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 ;-).
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
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.
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 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.
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
Got me there
Eating poisoned shit isn’t broadening your horizons.
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?
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.
Good choice of instance :-)
Yeah, the SDF instance seems to be lenient about this. Hopefully it will last.
I agree.
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.
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.
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.
Very true, count dongulus.
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.
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.
I wouldn’t pull that thread if I were you.
Probably purling.
c/tearrorists
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 it attracts a certain type of person to Lemmy in the first place; someone who would have probably used the original Reddit back in the day
Idk what this means but yeh
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
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
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
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.
o7 to the brave admins of Hexbear, Lemmy’s tankie quarantine instance.
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.
Whats so terrible about lemmygrad.
They think North Korea is communist utopia
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.
Other than the one we are all thinking of here, I can’t say I really agree.
2, hexbear and lemmygrad.
Help a noob out - it’s reddit, right?
cough lemmy.ml cough cough hexbear cough
And what we’ve learned about trump cultists is that echo chambers are fabulous.
Any system model that eventually encourages echo chamberism should not be in use, even if the intent is to change the system before echo chambers occur, by then it will be too entrenched to just change
But those echo chambers are a normal result of human interaction, from the friends you choose, to the events and bars/clubs you frequent, to the magazines and papers/websites you read.
Echo chambers will naturally occur as long as people can choose who to follow or read or otherwise consume or connect with.
The only system to prevent this would be to always force every flavor of everything to anybody, removing every way to filter or freedom to choose who to follow and what to hear/consume. And that sounds very dystopian and fascist to my ears.
I agree wholeheartedly
Fascist? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re literally just describing newspapers, broadcast news, town criers, and literally all life pre-internet.
Filter bubbles occur because we have the ability to selectively choose to only hear news we like which is a new phenomena that is a result of the internet, because it is fundamentally a messaging system, not a broadcast system like virtually every news system throughout history.
You are just falling into the American trap that personal freedom is the ultimate good and should trump everything else, even if the systemic effects of it are bad.
Reddit / Lemmy are fundamentally not a good place to read the news and get informed because of the filter bubble effect. They’re a good place to go have an in-depth discussion about an article, but if you actually want to be informed then you should use an RSS reader or something else that gives you a chronological feed, not one based on what’s popular amongst people you already agree with.
I fear you misunderstood me. Fascist would be if choice would be forbidden, when everyone would have to always hear every side of every topic.
Even with newspapers and the like are filter bubbles possible. I am free to buy only the newspaper who writes the stories in the way I want to read them. There are left wing newspapers and right wing newspapers and stuff in between. And even with newspapers and broadcasts you are still free to only consume what you want to consume and block, by not buying or active ignoring, what you not want to see or hear. Things like cracker-barrel philosophy or Stammtischparolen where a thing long before the Internet.
Echo chambers are a normal part of being human, it exists in small (only between friends),huge (tribes/nations/cults/religions) and anything in between more or less as long as humans are able to communicate.
Even with newspapers and the like are filter bubbles possible. I am free to buy only the newspaper who writes the stories in the way I want to read them. There are left wing newspapers and right wing newspapers and stuff in between. And even with newspapers and broadcasts you are still free to only consume what you want to consume and block, by not buying or active ignoring, what you not want to see or hear. Things like cracker-barrel philosophy or Stammtischparolen where a thing long before the Internet.
Are you arguing that the filter bubble effect is the same for a newspaper and for a social media site?
Yes, the filter bubble effect is still possible to some extent with a traditional chronological news feed, but it’s quite frankly absurd on it’s face to claim that that is the same severity of filter bubble, when a site like Reddit / Lemmy operates by taking those chronological news feeds and filtering them further.
The Guardian might be a relatively true neutral newspaper (meaning it appears to lean left by mainstream standards), and yet articles it publishes that back up any remotely right wing / economically conservative points do not get posted here.
Echo chambers naturally arose in the past because information could not travel freely, that does not mean they are a good thing or something that we should be recreating and reinforcing on the internet now that it can.
I never said that they are a good thing, I say they are a natural occurrence, something that only can prevented by a very dystopian system.
Because people will always filter what they want to hear and consume, and with that create filter bubbles. If you went to church (regardless of the specific religion) you enter a filter bubble. If you talk with people on a rave you are in a completely different filter bubbles then in a country music bar. Filter bubbles are all around us and yes the Internet is, by its nature, a magnifying glass for this effect. But it inherent to the human nature not inherent to the Internet. So to prevent filter bubbles you would have to radically change the human nature.
We’re not talking about every possible aspect of life. We’re talking about the choice we make in how we consume news. One way leads to more of a filter bubble, one way leads to less of one. Everything else you’re saying is just besides the point justification for why you wanna choose the one that leads to more of a filter bubble.
And I use my filter bubble power just now and here I think. Have a nice rest of your life
Have to counterbalance dog piling when your ban hammer can’t target a whole nest
