox just BLEW UP with replies streaming in for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. Then I did something similar at lemmygrad.ml with the same result. They are purely engagement trolls, enjoying their argumentation style of… well, as you said it. They are basically 4chan.
And it is not like I am on a campaign to wipe out their very existence, but neither do I want to recommend the Threadiverse/Fediverse to people if that is the kind of experience that those people will receive - and then look weirdly at me for having recommended it to them in the first place. There are stories aplenty on r/RedditAlternatives saying exactly as you: they came, they got disgusted with what they saw, and they immediately noped out, heading right back to Reddit. People here can be kind - whereas on Reddit that is extremely rare, especially in the larger subs. Traffic here is low and you can feel like you will be heard - on Reddit you are buried beneath an avalanche of thousands of comments, some of which are proven bots (repeating identical patterns of messages spaced years apart, just from different account names but they are word-for-word and it is beyond any rational thought of credulity to think that they could be otherwise - e.g. if you repeated this, my entire message here back to me, not even just this sentence or paragraph but the entire thing, then I would surmise that you had copied and pasted it, not responded organically, and would not believe you if you claimed otherwise, especially upon finding out that you literally could get paid irl money $$$ for having done so, to increase “engagement stats” and therefore advertising revenue).
I doubt you will remain long on SDF - the Lemmy software has very few features to help you deal with such trolling, although you can help reduce the clutter a little bit by blocking the instance. Unfortunately this does not “block” the “instance”, instead only muting the communities on it - leaving the users there free to reply to you in other communities, triggering notifications, blowing up your inbox, and otherwise wasting your time. You will convert nobody there as they exist in their own artificial echo chamber realities, and instead you will become more like them.
I recommend checking out PieFed - the list of features that it has that Lemmy lacks is long and it is FANTASTIC! e.g. polls, flairs (both user and post), Topics/Feeds that are both user-customizeable and shareable, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc., but most importantly the ability to block all users from an instance, which that one feature alone silences I am not even kidding basically 99% of all trolling negative experiences on the entire platform. See more at join.piefed.social e.g. a list of instances at join.piefed.social/try/. Or if you want to stay with Lemmy (but… why though?) and are in the USA then discuss.online or if in Europe then feddit.org - neither of which defederate from lemmy.ml nor allow you to personally do so unlike PieFed, but both of which at least defederate from both hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml.
Unless you are also a troll:-P, but the above is still sound advice imho.