I’m a long time Lemmy lurker and occasional Redditor. Since the Reddit influx, I’ve watched the frequency of shitty Reddit-type behavior, e.g., combative comments, trolling, and unnecessary rudeness, just sky rocket.
I’m happy to have more content on Lemmy, but I wish the bad actors and assholes would have stayed on Reddit.
Yes, I realize the irony of posting this on a new community that’s basically a Reddit transplant.
Because other people don’t care about your standard.
If you want to make an instance where it’s’ enforced, do so - that’s the whole point of the Fediverse. Just don’t be surprised when you have no users.
Depending on which are those standards, you might get a lot of users. We had examples of that even in Reddit, where a few subs (like r/AskHistorians) had fairly specific rules that boil down to “don’t be a moron” and they were still fairly popular, even in a site that could as well have as slogan "lasciate ogni ragione, voi ch’entrate"¹. That’s because not even the stupid benefit from the others’ stupidity, so they still gravitate towards environments with higher standards².
So what !OpenStars@kbin.social said might be actually viable; the Fediverse (or at least, some chunks of it) could hold itself to a higher standard. The question is how; perhaps through instances? User culture? Or even UX changes that make context harder to ignore and stupid shit sink to the bottom (against the Fluff Principle³)?
(At those times I really want a c/TheoryOfTheFediverse…)