Most people know this in some capacity, but it’s not talked about enough: the shape of the platform massively shapes its culture. Every mechanism, intentional feature or not, is a factor in resulting user behavior and should be accounted for.

Reddit Karma was (shitty) reputation from the start, but Slashdot user IDs became one despite being mere sequential identifiers; negative user feedback such as downvotes can be harmful to communities (yet, users without an outlet may lash out in other ways e.g. reports); even how the platform communicates with users influences them; and so on.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be nice and incentivize others to do the same, but unless the system naturally leads to the desired behavior, you’ll have a bad time in the long term because building culture by interactions doesn’t scale. By the time you realize there’s a shift, it’s too late; interactions will compound and affect how the average user acts faster than you can try to course-correct.

I wish lemmy was more experimental, because by building a clone of reddit, we’ve copied too many of its faults. We’ve already got gatherings to complain about mods, and the one time devs considered changing a core component, discussion was killed by an onslaught of users. Problems with the current setup that were brought up then will likely never see that amount of people thinking about how to solve them.

Contrast with Mastodon, which gets crap for not being a faithful copy of twitter, but their reasoning for not including quote-reblogs is understandable. They’re now putting a lot of thought into how to add them safely. Not ignoring functionality users want, but also not ignoring how it will affect culture, that’s compromise.

I’d like it if we could talk more about how our platforms work and, particularly, how they affect us, because that’s a big way we can build better platforms, right up there with being nice.

Whenever I post such things, I get a small wave of displeased people. Rarely get thanks, though. Even if it takes a bit of effort, and I inevitably find yet more stuff. That’s ok, praise obviously isn’t the point.

But it demoralized me a little, how there’s always downplaying. It’s never enough. I can say Brendan Eich is homophobic, ideally you shouldn’t support him, and someone will tell me he invented javascript, and that makes it ok (my entire point is thus null, I am overreacting).

Your thanks encourage me to uselessly annoy and present no arguments a bit longer. Thank you.

Downvoted for stating a relevant, verifiable fact. Incredible.

we’ve created the Ladybird Browser Initiative , a US 501©(3)

The inaugural board of directors:

• Andreas Kling (President)

I’m a bit hesitant to comment further because this thread is already quite long, but assuming it’s a genuine question I can send a DM and we can talk there, if you want?

Seeing that you replied to a comment that’s almost a week old, I wouldn’t be surprised if you do.

I really hope no one reading thinks this redditor behavior is as cool as the author does. Dude seemingly can’t get the point they’re arguing against, so this is all that’s left, I guess.

Yeah buddy, this is to sleep better at night. You’ve shown you’re not stopping the high-school tier debate club logic and the goofy-ass mic-drops.

Sure, ignore him being pals with the homophobe CEO and welcoming Mr. genocide because he made cool tech. Because being a developer puts you above mere ethical issues, and saying “I’m apolitical” makes you immune to criticism.

And lets ignore that it’s been changed since. People ‘never’ change, so lets fuck up their entire career and public image for life.

Andreas hasn’t changed, that’s half the point of my comment. Did you read nothing? The PR was sent by someone else, merged by someone else, disguised with a different title, and all after his departure announcement. Where’s his change?

I’ve defended his work, his skill, the very idea of Ladybird, the need for more browser engines, even the tooling, but unless people shut up and never criticize him, it’s just not enough for you.

If you think that comment outweighs all the positive impacts Andreas is making, that’s your prerogative. I’m not interested in holding everyone up to such high expectations.

“Don’t unnecessarily chum up to homophobes and genocide defenders” aren’t high expectations. They’re ridiculously low-hanging fruit, considering our history. Absolutely pathetic excusing of his actions.

I think voters started being counted a while back? I’ll see if I can find the release notes.

Edit: there we go, from the docs.

An active user is someone who has posted, commented, or voted on our instance or community within the last given time frame.

It’s a little complicated, but it doesn’t look good. If you’re interested, I wrote a comment about it.

A single line of documentation? How about looking into some context? Hurt feelings my ass, Andreas isn’t some innocent, silly little guy who never does anything questionable.

And which cause exactly are you talking about? Because I don’t know about you, but I’ll stand for real, marginalized people over lines of code of a screen any day.

What’s surprising is his complete lack of care that Eich is probably still against gay marriage.

It’s not just a few interactions, it’s Andreas’ entire attitude around these topics. You absolutely can judge people and guess their beliefs from their online actions. Put the pieces together, why don’t you?

I’m not “separating the art from the artist” when the artist is alive and frolicking with a homophobe. That’s very much relevant to me, I see LGBT folks being harmed every day due to such indifference.

Maybe I’m the odd one out, and do tell me if you think that’s the case, but when I can, I don’t support homophobes with my wallet nor my words.

It’s like voting with your wallet, but for free. Image is a tool, just like capital, and I feel that contributing to theirs is a form of (albeit minor) support. Maybe I should’ve used supporting, or another word. Point is, Andreas does that, and I think it’s because he likes Brendan. Thinks he’s great, shouldn’t have joined the people decrying him for being a homophobe.

People who care about LGBT folks don’t usually like homophobes, and aren’t usually against decrying them. I don’t think this is a good sign for Andreas. That’s the kind of thing that you need to keep in mind when you see that first PR.

Are you trying to convince me that making a neutral meme about a shitty person’s success is equatable to supporting/being a nazi?

No, I tried to make that clear. I actually don’t get how you read it that way. Also, the meme isn’t neutral when you consider how he views Eich, just like it isn’t originally neutral towards Gaben and Steam when gamers use it.

Dream, sorry if managed to bungle up and completely misinterpret that point. I feel like I was answering with something important to note, but can’t even tell anymore. I’m physically tired, so maybe I should’ve returned later. In any case, I hope this won’t bother you for long.

I honestly can’t tell if there’s a disguise. Maybe there isn’t! He seems to genuinely and stubbornly believe in the apolitical-centrist stuff, which you wouldn’t think him capable of since he’s so intelligent when it comes to programming… but programming intelligence is not necessarily applicable everywhere else.

You’re defending him—intentionally or not—because you’re giving legitimacy to the idea that, somehow, the party that kicked him out is in the wrong, not the guy that defends genocide. It’s likely there would be complaints regardless of their official reasoning, because Vaxry’s problem is beyond reason.

I feel it all comes to the same unhinged idea that because someone is a bad person, everything they touch, create or any person engaging with them is also a bad person.

Not at all? There’s a chance I edited my comment after you replied. I’ve made many edits, and I’m not exactly keeping track. Please reread the end of it:

For all its issues, I do hope Ladybird succeeds as a new browser engine because the internet needs more of those. But I’m not touching or otherwise supporting it unless they get their shit sorted.

I hope the project succeeds, that it helps the internet. Doesn’t mean I must like or support the person behind it, specially when they’re acting this way. I believe there are others like me. I would like them to be informed as well.

The idea that I am not allowed to praise Brave browser features because of something unrelated its founder did is ridiculous.

Good news: I never said that. Go on, praise Ladybird. Someone asked about details on “Andreas’ gender issue,” I replied with details. Because I’m tired of people defending it in isolation, I brought more details. Any criticism is of Andreas actions, based on Andreas’ own actions.

I refuse to believe a reasonable, healthy mind sees someone cheering for queerphobes and thinks there’s nothing wrong with that. “He’s just interacting, he doesn’t do the bad things” has to be the most insane or trollish response to this, because it shows you don’t understand or outright don’t care about how this harms people.

By that absurd logic, if I like interacting with Nazis on the daily it’s fine, so long as I don’t actually pull the trigger on the jews myself. When people call me a Nazi, I’ll just say I’m apolitical. That’s how Andreas describes himself, by the way. Apolitical.

I’m baffled by your comment.

Read again, it’s not just interacting, he’s praising, promoting, and gladly and voluntarily engaging with these people. Not “the wrong people.” Say it with me: far-right misinformation propagandists, queerphobes, a genocide defender. Not “wrong”, with scare quotes, but actually shitty people. And I’m not even done with that comment.

About your ridiculous defense of vaxry, I’m going to be straight with you: violating CoC or not is irrelevant. If you manage a community that toxic, don’t see anything wrong with it, and don’t want to do anything about it, it is normal to want nothing to do with you. No magical binding social contract is necessary for this—if you suck, people don’t want to deal with you.

Collaborating in FDO isn’t a natural right, it’s a privilege earned by contributing. Vaxry made people not want to be there. Vaxry was detracting.

Your entire reply reeks of “it’s not that bad,” which to me reads as “I don’t think those things are bad” and sincerely makes me not want to talk with you further if that’s truly the case.

EDIT: So, I checked your profile, and you have a giant comment thread on things you dislike about DEI, and you also do mental gymnastics to defend the right. Cool, cool. And a comment equivalating “what if kamala did the sieg hail” to the question “what if elon did it?”

I’ll give my take on it. Something many fail to grasp is that it’s not about a singular thing, you need to look at the context. Let’s go through some of it:

• Andreas Kling, lead developer of (now-)Ladybird, rejects PR that changes “he” to “they” in documentation.
  • This is the most frequently mentioned example of Andreas’ issues.
  • The “he” in question referred to any user, where “they” is already commonly used instead by everything from companies, to news, to the Linux Kernel docs (an arguably much more important software project).
  • Andreas’ exact words: “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
  • Later, someone publicly tried to explain to him why that’s not cool; he doubled down.
• Andreas Kling really likes interacting with far-right, homophobic, or otherwise controversial persons.
  • Here’s him calling Brendan Eich, known homophobe, kicked out of Mozilla for… being a homophobe, now CEO of the foremost crypto browser, infamous for its bravery and attracting like-minded fans, “Senpai.”
  • Here’s him cheering for Brendan Eich, so you don’t think it’s an isolated instance. The only reason I won’t cite others is that I’m frankly tired of scrolling through his tweets, I should’ve saved these last time I went dumpster diving.
  • Here’s him welcoming Vaxry, infamous for the toxic community of his Hyprland project to the point of being kicked out of the freedesktop.org project. He’s also on record saying “I do believe there could be arguments to sway my opinion towards genocide”. There is a print of this, somewhere. I will find it and put it here.
  • He also often interacts with other far-right users on Twitter, a platform he describes something along the lines of “full of positive energy.” I’ll try to find this again and add it here, too.
• There’s more. I realize I’ll need to edit this comment anyway to add sources, so I’ll add to it as I go.

Would I look at that PR and say I’m never touching him with a ten-foot pole? Maybe that’s excessive. Would I ignore all the rest and say he’s just misunderstood? Hell no.

didn’t read, easy block, shoulda done this sooner

You streamed together a sequence of misunderstandings, fallacies and self-victimization into an incoherent pile of garbage that fails at actually responding to anything. Got it, got it, you’re god’s bravest warrior, resisting the authoritarianism of people who think others shouldn’t be forced to tolerate your immaturity whenever you act like a cunt. I’ll stop giving you attention now, so sorry.

Toxicity doesn’t “work fine,” it’s contagious and destructive. For projects, it slows progress. For communities in general, it reinforces bad behavior and pushes out newcomers, leading to more negative spaces, isolation, and stagnation, just off the top of my head. These were issues in older communities just as they are in modern ones.

I don’t see why we should abandon moderation for your benefit, at the expense of people who care.