Call me crazy, but I a) think the fediverse probably doesn’t have more ‘toxic content’, harmful and violent content, and child sexual abuse material then other platforms like X, Facebook, Meta, YouTube etc, and b) actively like the fediverse because of that.
But after a few hours carefully drafting and sourcing an edit to make it clear that no, the fediverse isn’t unusual in social media circles for having a lot of toxic content, I realised that the entire ‘fediverse bad’ section was added by 1 editor in 2 days. And the editor has made an awful lot of edits on pages all themed around porn (hundreds of edits on the pages of porn stars), suicide, mass killings, mass shootings, Jews, torture techniques, conspiracy theories, child abuse, various forms of sexual and other exploitation, ‘zoosadism’, and then pages with titles like ‘bad monkey’ that seemed reasonably innocent until I actually clicked on them to see what they were and, well.
I decided to stop using the internet for a while.
I’ve learned my lesson trying to change Wikipedia edits written by people like that - they tend to have a tight social circle of people who can make the internet a very unpleasant place for anyone suggesting maybe claims like ‘an opinion poll indicated that most people in Britain would prefer to live next to a sewage plant than a Muslim’ should maybe not on Wikipedia on the thin evidence of paywalled link from a Geocities page written by, apparently, a putrid cesspit personified.
I thought I’d learned my lesson about trusting Wikipedia.
It just makes me so angry that most people’s main source of information on the fediverse contains a massive chunk written solely by a guy who spends most of his time making minor grammar edits to pages about school shootings, collections of pages about black people who were sexually assaulted and murdered, etc, and that these people control the narrative on Wikipedia by means of ensuring any polite critics’ are overcome with the urge to spend the rest of the day showering and disinfecting everything.
it looks like somebody who just saw this post edited wikipedia for the first time to remove that. this is why wikipedia’s wonderful: it’s that easy. i have this quirk where i wanna debate anyone who distrusts wikipedia or claim its rigidity
They did! The change log shows the main section of ‘I found a single paper criticising the fediverse so here’s 600 words on how terrible the concept is’, and also reassured me that I wasn’t just being lazy in not wanting to trawl through the text to edit it to be less awful.
I’m bizarrely excited about it too. You can’t thank anonymous Wikipedia editors, so I’ll throw a vague ‘thank you!’ out into the world and try to pay it forward.
My next battle: figuring out why I can’t edit this post, lol (maybe a mobile problem) and long term, why I didn’t think of ‘just edit it anonymously’.
lmao wait until it’s reverted, argued over, then the editor gets banned.
go on, show me
My ip got banned despite never editing wikipedia, never even reading the talk.
It’s pretty toxic toward right-wing pieces of shit that espouse hate toward minorities, women and queer people. As it should be.
And reddit has shifted from that using auto-moderation I think
Today you learned any idiot can edit Wikipedia and it is mostly done by pro government entities.
Even worse. A lot of it just seems to be done by trolls.
Every now and again they have a big push to get more editors from more sections of society and normal humans, because a majority of the edits are done by a small amount of people, and these people spend so much time doing that that they don’t have much time for things like jobs, hobbies, socialisation, etc.
They are doing a great service, and most of them are great editors, but they are very very online and aren’t always interested in Wikipedia being a collaboration of people from all walks of life.
So they manage to get more random people to make an account and make their own first little edits, and then half those random people get yelled at for not following some hidden rules or for disagreeing with Big Mike who doesn’t like to be corrected or whatever and, surprise surprise, most people whose first experience editing Wikipedia never try again. The ones who stay are the dogged, determined ones, or the ones who don’t really care about criticism, and thus the cycle continues.
Seriously though, small time editors are absolutely essential to keep Wikipedia (reasonably) honest and unbiased. Literally anyone can contribute to the world’s biggest shared knowledge hub, and if you’re not a troll, a dick, a shill or an extremist then your contribution is really, really valuable.
If you see any page that has incorrect info, or anything that’s missing information that you know, or even some clunky grammar or out of date references, please do consider making an edit. There are a bunch of best practice guidelines on editing (that aren’t always very accessible) but the main ethos is to do what you can in good faith and don’t sweat the red tape. Someone else can come along afterwards and tidy formatting up or send you a message saying ‘hey, I’ve reverted your edit because you need a source / this type of source / you accidentally replaced the entire page on astrophysics with an emoji’, and they’ll link to the guidelines you need to follow if so.
I’d love to say it’ll be fun and chill and once you’ve realised how easy it is you’ll be evangelical about it. If you edit a totally innocuous page, it probably will be.
But it’s the internet, so there are all sorts of people including the knobs, so I’ll just say - by widening the pool of editors you will be benefitting Wikipedia whatever your actual edit is, and by ignoring any argumentative bastards you’ll be adding to the majority of Wikipedia editors who are normal human beings and not, well, argumentative bastards.
(Obviously if you are actually an argumentative bastard troll, no offence meant, I hope you have a great life but the applications to be a Wikipedia editor are sadly closed and honestly it’s not worth it 😀)
Just wanted to bring up that when its one person and recent you can do a revision to revert to where it was and give a reason why that editor is griefing. Did it a few times on an article of a book called intelligence of dogs and some person took the article to be its about the intelligence of dog breeds (I mean it was in the context of the book and study done) and would change the list. I would revert with a link to what the book had and a comment that the article is about a book and if they wanted it different to run their own damn study and publish it in their own damn book.
Yeah, that generally sounds good. In this case though, it had been up for 6 months and a lot of people had edited the page since, so I wasn’t sure how that would work.
And, to be honest, cowardice 🤣 I don’t know if it’s just the sort of pages I’ve edited, but I’ve found the number 1 indicator for when a reversion will get pushback is when it was put there by someone with an unholy amount of edits that have a troll / far right / aggressive theme. Some people only seem to edit controversial topics, and some push really weird theories and will argue every bizarre claim as nauseum, some are very free with personal insults, and most are totally normal people.
But the ones who’ve made a slightly odd, vaguely political edit to a reasonably banal page, and when you leave a polite discussion on the talk page and carefully edit it to remove the most inflammatory bits they just revert your edit within a couple of minutes - I’ve had a terrible time with them.
Always, they revert your edit and then either make another minor edit right afterwards, or some other account / anonymous comes in and makes a minor edit, within 2 minutes of theirs. And when you check their history and see a vast majority of their edits are on X rated pages, in my experience that means you’re never going to win. Every edit you make will be reverted within minutes. If they put anything on the talk page it will be exactly as personally offensive as you can get without being outright ban-able. And their shadow account will be along right after every comment or action to agree.
It’s exhausting, and it totally made me lose faith in Wikipedia. I know there are channels to report that, but I’ve found that they take months and the discussion is like ‘yeah that was out of line but they’ve made so many non offensive edits, maybe they were having a bad day?’ with the odd essay-length barrage of insults from new accounts that are always deleted, but just remind me that it’s so easy to just create a new account for bad faith purposes that what’s the point wading through all this aggro just to make sure one user gets a stern talking to on one of his many accounts, for the sake of a line or two on a page about a topic you’re not that interested in.
Sorry for the tragic novella lol, it just really annoys me. Wikipedia could have been so great, but for the fact that trolls and bad actors don’t worry about following the rules, certainly don’t mind conflict, and can write 50 pages worth of bullshit in the time it takes an honest person to fact check the first paragraph, let alone the time and effort it takes to edit stuff by the correct channels.
And when you argue with them, that’s what they enjoy. They can wear people down just by being odious, and even if enough people wade in to help you out and waste their time arguing with someone who’s being deliberately inflammatory, and everyone agrees that yes the page on trees shouldn’t be mostly about lynching black people or whatever - that page is going to be edited again by a new account within days. All the decent people stand to win is a temporary, hard fought knowledge that a tiny piece of the internet isn’t quite as toxic as it was before, and will be again, and they lose so much energy and good will if they don’t like arguing. And for the dickheads, the entire thing is win-win.
I don’t know how to prevent that, other than a much stricter attitude to anonymous/ new account edits and offensive arguments, and detecting patterns like ‘this account always makes innocuous edits within minutes of this other person making controversial ones’, but that’s a bit more tightly controlled than Wikipedia could / should be.
(I mean the other solution is some sort of mandatory therapy and socialising courses for people who actively enjoy trolling / shit stirring / making people angry, but that would be a little beyond my or Wikipedia’s remit, so)
I mean my experience has been different. When I revert it reverts it and the person I think could go revert your revert. There are higher level people that can lock the article or whatnot but I don’t think they see the reversion of their edit unless they go look or maybe when logged in they get a message. I think if enough reversions go through one of the higher level folk maybe get pinged. I had to revert it back to the book list like 3 or 4 times then it stayed for awhile. Although I should look and see if its accurate but then I have to go look up the book and ugh.
I have seen worse stuff on Instagram and Reddit than I have seen on the fediverse… and I use the fediverse far more.
it is impossible for an instance to be “removed” from the Fediverse
That’s just how the internet works.
As with Wikipedia, I saw the same stuff with articles regarding religious topics that were just heavily guarded by a neckbeard atheist who had unreasonable expectations.
Financial interests pay people to edit.
Mysteriously my ip is banned from editing when I tried to view talk on a suspect edit, even though I have never once edited a page or even accessed that part by this ip. None on former ip’s either.
Ip is on some shady brazillian blacklist so maybe that is it idk, everyone just trusting shady internet players.
we are a den of scum and villany. You know. Places where like han solo hangs out.
It’s pretty cool being a member of a den of iniquity.
Meh. I’m holding out for wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I can bring villainy and snacks, maybe some sandwiches or something?
Do not view Wikipedia as the only source of truth. And please relax your soul in face of online drama.
I think Wikipedia itself says that it is just an entry into topics. To confirm the things that are written there you check sources.
It is pretty fucking toxic if you’re not a Linux sheep or violent-leftist.
Love it. Those hypocritical fucks will rue the day they fuck with Tux.
linux sheep
bruh
Well, it should be toxic for Reich Wingers
ok bye
Thanks, another recommendation for my block list then :3
i’m a peaceful leftist and support criticism of fascism. if that makes me toxic then you’re the problem :3
How so?
The mainstream fediverse instances are definitely leftist, but there are also other instances that are politically on the right (e.g. poa.st and FSE) and some smaller ones that are welcoming to whoever regardless of political ideology. There are really instances for just about everything, which is what I like about fedi. You don’t have to associate with any instances you don’t like nor do they. That’s the part that gives you more freedom than what you get on mainstream socials. On mainstream social media, you are bound to their rules whether you like it or not. On Fedi, you aren’t. You can always host your own instance, build your own platform, and customize the client app to fit your needs.
Since anything non-left isn’t really accepted on most listing sites, the easy way of looking up alternative instances is just by looking up some of the public block lists and visiting or joining the instances on those lists. Good example: https://codeberg.org/oliphant/blocklists/src/branch/main/blocklists/mastodon/gardenfence.csv
Just have to do the opposite as per usual.
Linux wins vs Windows (when it comes to user-control and stability). Immutable distributions allow reset to prior state, can Windows do that? Thanks for the bait by the way.
People try to act like Wikipedia is some kind of miracle when it’s founded and run by fash.
Good luck editing anything on that site. Total shitstorm.
founded and run by fash
wait what? that’s new to me. what’s the deal?
Sounds like nonsense hyperbole
Source? I donate both my time and money to Wikipedia, so pretty invested on making sure it’s a force for good.
Wikipedia certainly isn’t wrong, the Fediverse is filled with so much political extremism, made worse by the Tankie Developers
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works to see more of how widespread tankies and their extreme bigotry and violent rhetoric spreads across the fediverse
Note this person is a Zionist promoting a community where they encourage Jewish ethnic surpremacy.
It’s true, check the various pages of info collected by other users. And he’ll ban you for calling it out.
But he won’t ban the nazis! He was on Voat for a reason.
- Source needed
Is that the same person?
I got banned by Goat for reporting that person. That person did not get banned.
Goat banned you for calling out fascism, unheard of.
So no?
I don’t think the conclusion you have reached is reasonable. By the logic you are running on every community is every bad thing anyone has ever posted and every ban would be grounds for de-federalization.
You got banned for specifically using “Zio” – A term coined by David Duke. I asked you to use a different phrase instead, such as zionist, zionazi or anything else, but you insisted on using Zio.
Your ban has expired by now anyway, I don’t dish out perm-bans unless it’s absolutely neccessary
For more info see my my post about previous ban there where Goat got banned on DB0 for going full Zionist himself and somehow DB0 is tankies.
Is this the part you wanted to highlight? Because this seems to be about you being a pro china genocide denier who was down voted for that point. I don’t get how you are getting “full zionist” from this.
No the rest of the thread where Goat goes full Zionist.
That’s not at all true
Skimmed through the article and something picked my attention, the numbers given in the “325000 posts analyzed”. The way its given, it makes seem like big numbers, but if you calculate what is the percentage of the numbers given, it’s less than 1%. Can’t check the linked source, but it seems like a classical “lying with statistics”.
And besides, text seems written in a way to give the impression site moderation for smaller sites is too stupid to block bad actors, and that only the paternalism of bigger sites can solve this implied issue.
The entire tone of the article feels… condescending? (not sure the exact feeling). It feels off in the way information is presented, like subtle disdain in the writing voice.
1.) This is part of the background narratives being pushed by the rich and powerful that we need AI and big tech to moderate us when the opposite is true, we need more humans involved in moderation who have a stake in their community.
2.) The prevailing winds in the tech journalism sphere have always been strangely blowing against the Fediverse since the beginning. The simplest possible explanation to me is there is a lot of money in writing off the Fediverse as a cool nerdy space that nonetheless is an unrealistic solution for everybody else and pushing the axiom that a Harvard MBA is needed to translate the Fediverse into a product the public can actually use.
You will NOT notice this same prevailing winds against for profit corporate social networks like Bluesky and Threads… and it is a curious thing isn’t it…
Having everything everyone ever interacts with channeled through the same four fucking websites obviously sucks and doesn’t currently–and likely never can–scale.
Reddit power Mod turning their attention to Wikipedia and abusing its TOS & users of that site as well now too?
Oh you mean like jordanlund?
Ex(?) Reddit power mod, current awful lemmy.world mod?
I will never understand why that person thinks Lemmy should be moderated like Reddit. Reddit’s moderation policy was at the behest of advertisers; we have no such masters to answer to here.
I couldn’t say, as I’m not familiar with them.
i’m so fucking jealous
Youn could follow that link and become pretty familiar with them.
What happened to Wikipedia’s neutrality policy?
Nothing?
The 325,000 tells you it’s 1%, plus the 1% is split into several categories already anyways. I don’t see how these statistics are misleading.
The crappiness of this section has been noted
Someone put that on in the last 12 hours, and since then, some anonymous person just deleted the entire section lol.
I legit feel really grateful, I’d been going down a bit of a ‘either every source of information is corrupt and there’s no hope, or I’m losing my mind’ rabbit hole. I haven’t quite pulled the plug on Reddit yet, which may be contributing to that.
I prefer the whole ‘major additions and changes should be introduced in the talk section of a page so it can be discussed by the committee of reasonable good faith adults with lots of spare time and patience’ approach to Wikipedia editing, but in retrospect that may be a wee bit idealistic in current times. So the ‘one person complains and documents, another person flags, and another just deletes the entire thing’ is a process that may be a good compromise between The Way Things Should Be and how to edit Wikipedia with consensus and without being harassed by neo Nazis.
