Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds

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Don't browse all, but curate your own feed by subscribing to communities.

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Showcase truly instance-specific content

Local feed

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The "All" Feed Syndrome

Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the "All" feed looks across different Lemmy instances? It's like we're browsing the same curated content, just with different window dressings. The posts, upvotes, and discussions feel increasingly uniform - a far cry from the diverse, decentralized dream we signed up for.

It's called All for a reason?!

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This one million times.

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OP still wants to see all federated content but through a local lens, hence suggestion it could be implemented as a sorting option.

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This is already implemented and coming with Lemmy 0.20.0 afaik. Not precisely with this goal in mind, but more general to give instance admins more customizability over vote federation.

I kinda agree that it might be interesting to lean into the idea to have the all feed further curated by what instance members are interested in. It already is to some extend, but the bigger the instance the more it gets dilluted out right now.

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It never is "all" though. It is all communities subscribed by any member of your instance right now. On smaller instances it is noticably different from larger ones.

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Strongly disagree. This is just recreating what already exists, using a technology that's actually not great for it. Each website's connections should in some way resemble what that website is tailored to. And we don't need a network of websites that are tailored to "looking exactly like every other website, because we couldn't be arsed to pick a niche".

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And we don’t need a network of websites that are tailored to “looking exactly like every other website, because we couldn’t be arsed to pick a niche”.

That's the whole point of the Fediverse, and Lemmy instances. Mastodon instances look like each other, to an extend.

And even here, https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ and https://lemmy.world/ default themes look different.

If you want a truly different layout, there is https://fedia.io/m/floatingisfun

But that's a unique case, because Mbin allows community-based themes

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Well, I strongly disagree right back.

Especially smaller instances regularly have reliability or federation issues, so it's vital for me to be able to hop to an alt account and still the same all feed.

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there’s no algorithm

There are several algorithms to choose from. OP is upset because they don't like the default one. They don't seem to understand that they can change it.

What’s suggested here is to have some sort of sort/scaling that would assign higher weight to votes from local instance.

But why?

promotes decentralisation

Decentralization is not the same thing as fragmentation. What you and OP are suggesting is the latter.

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Use All to get started. Check it out now and then for some variety and maybe to find new communities. But absolutely curate your own Subscribed timeline.

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Break the algorithmic echo chamber

Showing things by a local vote only would do the exact opposite of this. The majority of Lemmy could be said to be fairly liberal moderate thinking folks, so globally that tends to be what gets reflected in the votes. There are however a handful of notoriously aggressive tankie instances who will pile on and ban at the slightest whiff of someone disagreeing with their perception. Allowing posts from more neutral places like .world to be viewed on these instances through a filter only of their local votes is only going to reinforce that already existing view.

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I was just about to ask, this writing style reminds a lot of LLM's.

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I think it's a bad idea to have each server have one topic which I know is often how Fediverse is sold but I think it's not good.

I don't know you but I have more than one interest and I don't want a server to be about one interest and that's it. I want the server to be fair and have rules about discrimination and so on. I can choose the topics I want to follow thanks to federation that's the whole point, the server should focus on the moderation side.

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They can change sorting and view but they will not get anywhere near their stated purpose. OP wants instances to gather people that share similar interests or beliefs so that his/her browsing experience is shaped by this choice in a natural manner.

As an very rough example, this could mean that in discussion-centric instances text posts would be ranked higher because users in those instances tend to upvote them more often. This would also mean that less interesting stuff is not filtered but lower in the ranking. Those seeking such experience (it does sound attractive to me) would have higher incentive to join smaller and more focused instances. Maybe they wouldn’t be so small then or they’d have to vet new users and it’d be a terrible idea. Still worth considering imo.

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OP wants instances to gather people that share similar interests or beliefs so that his/her browsing experience is shaped by this choice in a natural manner.

That's what communities are for. Like....I don't understand.

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Community has no control over who uses it except for federation policy. Random people browse communities through „All” which leads to random downvotes, ignoring community rules and so on. I believe that idea that makes Activity Pub so nice is that you can use various apps and platforms as distinct ways of browsing and communicating with people that want to do it differently.

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I’ve never really understood how people could browse exclusively by All. I barely have enough time to keep up with my own hobbies and interests, let alone everyone else’s.

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Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds

The "All" Feed Syndrome