Seeing some people in my TL talk about how criticising Mastodon has resulted in FOSS devs dumping essays in their mentions, and I've noticed very much the same. This place doesn't have nazis (yet, that I've seen), but I have had randos come into my mentions and wellactually me here and I haven't had that on the birdsite yet. Is it social media as a concept that's a problem, or is it society being full of asshats that's the problem?

@lindar Bit of both but mostly the latter?

@cybergazz @lindar The UI design decision to show users the federated and local timelines encourages people interacting with strangers. Which is exacerbated by many people being new here and looking for connections.
If you select 'unlisted' it won't show up there and this will lessen sealioning, but also people who are nice.
tl;dr What cybergazz said.

@celesteh @lindar There's a lot of interacting with strangers and very few people here I know IRL - that's a bit challenging . . .