I ‘upvote’ more or less all posts I interact with (sometimes I forget to vote). I feel like we should bring back open dialogues and heavily dissuade people from simply disregarding someone’s entire belief system or ideals based on 200 characters of text (an example).
Think about one person in your life who you first thought was a complete asshole and once you got to know them they were pretty cool, maybe you became best friends with them. The point is, judging a person based on a minute snippet in time is a fool’s errand, and your own state of mind contributes a lot to your own judgement of people. Your next thought might be, well they have a history of x, y AND z, so they deserve every bit of judgement coming their way! I would ask you, why? Are you not simply fueling further hatred, vitriol and division? So instead of stopping for a moment and thinking about the world from someone else’s perspective, you’d rather just spit out some more hatred and move on like that person doesn’t exist?
I would love to see some solution to the shitty state of the Internet. I only say Internet because for the most part this doesn’t happen in real life in my experience. I think it has to do with consequences and social sigma and so on. I reckon it would be pretty awesome if there was something like the following:
- all upvotes are free range, people can give out upvotes like they were candy
- downvotes come at a “cost”, whereby if you want to downvote someone you have to reply directly to them with some justification, say minimum number of characters, words, etc.
In an ideal world, and setup, this would help raise positivity in the world and have people at the very least have a second thought before being negative.
Yes I understand there would be flaws, I’ve worked with and used computers for a long time, I know. I chose not to delve deep into those as I feel that would defeat the purpose of the message I’m trying to convey. And, you know, lead by example.
What do ya’ll think? Any suggestions to boost positivity in the world, I’m all ears, smash them and any other thoughts in the comments.
This is a commonly held belief that is actually just not true. Certain garbage opinions and behaviours will fester and spread and absolutely make a space worse. Communities that allow toxic behaviour will both push away reasonable people, and attract people with toxic views. Setting proper boundaries, rules, and conduct are important for maintaining a place of healthy discussion.
I don’t mind if they have somewhere to talk with each other - I think you’re correct it’s pointless to try to stop that - I’m just not interested in spending any time there.
Highly agree because thats not what i am saying we should do. I am very aware of the paradox of intolerance, that we should be intolerant of intolerance.
I actually had to very conversation yesterday and i think i even mixed them up at some point, here is comment of mine from the other explanation where i think I articulated my opinion better.
“an individual forum shouldn’t carry the responsible to protect all human rights on that forum. But as an anarchist i object to the authority of a centralized state so i cant see it their job either.
In my ideals humanity is a collective of people and all of us carry the responsibility to safeguard the wellbeing of all people, as a collective. People who have been at the rejected end of continued intolerance know how damaging it can be for ones health.
Currently i dont know any true safe online spaces for the world most misguided or seriously ill people. So where can these people go? Social isolation is an echo chamber of their own mind.
Lemmy.ml doesnt need a nazi community but as - moral global human collective we should at least maintain lists of resources to help those struggling (with morality). A simple “we dont allow this here but here is a list of resources” ranging from social media to mental heath providers, or better social media monitored by non authoritative mental health providers. “