Probably going to be ignoring most replies here because I've seen the song that you people sing, especially when it comes to criticism of Lemmy, and it's predictable and boring (and a little alarming) now. If there was the feature here to disable notifications for a post I would use it but oh well. This is going to be my last post from this account anyway.

Last night I made a fairly controversial post discussing how 'blocking' works here on Lemmy. And let me tell you something, my eyes have been opened even wider about this place and a lot of the people here now. I started off angry about the fact that people can downvote troll you around here and there's nothing you can do about it but by the end of it, I was angry (or more accurately perturbed) about something else entirely. And that was watching blatant false info in the thread get upvoted like it's truth. In other words a lot of people around here actually prefer misinformation as long as it suits their vibes and circlejerk best. Just like the MAGAs that everyone here shits on. The pearl clutching and insults were expected, that's the most over exposed verse of the same old song that I've come to expect from this place. But what got to me and made me stop listening to what anyone had to say was watching everyone upvote incorrect information because it suited them best.

And on the subject of downvoting. The fact that the general consensus towards having someone go through your profile and downvote everything is "Lol loser they're just imaginary internet points. You should be cool and tough and beyond it all like me. Look at me! Look at how cool and awesome I am!" (along with other people then doing the same because they think it's funny or something) reduced my confidence in admins actually doing anything about harassment here to around 0.1%. So you can't use your own moderation tools because they're useless and you can't rely on help from admins or moderators either. Unless it's Ada because Ada is awesome and protective of users. In fact I reported the person on my other account as was suggested to me and I haven't heard anything since.

And I know why a lot of people here are so against proper blocking. It's the 'free speech' types that want the right to barge in anywhere, even when they've been explicitly told they're not welcome. They'll break down your locked front door to tell you how stupid you are anyway. That's why you get so many of the types around here that will go into !reddit@lemmy.world to complain about people talking about Reddit. And that's why seemingly every women-centric community was harrassed out of existence and why the only way for a women-centric community to survive around here is to take extra measures like making it women only and actively removing anyone that doesn't belong. Because apparently a lot of people here are spoiled toddlers that have never been told "no" in their lives, so they have to treated like toddlers.

And the thing that gets me most of all. Despite the outright hostility towards anyone that has something not 100% positive to say about how things work here and despite the clear history of hostility towards women and despite the fact that you can't really protect yourself from harrassment because the harrassor's free speech is more important or something, people here just can't fathom why anyone would choose a platform like Bluesky instead. Everyone and everything else is simply the enemy. But let me tell you, as an end user not trying to set up servers, it's not the infrastructure and design of a platform that makes it what it is, it's the users. So the reasons why people would choose Bluesky instead are less snarky and hostile neckbeards, women and LGBTQ+ people being allowed to exist without taking special measures and the fact that you can actually have confidence in the tools provided to you to moderate your own experience. I've been told that actually blocking properly would be impossible here because of how federation works. Well I'm sorry to say, that's a big glaring issue with this setup then.

I'm actually thinking of looking for somewhere else now. Bluesky is not my style but I wish there was a Reddit equivalent to it. The only thing keeping me here now is certain people that I've met and interacted with, who I would miss a lot now that I've got to know them a little (I repeat, the users make a platform what it is, not the technical specs). And you can be sure that if I'm on another platform and the subject of Lemmy comes up, I will be discussing exactly what I have experienced and seen here. And I look forward to seeing that get shared to some meta community here with everyone clutching their pearls and trying to figure out why anyone would possibly dislike this platform.

I might hold out for more app support for Piefed though. And just park on my Blåhaj account until then. But unfortunely that doesn't change the fact that potential new users are going to just keep getting chased away from here, while the clueless neckbeards that chased them try to figure out why people are going elsewhere.