Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds
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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.
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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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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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?!
Right?
I stopped reading after that.
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That was two months ago and now I've changed my mind stalker.
So, you resort to name calling? Why should any of us engage with you?
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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.
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? 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.
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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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.
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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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.
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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Servers per language/country make sense. It's nice to be able to see content relevant to your language/country in Local.
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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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.
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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Exactly! That's why it's called "All" and not, say, "Some" or "Maybe".
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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.
True, which is why so many instances employ the seeder things when starting out.
