the word dictator has a negative meaning. In what way was the Roman idea of a dictator different from the way we think of dictators?

A roman dictator was basically a symbolic ruler, the parliament was the place where they took the real desitions, whereas a present day dictator makes all the choices and makes them all to his favour, like Stalin, Lenin, The Kims, Chavez, Castro, Maduro, Pedro Sanchez, Xi Jinping, Hirohito, Mobotu, Oumee, Erdogan, and many more.