this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
629 points (95.5% liked)

Fediverse

28468 readers
525 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Bodongs 48 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm an example of a filthy casual reddit user who is really struggling to find value in lemmy. Finding an instance where local is of value is difficult, world may as well be "everything", and "everything" is a nightmarish hodgepodge of memes for teenagers, furry porn, really niche technical discussions, and star Trek memes. I never stay in the app longer than a few minutes and I feel like I spend more time blocking weird porn communities than I do reading interesting articles.

The other major issue is having to sort through the exact same article 60 times because people cross post not only to local communities but then also the same communities are duplicated on every instance. I'm probably going to abandon this soon unless I can find some kind of curated community list to subscribe to or something.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I don't really get all the "'all' is bad" discussion. Isn't that what the "subscribed" feed is for? Just sub to the communities that interest you and browse from there. Just like it was back on Reddit.

[–] Bodongs 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The big difference is 1. Finding communities is not easy. Can you name every one of your interests off the top of your head? 2. Just punching in communities from reddit 1 for 1 doesn't work. 3. Content and user base. There are no discussions for my favorite podcasts here and if there are where do I find them.

It took me a decade to build out a decent sub list on Reddit and I still stumble upon new interests now and again. I don't know how to "stumble upon" decent communities on Lemmy and I'm sick of wading through cartoon horse cocks.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you have a decent list from Reddit you can use https://sub.rehab to map Reddit to Lemmy / Kbin

If you just want to look for communities you can use https://browse.feddit.de

Takes some time to get everything set up but I honestly prefer having only stuff that interests me in my feed + no porn randomly popping up

[–] Bodongs 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They still call it squabbles on that site lol

[–] TropicalDingdong 9 points 1 year ago

Yeah I think that respondent is being defensive and really doesn't get the point.

Discovery sucks. Its really bad and its hurting the ability of lemmy to be a viable alternative.

[–] Brekky 2 points 1 year ago

Option number 2 worked pretty well for me, porting from Reddit. Not perfect but then neither was reddit.

[–] theragu40 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One thing I don't like about the approach of blocking things is that the frontpage of reddit still allowed some level of discovery. If something in a niche community got hot enough it would break into my feed even though I didn't subscribe to that community. It was a cool way to expand my content on an occasional basis.

If I'm going to only view my subscribed list on lemmy then I have to also manually go out and intentionally discover new communities. That's hard, because some of my favorite small reddit communities were ones I never would have thought to search for.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That got me very confused as I never had that happening on my Reddit feed. I had to go back to Reddit to notice that I actually had that setting disabled.

Anyway, I don't think something like that would really work on Lemmy. Reddit has his algorithm that devours your privacy, chews on your data and spits out results that may or may not interests you. Lemmy is much more simple than that. IIRC it's "algorithm" is little more than a logarithmic curve and the (very based) devs are committed to user privacy, so your data will never get analyzed, not even to sugar coat your feed. For me it's a feature, though I get that not everyone might feel that way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the (very based) devs are committed to user privacy, so your data will never get analyzed

All credit to the devs, but Lemmy isn't great on privacy. Your votes are technically public, and there is no way to guarantee what you delete or edit is actually deleted and edited. You're right the data is not used to customize your feed, but not because it's private. It isn't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You are right. I don't mind the upvotes being public, I do mind the deletion thing (although it's an inherent flaw of federation, hard to get around it) but both are points against it having good privacy.

I guess what I meant is that the platform makes no attempt at linking your online persona to anything else. It doesn't even collect IP adresses and has very poor logging - btw this is actually a liability with the ongoing CSAM issue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That got me very confused as I never had that happening on my Reddit feed.

Same for me, and I never had trouble finding new content. Discovering subreddits (and communities) through word-of-mouth worked perfectly fine.

Also, unlike Reddit, Lemmy has a community browser.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, I use my LW account for local and lemm.ee for all (because it can see more posts). They are just... different, although I am getting pretty annoyed at the mass of r/politics level politcal discourse on the LW local feed.

[–] Bodongs 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What do you mean "it can see more posts"? I thought the point of world was that it was the general everything respiratory.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lemmy.world has been defederated and has defederated some pretty large instances. On the othe hand lemm.ee is probably the instance with one of the most open fed lists

[–] Bodongs -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DUMB. Just another reason for the average user to not bother with the platform IMHO. I can't be arsed to figure out who is censoring or who isn't I just want it to work.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can view all blocked instances by viewing the /instances page and scrolling to the bottom.

For lemmy.world you just check https://lemmy.world/instances

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Off the top of my head, LW accounts can't see posts from beehaw, hexbear, or piracy communities on db0 due to defed/blocks.

[–] Bodongs 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Whaaaaaat. See this is the shit I'm talking about. Stupid I have to watch out for these kinds of pitfalls that I only know about because somebody happens to tell me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I only know about because somebody happens to tell me

I agree on that point, I have built a site to check for that https://defed.xyz but you still have to query each instance manually. It's just the way Lemmy works, some research is required when creating your account. I could write you a whole spielt on what criteria you should look at but the short answer is that if you want something big that "just works" lemm.ee might be the place for you.

[–] Bodongs 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Appreciate the feedback, I definitely want it to "just work".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

a decentralized system NECESSARILY has these challenges. it's a feature not a bug. if you want it to be easy then go back to Reddit where it doesn't work for different reasons. this will never be that so either you accept this and learn or put up with spez type bullshit.

[–] TheBat 21 points 1 year ago

I browse all and block communties I have no interest in.

Bye bye Star Trek memes and may the force live long and prosper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Did you hide all NSFW and still get that problem?