Is there any reason to think it isn’t rooted in the difference in political alignment?

I saw a lot of shit from hexbear, and the issue rarely was political. Plenty of examples in this comment section.

I don’t see why people who want to block hexbear.net don’t just block some communities they don’t like and users they see commenting a lot.

Since I recently joined this group of people who want to block hb, I reply. First, I'm not subscribed to any hb community, as far as I'm aware. So this option is unavailable to me. The issues I have happen in communities hosted on other instances, with hb users participating.

What bothers me is the way in which this participation happens. Sometimes the content (offensive, vulgar, dishonest), but mostly the way (edgy). I feel this negatively impacts the non-hb communities I'd like to participate in. Blocking specific users makes me not see them anymore, but it does not undo the damage they do to what I like. It's like looking away when a classmate is being bulied. Feels wrong.

Exactly my feelings.

That's a nice opportunity to voice my support for defederating hexbear.net from lemm.ee.

I say this although I very much approve the open federation policy of lemm.ee, which was a main reason to register here.

But of the growing list of encounters with hexbeared comment sections, there was not one which was fine. There just seems to be something about some users of this instance to consistently ruin things.

we get called something that implies you won’t take us seriously (e.g. genocide denier is a more common one among others we’d consider on the left), why bother with civility or politeness?

Interesting you're commonly being called genocide deniers. I haven't seen a specific case yet, but I've seen the accusation frequently.

You seem to imply the accusation is not justified. But assuming this is case, you do note it is brought up frequently. You may also be aware that most other communities don't have that issue.

So if you are right and you are not genocide deniers, where is communication going wrong that others still frequently think you are? Maybe you can present your ideas in a way which is less misleading, to make yourself better understood. To help others to understand you better.

A common practice is to distance yourself from a bad thing for which you don't want to be mistaken. Inversely, the lack of such distancing can sometimes be seen as evidence for alignment with bad things.

If you're still with me, let's switch perspectives for a second. Assuming you realize you're talking with a genocide denier, which you despise very much. Would you care wether they deny genocide politely and with civility (if that last bit even makes sense)? I'd say you probably already lost the conversation if the other side thinks you're a genocide denier, and how much effort you put into being polite and 'civil' is meaningless at this point.

From my understanding, the term "genocide denier" correlates strongly with arguing in bad faith, and not taking things seriously. It seemed important to you that you are the opposite; arguing in good faith and you want to be taken seriously. Which highlights the importance of the first section of this comment. Help others understand easier and clearer who you are, or who you are not. If you are commonly misunderstood, it's probably worth questioning where things go wrong and how you can change how you are being perceived.

For the record, I changed my opinion regarding hexbear. While I generally very much appreciate the open federation policy, I think users from that instance overwhelmingly deteriorate the culture in comment sections. Appreciable individual exceptions exist.

Needlessly edgy and otherwise pointless comments, like the two you presented here, are the reason why no one likes you guys.

Maybe you care more about: It's also the reason why you don't get the point across which you may try to get across. Or maybe you're just trolling, I can't tell.

The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

I read it as: 'They embraced, extended and extinguished what you held dear'.

I was self hosting GitLab for a while. The docker container was quick and easy to set up, simply worked out of the box.

Others gave good reasons against, but I'd like to find a way through. Without knowing much about your project.

What if you classify it as art, whatever it is? Others are free to use, change and copy it, as long as they themselves allow the same with theirs.

It's not the device whis is made obsolete (objectively). It's a very specific group of users who perceives it as obsolete (subjectively), since they want to always have the newest thing. Other people are different, and will be happy to pick up one of those "obsolete" phones at a discount and use it until they physically fall apart.

For example, I'm just switching phones after having used a 2nd hand phone for 8 years. Screen was broken for years, battery is struggling more and more, freezes are getting too frequent to ignore. Another reason for the switch is, there's more and more apps I cannot install because my phone is too old.

The last point is a good reason for your argument, discontinuation in support. When they stop supporting my old device, that is making it obsolete. But whatever new stuff they release in the meantime does not affect me at all.

undress in public

That seems like a dishonest wording, suggesting they would be publicly visible while undressing.

The article talks about "change out of". I assume this is done with the normal level of privacy: In a separate room, or a cabin.

I live about 100m away from a city metro station and I love it. On my way to the station, I walk past:

• a wellness studio
• 3 fast food restaurants of different types
• a bakery
• a small supermarket
• a hair studio
• an ATM
• about three other businesses which always make me wonder why they exist

Now I could have this walkable neighborhood or I could walk past six lanes of high speed traffic. And up and down the street I have more destinations to visit or I could count SUVs zooming by on a freeway!

Just today I blocked a bot and a very active user (?) because they clutter my feed.

I mostly blame the poor Lemmy algorithms. I select "New Comments" and still get 33% posts with 0 comments and 1 points, shared between two accounts. I'd rather see a post from yesterday with actual engagement.

Yes, I very much agree with the general lemm.ee policy. But I also found your argument convincing:

These bots ruin the experience on Lemmy for new users.

Trying to be constructive, I have two thoughts:

1. Can we hear opinions in favor of these accounts with thousands of posts, most of which are 1 points, 0 comments?
2. How about reaching out to these accounts, asking them to post less, or less non-engaging stuff?

Without too much knowledge, I have the strong feeling this is equally true for the Fediverse and Lemmy.

And while it is fairly obvious and straight forward how to contribute as a programmer, it's less so for all the other, equally important, tasks.

Isn't "I'm for the intentional non-participation in animal exploitation and cruelty" just a consequence of "I saw the videos you refuse to watch", hence similarly alienating and holier than thou?

Maybe even more so. "I can't continue because I saw a video" could be an unreflected emotional statement, whereas yours sounds like a moral argument.

Yes, that's infringing on other people's freedom to own exactly 1 house. While that one person's freedom gains nothing beyond the first 50 or so houses, very generously speaking.

Don't mind OP. Write it for the audience. I loved your first response and would appreciate to read more.

Good points, but what's the alternative? At least Ukraine has a chance to even have internal politics after the war.

what’s stuck out to you as stumbling blocks, or basic user experience fumbles?

For Lemmy:

• Onboarding. Newcomers should not have to decide which instance to use. They know nothing to make that decision. An algorithm should make an educated guess. Even a random pick might be better than forcing them to choose. Manual choice should still be available as an advanced signup method, but the default should be as quick and simple as possible.
• Account Migration. The lack thereof only increases the pressure for making a good choice for your first instance. If we could easily migrate accounts, this would also ease the signup burden. 3rd party tools exist, but this should be a core feature.
• Discovery. There exist dozens of tools for discovering communities, which shows how bad the built-in search function is. This should be a core feature with no need for 3rd party tools. I should not have to care wether someone else from my instance already searched for the same community or wether I'm the first.
• Stream Aggregation. I signed up to loads of niche communities (which do get new posts), but never see any of those in my stream, no matter which mode I choose. I even started to unsubscribe from big communities to give smaller content a chance, to no avail. This effectively hides original and interesting content from view, and makes the overall experience more boring.
• Remote Instance Posts and Comments. When looking up a specific post or comment, I probably cannot do so while being logged in. Which means, I can read it, but cannot interact with it.
• Remote Instance Communities. When browsing the communities of another instance (for example, a themed instance like mander.xyz), I can only do so while being logged out. When I find an interesting community, I have to manually copy the link, search for it in another logged-in tab, find it again, to finally subscribe.
• Lack of Niche Content. It's getting better, but we still have a long way to go. This probably needs more general growth, but some technical aspects (like Stream Aggregation, Discovery and Remote Instance Browsing) also make it harder for niche communities to gain traction.
• GDPR Compliance. A private person and a public institution (which publishes educational content and videos) explicitly mentioned to me that they cannot join Lemmy since Lemmy cannot assure GDPR Compliance. I don't know wether that's true, just reporting the reason.

Overall, it still requires significant willingness to either accept missing features and content, or jump through technical hoops to regain some.

My experience on other fediverse platforms was similar, which most often resulted in me staying away from that particular service for now.