Answer questions if I can

Downvoted unkind discourse.

Upvote is for quality. No vote is for noise/disagreements. Downvote is for hate.

In theory, the lower a score, the less people see something. If I disagree with something that’s said (like a civil political opinion), then I won’t ‘like’ it. That takes away one potential point. But if someone is being unkind to others (mean, rude, trolling, etc) then I’ll downvote, which I see as removing two votes. The one they could have had from me, and one from someone else. Hopefully, that means they won’t get as much attention.

If it’s really bad, then I’ll also report

Stop feeding off what is given to you and look for and search for quality, informative, objective content that is not manipulated to play with you emotions.

The internet is many things other than just a place to waste away your time, energy and awareness of the world.

When some nihilistic edgelord cares too much about others caring about something and screeches “WHO CARES?” or “NO ONE CARES” thought-terminating cliches to try to shut discussion down, I voluntarily say “I care” and that often shuts them up and whatever was being cared about usually continues.

It’s a small thing, but I think it makes a local difference.

Don’t participate or be involved in the most popular online communities. I find once an online community reaches a threshold it goes to shit. Finding your niche people online is the best way to finding a nice place you belong.

Dns ad blocker and I don’t use big tech sites almost at all.

uBlacklist: block SEO, clickbait garbage from Google search

Shutup.css: blocks comments on all websites; I enable it on websites (such as lemmy) in which the website is dedicated to discussion. This prevents me from seeing stupid MSN like comments.

AdBlock: Blocking ads. They are slow, they are annoying, they follow you and I hate them.

Privacy.com cards: Lets me lock a card and certain amount to a website I may or may not trust, and prevents them from charging more than I state. Has been VERY useful for Amazon Eero in which they keep auto subscribing me to eero Plus and “don’t know what happened on their end”.

This is more so related to Xbox, but:

Filtering all messages from people who aren’t my friends into a separate inbox that doesn’t notify me. Blocking party invites from people who aren’t my Xbox friends (prevents assholes in Overwatch from DDoS).