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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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One thing I firmly believe is that arguing on the internet is 100% pointless and never accomplishes anything. We are too alienated and isolated and atomized on the internet to ever truly reach someone else across the gap of ideology and prejudice, everything bounces off because we're all just strings of text on a screen. Every debate is another random encounter in the posting RPG. Rather than a public square, it's a mob farm for exp.
I think online spaces can still be useful, but conflict is entirely useless. It's just for fun.
I disagree. I joined Lemmy as an anarchist and I've been convinced over time that Marxism is actually the correct idealogy.
And I will never be able to convince you otherwise! I could say that I think there are other factors which made you change your mind, give examples from my own evolution from anarchism to Marxism, we can trade replies back and forth for hours or days, ect etc
It would all accomplish nothing.
I don't even know if it is about conflict per se, or the very notion that it is virtuous to engage with these media politically. Even these alternative platforms, because they are modeled after Twitter, Reddit, and the like, possess the same qualities, by making us react and respond to similar ways. I guess digital infrastructure for activist groups should be more similar to private infrastructures of orgs rather than corporate social media. And they should be community first, with a sophisticated take on the channels available to communicate to and from the organization and the rest of the community.
Until some time ago, I was still on the fence about Lemmy though. On the technical level it has some desirable attributes in the community structure and federation, that could possibly help. But the user culture, me included, is so fucked up that only with insane levels of moderation it could ever fulfill such a purpose. For this another medium should be considered in Lemmy's place (I don't think Mastodon is the one either), that would constrain antisocial and non-social user behavior on the technical level. So, this is a loose argument that Lemmy and Mastodon are not tools for social change, and should be abandoned as such.
I think the format promotes conflict. Lemmy ultimately is made to be Reddit-like, so we shouldn't be surprised when it produces Reddit user culture. Ultimately we need an entirely new format that promotes cooperation over conflict.
As for moderators, I also think the volunteer model is bad. They do important work and should be compensated for their labor.
Another thing I came up with is the time factor. Or the pacing if you will. We have also received that from those other platforms. I have turned to reading e-books instead of scrolling and I have found my attention span has improved. It is the time factor that is internalized and doesn't allow careful consideration of everything. Conflict and weaponization of sincerity might well be a side effect of this one.