"I will never suggest Lemmy to people" - 196 users on the Fediverse's harassment of women

I run a few communities that I would consider to be fairly women-oriented, or at least I would expect them to be interested. I do not expect many men to be interested, and hey that's okay. I welcome anyone who wants to, but no harm if it's not your thing.

But any post that gets made gets downvoted to hell. I routinely have to moderate and remove posts of "Why is this here" and "This is stupid" even though there are people who enjoy it, they are just swarmed by other commenters, and it's made my members less active.

It's pretty clear how people vote and act here, I'm coming up on 2 years here and it's been like how you'd expect. Downvotes don't mean "I don't think this adds to the conversation" or "This is appropriate", they mean "I personally don't like this" here, and I think that kills a lot of our smaller communities.

Exactly why my instance has downvotes disabled
- I deeply appreciate your decision to do that :3
Apparently mods can and do ban people who just downvote everything they see, there's even been posts here about it.

Perhaps this is the solution?
- It is, I just wish it wasn't. I don't want to ban people for having negative opinions, but there are a lot of people who only downvote, and for them it's the only option. There also aren't tools to easily automate it.
- Yes. The correct solution is to kick them out. Why are they even there if it isn't to participate? If the topic is inappropriate, make a report and let the mods handle it.
I've experienced this (though on a much smaller scale), Lemmy should have the option to disable downvotes for users not subscribed to a community, or at least not members of the instance
- I would love this
- I really like the idea of having to be subscribed to a community in order to be able to vote. It would encourage people to use the correct tools (subscribe/block) if they like or don't like a community itself.
Downvotes don’t mean “I don’t think this adds to the conversation” or “This is appropriate”, they mean “I personally don’t like this” here, and I think that kills a lot of our smaller communities.

Yet another nasty redditism inherited by Lemmy... and frankly that's why I think that we should have multiple types of downvote, this way people can express their disagreement in a fast and pseudo-anonymous way without fucking everything up.
- It's just the internet, not necessarily a redditism.
  
  And instead of a rainbow of downvoting options, just disable showing the vote counter.
  
  This way, you can still downvote, but nobody sees the end result except maybe mods and admins for moderation purposes.
  
  You can still use the upvote/downvote ratio to sort comments or posts in your feed, but it would be working under the hood instead of out in the open.
- Kind of like slashdot modding of yore? I don’t recall if they still do it, but they had multiple positive and negative tags for moderation.
Very disappointing to find out the real reason why women-oriented communities aren't exactly thriving here. But not surprising, I guess, although I was expecting better from a platform that seems so generally left wing. Can't even expect the men here to stomp that shit out. And now I'm waiting for someone to come and respond something along the lines of "not all men" while not addressing or confronting the issue or taking any steps to push for change.

Edit: aren't admins able to see who is downvoting? So basically the admins of your instance are just sitting back and allowing certain people to ruin things for others in communities that don't concern them?
- I can, but the problem is how do you sort out genuine downvoters from as you put them, the stompers? I've been working with a few other admins to have a more automated solution. Right now I have to go into the database and do queries about once a month to find trends
- I was devastated from the most recent US election as I learned a similarity between all political views is hating women. On another note, it's been 17 hours and I am immune to sarcasm; NoT aLL mEn
- So basically the admins of your instance are just sitting back and allowing certain people to ruin things for others in communities that don't concern them?
  
  Yes.
I think I understand why one of your communities is getting downvoted, it probably attracts some dedicated megas. I'll try to go in and upvote to counter act. I'm not a fan, but I'll try to help out.

Reddit used to have a rule that you couldn't downvote more than 3 or 4 posts in any community for a certain period. They went inactive while still showing as active. I think that might have been the beginning of fuzzy votes, but turned into so much more shittyness. It still might be a good solution for here. I still think mods should also be able to tag users as default, it's really hard to remember who was hateful yesterday and troll baiting, but acting all nice today.
Thanks for running those communities. I try to post to one of them where I can (I.e., make memes), but I’m not really a content creator. I just like to lurk in comments and respond when I feel like it’s worth me putting in my opinion or effort.

I’m aligned with your perspective. Hard to create or promote content when people downvote it due to hive mind. It’s discouraging and unwelcoming because it sends the signal “why is this here, you don’t belong in Lemmy”.
- Thank you, Zoomies, that means a lot, honestly. I'm not one either, but I try to keep them going. I see the upvotes, people enjoy it, but I think many are a bit nervous to comment, but it'll grow eventually. I'm going to put some time on this over the next week to automate something I think

Yup, that's a problem. Specially because, once the gender ratio gets too skewed towards one side (it is), the Petrie multiplier kicks in; then the sexism targets each woman more and more frequently.

Potential solutions that I see for the problem:

Perhaps creating a few instances for women? I don't mean instances to talk only about feminism, but for general stuff. With higher standards against harassment.
Better mod policing against harassment. Collective action, so it's easy to say and hard to do it, I know.

The admins could try banning sexist men, but that'll never happen
- The admins of what? There is no singular "admins" of the Fediverse. That's kind of the whole point.
- I think that it would be a good start. But only a start; sexism is a social problem, so even if you ban the individuals saying sexist stuff, you still see sexism elsewhere.
  
  And even if you ban overtly sexist users, others will keep:
  
  focusing on topics typically enjoyed by men, and typically disliked by women;
  
  interpreting what each other says based on masculine social norms;
  
  assuming that they're dealing with other men unless explicitly told otherwise;
  
  etc.
  
  That's still aggravating, you know? You can't pinpoint why but it still makes you feel unwelcome.

I do agree that the reports and downvotes of topics geared toward women are very widespread which is exhausting, and can make it hard to talk about the things you want to. Most of the virulent, misogynistic comments get removed quickly but often the damage is already done by then. I have learned over the years on the internet that sometimes I should let womens', trans' and other races' people's spaces be their spaces, and check carefully if whatever I have to say really adds to the conversation or just minimizes/drowns out the opinions of the minority audience the community is for. So I have had the urge to participate but have backed off. I'm a bit torn because the lack of activity can also make a community feel unwelcoming, but I am concerned that even my most well-intentioned comments could have a blind spot or inherent bias that makes it also unwelcoming.

The solution I see is that a woman safe-space instance is needed, whose admins ban misogony, unhelpful comments and reports, mass downvoting etc., to the point where some might feel the actions are like PTB. Beehaw has a strict moderation stance, they even defedded from lemmy.world due to the amount of toxicity they had to deal with, but they are able to curate a more welcoming experience. We are still "early days of Reddit", it will take time and effort from users of all genders to make it a better place.

relevant discussions:

[email protected] true colors: https://lemmy.cafe/post/10574267
incredible find: https://lemmy.cafe/post/10217719
epic ratio: https://lemmy.cafe/post/9597634
lemmy is a worse platform for women than reddit was: https://lemmy.cafe/post/4821164

this issue of such a massive proportion can only be solved with intention—it’s not getting fixed by accident. recognizing the problem is the first step.

I'm not quiet about being a woman, but have yet to receive dms or inappropriate responses or dismissals due to that fact (via lemmy).

EDIT: although elsewhere in this post's comment section I just received such a dismissal by someone who thought I was a man. Indeed, this is the direction in gender space along which I am used to experiencing such behavior, and it is why I have chosen to emphasize the fact that I am a female with a vagina so much in recent years: to get women to stop harassing me.

So I'll shout it out here: I'm a woman, if anyone has a problem with that or just wants to talk about it, please reach out.

I want to help solve the problem but I need to see it better first. I only ever see cherry-picked examples like you have collected here instead of seeing it in the wild. Don't get me wrong, the cherry-picked examples are bad, but I need more than a handful of outliers to really understand the problem and where it comes from before I can understand what I can do to help.
- I am a male with a penis but it is a very feminine penis and I stand in solidarity with your vagina. In fact,. Ny.penis' name is Cassandra, which is neither here nor there but it is indeed a fact.
  
  Being serious for a moment though: I agree with your rational approach here. I have found Lemmy to be more hostile than reddit overall, and while I condemn hostility based on gender or race (I very much applaud hostility based on religion though) I think we NEED THIS SO FUCKING BADLY.
  
  The entire internet has become a bland cesspool of meaningless garbage. I think the current state of things has proven that what inevitably begins as a laudable attempt to stomp out hhate speech (which I condemn) the window invariably gets wider and wider until meaningful dialogue is silenced.
  
  We should be very fucking hostile towards Nazis. We should be hostile towards avaricious governments and unchecked human greed. We should be hostile towards proselytization, and anyone that cant understand that freedom FROM religion is as, or more important than, freedom OF religion. And while I can see the need to ban outright calls for violence as being necessary, the ubiquity of iron-clad moderation makes me very concerned about what will happen when there is a legitimate need to react against violent acts from entrenched power systems towards the oppressed.
  
  While the comments here about "go make your own instance" are dismissive, I do agree with then in spirit. I want to participate in communities that eschew group think and promote real dialoguue. Especially dialogue I don't agree with.
  
  The power of the fediverse is that if someone wants to copy the bland corporate safe space that is the rest of the internet there is fuck all stopping them.
- these aren’t cherry picked? these are quite normal—that’s why i started collecting them because they were so easy to find.
  
  i respect your expression of experience of not having been on the receiving end of this that much—i will thank you to respect mine!
Hard agree about it being worse then Reddit. It's gotten to the point where I don't engage as much as I want to and thinking about going back to Reddit. I'm sure there are people that would like that.
Oh God I remember seeing that "incredible find" comment in the wild and being like, "What the fuck? Who thinks like that?"
- and the number of upvotes 🤮 there is so much work to do and so many awful people out there
- All I get is "unable to connect"
  
  Ironic

One of my first experiences on Lemmy was a bunch of mens rights activists celebrating a women's tech job fair being overrun by men.

I'm not surprised that this is a problem. Lemmy's main demographic is the tech obsessed, that's always going to be filled with misogynistic neckbeards.

Don't say always.

It's defeatist.
- You're a man quipping back on a post about men forcing themselves to women's spaces.
  
  I used to think differently, but men who force their way into conversations just to say "not all men" are part of the problem.
  
  There's no actual understanding, just correction and dismissal.
the tech obsessed, that’s always going to be filled with misogynistic neckbeards.

Generalizations are hateful.
- It's a good job misogynists aren't people. I might feel bad otherwise.
- No reason to out yourself lol

It's especially jarring coming from Mastodon, which is broadly more diverse than Lemmy. I've witnessed some really questionable comments here during the last year. I really hope something can be done to improve things. I think a feminist-specific instance might be the best option, much in the way someplace like Hexbear has managed to create a fairly strong community bloc with strong core beliefs.

Sadly hexbear doesn't have a ton of really active comms specific to women. Though at least they're very aggressive removing misogyny across the instance. It's been categorically less stressful posting on hexbear vs the rest of lemmy simply because I'm not then checking an inbox with replies/dms calling me 'removed' or 'it' or other charming insults.

Removing downvotes makes sense too, though I also like keeping them and using them to ban people abusing it. The voter is only visible to admins though.
- Hexbear might be safe for binary women, but as far as drag can tell, they're still sexist against a few million other gender identities. Drag went to Hexbear and searched for discussions about dragself pronouns. It wasn't good.
I don't think creating more echo chambers is the right thing to do tbh
- Echo chambers of...gender equality?

Not good. We need Lemmy and the fediverse represent all people as a whole if er hope to become the standard backbone of internet communication.

Thanks for the enlightening thread. And that puts a dampener on the enthusiasm that I was feeling for this place. Not that I should be surprised or anything.

I might misunderstand how things work here but it sounds to me like if entire communities are getting bombed by downvotes, then it's the various admins across instances that are allowing this to happen. And it puts a bit of a dark cloud over this place now for me.

Blahaj.zone has disabled downvotes, so at least that part can't be weaponised against folk on our instance.

As for the rest of it, yeah, lemmy is better than reddit, but it did get a lot of users from reddit, so its still closer to reddit culture than I'd like. But, it's also got a lot of better aspects than reddit ever did, and hopefully that trend will continue
- I think it would be interesting to see how the experience of women pans out by instance. I can imagine it being a fundamentally different experience on blahaj or beehaw, when compared to more generalist instances like .world
One of our admins was banning people if they saw you only downvoting. This place is so much better than reddit, that growing pains are fine with me.
- Hello the based dept called they want to speak to that admin
Another issue that's starting to pop up in "inclusive" communities that don't have active enough mods and admins is users had to start policing their own spaces, and then the admins get upset with the vitriol directed at the trolls and force the community to repsect the trolls and wait until the reports eventually get through.
- Fuck off with your targeted bullshit drama.
  
  Not only are so you juvenile as to to bring it up in this context, you're clearly more interested in being a passive aggressive little bitch about the thing or you would never have seen this post in the first place after you blocked OP like a responsible adult.
- come up with new drama dude this is so tired

Back when I used Reddit, one of my favorite subs was TrollX. If we had a sub with that spirit, it would be a good start.

Are there secret communities on Lemmy? Not that secret communities should be a default, but I was invited to a secret sub on Reddit years ago that was all women. It was a true safe space from harrassment, where we could talk about feminine things that we knew wouldn’t gain traction in main subs. I have no idea how it started, but I knew that users who were invited to join had previously been vetted by the sub’s mods - they saw that I’d made feminist posts and multiple comments about being a woman, and didn’t go around picking fights. It was like a background check.

I don’t believe there is any one solution, but starting with dedicated communities (in the spirit of TrollX), with mods that smack down misogyny and (actual) trolls, sounds like the best way to start.

Let's get away from the "X chromosome" bit now that we're not stuck with Reddit's bad names
- It doesn’t need to be called the same thing.
  
  I’m also not sure if it matters, but Troll X and Two X Chromosomes were very different subs. Troll X was more of a spin-off, and was never strictly for XX women - it was trans-inclusive by default. That’s what I’m hoping for here too.
Yeah private communities on Reddit are an actual delight. /r/centuryclub was an unexpectedly fun community to be a part of. I kinda miss the memeing that went on in intro posts on there.

Is there anything others can do to help? Feddit.uk wouldn't tolerate this but I'm not sure what a regular user can do apart from look out for harassment, call it out and report promptly

It seems to be one of the problems where Lemmy feeling a bit like old Reddit is really, really bad. Remembering from back then, it took many years of concerted effort and dedicated subreddits attacking sexism (that were in turn harassed and hated on by the "mainstream" Reddit audience, like SRS for example) to slowly change the culture. And it's not like Reddit is some sort of safe haven even now.

So, something like Hexbear's the_dunk_tank, but against bigotry? Not sure any of the admins on the Fediverse would allow a community like that. Everyone in charge here seems very anti-drama, which is another word for pro-status-quo

Lemmy is a relatively small and niche platform, imo small platforms tend to be like that. First men show up, then transfems, and then cis women. We seem to be at the second stage and while things can be done better (like a female only instance) I do think things will get better.

In Mastodon, this is typically solved with defederation, block lists, and admins enforcing mod policies. How come this approach doesn't work for Lemmy? Is it not decentralized enough?

Yes. Just look at .world. As long as world is still federated into other communities, the fediverse is not federated.
it’s not decentralized enough is exactly the answer. lemmy.world holds a huge portion of users and communities despite having middling at best moderation. illustrating this, one of my favorite communities (196) just recently tried to force everyone to migrate to .world. fortunately, the community at large openly rejected that absurd move, but it definitely exemplified the centralizing forces at play.

I would moderate it :(

You don't need to ask anyone's permission to create a Lemmy community.

Tbf, i wouldn't recommend Lemmy to anyone i know either for more reasons including this

Examples please?

I think it's much better then literally anywhere else on the internet. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but unfortunately everywhere else is worse. As such, I'm not sure whaz the solution is for Lemmy in particular.

Everywhere where it seems "better" is just moderation making it seem like that.

There’s many internet spaces that are better than lemmy regarding misogyny, any platform that does not have a strong majority of cis men is probably better than lemmy.
- Which platform exactly is that :D
So you're saying the moderators on Lemmy aren't making the space seem safe for women?
- I haven't seen any comments not removed by moderators. Unfortunately there's a time discrepancy between comment made and action taken.
  
  If this time discrepancy didn't exist, I think we'd be perfectly fine.

And this I why I don't either

I had much more toxic behavior at reddit, but it is hard to imagine any safe space online anywhere.

it definitely depends where you go on all platforms. blahaj zone is good, world is bad. places moderated by mods with actual experience are generally good, places moderated by jordanlund and similar get pretty toxic pretty fast. :(

wait, what? we have women in here? where?

I do get the joke; Even so, to this post's credit, that this comment [at time of writing] is +3 is a great representation of their challenges.

The whole point is about people feeling legitimate using the platform. Jokes feeding on the trope "there aren't women on the Internet" reinforces alienation. It makes sense they wouldn't feel comfortable if dismissal is the community upvoted response to them -already- feeling unwelcome.
- I really don't see how upvoting a silly joke is a representation of anything.
  
  It was solely meant for some giggles, to relax the conversation about a serious topic a slight bit. If you will, it's more like karma whoring [no pun intended].

Drag you killed blahaj, you are an extremely impressive troll.

Off topic drama farming. Nobody asked.

The is why dull_mens_club gives me really bad vibes. Any similar community aimed at women would be harassed into oblivion.

Any similar community aimed at women would be harassed into oblivion.

And why is that a problem with dull men's club? I mean I'm not subbed to it but it occasionally appears in my feed (I browse /all) and it seems to be just what it says on the cover: A dull men's club.
- Drag has had mixed experiences on that community when it comes to sexism. Not what this post is about, though.

You win some, lose some, it’s all the same to me.

It's your duty to protect your fellow ~~men~~ women. If we don't stand together, we fall alone.