Kill your Feeds - Stop letting algorithms dictate how you think
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Lemmy doesn't have a recommendation algorithm, yet our feeds are just as bad - if not worse. If your daily interest revolves around reading about U.S. politics, this might not be obvious to you, but for the rest of us, it’s painfully clear. And before you suggest "just avoid political communities" or "stick to your subscription feed," let me assure you that doesn't work. It's not just political communities - it's everywhere. I can't even read articles about space without people injecting their opinions on the CEO of a certain rocket company. Even communities like microblogmemes are beyond salvation. If you limit yourself exclusively to communities where the "no politics" rule is actually enforced, you'll exhaust new content within about two minutes each day.
My point is that the algorithm itself isn't the sole issue. Algorithms can actually be helpful, provided you invest even minimal effort into training them. YouTube doesn't bombard me with politics because it knows I'm not interested. Lemmy’s user base, however, seems so addicted to outrage that outrage inevitably dominates everyone's experience here. If we measure the quality of social media by counting the "regrettable minutes" we've spent there, Lemmy would rank at the absolute bottom. Even Twitter doesn't irritate me as consistently as Lemmy does. I've gone to great lengths setting up content filters to block politics, but even when half my feed is blocked, the majority of what's left is still U.S. politics.
I have blocked any mention of trump and musk, and yet I still know every single stupid thing they do. It's impossible to avoid it.
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Lemmy doesn't have a recommendation algorithm, yet our feeds are just as bad - if not worse. If your daily interest revolves around reading about U.S. politics, this might not be obvious to you, but for the rest of us, it’s painfully clear. And before you suggest "just avoid political communities" or "stick to your subscription feed," let me assure you that doesn't work. It's not just political communities - it's everywhere. I can't even read articles about space without people injecting their opinions on the CEO of a certain rocket company. Even communities like microblogmemes are beyond salvation. If you limit yourself exclusively to communities where the "no politics" rule is actually enforced, you'll exhaust new content within about two minutes each day.
My point is that the algorithm itself isn't the sole issue. Algorithms can actually be helpful, provided you invest even minimal effort into training them. YouTube doesn't bombard me with politics because it knows I'm not interested. Lemmy’s user base, however, seems so addicted to outrage that outrage inevitably dominates everyone's experience here. If we measure the quality of social media by counting the "regrettable minutes" we've spent there, Lemmy would rank at the absolute bottom. Even Twitter doesn't irritate me as consistently as Lemmy does. I've gone to great lengths setting up content filters to block politics, but even when half my feed is blocked, the majority of what's left is still U.S. politics.
I want a local LLM filtering my feed(s). So I really don’t need to see Elmo and Donald -related stuff.
Simple word filters don’t work, but with a LLM I might be able to make it work
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Has Lemmy ever noticed how much the Anglophone web speaks like advertisers now?
I'm off to Youtube now to watch some content. Gotta get that new content! Thanks to modern networking technologies I'll never run out of content! Does the non-English web do the same? Are the French and Russians and Chinese similarly indoctrinated?
Let's rewrite some Wikipedia entry intros to see our adopted term work its wonders:
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni[a] (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo,[b][1] was an Italian content creator of the High Renaissance.`
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English content creator who wrote content under the pen name of George Orwell.[2][3]
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American content creator. Dubbed the "King of Content", he is regarded as one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. Over a four-decade career, his content broke racial barriers in America and made him a global figure. Through content, he proliferated visual performance for artists in popular music; popularizing content including the moonwalk (which he named), the robot, and the anti-gravity lean. Jackson is often deemed the greatest content creator of all time based on his content and subscribers.[1]
After watching Content on Youtube I'll probably visit the zoo to marvel at the meat. Then later I might load Pornhub and watch some meat. By then it'll be time for some dinner, so the butcher will fix me up with some meat.
This language demeans all creative endeavour. It trashes our ability to communicate. When read out loud it's infantilising too.
What's wrong with the word "content"? What word would you use to describe the things shared in places like Lemmy?
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I want a local LLM filtering my feed(s). So I really don’t need to see Elmo and Donald -related stuff.
Simple word filters don’t work, but with a LLM I might be able to make it work
Agree. Blocking / keyword based filtering is quite blunt tool. I'd much rather tell AI what I don't want to see and have it analyze the content for me.
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Maybe stop sticking your head in the sand?
Not wanting to be bombarded by a foreign country's political antics and sociopathic leaders == sticking your head in the sand? Interesting take!
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Not wanting to be bombarded by a foreign country's political antics and sociopathic leaders == sticking your head in the sand? Interesting take!
we're all connected
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Lemmy doesn't have a recommendation algorithm, yet our feeds are just as bad - if not worse. If your daily interest revolves around reading about U.S. politics, this might not be obvious to you, but for the rest of us, it’s painfully clear. And before you suggest "just avoid political communities" or "stick to your subscription feed," let me assure you that doesn't work. It's not just political communities - it's everywhere. I can't even read articles about space without people injecting their opinions on the CEO of a certain rocket company. Even communities like microblogmemes are beyond salvation. If you limit yourself exclusively to communities where the "no politics" rule is actually enforced, you'll exhaust new content within about two minutes each day.
My point is that the algorithm itself isn't the sole issue. Algorithms can actually be helpful, provided you invest even minimal effort into training them. YouTube doesn't bombard me with politics because it knows I'm not interested. Lemmy’s user base, however, seems so addicted to outrage that outrage inevitably dominates everyone's experience here. If we measure the quality of social media by counting the "regrettable minutes" we've spent there, Lemmy would rank at the absolute bottom. Even Twitter doesn't irritate me as consistently as Lemmy does. I've gone to great lengths setting up content filters to block politics, but even when half my feed is blocked, the majority of what's left is still U.S. politics.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. These days, Lemmy is just making me depressed. I like to read comments to get further insight to articles, maybe someone trying to point out the author's bias, or a joke. But Lemmy comments are all some variation of "the world is doomed", "kill this person", or "capitalism is the root of all woe". They are neither useful, insightful, or improve my day in any way. Lemmy is making my life less enjoyable. It was already an overall negative and cynical space during the Biden administration; now it is unbearable.
I've been on Lemmy for a long time now, since Reddit killed 3rd party clients with their API change, but now I think I might go back to Reddit. The company itself has a lot of problems, but at least I can get a lot of non-doom content to fill my day.
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Maybe stop sticking your head in the sand?
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Agree. Blocking / keyword based filtering is quite blunt tool. I'd much rather tell AI what I don't want to see and have it analyze the content for me.
This is basically the same thing as what the big platforms do. You’re just offloading the decisions of what to see to a neural network and hope it’s deciding correctly. I’m not sure what a solution would be but I’m not sure I would put my eggs in the llm/ai basket. Not without a lot more details from the models on why they made a decision.
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Lemmy doesn't have a recommendation algorithm, yet our feeds are just as bad - if not worse. If your daily interest revolves around reading about U.S. politics, this might not be obvious to you, but for the rest of us, it’s painfully clear. And before you suggest "just avoid political communities" or "stick to your subscription feed," let me assure you that doesn't work. It's not just political communities - it's everywhere. I can't even read articles about space without people injecting their opinions on the CEO of a certain rocket company. Even communities like microblogmemes are beyond salvation. If you limit yourself exclusively to communities where the "no politics" rule is actually enforced, you'll exhaust new content within about two minutes each day.
My point is that the algorithm itself isn't the sole issue. Algorithms can actually be helpful, provided you invest even minimal effort into training them. YouTube doesn't bombard me with politics because it knows I'm not interested. Lemmy’s user base, however, seems so addicted to outrage that outrage inevitably dominates everyone's experience here. If we measure the quality of social media by counting the "regrettable minutes" we've spent there, Lemmy would rank at the absolute bottom. Even Twitter doesn't irritate me as consistently as Lemmy does. I've gone to great lengths setting up content filters to block politics, but even when half my feed is blocked, the majority of what's left is still U.S. politics.
This isn’t my experience at all, maybe I just have curated my subscriptions enough that I don’t see that much. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so used to just tuning out socialist/communist comments on threads that have nothing to do with politics.
It’s also worth noting that Lenny’s algorithms sort by either top (which is just votes), hot (which is based on votes and comments which will surface contentious topics like politics more often), new (which is just when it was posted), and scaled (which is just hot but proportional to the size of the community so it will surface smaller communities more often).
If you sort by hot it’s going to give you a similar feed to Reddit. I prefer to sort by top by 6/12/24hr and by scaled personally.
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A bit of a random question: on a single user instance, if you subscribe to a community, then later unsubscribe from it, would that community still show up in your All feed?
I think it would show up in All still, but only posts that were synced while it was subscribed I think?. I haven't really checked if posts would disappear again. On the "Top Day" view I use, the "All" posts are identical to "Subscribed"
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What? No, use "All" to browse through federated instances and then subscribe to any interesting communities across the whole Fediverse. Then stick to the "subscribed" feed and only occasionally recheck "All" if you're bored and looking for new communities with none in particular; otherwise, run searches for them.
Let me explain how it works when you self host like me:
- "All" starts out completely empty, there are no federated instances to find this way.
- You then have to browse communities on other instances and subscribe to them on your own instance. Only then will posts start showing up in "All".
- Since there's only 1 user, the list of communities in "All" is the exact same list of communities in "Subscribed"
For most people yes, you can just browse "All" unless you're on a smaller instance, since someone on your Instance has probably already subscribed to the community you're looking for.
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Lemmy doesn't have a recommendation algorithm, yet our feeds are just as bad - if not worse. If your daily interest revolves around reading about U.S. politics, this might not be obvious to you, but for the rest of us, it’s painfully clear. And before you suggest "just avoid political communities" or "stick to your subscription feed," let me assure you that doesn't work. It's not just political communities - it's everywhere. I can't even read articles about space without people injecting their opinions on the CEO of a certain rocket company. Even communities like microblogmemes are beyond salvation. If you limit yourself exclusively to communities where the "no politics" rule is actually enforced, you'll exhaust new content within about two minutes each day.
My point is that the algorithm itself isn't the sole issue. Algorithms can actually be helpful, provided you invest even minimal effort into training them. YouTube doesn't bombard me with politics because it knows I'm not interested. Lemmy’s user base, however, seems so addicted to outrage that outrage inevitably dominates everyone's experience here. If we measure the quality of social media by counting the "regrettable minutes" we've spent there, Lemmy would rank at the absolute bottom. Even Twitter doesn't irritate me as consistently as Lemmy does. I've gone to great lengths setting up content filters to block politics, but even when half my feed is blocked, the majority of what's left is still U.S. politics.
If you limit yourself exclusively to communities where the “no politics” rule is actually enforced, you’ll exhaust new content within about two minutes each day.
It's almost like US politics are a historic fucking shit show and that affects many other things.
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I have blocked any mention of trump and musk, and yet I still know every single stupid thing they do. It's impossible to avoid it.
It's almost like...one is the leader of the richest country in the world and the other is running a government office that's dismantling the government.
Seriously, if you guys were alive in the 1930s or 1940s you'd be there like "I just can't pick up the paper anymore without talk of this Hitler guy!".
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Idk man, the universe is an algorithm.
Everything I did, am doing, and will do, are all part of the algorithm. I have no control. Free will is a lie. Even the act of me typing this comment, is not of my free will. The neurons are making me do it. AH FUCK STOOOOP IT YE FUCKING NEURONS, BAD NEURONS...
Everything is fine, I have free will, disregard everything above, that's the other half of the brain in this body that's being weird.
THERE IS NO FREE WILL
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
You did not choose Lemmy. Lemmy chose you! Accept your fate. Accept Determinism.
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What's wrong with the word "content"? What word would you use to describe the things shared in places like Lemmy?
It subordinates all creative output to the priorities of advertising. On Lemmy (in fact any web forum) I'm a member and a discussion participant. I don't 'make content' for it - it suggests the only value in my posting to a Lemmy is to 'attract eyeballs'.
The ability to dress and chisel marble and have your creations still talked about half a millennia later, and being the most recognizable singer on the planet, aren't fungible.
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Let me explain how it works when you self host like me:
- "All" starts out completely empty, there are no federated instances to find this way.
- You then have to browse communities on other instances and subscribe to them on your own instance. Only then will posts start showing up in "All".
- Since there's only 1 user, the list of communities in "All" is the exact same list of communities in "Subscribed"
For most people yes, you can just browse "All" unless you're on a smaller instance, since someone on your Instance has probably already subscribed to the community you're looking for.
Huh, I didn't realize that All including all federated communities must be a Thunder-specific feature.
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Saw it in my feed btw
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Idk man, the universe is an algorithm.
Everything I did, am doing, and will do, are all part of the algorithm. I have no control. Free will is a lie. Even the act of me typing this comment, is not of my free will. The neurons are making me do it. AH FUCK STOOOOP IT YE FUCKING NEURONS, BAD NEURONS...
Everything is fine, I have free will, disregard everything above, that's the other half of the brain in this body that's being weird.
THERE IS NO FREE WILL
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
You did not choose Lemmy. Lemmy chose you! Accept your fate. Accept Determinism.
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I was just thinking about this yesterday. These days, Lemmy is just making me depressed. I like to read comments to get further insight to articles, maybe someone trying to point out the author's bias, or a joke. But Lemmy comments are all some variation of "the world is doomed", "kill this person", or "capitalism is the root of all woe". They are neither useful, insightful, or improve my day in any way. Lemmy is making my life less enjoyable. It was already an overall negative and cynical space during the Biden administration; now it is unbearable.
I've been on Lemmy for a long time now, since Reddit killed 3rd party clients with their API change, but now I think I might go back to Reddit. The company itself has a lot of problems, but at least I can get a lot of non-doom content to fill my day.
To be fair, I don't think Lemmy is to blame for all the negativity. It's impossible to escape politics nowadays thanks to American dominance in social media. And since the US is a dumpster fire since 2016, the rest of the world gets to be a dumpster fire as well.
In my opinion, Lemmy is the least negative social media platform out there and that's saying something. I advise against going back to Reddit. I take peeks at it every once in a while and oh boy did things go downhill since I deleted my Reddit account after the API changes.
The best way to deal with all of this is to limit your exposure to social media all together.
