Something I see a lot in the Fediverse and left wing spheres is people rejecting, or making enemies of imperfect allies. The video I shared paints a great picture of what it’s like.
Here is some examples I’ve seen, and what reactions they’ve been met with.
“I ditched Gmail for Proton” is met with “That’s terrible the CEO is a Trump boot licker”
“Posts on r/BuyCanadian” is met with “Why are you still using Reddit, it’s American?”
“I’m pro trans but, there are some things I’m not 100% onboard with” is met with “Harsh criticism & Ban”
“I sold my diesel SUV for an electric KIA” is met with “You shouldn’t support China or drive a SUV, buy European instead”
“I switched to Brave instead of Chrome” is met with “Brave sucks its American and still part of chromium”
etc.
I so often see people harshly criticize and alienate people that are mostly on their side, and might in the near future be fully on their side.
Instead I’d like to see responses like
“Hey fantastic that you switched to Proton away from Gmail, consider moving to Migadu as they’re an even better solution”
“Awesome that you’re buying Canadian, while you’re at it consider checking out Lemmy or PieFed”
“Great job switching to Electric, next time consider buying a smaller European car there are many great reasons why they are better”
“Great that you’re pro-trance, what’s stopping your from being onboard with XYZ? Maybe I can change your mind?”
“Nice Brave is already a lot better than Chrome, even better would be LibreWolf, also make sure to try out Kagi or Qwant instead of google”
You don’t change someone’s mind by criticizing them, you need to have a discussion and bring them over, tone matters. How do we stop these criticisms and alienating imperfect allies?
I always come back to the voting system criticism that I started in Reddit. Unfortunately, the voting system was brought to Lemmy, but it’s less “damaging” the way it’s used around here. Moreover, in Lemmy you can hide the voting system, which is the way I use this platform, with a positive effect in my social anxiety.
I believe the voting system is planned, primarily, as an “emotional pit”. With this term I mean it’s like having a sentiments pool of the community members points of view on some issue. A highly voted comment is ideology and enotionally-charged in a given way, and it’s usually read within the context that was provided by the emotional discharge of massively liking or not a comment. Try always to read a comment without the votes context in search of a different meaning of the author than what the community reads. This is also affected by the cultural framework of the participants in a community. Most prominent among these factors is the English language, which is not spoken daily by many users of Lemmy, frequently sending a tone that may sound harsh, flamboyant, ignorant, sloppy, etc. to native speakers.
So, going back to OP’s discussion, yes, I believe the voting system exacerbates the differences between the members of a community and casuals looking for knowledge about some issue. Communities are not random and neutral, they have defined affinities that frequently imply others which may remain hidden. When someone unrelated to a community comes with new knowledge for them to share to a seemingly familiar group of people, they are welcomed by the “champions” of the community in case. These '“champions” are just people immerse daily in a specific mindset and discourse, who also receive an overwhelming emotional support through votes, so their confidence is very high. Add to this that sometimes they even have the right to ban you if you don’t follow their rules and you get a lot of attitudes like the ones you describe.
Anyway, the use I do of the voting system is something that, I believe, levels the ground of discussions. I can’t see votes, I hide which instances are users coming from, and I only vote positive and reserve negative votes to, basically, comments and posts that go against human rights.