Am I the only one feeling that the quality of discussion here felt big time after big instances got created and federated (think lemmy.world)?
TLDR : we can block communities we dislike but we have no choice but to interact with instances we dislike. (Also main points in bold in the text)
I have barely any interest in conversations here compare to before and I feel it is due to a lot of very bad takes and nonconstructive comments being the norm now. I can't help noticing/feeling like the majority of them comes from the same instances.
I was annoyed from the early days (before Lemmy got some traction after the reddit debacle) that I had to block all the 'meme' communities and some others. This is a sample from my block list :
cryptocurrency
Memesich_iel@feddit.deShare
Funny Videos, Images, Memes, Quotes and more Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world
Political Memes@lemmy.world>
Greentextmemes@lemmy.worldmemes@hexbear.net
RPGMemes @ttrpg.network
ADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
SurrealMemes@sh.itjust.works
Microblog Memes@lemmy.world
Memes@midwest.social
Star Wars Memes@lemmy.world
Risa@startrek.website
Memes@sopuli.xyz196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
solarpunk memes@slrpnk.net
Funny@sh.itjust.works
GenZedong@lemmygrad.ml
AI Generated Images@sh.itjust.works
Lord of the memes@midwest.social
Furry@pawb.socialScience Memes@mander.xyz
Comics
People Twitter@sh.itjust.worksich_iel@feddit.org
This is fine by me as at least I have a way to not bother and not be bothered by those communities I have no interest in. I feel like some conversation that could be interesting and deep get bombed by the sheer amount of terrible interaction from other instances.
There are surely better and worse instances, and depending of our interests we'll have preferences. Because of the way federation works now I cannot filter out the 'noise' and things like "top of week" is... not going well in my opinion. There is no community-blocking equivalent way of blocking votes/post/comment for specific instances.
When I read 'Hacker News' it is so refreshing to see such a community with deeper interactions and sourced arguments and points. I feel like I am learning things there. It would be perfect if not America-centric, start-up minded place (also only about tech there). But the moderation there is amazing.
I am starting to give up on the current state of Lemmy now and looking for non-federated places that would have better communities. I haven't found any yet (not that I've searched that much). I feel like there might be a way around all-federated or isolated silo choice here. I guess that would also imply a lot of technical work (thank you very much too all who contributed to Lemmy so far).
Lemmy is in growing pains. It doesn't need to surpass Reddit, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that federation and defederation is like maintaining a garden, if your goal is high quality discussion amongst knowledgeable individuals. It's like good moderation
Hexbear does a great job with this in my opinion, they are widely federated but are selectively defederated with instances like Lemmy.world (even though Lemmy.world defederated them before they were federated). Discussion on Hexbear is usually much higher quality per conversation (assuming it isn't a meme post).
It's a tradeoff if you want broad federation like Lemmy.ml or Lemm.ee.
Federation has nothing to do with the problem you are talking about. Moderation is. That's it. You're picking the wrong enemy. When any platform gets big, more moderation is needed, more stupid comments will appear. Has nothing to do with federation.
I had the idea that moderation is instance based in Lemmy, mods only moderate people on their instance.
Only an instance admin can prevent somebody from logging in to that specific instance. Their activities can be ignored by other instances though.
Normal moderation actions in communities such as deletions and community bans are federated.
users on their instance, not users from their instance. This account is from midwest.social but currently commenting on... uh, lemmy.world, right?
Does your app or site not display home instances of communities?
I think you can block entire instances as a user. But, if not, you can create your own instance and federate with only the instances that you like. Far more work though.
Here: using Thunder. *removed externally hosted image*
*removed externally hosted image*
It is good in that it is easier to find communities that you like. It is bad in that you'll probably be connected to communities you don't like.
In my mind the entire point of federating is to avoid censorship by corporate and government authorities. The point is to NOT have an echo chamber. Of course theres gonna be stuff you dont agree with. If you want to only see stuff you like and agree with go use one of the algorithm based social medias like tiktok and itll do that for you.
