Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds

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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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That was two months ago and now I've changed my mind stalker.

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If you don't want everyone to be allowed to participate, then you're simply using the wrong platform. Lemmy also supports private instances.

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Right?

I stopped reading after that.

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So, you resort to name calling? Why should any of us engage with you?

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How does this prevent anyone from participating? This kind of sort would make one engage less with some content and users they don’t want to. You could do it for efficiency, mental health or whatever reason you come up with. Having an option of increasing importance of your local instance in shaping what you see is just one more way of tweaking your experience without affecting others. It’s dangerously close to „the algorithm” but works without being a black box.

OPs issue is not solved by private instances because it cuts off contact entirely. You might as well set view to Local and ban other instances in your client.

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How does this prevent anyone from participating?

OPs issue is not solved by private instances because it cuts off contact entirely.

...I mean that sounds like the entire point of what you're proposing? I guess I'm still confused but I will agree that BlueSky-style custom feeds would be a super-nice addition to any social platform.

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Same. Every time I see someone complaining about the all feed I wonder if they came from 4chan's b board or something.

How many places on the internet expect you to regularly use some sort of all feed? 9gag maybe? Did people regularly use reddit's all feed, despite it being crammed full of garbage and vote farming? I think I used it for like 5 seconds when I first started there before I gave up in disgust and started picking communities intentionally.

Do you set up your newsreader with all of everything? You want all the sports, all the pop culture, all the tech, etc etc?

I just don't get it. All is always going to be garbage on every service just because the world is a big place, and that's fine.

Now, rant aside, I did actually find his idea of an all feed where local instance voting is all that gets counted kinda neat. I don't have any problems with that being an available option if someone wanted to work on it.

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Servers per language/country make sense. It's nice to be able to see content relevant to your language/country in Local.

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A language is not a topic that's why it makes sense and rules on servers that are on your language (and probably your own country) probably will have rules more aligned with your vision too. It makes sense on a moderation point of view.

A server that is about technology or art, doesn't say anything about how they might allow their users to behave. I just think it's misleading and the focus of a server shouldn't be about things you like but the way you like to be treated and how they manage your data which is at the end what they handle.

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This is not BlueSky-style, it’s Activity Pub style.

I can browse a Lemmy community from Mastodon and see it in a very different way. Yes, I could sort by activity but then I’d have to keep a separate Lemmy account for those low traffic communities. In Mastodon I can make a list of groups and see only last two replies per thread effectively. Votes are irrelevant and Mastodon has that covered by not implementing that at all.

We don’t have any control over how others will view whatever communication or interactions are being sent over AP. That also means it’s free to reinterpret in whatever way one sees fit.

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Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds