A lot less annoying then endlessly filtering content by community and user
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.
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
Edit who the fuck downvotes this
Fwiw, I see only 9 upvotes but 0 downvotes from PieFed.social. Meaning that your 2 downvotes must come from an instance that is defederated from by PieFed.social - likely hexbear.net if I had to guess. That is one of the downsides to not defederating from such places - you get to see and vote on a wider array of content, but they get to do the same to you as well, and unlike you, they may have their own priorities about how to treat such matters. e.g. I don’t think I’ve ever downvoted anything at all from my current account (except once accidentally, easily remedied!:-), and if the situation came up I would rather explain my disapproval rather than merely downvoting… but they may do things differently, hiding behind the relative anonymity of a vote to try to silence / lessen the reach of your POV.
So it goes. My question was more rhetorical. If someone takes issue with my identifying some instances that have that content, fuck em.
I was speaking to the general practice of filtering in response to the echo chamber generalization, not the original post calling out instances. Personally I filter out porn instances because that’s not what I’m here for. The nice thing about the app I use is that I don’t see any posts from those instances but I can choose to see comments because people interacting on the posts I see are generally there for random reasons and are reacting instead of posting their whatever.
I feel like the term echo chamber gets thrown around a lot. Imo an echo chamber has to be highly specific. I wouldn’t classify every monolingual person as trapped in an echo chamber for example. I would also argue against to idea of having to be weary of creating your own echo chamber online. Use social media how you like, the solution to echo chambers is going outside and touching grass not forcing yourself to interact with every community on the internet.
It’s an echo chamber whether you think that’s a bad thing or not, only being exposed to one type of view point is what an echo chamber is. And people probably should be exposed to opinions they disagree with, but it doesn’t have to be constantly, and it doesn’t have to be when they’re already stressed or tired, for the sake of their mental health.
Very well put!:-)
I wouldn’t classify every monolingual person as trapped in an echo chamber
Simply being something isn’t an echo chamber, you have to have a thought or opinion being shared by the group. If every person you interact with only speaks one language, and they all share that one language is the best method of communication, that’s an echo chamber.
Use social media how you like
I agree. Although it is useful to be aware of your own biases.
the solution to echo chambers is going outside and touching grass not forcing yourself to interact with every community on the internet.
Assuming you don’t mean literally “touch grass”, the solution is seeking out opinions/thoughts outside of your echo chamber. That doesn’t necessarily mean forcing yourself to interact with terrible communities, but being aware and understanding (but not agreeing with) them.
Although I again refer to using social media how you like is fine. No one needs to be exposed to certain communities. It’s not wrong or lazy or bad to ignore certain communities or viewpoints, especially toxic ones. However you should be aware that they exist and it can be helpful, if you choose, to understand where they come from.
As a harmless example, if you don’t like brussel sprouts and none of your friends like brussel sprouts, it may benefit you to try brussel sprouts or to seek out and talk to or read about people who like brussel sprouts. You can still at the end of the day dislike brussel sprouts. You don’t have to change your opinion. But now your opinion is more well rounded.
wary=cautious
weary=tired
It’s a good comment just trying to help.
Ha, I was tempted to make basically the same comment. I’m super weary of people mixing the two up!
Counterpoint: filtering out the furry communities by blocking a single instance
Honestly if the furies want to have there own space that’s fine. Just don’t invade the rest of Lemmy. Same goes for hexbear and whatever else.
Absolutely. I don’t have any hate for them it’s just not my thing and it’s a bit unpleasant when I see it. It’s a great feature for the fediverse that we can filter and let others enjoy their thing in peace.
Got me there
As if the default Lemmy experience isn’t a massive filter bubble in itself. I doubt hardly anyone here would want to federate with Twitter and Truth Social even though that would make your feed, in fact, less of an echo chamber. Hell, a huge number of inctances don’t even federate with Hexbear, Lemmygrad or Threads.
I think it’s pretty much impossible to fully get out of filter bubbles, but the only way to really get every view on everything is to be part of everything mainstream AND everything more underground. Personally, I don’t feel the need to associate with any other social media. I think toxicity differs from being exposed to a different point of view.
Reddit has had the problem for years that if you tried to make a point that slightly differed from the hive mind’s opinion, however eloquently you would put it, everyone would just pile on with their ‘akshually’ mentality and not even be open to any other viewpoint than their own.
And that’s toxicity without even mentioning folks that would just say ‘no’ followed by hateful language.
I feel Lemmy is a far kinder, more balanced community where you can have a polite discussion about stuff. And OP is right, if a certain instance shows its users can’t behave or have such different views than your own, you can just make them go away and enjoy the rest of Lemmy.
I just hope those users don’t defederate from the rest of us so at some point they will have a more nuanced view of things.
I feel Lemmy is a far kinder, more balanced community where you can have a polite discussion about stuff.
My experience has been much closer to what you described reddit to be. Lemmy is extremely unwelcoming of differing opinions.
I have already personally defederated from the likes of hexbear.net (my prior instance had not done that) and lemmy.ml - the latter I even switched instances specifically to be able to do (although now that I’m here I’m finding it amazing what features are here that Lemmy lacks, like Categories on top of Communities).
There is a difference between a valid point of view, presented in good faith, vs… the opposite of that, masquerading itself as a merely “different POV”. In essence, while I am aware that I blocked many good people and therefore some good content, I decided that it was a good trade-off for me to be able to halt the flood of what is essentially spam sent out to the Fediverse from those instances.
I would rather see receipt of such spam be opt-in rather than have to find a way to opt-out, but it is what it is. At which point yes, according to this perspective at least, under this set of value judgements, then it is helpful that so many of the spammers congregate into one place making that process easier. At the expense of others who are now blocked as well, having done or even intended no wrong but being caught up in that war of ideologies. We live in a society though and our actions impact others, whether we like or even acknowledge that or not.
Eating poisoned shit isn’t broadening your horizons.
That’s my philosophy too. I like browsing all so I heavily filter with keywords and blocking. My community block list is approaching 600
100%. I don’t want to spend my free time scrolling past the political options of every single fuckhead in the world, these topics achieve nothing but pissing each other off. Block, block and block again.
I still remember the old-school crude internet saying of bygone days: “Arguing on the internet is like completing in the special Olympics; even if you win you’re still retarded”
More wise words from MY_ANUS_IS_BLEEDING.
For these
social mediaad companies to profit, self awareness had to be done away with. The profit machine stops working when the crowd realizes they’re trapped inside of it.I don’t think the older internet was crude. It was more polished than the social media garbage of today. Corporatized internet had to mess all that the old internet worked to achieve. Because if everyone starts understanding the meta-dynamics of the internet again, then crowds will realize they’re trapped inside corporate internet. The profit machines would stop working.
You ever notice how the old internet figured out the basic rules of teh game decades ago. But trying to tell the social media crowds how these things work is like talking to a brick wall.
The existence of “echo chambers” is debated by scientists. It really doesn’t matter who you hang around with, you’re going to disagree with people.
The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media.
Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber?
It doesnt necessarily mean that importent things won’t be covered. I just don’t need fox news opinion about it.
Then you should pick a reputable paper like The Guardian and read a chronological RSS feed. Articles that don’t support Lemmys preexisting point of view don’t even get posted here.
They do. I’ve seen some - heck I’ve posted some. Sort a community by Controversial and you’ll see them.
If you had said “rarely” or “mostly” rather than “don’t even” then your statement would have been correct. As it is, you are using hyperbolic claims that are easily refuted by a handful of counterexamples, thereby turning people away from listening to your POV.
Maybe the solution is to either not restrict yourself to one platform or to be aware of the bubble.
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.:-)
Good choice of instance :-)
I agree.
Yeah, the SDF instance seems to be lenient about this. Hopefully it will last.
Hah, the world admins are desperately trying to keep the instance running, blocking shit isn’t even close to their radar.
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.
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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.
I was happy today when I made a post on an obscure community and some guy just passing by on the “new” feed left a comment.
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?
Not everything has to have an opposing perspective, where’s the opposing community for knitting? Tearing?
Rip and tear, until it is done. And you can start knitting again.
Probably purling.
I wouldn’t pull that thread if I were you.
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!
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.
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Why not both?
Some people don’t come to social media to have their beliefs challenged and that’s okay.
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.
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.
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.
Are you me
This is the way. Although I also block e.g. sports and hexbear - I already know that I don’t want any of that.
I just raw dog All for the past 6 hours most of the time.
Doing my part!
Lemmy has a mod problem honestly. Legitimate options get censored while the echo chamber is promoted.
Underrated benefit of Lemmy is that it isn’t infested with bots the way its larger counterpart is. Reddit has really turned to garbage.
Lower quantity of content here, but more authentic
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…
My reply test to see if you blocked me
You are not blocked, because you are beneath contempt.
[jk]
I have enough people I dislike and disagree with IRL, I will have all my opinions confirmed when I’m browsing online, thankyouverymuch. /s
There are some instances that lean in specific directions, but there are also several that are kind of just melting pots. For the most part I don’t need to use blocks too frequently, but there are definitely some spaces/users that I find are too hostile that it gets in the way of their intended messaging. But then, that line is going to be different for everybody.
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.
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
Lemmyml has a lot of tankies and other weird characters
Also they have a mod/admin problem. (Don’t you dare question the tankie rhetoric)
Whats so terrible about lemmygrad.
They think North Korea is communist utopia
You just demonstrated the issue with lemmyml
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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
Almost everyone is on Lemmy.world, so… I don’t know. Don’t think they made a choice. People who are not on Lemmy.world made a choice at least.
Not sure if a third is everyone
Should I be concerned about being on lemm.ee?
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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
I used to, but they either got blocked or defeded,. either way my experience got WAY better.
Help a noob out - it’s reddit, right?
cough lemmy.ml cough cough hexbear cough
I haven’t thought about how that works.
If other instance users post on a problematic instance by accident or because there’s a useful community, I wouldn’t want those hidden.
Then again if it, preferably, only hides the users of the problematic instance, that doesn’t really solve the core issue of bad actors being enabled in the fediverse 🤔
Trust me, as someone who has been through this process, they manage to drive away all the normies pretty quickly.
That’s why we should use the federation features more often. You should choose an instance that federates with the instances you like. Blocking can be done on most mainstream platforms, we can defederate!
Still looking for instances that defedded with lemmy.ml…
https://lemmy.cafe/instances does
Single admin low population instance though, so as usual it might disappear overnight
dubvee.org also does.
True, Tesseract might not be for everyone
Thank you
In addition to lemmy.cafe and quokk.au and Tesseract on dubvee.org that have each defederated from it (though as Blaze mentioned they are all single-admin instances), iirc the apps Connect or Sync will let you block any custom instance you want (I don’t have either, but from what people say?), or the Lemmy alternatives PieFed or Mbin likewise plus they have neat features that Lemmy lacks such as Categories of Communities.
