- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.ml
As a moderator of a Lemmy instance, you currently have two options to take: pushing users first to your local content or content from all instances you federate with. These options come with the costs seen in the picture. The moderator of another instance has the same choice. However, in this scenario, they will both always switch to promoting the local-feed. I don’t want to say its wrong - it’s just the most sensible way to act on Lemmy currently. However, if everybody does it, it is bad for the overall discussion quality of the Threadiverse.
Its a classical prisoner’s dilemma from game theory, which sometimes happen in society, for example with supply shortage during lockdowns. A way to solve it is by making action B more positive and option A more negative. This would lead to more moderators choosing Action B over A.
Mastodon solved this with an Explore-Feed, which consolidates the Local- and All-Feed. I think this could also be a solution for Lemmy. It would result in less engagement decrease AND an overall positive effect on discussion quality.
Additionally, a general acknowledgement that instance protectionism is a problem and should be avoided could help to make A more negative. In other words: increasing the pressure by the community. This would put a negative social effect on option A. So: start talking about it with your moderators.
Do you think these two measure would do (additionally to more powerful moderation tools, which would only enable a working explore-feed in the first place)? Is this a problem on other services on the Fediverse too (at least Mastodon seems to have handled it quite well)?
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I almost never used all on reddit.
On the fediverse, I use it every day. There isn’t enough content in my subscribed feed, so I check the “good stuff” first and then pop over to see what’s interesting elsewhere.
Using m/all is how i find a lot of the content I like. There’s a lot of magazine blocking to get rid of the trash I don’t want, and that allows me to get a moderately different feed than my main subscription page.
Interesting, I agree with OP in that I never cared for browsing Reddit’s All, except for rare occasions. But your post made me think about the possibility of setting up multiple subscription lists:
- Subscribed
- All with some blocks
- All
I’ll never really understand why people want anything but a subscribed feed.
You got lots of answers in favor of All, so here’s my contribution for Local: It makes sense for themed instances. Examples:
- https://mander.xyz/ to see science things
- https://startrek.website/ to see star trek things
The Local feeds of these instances basically act as a merged view of all their individual communities. Which is a frequently requested feature in another context.
Personally, I almost exclusively use Subscribed (since I’m also not interested in themed instances), but there are reasons for All and Local.
I kinda disagree, /r/all was amazing way back before they started fuckin with it. That was the best way to discover new communities once upon a time.
But I do admit the firehouse approach isn’t for those looking for a refreshing glass of water.
I never browsed all on reddit all the years I was on it.
It’s partly FOMO. The feeling that even with extensive subscriptions, there might be interesting content that the user would miss because they aren’t subscribed. That and some users just want to discover new stuff that they might not otherwise know they were interested in just because they never had the chance to see it.
That makes sense. For me, I am very sure about what topics/communities I am interested in; other things I am not interested in checking out. My subscribed field takes up the time I allocate to lemmy anyway.
As a a casual lemmy user with accounts on a few instances, I can say that I never visit the local or all fields of any of my logged in instances. I only visit my subscribed field, which is identical over all my accounts. How much do the local and all fields really matter for users?
I use all constantly, local occasionally, and subscribed rarely at this point.
That may change but that’s how I typically use Lemmy as it stands today.
When I first joined I mainly used all to find communities I was interested in and then subbed to them.
Now that I have nearly 100 communities subbed, I mainly use the subscribed view, occasionally I’ll take a look at all, very rarely local.
I do the exact same as you, with the exception of a few topic-specific instances, where the local communities are only about that topic. There I will actually use Local as default.
At least on my Kbin instance, going in All and Local opens me up to doom-and-gloom “big corporation and alt-right bad” news and outrage bait.
I agree wholeheartedly with “big corporation and alt-right bad” and that they’re the cause of too many of the world’s big serious problems. I’d also rather spend my time on Kbin enjoying what I see instead of getting mad. I can already find out what horrible thing a corporation or alt-right politician has done from the regular news, without the understandable but exhausting comment chain of outrage.
Even without an algorithm shoving it down your throat, outrage bait will rise to popular status on its own. Unfortunately, getting mad at and feeling superior to the idiotsincars, choosingbeggars, etc. is kind of crack to our brains. I’m no exception, which is why I have to only look at /sub. I have to keep it out of sight, because if it’s in my feed, I’ll click on it and get mad too.
So how do I find new stuff? There’s a lot of communities out there whose purpose is to advertise other communities. I subscribe to those.
I too think the same way. I purposely stay away from all due to excessive doom and gloom. However I haven’t really found any topic specific instance where I would enjoy local content. Now I think finding interesting topic specific instances is a problem whose solution I haven’t found yet. Communities I can find using search function; I even created an account on lemmy world simply to find obscure communities I would be interested in. I wish there would be a simple search function to find topic specific instances.
if
instance protectionism
is occurring due to prisoner’s dilemma then there also exists a sustainable positive-sum solution as the fediverse and Lemmy is playing by the rules of the infinite prisoner’s dilemma:
Interesting. And what would that mean for the problem at hand?
Maybe like that: Moderators would need to know that there is some consequence to protect their instance. For example, because then other instances would defederate or because users would join other, more open instances. That would be my suggestion for some kind of social pressure.
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Mastodon solved this with an Explore-Feed, which consolidates the Local- and All-Feed
Can you please explain what that means for non-mastodon users. As far as I know about lemmy, which granted isn’t much, local posts are not hidden from all, meaning it already is a consolidated local and all feed.
Personally, I didn’t agree with your previous post and I don’t agree with this. I believe instance owners can run their instance however they wish, they’re the ones paying and maintaining it. If it’s not suited to your tastes, there are other places to look at. If an instance wants to federate with no one or hide all remote posts or anything, that is their choice to run the software that way. People aren’t locked in jail cells making decisions with no information of the outside world. Nor are the defaults they set locked either, I just bookmark “hot” and “sub” and go to those every time, regardless of what the homepage has set.
I’m very confused by this post. Maybe it’s because I’m using a client (Sync), but I was able to select my default post and sort for my homepage, so my instance owners had no say in it. I rarely ever go to my Local or Subscribed feeds because I have a very healthy blocked instance/user/keywords list, so I like to spend time on Everything since other feeds don’t have enough content to fit my needs.
Seems to work well enough, I don’t see my instance taking over my feed at all.
Its as simple as if I constantly see shit discussion I’m not gonna keep returning. Some instances specifically cause shit discussion and therefore instances don’t want to federate with them because it drives away their members.
What main page? How does local,local negativly impacts discussion quality? Actor A and Actor B are on the same instance for a reason.
I also always switch to
federated
when there is nothing new on my subscribed communities.