Appreciate the thoughts, it gives me more to think about. I’ve also been avoiding controversial subject matter and I think I’ll avoid it even more now.
I do think the Fediverse needs to improve privacy and ease of use for alts. I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years on Reddit that an authoritarian government would love to get their hands on. I guess the fediverse, by design, can’t be private? I worry that someone who doesn’t know better will get hurt because they don’t understand the risks.
All the more reason to join trusted instances with solid admins, and to keep your Lemmy profile separate from your real identity.
A possible workflow right now might be to browse on one account, and post comments from another. Boost on Reddit made that easier, but I don’t think the Lemmy one does that yet
aniki@lemm.ee 10 months ago
e0qdk@kbin.social 10 months ago
Harassment, mostly.
aniki@lemm.ee 10 months ago
e0qdk@kbin.social 10 months ago
A vote on kbin/lemmy is closer to a retweet than to a vote on reddit in terms of its potential impact on folks. You are publicly saying you support/do not support a post by voting on it (which might be taken as publicly thanking someone with an upvote or publicly saying fuck you with a downvote in some contexts); that can be a workable system, but it's surprising if you're coming from reddit where basically no one but the admins (and whoever they told/sold the data to) actually knows what you voted up/down.
Hell, consider all the drama around "YOU DOWNVOTED ME!!" / "No I didn't!" BS that was so common even when it was just suspected -- now it can be confirmed (again, for better or worse), for kbin users. I was on reddit for a long time and just thinking about that crap makes me feel tired... -.- Downvoting on kbin is potentially picking a fight every time. The end result is that I've basically never downvoted anything except some spam bots. I don't need that shit in my life again -- even for some of the posts that I think really should be downvoted, I'm just ignoring now. (Not getting into it further. Don't ask. I won't respond.)
If your IRL identity is associated with your account (or can be figured out eventually...), upvoting something really spicy could also end up causing you the same kind of drama IRL as retweeting or commenting strongly on the post -- e.g. job loss, loss of business, targeted harassment/violence campaigns, loss of friends/romantic partners, etc...
I really don't need more drama in my life, so I'm a bit more mindful of how I'm voting (for better or worse) and some stuff I probably would've voted on before, I am just leaving alone now.