Unpopular Opinion

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Vote the opposite of the norm.

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If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
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This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.

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Lemmy is a worse platform for women than Reddit was (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

570 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(Content warning, discussions of SA and misogyny, mods I might mention politics a bit but I hope this can be taken outside the context of politics and understood as a discussion of basic human decency)

We all know how awful Reddit was when a user mentioned their gender. Immediate harassment, DMs, etc. It's probably improved over the years? But still awful.

Until recently, Lemmy was the most progressive and supportive of basic human dignity of communities I had ever followed. I have always known this was a majority male platform, but I have been relatively pleased to see that positive expressions of masculinity have won out.

All of that changed with the recent "bear vs man" debacle. I saw women get shouted down just for expressing their stories of being sexually abused, repeatedly harassed, dogpiled, and brigaded with downvotes. Some of them held their ground, for which I am proud of them, but others I saw driven to delete their entire accounts, presumably not to return.

And I get it. The bear thing is controversial; we can all agree on this. But that should never have resulted in this level of toxicity!

I am hoping by making this post I can kind of bring awareness to this weakness, so that we can learn and grow as a community. We need to hold one another accountable for this, or the gender gap on this site is just going to get worse.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I'll be honest with you: based on your comment scores, I don't see anyone following you and downvoting all your comments. I can almost guarantee that there's no "group" doing it, as very few people care that much.

Although I have seen people on Lemmy randomly downvote things for no discernable reason. Like I will post a comment and it will be negative for a few hours. Then when more sane people show up, it's upvoted so it's positive. My comment didn't change, the people looking at it did. Don't worry so much about votes.

[–] rottingleaf 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Actually I have had an argument (don't remember if that was still Reddit or already Lemmy, but my old account on an instance which went dead) with every my comment N days back getting the same 2 or 3 downvotes (don't remember, but it was the same number with every of them) and the other side at some point saying that it's "the community showing you the door", making it clear that it's them trying so hard, but that was actually funny.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

True, there are some people that just downvote everything, for no reason. I get that. I guess what made me worry was the fact that I had comments in Lemmy News telling me they hope I get raped with a rusty lawn mower blade, followed by someone downvoting all of my past comments in succession after that comment. I figured it was the person who made that comment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I had comments in Lemmy News telling me they hope I get raped with a rusty lawn mower blade,

Curious if you reported them?

If so, did you check the mod log to see if they were banned? Did the offending comment get removed?

followed by someone downvoting all of my past comments in succession after that comment.

Personally I would say that's happening to you, sure. I've experienced something similar, over something much more trivial than what you've experienced.

Apparently it's someone's personal mission in life to try to maintain their version of 'order and peace' on Lemmy, through their singular actions.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I did report it. I should check to see if it was removed. Honestly, I haven’t thought about it much. I have had other things to do, and it just wasn’t on my mind lately.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy is very small. When I run into the grandparent poster, if their comment is benign I don't vote for it either way. But if it taps into paranoid fantasies, or is fanciful, or factually incorrect I down voted. But I would do that for anybody not just because it's them. They just have a really really high degree of going off the rails in their posts.