I saw this discussion brought up on a different thread and I though I’d get some more opinions on the matter.
The Beehaw community guidelines describe a place that’s meant to be safe, friendly and encourages people to discuss their ideas in good faith. For the most part I feel like this community lives up to that; users of this instance are generally thoughtful with their responses. However, I don’t feel like that level of quality extends to the users who post from other instances. Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.
Now I may just be an elitist fuck so I’d like to hear your opinions on this. Does Beehaw benefit from federation? Do the community guidelines even matter if they don’t apply to many of the people who engage with this instance? Am I just looking for a reason to complain?
EDIT: This post isn’t a request for Beehaw to defederate btw. I just wanted to discuss the negatives of federation and what we can do to alleviate them :)
There’s a middle ground between being an “echo chamber” and being forced to put up with the same 10 different bad-faith bumper-sticker sealion questions over and over again for all eternity.
I come to Beehaw when I’m just dead-dog tired of having the same arguments over and over again, when I’m sick to death of hearing what the alt-right thinks about any given issue, when I’m just fed up having to defend my identity and my beliefs from crypto-facists who think they’re being subtle when they imply I shouldn’t exist and wouldn’t exist if they had their way.
I know what “the other side” thinks. Dear God, I can’t escape hearing what “the other side” thinks, about everything from the international politics of war to beer cans. I’m well aware of the “discussion” they want to have, I’ve had it eighty thousand times over the course of my life and it’s always the same theme and the same tactics lightly reskinned for whatever outrage bait they read about on Facebook last week.
For example, their opinion on “kids getting trans surgery” is exactly the same pile of nonsense as their opinion on “partial-birth abortion” was 25 years ago: “We’re going to take an extreme situation, that almost never actually happens precisely because of how extreme it is, that only ever takes place after months or years of agonizing decision-making between parents and entire teams of professionals with advanced degrees and decades of experience, and pretend like it’s the primary form of this issue and happens on a whim.”
I’m over 40. I’ve heard it all. I know what their opinions are. Fuck, I know what their opinions will be on shit that hasn’t even come up yet, because it never changes. They never shut up about their opinions. So no, I’m not worried about getting into an “echo chamber”. I like finally having a little bit of soundproofing between me and the “(allegedly) silent majority”.
That’s true and I can definitely see the appeal. Sometines it’s just nice to chill with like-minded people and get away from the toxicity of the internet.
It’s a double-edged sword in my experience, though. My local subreddit has been an echo chamber for years now. Politics and complaints. You’ll seldom see a thread where both of those aren’t present. Dissent is also discouraged by the majority through actions (downvotes) and replies. It got so bad i stopped going there for more than a year before the reddit API shitshow. I don’t want to see every single post containing a comment about how our country is a shithole with no hope and it’s better to move to literally any other country. Imagine you’re stuck in a community filled with the “other side”. It’s that bad (at least when I was there).
If Beehaw can maintain a good and positive community then there may not be an issue. Unfortunately, we’re on lemmy and it’s quite easy for bad actors to infiltrate a community unless everyone is vigilant. I hate bigots and discrimination probably as much as you, but I have to admit an echo chamber of the other (extreme) side of the spectrum doesn’t really appeal to me, either. Extremes really aren’t for me. A middle ground, like you said, sounds nice.
Hopefully Beehaw can maintain its standard and stay in the middle. I think that would be my biggest concern if I were a beehaw user. Or even a lemmy user.