this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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I've seen a few. Way less than in Reddit, it's mostly low-key, and instance admins get rid of them fast. However I often see people here saying that we should allow them in, and I think that it's a mistake, specially if trying to promote Lemmy among non-English speakers. Because a lot of them will be somehow the target of this sort of discrimination, and they won't stay here if they feel hostility against them.
The problem with that conflation between country and language is that it alienates linguistic minorities badly.
I'm not a minority speaker myself, mind you. But I got close ties with Talian (a cluster of Venetian varieties) due to familiar background, and I've interacted offline with the folks from the examples below.
Sometimes it's external prejudice; a Kaingang speaker "speaks injun" so she's assumed to be primitive and dumb in comparison with Portuguese speakers.
Sometimes it's internalised prejudice; like Talian speakers claiming that they speak "broken Italian mixed with broken Brazilian" instead of a variety from Veneto.
Sometimes it's questioning allegiance to the country; like "fuck off back to your Nazi country" if you speak Hunsrik (a German variety).
Sometimes it's erasure, like people claiming "minority speakers? Everyone speaks Portuguese here. I never saw one." (Pragmatically saying "I'll pretend that they don't exist because I don't think that they should exist on first place.")
Often it's also practical matters - like online services not allowing you to access the service in your native language, even when available (often there isn't), because you're assumed to speak something else based on your country. Or expecting you to consume content from somewhere else than your homeland, because of your language.
And, from online discussions plus reading, I conclude that it's the exact same deal elsewhere. It is not just "shit Brazil does" or even "shit New World does", it's everywhere - from Galicians to Okinawans, Saami to Xhosa, Pennsylvania "Dutch" and Maori speakers. Often with that feeling that you shouldn't open your mouth, that you belong to no place, that you coexist with people who hate you, that even if your language is part of your identity your identity is wrong anyway. It's gut-wrenching how much linguistic minorities get the short end of the stick because they're expected to speak the country language instead.
[Sorry for the long text.]
Back to Lemmy. Those people want to consume social media as much as everyone else. Specially in their native languages, as it gives them the sense of belonging to a community - "this was made for us, by one of us!". Memes, shitposting, a thought-provoking text, a meaningful discussion. And yet traditional social media consistently neglects them, I think that the Fediverse should welcome them with open arms - not just because it's convenient for them, but also for the ones already here.
However when "we" [the Fediverse] create instances that tie languages with countries, we're effectively telling them "nope, you are not welcome here", exactly like the traditional media does. "We" can and should do better.
Thank you for your detailed answer.
I really appreciate you typing that out (for me).
Oh no. I also see people suggest we need to attract users and generate content for Lemmy by any means. In my opinion, there is a good possibility we, as an 'Reddit alternative' not only accept people wo look for an alternative, but also the people who got banned there for good reasons, because they're a-holes. But if that is the way it plays out, we're going to be the more toxic little sibling of Reddit. I think argumentative people and things like re-post bots will kill engagement, if that's your way of handling things. It's a noble thing to want Lemmy to grow. But many people just don't thing it through, properly.
I get the appeal of a true free speech platform. But I learned about the necessity of moderation during the Covid-times while I was building a small PeerTube instance. After YouTube got a hold of the misinformation, PeerTube got flooded by their fake-news documentaries and the content creators got banned on the large platforms and went to PeerTube, uploading their daily lectures about "the truth". And the annoying people do yell the loudest. It drowns the regular stuff and it's a sure way of not attracting normal people ever again.
I can co-exist with all sorts of different people. But my approach of dealing with them on a federated platform would be: I want the biggots confined to their own space and blocked by default. And make it really uncomfortable for them on the rest of the instances/platform.
Yeah, that's classic prejudice and generally just being an a-hole to an individual you know little about.
I'm from Germany. It used to be a thing on the internet to make fun of people from Austria. Not because they speak differently, but because they were a minority on the internet. I don't think people do that any more. It's mainly a thing of the past and people learned to be better than that. Idk often there is a dynamic that people want to see someone below them. Especially if you're not at the top yourself, you 'need' someone in the hierarcy below you to re-affirm yourself. I think that's the main reason why things like that happen. It's not really hatred or anything against those people. But bad nonetheless. (And some people just don't know any better or don't think in the first place. We should strive for that.)
Yeah, that's stupid. Hunsrik isn't spoken in Germany. And 200 years ago when this seperated, Nazis weren't a thing.
Sometimes I get that. English it the lingua franca and people tell other people to speak the language that everyone there can understand. It's the same thing like when you're having dinner in a group, 3 people speak a different language. If they start talking amonst themselves in their native language, it kills the conversation and doesn't allow for participation for the rest of the group. It's the right thing to agree on a commonly spoken language then. But I also get the other side. If you're on vacation for weeks and only spoke english to people, it's kinda nice to meet the only other person speaking your language for once and you start chatting...
On the internet there are also technical reasons on top. To be able to moderate things, you need to be able to understand what is said. If you don't have moderators for a language, you sadly have to ban that language. Or be happy to have an unmoderated corner on your instance. I don't see a good way of handling this. (Except for growing a community in that language to a healthy size and have those moderators in place.)
But part of platforms like this is to provide a comfy corner for every niche interest. Providing for niche languages should be a part of that and we have the tools to do so.
I don't have too much insight about how it feels to be on that side. I live in a part of Germany with a bit of a dialect. Nagging people about how they speak is a thing. But I really appreciate that we have dialects and not every person I meet is exactly the same. I think most of the people I've talked to feel the same. And I myself feel attached to my region, maybe more so than to the nation as a whole. ...I'd have to think about that, you can't really compare the two things.
Then there are things like the "Low German" language. And I agree, regional languages and proper dialects are on the decline everywhere. But there is a consensus in society that we need to keep those alive. Many people do. And we even have (very little) regional TV program and some podcasts in low german.
But I have to make a distinction to dialects when talking about written language. You can't really write in dialect. Just speak. And hence things don't translate into the online-world.
100% agree. The Internet excels at connecting people all around the globe. It would be a shame if we couldn't broaden our horizon past re-creating the same borders we know from our real-world nations.
To summarize things: Thanks for your perspective. I agree. Judging by my own surroundings, I think most people embrace linguistic diversity. It's always more difficult to be part of a minority. But lots of people have made up their mind and are aware of that fact. There are people who don't know any better and there is a certain amount of idiots around. I think the first group of people isn't really a problem and we should push against discriminatory behaviour and small-mindedness. Platforms like Lemmy are good at connecting people and designed so they can cater for niche groups. We should use that to our advantage.
I agree with you that the best approach would be to let them have some "containment cages" here and there. They tend to attract legal trouble and get deplatformed anyway.
I remember seeing a bit of this in Krautchan. Sometimes it sounded like plain humour, but sometimes as punching down (like claiming that Austrians on the internet were actually German shitposters, since there was no internet in Austria), or some local hate boner against "Serwus".
Do you happen to have better examples?
Remember the conflation between country and language? Their logic goes like this: Hunsrik is just a fake name for German language (implicitly Standard German), and this gets "proved" by the fact that there's a Germany in the map but no "Hunsrikland". The same reasoning is the one used against Talian (the name doesn't help).
The "Nazi" association that people do is mostly to make the person look like the bad guy for speaking a minority language. It's the same thing with "batateiro" (roughly "potato guy"), to imply redneckness.
Perhaps not surprisingly it's the same sort of person who makes a big deal out of Portuguese as spoken in Brazil vs. in Portugal, Angola, etc., by pretending that "Brazilian Portuguese" is 1) internally homogeneous (nope) and 2) has some defining, linguistic feature (nope too). As if crafting a language out of nowhere, to fill the "gap".
I've thought about moderation for this, as I was creating a local comm. Back then, I've concluded that it isn't a big issue. Troublemakers beeline for the majority language (for visibility), and by the time that casual rule-breaking in a minority language becomes an issue, you're probably able to ask for help from speakers of that language. Context also helps a lot.
That's a great sign - for your community, the sense of belonging is still there, strong. That shold be the normal.
In Germany perhaps a better example would be the Sorbian speakers, I don't know. But for Europe as a whole, Vergonha ("The Shaming") is sadly a textbook example of it.
You can. And I've seen Swiss German speakers doing it informally. Since the distinction between dialect and language is mostly political in nature, there's nothing that you can do with a "language" that you wouldn't be able to, with a "dialect".
Also, thank you for this conversation! (Sorry for not using German with you; I'm not too proficient in the language yet, and keeping it in English benefits other posters here.)
I think that worked well for the covid misinformation. And arguably quite some toxic (American) people left Twitter for gab.com and truthsocial.com
But... It has its downsides. I just had a conversation about right-wing populism in Germany. We - like many nations - currently suffer from that. I think filter bubbles are a big part of that dynamic. We discuss here, openly. While some other people radicalize themselves and each other on some Telegram channels. The far-right is on the rise everywhere and it starts to make me uncomfortable.
Regardless, we shouldn't give them a voice here. They're going to do it anyways, reasoning with them and giving good arguments does nothing and opposing them makes them even stronger. (I'm generally a very liberal person, but I count those populists to the toxic people and they should -in my eyes- all feel un-welcome where I am. Even in small quantities, they poison nice places and yell the loudest.)
Yeah, I see you're well versed in internet culture, not many people know about Krautchan. It's really not a good example for anything because it mainly contained trolls and shitposting. They were a group of people mainly commemorating their inside jokes. They really worked hard flashig out details to stupid small jokes like the one with the Austrians. I've seen this specific joke on other internet forums, albeit not often and not anything close to that degree.
We have German inside-jokes here on Lemmy, you can check out the community !ich_iel@feddit.de they do stupid jokes and innuendo, often about politics. But it's not related to the old imageboards.
I don't have any better examples. Well, jokes about stereotypes used to be a thing during the early parts of my life. Regarding regions: jokes about the inhabitants of East Frisia and people from East Germany. It was a play on stereotypes and on mainly on the same level with jokes about blonde women (stupid) and gay people. I think every culture has them. ("A texan walks into a bar in Ireland..." / "How do Mexicans sneeze? Quetzalquotle" ...) I've wondered lately if those kinds of jokes are still around. I think they grew out of fashion. But that's more playing with stereotypes than anything connected to language.
I agree. We should try it and see what happens, instead of coming up with hypothetical scenarios that are probably never going to play out this way. I know some people would disagree with that. For example here on Lemmy, the people from beehaw.org want to build something like a safe space. They have rigurously used defederation on other instances that have different approaches to moderation and signup. Sometimes even before anything happened. They won't like taking chances. But I think we have to be bold and try things. Lemmy still has a few technical shortcomings. But the general (federated) design allows us to do both simultaneously.
That's perfectly alright. English is the Lingua franca (common language) here. I'm very thankful I have it and it grants me the opportunity to efforlessly talk to people like you. I think recent developments in AI and machine translation like the local translation feature of Firefox 117 will soon enough bridge the gap more and more.
I suppose it's difficult for minority languages. They are somewhat bound to become extinct. And people have to work hard to keep them alive. The world is very globalized. People commute to the next bigger city and work there. And generally move more often than they did a hundred years ago. Even in the small mountain villige in Tyrol in the Alps, the young people go study at an university in the city and a large percentage doesn't come back after. They used to have a distinct dialect in every valley, back when they weren't yet as interconnected as they are today.
I don't know what OP was trying to achieve with this post. They didn't engage in the conversation. I think internet communities have the abilitiy to connect non-english speakers. And even linguistic minorities. Lemmy would be a good platform for something like that. But I don't think a top-down approach works here. We can (and should) advertise the service. But I don't think doing missionary work will cut it. If you don't have any insight on the culture, it's really difficult to get to the people and make it a lasting and healthy thing. I wouldn't know how to attract a dozen of the few thousand Sorbian speakers to get something going. And I don't feel entitled to do so, either.
I've been imagining a federated platform that connects people who live nearby. As far as I know there isn't anything like that around, yet. And there are some privacy issues to tackle if you want people to share their location. My use-case for something like that was to use it for classified ads. Or recommendations about concerts and cultural events. Maybe we should program something like that and also have language and dialect be part of the design.
Thanks for all the references you gave. I really can't reply with anything of substance, here. I skimmed a few of the articles but I still have to read most of them properly. And I think I have to brush up on my knowledge about things like the Vergonha. For me, language discrimination hasn't really been part of my perspective, yet. I grew up and live in a city. Things are more connected and more diverse here, and it happens to be a region thats close to speaking standard German anyways.
It's really a fascinating topic. And encompassing lots of different dynamics. We can't go back to live all our lives in a few kilometres of our birthplace in order to nurture local things. We need a more modern approach. But it'd be nice to keep those things alive and even actively doing something for it.
Yeah it's awful how people subscribe to willful ignorance and right wing misinformation that can ultimately hurt them - like not getting vaccinated, and the right wingers are still the biggest group dying from COVID every day. We do suffer from right-wing populism which is the direct result of ignorance and lack of education in our country. The more stupid America gets, the more right wing it will become, until it completely falls apart as a country and never recovers.
I don't know what to reply. I live far away but still on the same world. Shady politicians here follow what kind of stuff works in the US and copy the arguments from people like Ron DeSantis. I've even seen his face on the news when he visited Bavaria a few months ago. Imho German politicians should know better than take a picture with someone who has proper neo-nazi followers.
The USA is way ahead in being backwards. It makes me sad, too, and my solidarity to you.
I can't imagine how it feels to have that many biggots and idiots around. And I suppose it depends on where exactly you live. But I think we're headed the wrong direction. I have nice neighbors, though. I don't think the situation here would look desperate to me if I wasn't reading the news. So I'm still optimistic. But I have no solution for the short or medium term in the USA. There seem to be nice people around and also sometimes good things happen. Hope it turns out okay in the end, even if it looks desperate now.
Most of our US politicians are also shady and very crooked. Very much in it for the money they can get from special interest groups. Ron Desantis is an example - he doesn't care about anyone, and he constantly tries to pass laws to hurt LGBTQ people just because it pleases his followers. He's really a scumbag.
America had the potential to be a great country, certainly it had the right idea - but as usual, people are crooked and untrustworthy and have ruined it completely.
I read the news also, and it's a sure way to get totally depressed about the world and what is going on. I think man's natural inclinication is to make unhappiness for each other. There are some good people, but they are very far between. Hope it all goes well for you there in spite of all this.