A lot less annoying then endlessly filtering content by community and user
Doesn’t this lead to potential echo chambers though. If I go and block all content I don’t like, how can I have ideas that challenge my beliefs?
Who cares? It’s social media, I come here for entertainment. Don’t let it form your opinions and believes. Read credible newspapers and journals from across the spectrum and go touch grass and have a civil conversation with a stranger if you want to hear ideas that challenge your beliefs.
People are downvoting you not because you are wrong, but because it really hurts when you call people out with this kind of precision. It should be common sense that the message boards full of randos shouldn’t be the foundation of one’s political worldview, but it’s also really easy to make message boards full of randos an integral part of one’s social life.
Getting your news from credible, non-social sources, is important. Being able to read an article and move on without heading to the comments is important. Having conversations with real people offline is important. But those things don’t offer the same steady drip of dopamine that social media provides.
A lot of people here are excessively online, and in desperate need of grass touching, and they don’t want to be told that directly, but they do also need to hear it.
Why not both?
Not everything has to have an opposing perspective, where’s the opposing community for knitting? Tearing?
c/tearrorists
On which instance is that? lemmy.world?
Lemmy try: !tearrorists@lemmy.world
EDIT Hmm, doesn’t seem like it exis- Oh, I get the joke, now!
Rip and tear, until it is done. And you can start knitting again.
The downside of that is the filter bubble or echo chamber effect. Question is whether Lemmy should be a fun experience for you or something to broaden your horizons a little
You can listen to people try to convince you that Russia’s war is justified and that Tienamen Square never happened for a while if you want, then make up your mind and block them later ;-).
It was super fun to be gaslit by people while I was actually living in Taiwan but yeah, gets old after a while.
Bruh. It’s not an echo chamber to filter out literal Nazis and other stuff. Ain’t nobody changing their mind from “spirited” internet debate and I don’t need their garbage in my day.
If you really mean “literal Nazis”, that tends to support the hypothesis that you’re not being exposed to much that contradicts your worldview.
Tell me more about how you must listen to literal Nazis on a daily basis to contradict your worldview.
And if you don’t think Lemmy has or has had to deal with literal Nazis:
Lol
You are referring to literally everyone you disagree with as a Nazi. You are an example of someone who lives in a toxic filter bubble.
No, I don’t. When I call people Nazis and fascists it’s because I know what both of those words mean, being literate.
Then you are missing the point because there are tons of people who disagree with you who aren’t Nazis. OP is talking about how it’s great how you can only talk with people you agree with.
You are replying to a comment thread that is about blocking Nazis, it’s completely disingenuous to act like that’s not a legit problem and that anyone is talking about anything other than actual fucking Nazis. They are real. No one said everyone they disagree with is a Nazi because that’s fucking stupid.
What instance is “literal Nazis”?
There are many that were defederated many months ago that aren’t even the common ones discussed. I forget some of their names but you can review the defed lists. They are beyond the pale, open open racism, calls for open violence, CP, etc. I’m not talking about some double speak, bad policy maga stuff, I’m talking about cartoons showing minorities as animals, cartoons of lynchings, etc.
The fediverse is a big place.
Edit who the fuck downvotes this
It is the opposite. People join an instance which does not agree with their point of view. They get banned. They move to a different instance.
Echo chamber galore.
People talk about filter bubbles, but there’s a nuance here: on Lemmy, you’re not being served up whatever the platform owners think you should see from an opaque algorithm. You’re going to, by default, see cesspool content. You have to choose to block it.
Unfortunately, the owners of your instance can also choose to block something for you.
But that gets back to something similar to OP’s statement. As in, you can spin up your own instance (though a not entirely trivial process), or you have the freedom to choose an instance that matches your style [edit: and people tend to gravitate towards an instance admin policy that matches their preferences].
Some people want some content blocked - e.g. NSFW, or even NSFL. Or even better, slap a label on each content item, which rather than have to choose between the binary options of forcibly remove or allow fully, offers each person their own choice to view or not. PieFed even has a NSFL/gore/gross tag that you can set, though only for posts ATM not comments.
I find the Fediverse really friendly in regards to NSFW/NSFL content, in that it is both here but virtually never unlabeled (ONCE in the last year iirc there was a particular spam account that got through…). Politicial or extremist content not so much unfortunately, so we’re back to blocking or defederating, for those for whom consent of the reader of their messages means little to nothing.
To me Lemmy.world is just a place to login, I forget how I even got here. But I really don’t think of it as one instance vs others or care how it compares with others. The content is what matters, and if I finally understand it correctly the content is everywhere.
Mostly that’s true but not entirely. The common analogy is that the Fediverse is a bunch of pirate or free trading ships passing in the night, each passing messages from one to another until they all have all of the messages - “federation”. However, some captains have some bad blood between them and other captains and refuse to pass messages from them along - “defederation”. And for good reason I need to add, bc if outright illegal material were to make its way onto your “ship”/computer then you could be in big trouble, like literally with the FBI or other equivalent governmental agency in other countries. Or imagine that some captain decides to send out a virus - not all of these captains are apparently ethical!
In practice, any captain of a ship can decide which messages they want to pass along to share with others vs. keep private solely for themselves (their own internal set of users). And likewise they get to decide which messages to receive too - like none from a particular source, or maybe only some if they are structured a certain way. And then on top of all of that, Lemmy.World in particular has decided to edit certain messages to filter out banned keywords that they deem offensive to their users.
So like an irl example is that a few years ago a bunch of people/captains decided to create Alt-Right instances, and these spewed forth violent rhetoric and pedophilic content throughout the Fediverse - which in addition to being not nice was highly illegal. So rather than allow that to get us all in trouble with the FBI, in response all the other captains/instances decided to block/defederate from them. In theory I suppose you could spin up your own instance - becoming captain of your own ship - and you could choose to receive to those messages (but again, be careful about content that is literally illegal!). Although actually I think those instances may have shut down in the meantime, deciding to switch to the likes of Truth Social, so they probably are not around anymore to be federated with even if someone wanted to. Still, to be on the safe side, every instance I’ve ever seen has defederated from them, I guess in case they ever decide to come back.
So one practical way that this affects you personally is that Lemmy.world has decided to defederate from hexbear.net, a known nest of trolls (they enjoy a highly contentious argumentation style, but they don’t stop that even outside of their communities where it is consensual, and it is this refusal to consider consent of people outside of their echo chambers that makes them trolls). So no, this content in particular is not “everywhere” - it is blocked quite often from many/most instances.
If you truly wanted to experience the Fediverse with as few filtering of messages as possible (although remember that not all of it is offered in good faith), then you may want to make an account on lemm.ee rather than lemmy.world. But otherwise lemmy.world is a great instance - it is where ~80% of all the people on Lemmy are located.
Fantastic explanation, thanks for taking the time to post that! I’m fine with not having to sift through a lot of troll content and angry argument from people who just want an argument. There’s still a fair amount of “So WhAt YoU’rE SaYiNg Is [something I was not saying]” but I guess that’s inevitable. I think Lemmy.world is great.
Yeah some amount of that is inevitable, but see e.g. https://hexbear.net/post/3820065 for an example of the type of content that you are “missing”, being on lemmy.world that has defederated from hexbear. Also note how it’s not just the post itself but how supportive of the position the comments are (overall), with several of them expressing an explicit desire to do such again, and the overall theme being how “funny” it was.
Now mind you, there is still a lot of similar content that you aren’t “missing”, from places such as lemmy.ml, but hexbear.net is most definitely a special place full of toxic trolls (many of whom continue to troll us after the defederation via their lemmy.ml alts, bc consent means little to them). Here is another example, this time from lemmy.ml that almost no instances have defederated from, since the admins are also the developers of the sourcecode for Lemmy: https://lemmy.ml/post/22043103. The cognitive dissonance is in full display on that instance by declaring that what the Western nations do is “genocide” (I mean…), yet somehow what Russia and China are doing is not genocide - either directly (Uyghurs & Ukraine) or indirectly (the USA has sent support to Israel, while Russia has also sent support to the other side of that conflict). Realistically, both the USA and Russia are supporting genocide, but NOT EQUALLY SO, as one of those two nations is also actively engaging in that activity directly.
Because of so very many posts from this, and toxic trolling from many of their users, I have gone to great lengths to find a way to block both hexbear.net and lemmy.ml, even switching instances to piefed.social that allows a normal user, without needing admin support, to block all users from any instance of my choice (https://piefed.social/post/307636 ). There are also some apps that can do that as well, though you won’t find that option provided in basic Lemmy. I’m not necessarily advocating for such a switch, but it’s nice to know that it’s possible, and it is good to be aware of what content is out there and in particular note where it comes from - i.e. you may want to block at the very least communities such as !memes@lemmy.ml, if you don’t enjoy having the above-mentioned content finding its way into your feed.:-)
Wait, is some content blocked on some instances and available on others? If that’s true then I still don’t understand lemmy - I thought the content was everywhere.
Some instances choose to “defederate” other instances, which means that users from one won’t be able to see or intract with content from the other. This is primarily meant to combat instances that create spam or host illegal content, but many instances use it for political purposes.
And without that capability, every instance would be a cesspool of Nazi and pedo content flooding in from the Fediverse’s dark side.
The instance I’m on doesn’t seem to block any other instances and I’m not seeing any Nazi or pedo content.
hello fellow sdf’er :) I specifically chose SDF so I could choose what to block myself, and so far I have just blocked a lot of anime. Anything political I see is leftist.
Very true, count dongulus.
Personally I kind of don’t want everybody to be like-minded, because that becomes an echo chamber. What I’m after on Lemmy is people willing to explore subjects objectively, without beating the bushes for enemies or competing for upvotes.
On the other hand, learning to deal with people you dislike is a useful skill. If everyone segregates themselves into opposing factions there will never be any progress.
Of course, I’ve personally blocked about 600 people…
I have enough people I dislike and disagree with IRL, I will have all my opinions confirmed when I’m browsing online, thankyouverymuch. /s
My reply test to see if you blocked me
You are not blocked, because you are beneath contempt.
[jk]
Other than the one we are all thinking of here, I can’t say I really agree.
2, hexbear and lemmygrad.
I don’t mind hexbear
cough lemmy.ml cough cough hexbear cough
How do you filter out an entire instance as a single user? I was just trying to figure that out the other day, but it didn’t appear possible.
Account Settings - Blocks - Instances
Ah, thanks. I had to scroll down a ways because my individual community block list was large enough to push that one out the bottom of the page I guess.
Note that that approach doesn’t actually block the users from that instance, only the communities.
To block user content leaking through that block, there’s apps like Connect or Sync, or the Lemmy alternatives PieFed and Mbin, which additionally offer a number of advanced features that Lemmy does not have such as Categories of Communities (but you’d have to switch instances to access those).
Apparently I earned a site wide ban from lemmy.ml, but their posts keep showing up here. Annoyingly, I learned that when you get banned the “block community” button is hidden, so you have to add each community you want to block manually. So just blocking the entire instance solves my problem.
I think a bit the opposite: I’m really worried about the trend to give people only information they care about. I think it’s essential to be able to have information about everything. Of course there will always be stuff you don’t care about but having it automatically filtered out is dangerous in my opinion. In GAFA-powered social networks, you are only given pieces of information about your own opinion, you never have something that make you question yourself about your opinion. The power of independent and open media like Lemmy is to not rely on such biasing algorithms.
There’s a nuance here that you’re missing - self-curating your social media experience is vastly different from the algorithm hellhole that is the modern corporate social media landscape. You can filter out any dissenting opinions or facts, but you can in real life, too. And like in real life, it takes a lot of active effort to get to that point. Whereas the algorithm will do that for you without you even knowing it.
I’d say that self-curated social media is like going off to college or moving to a new city while the algorithm is like living in the town you grew up in. I grew up in a very liberal state, but there were about 3 non-white kids in my entire high school the year I graduated, and it wasn’t until I was introduced to Tumblr in college in the late 2000s that I first heard words like “transgender.” And Tumblr is the most self-curated social media that I’ve ever seen. Back then, you couldn’t even follow hashtags - just people. So your front page was exclusively people that you followed and the posts that they reblogged from people that they followed.
Very interesting opinion, thanks for it.
You don’t have to use filters, just like you don’t have to subscribe to subreddits on Reddit. You can just use the default front page if you are afraid of tailoring it to your tastes.
Yep. I just raw dog All for the past 6 hours most of the time. The only communities I’ve blocked are the most active German ones because I don’t speak German.
I just raw dog All for the past 6 hours most of the time.
Doing my part!
Meanwhile I’m on a Dutch instance and look at all the bs…
You dumb dumb Dutchland isn’t part of the Netherlands continent
You are the one with BS not me
Yes, most people will want to do this at a minimum with Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml (actually most instances already have defederated with the second, but it doesn’t hurt).
What’s wrong with lemmy.ml? It’s a pretty generalist instance if you ask me. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn’t block obvious troll instances like lemmygrad or the one that’s even worse by default but you can do that yourself these days.
It’s full of tankies. Many of the mods of major subs such as politics or world news are tankies and will block anything remotely critical of Russia or China and censor anyone who says, for instance, that Ukraine has the right to take the fight to Russia. It’s definitely more covert than lemmygrad is, but after about 6 months there, it became abundantly clear to me that nothing good was coming out of that place.
I find Lemmy in general tends to lean quite authoritarian autocracy-ish; that feels more like a reflection of the general user base.
I don’t like that in the slightest to be clear but I do think it’s true.
I don’t feel that that’s true if you remove the .ml’s.
Make a joke at russian or China’s expense on there, then please report back haha
So far I find it to be nonsense. Call the US a terrorist nation for couping democratically elected leader in favour of dictators for over a hundred years, get downvoted and banned by amerophiles. Call China or Russia terrorist nations for literal genocide, wars and international strongman bullying, get downvoted and banned by tankies.
Can’t say retard because that’s a slur but idiot is fine despite it meaning the absolutely same thing, also calling someone slow but in french is also fine.
People are so hardcore pro privacy would literally rather see child rapists go free and child porn platforms stay online, than to have to tolerate the police scan outgoing connections for a specific IP for three days.
Lemmy feels more and more like extremist echo chambers without any actual discourse or exchange.
the US a terrorist nation for couping democratically elected leader in favour of dictators for over a hundred years
Is this really true?
Yeah CIA likes to overthrow foreign governments, some democratically elected, and destabilize nations. They say they don’t do it anymore but who knows. It’s pretty public knowledge.
Edit: I live in America and it’s like that thing where you can talk shit about your own family.
I meant the “for over a hundred years” part specifically, I bolded it but it’s not as noticeable as it should be.
oh yeah for sure. Dude they orchestrated a coup and took over Hawaii in the like 1800s.
Plus I think there was fuckery in Latin America even back then.
The Monroe Doctrine has been a guiding principle of American geopolitics since its conceptualization in 1823, whether or not America has had the power to necessarily enforce it.
The goal is clear, the Western Hemisphere is America’s property to do with as it pleases and interference will not be tolerated.
Just the history of Haiti alone and the Banana Wars in general proves the point for at least 100 years.
People are so hardcore pro privacy would literally rather see child rapists go free and child porn platforms stay online, than to have to tolerate the police scan outgoing connections for a specific IP for three days.
This does not make sense. If police suspect a crime and have valid reasons for surveillance, nobody would have an issue with it warrant was obtained.
Privacy crowd is pretty clear, we are not here to enable crime. But we will not tolerate police state for a fake feeling of “security”
Can you provide some context what you are actually trying to say here?
