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.
The problem of reporting specific cases is that it could become cancel culture all over again. First option, I think, would be to try to correct issues in the article. Then, if they denied, then start suspecting of the site itself. And if already suspecting, it adds up to the site’s untrustworthiness.
What do you mean by cancel culture?
I feel like you are mistaking all acts of boycotting or mass comment submittal for “cancel culture”.
I am not arguing for DDOSing Wikipedia, to edit articles with a hostile intent, or of smearing Wikipedia people in public places…
…I am arguing for organizing a campaign to submit feedback on the articles about the Fediverse FROM people on the Fediverse that explain in their own words why they think the way Wikipedia describes the Fediverse is incomplete, problematic and misleading.
Those are two VERY different things and I see no danger in slipping into “Cancel Culture” because the basic objective isn’t to silence, hurt or destroy something it is to correct the narrative ABOUT US being pushed by a prominent source of information that should be beholden to people coming to it and saying “this isn’t right what you wrote about me”. They can disagree, but the more of us that argue the point in a genuine and substantiated way the harder it gets to ignore us and keep the distorted narrative intact.
I see. Sorry for jumping the gun.
Yeah, this needs to be brought to someone’s attention. It’s not just someone adding their personal opinion to the Fediverse article, but they’re also messing up a bunch of other articles, too. I’d almost call it vandalism. OP, maybe you could get together with some other editors and bring it up to an administrator / mods?