Am I the only one feeling that the quality of discussion here felt big time after big instances got created and federated (think lemmy.world)?
TLDR : we can block communities we dislike but we have no choice but to interact with instances we dislike. (Also main points in bold in the text)
I have barely any interest in conversations here compare to before and I feel it is due to a lot of very bad takes and nonconstructive comments being the norm now. I can’t help noticing/feeling like the majority of them comes from the same instances.
I was annoyed from the early days (before Lemmy got some traction after the reddit debacle) that I had to block all the ‘meme’ communities and some others. This is a sample from my block list :
cryptocurrency
Memesich_iel@feddit.deShare
Funny Videos, Images, Memes, Quotes and more Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world
Political Memes@lemmy.world>
Greentextmemes@lemmy.worldmemes@hexbear.net
RPGMemes @ttrpg.network
ADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
SurrealMemes@sh.itjust.works
Microblog Memes@lemmy.world
Memes@midwest.social
Star Wars Memes@lemmy.world
Risa@startrek.website
Memes@sopuli.xyz196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
solarpunk memes@slrpnk.net
Funny@sh.itjust.works
GenZedong@lemmygrad.ml
AI Generated Images@sh.itjust.works
Lord of the memes@midwest.social
Furry@pawb.socialScience Memes@mander.xyz
Comics
People Twitter@sh.itjust.worksich_iel@feddit.org
This is fine by me as at least I have a way to not bother and not be bothered by those communities I have no interest in. I feel like some conversation that could be interesting and deep get bombed by the sheer amount of terrible interaction from other instances.
There are surely better and worse instances, and depending of our interests we’ll have preferences. Because of the way federation works now I cannot filter out the ‘noise’ and things like “top of week” is… not going well in my opinion. There is no community-blocking equivalent way of blocking votes/post/comment for specific instances.
When I read ‘Hacker News’ it is so refreshing to see such a community with deeper interactions and sourced arguments and points. I feel like I am learning things there. It would be perfect if not America-centric, start-up minded place (also only about tech there). But the moderation there is amazing.
I am starting to give up on the current state of Lemmy now and looking for non-federated places that would have better communities. I haven’t found any yet (not that I’ve searched that much). I feel like there might be a way around all-federated or isolated silo choice here. I guess that would also imply a lot of technical work (thank you very much too all who contributed to Lemmy so far).
I can block instances on Voyager. I assume that only blocks them when I’m browsing on Voyager though and I have no idea how it handles votes/posts/comments for any blocked instance.
Best of luck with your endeavours to find a place you want to hang out in.
Blocking instances works with the OG Lemmy, but they didn’t build the function into the app, you’d have to go through the website (that one time only).
Or can you block all users of a specific instance with Voyager?
I must be missing something (I can see the community is not from lemmy.world but the guy is)
It only blocks communities from that instance.
In Voyager there is a setting to add instances you want to block.
Federation has nothing to do with the problem you are talking about. Moderation is. That’s it. You’re picking the wrong enemy. When any platform gets big, more moderation is needed, more stupid comments will appear. Has nothing to do with federation.
I had the idea that moderation is instance based in Lemmy, mods only moderate people on their instance.
users on their instance, not users from their instance. This account is from midwest.social but currently commenting on… uh, lemmy.world, right?
This is Lemmy.ml, not Lemmy.world.
I wasn’t sure, I’m in the Ask muni on both.
Does your app or site not display home instances of communities?
Not from within the “comment reply” action, sadly.
Only an instance admin can prevent somebody from logging in to that specific instance. Their activities can be ignored by other instances though.
Normal moderation actions in communities such as deletions and community bans are federated.
Eh, I was a pure lurker before the reddit move.
I can’t really say that the slippery quality of discussion has gone down because discussion would be an exaggeration of things before more people jumped over. There just weren’t enough interactions between people to use as a reliable indication of quality.
Now, any forum I’ve ever been on, even back to ICQ days, and old school bbs stuff, there’s a certain degree of “poop in the peanut butter”. You eat enough peanut butter, and your chances of also eating bug poop go up, with it becoming a certainty eventually. You get enough human beings in the same place, you get assholes. The more people, the more assholes.
You can’t really escape it entirely. Even the best possible moderation has delays, and judgement calls. All you can do is drop the numbers until the amount of poop in the peanut butter is low enough to pretend it isn’t there. The only way to entirely get rid of the bad elements is to host your own forum, and make it invite only, while also not letting it get big enough you can’t moderate it.
But, my impression is that the good discussions are still way higher on lemmy as a whole than anywhere else currently. Mbin counts as part of that, though it isn’t the same thing.
Blocking instances helps. You’re right that some instances have a certain proclivity towards personality types and/or beliefs that go hand-in-hand with bad behavior. And the bigger ones (the one I’m on included) have big enough numbers that even without those proclivities, you end up with good bit of poop with your pb&j. Sadly, even blocking an instance isn’t going to fully prevent running across users in comments here and there.
But overall? Way better than reddit was in the five years or so before spez spazzed. Better than 9gag ever was. At least as convivial as one of the forums I moderated back in the late 90s, where the user base was pretty decent overall by virtue of it being homogenous in several ways.
As pissed as I was that reddit went all the way into stupidity, I’m happier on lemmy now than I was on reddit a decade ago. And I’m happier with the average interactions I see on lemmy than I was with lemmy before last year. And that’s including the truly abysmal run ins I’ve had over the last year here.
Lemmy is in growing pains. It doesn’t need to surpass Reddit, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that federation and defederation is like maintaining a garden, if your goal is high quality discussion amongst knowledgeable individuals. It’s like good moderation
Hexbear does a great job with this in my opinion, they are widely federated but are selectively defederated with instances like Lemmy.world (even though Lemmy.world defederated them before they were federated). Discussion on Hexbear is usually much higher quality per conversation (assuming it isn’t a meme post).
It’s a tradeoff if you want broad federation like Lemmy.ml or Lemm.ee.
Idk if it’s good, but I do know that it’s extremely cool to petition the admins to defederate as soon as someone disagrees with you
I thought the level of discourse has increased sharply since lemmy.world got along, and the effect of lemmy.ml’s somewhat extremist stance has lessened. It’s now possible to mostly actually talk here without blocking half of the whole network.
So I would be perfectly ok with dropping lemmy.ml from the rest of the network. But I’m guessing that goes somewhat against the overall philosophy of the whole thing? I don’t suppose the idea of federation was to create even stronger bubbles.
You’re never going to get rid of Communists on Lemmy, FOSS in general attracts Communists, combined with stable and growing Communist instances. If Lemmy.world wants to go its own way it can, but there’s already a right-wing Lemmy, that’s Reddit.
They never said anything about getting rid of communists, they said it’s no longer a communist echo chamber.
I read their comment too, no need to worry. Anticommunist instances like Lemmy.world and, relevantly Lemmy.ca, still can’t get rid of Communists even by defederating from Communist instances.
My point is more that Lemmy itself is structured along Communist principles, while Reddit remains the right-wing Lemmy. Choosing Lemmy over Reddit is ideological in nature, which means there is going to be a steady influx of Communists and other Leftists, less so Liberals.
I read their comment too, no need to worry. Anticommunist instances like Lemmy.world and, relevantly Lemmy.ca, still can’t get rid of Communists even by defederating from Communist instances.
Assuming that whole instances are anti-anything is a great way to judge a whole swath of people quickly and look childish, it’s less useful to do anything else.
My point is more that Lemmy itself is structured along Communist principles, while Reddit remains the right-wing Lemmy. Choosing Lemmy over Reddit is ideological in nature, which means there is going to be a steady influx of Communists and other Leftists, less so Liberals.
No, Lemmy is just decentralized in nature, while that’s attractive to fringe left groups like hardcore communists, it’s also attractive to anarchists and fringe right groups like hardcore libertarians.
Assuming that whole instances are anti-anything is a great way to judge a whole swath of people quickly and look childish, it’s less useful to do anything else.
You only need to look at Lemmy.ca’s Hexbear refederation poll and compare it to Hexbear’s Lemmy.ca refederation poll. Lemmy.ca was overwhelmingly anti-Hexbear, while Hexbear was more reasonable and generally okay with refederating as long as Lemmy.ca understood that Hexbear hates landlords and whatnot. There are individuals on Lemmy.ca that are not necessarily anticommunist, but in aggregate Lemmy.ca is absolutely anticommunist, and the same applies to Lemmy.world.
No, Lemmy is just decentralized in nature, while that’s attractive to fringe left groups like hardcore communists, it’s also attractive to anarchists and fringe right groups like hardcore libertarians.
I restate, Lemmy is built on Communist principles. FOSS is anticapitalist in nature, hardcore libertarians prefer Reddit. Anarchists are also Leftists.
Hexbear wasn’t defederated from for its top comments. It was defederated from for its bottom ones, in which people repeatedly call Canadians Nazis and the KKK.
I restate, Lemmy is built on Communist principles. FOSS is anticapitalist in nature, hardcore libertarians prefer Reddit. Anarchists are also Leftists.
Given that the largest and most successful open source projects are all openly supported by capitalist companies, that is evidently not true. There is nothing inherently anti-capitalist about FOSS. Capitalism is a poor choice of resource distribution system for information because unlike material things, information can be copied and replicated freely, so there is no need for scarcity. FOSS exposes that flaw with capitalism, but it is not inherently communist.
You double commented, buddy
Hexbear wasn’t defederated from for its too comments. It was defederated from for its bottom ones, in which people repeatedly call people Nazis and the KKK.
I restate, Lemmy is built on Communist principles. FOSS is anticapitalist in nature, hardcore libertarians prefer Reddit. Anarchists are also Leftists.
Given that the largest and most successful open source projects are all openly supported by capitalist companies, that is evidently not true. There is nothing inherently anti-capitalist about FOSS. Capitalism is a poor choice of resource distribution system for information because unlike material things, information can be copied and replicated freely, so there is no need for scarcity. FOSS exposes that,l flaw with capitalism but it is no inherently communist.
Hexbear wasn’t defederated from for its too comments. It was defederated from for its bottom ones, in which people repeatedly call people Nazis and the KKK.
So you say, yet you’re admitting that the most fringe of Hexbear is the issue in your opinion, not the entire instance, so then why defederate? Why not federate and block bad-faith users? Because Lemmy.ca itself is anticommunist and anti-anarchist, as I said.
Given that the largest and most successful open source projects are all openly supported by capitalist companies, that is evidently not true. There is nothing inherently anti-capitalist about FOSS. Capitalism is a poor choice of resource distribution system for information because unlike material things, information can be copied and replicated freely, so there is no need for scarcity. FOSS exposes that,l flaw with capitalism but it is no inherently communist.
The fact that Capitalism exists and makes use of readily available tools does not mean actively choosing to support and develop FOSS, not just standard Open Source software, is compatible with right wing views. FOSS is actively sought out by Leftists out of a desire to reject Capitalism, again, Reddit exists for right-wingers.
Capitalism is an awful choice of resource distribution in general, not just information.
federation is ammmmazing. i cant imagine anyone looking at reddit vs the all the available interfacing for the fediverse and choosing reddit.
The rest of the Fediverse would be better off that’s for sure.
We’re a bunch of assholes in a more or less unmoderated space. Of course discussion sucks.
Depends on the instance in my experience.
Only up to a certain extent. The point of federation is that the shit gets spread around the instances.
Also, we have evolved “free speech” kind of ethos that only allows the most egregious of norm violations to be moderated.
This is place is forever lost to the edgelords.
Not really sure what you’re saying here, who are the edgelords? The Nazis and their instance, Exploding Heads, was so widely defederated that hardly anyone knows about them anymore.
Edgelord was the wrong word choice, sorry. I mean argumentative jerks that pick fights over absolutely anything.
Don’t sleep on the actual edgelords either. I got a guy in my replies right now screeching how women in politics are the real fascism because of identity politics.
But the jerks are the real issue.
Edgelord was the wrong word choice, sorry. I mean argumentative jerks that pick fights over absolutely anything.
Fair, I’m guilty of that myself. I try to distance myself from it, but then I see overt Zionism and lose it.
Don’t sleep on the actual edgelords either. I got a guy in my replies right now screeching how women in politics are the real fascism because of identity politics.
Gross, sorry to hear that.
In my mind the entire point of federating is to avoid censorship by corporate and government authorities. The point is to NOT have an echo chamber. Of course theres gonna be stuff you dont agree with. If you want to only see stuff you like and agree with go use one of the algorithm based social medias like tiktok and itll do that for you.
