Comment on Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds
misk@sopuli.xyz 23 hours agoThey can change sorting and view but they will not get anywhere near their stated purpose. OP wants instances to gather people that share similar interests or beliefs so that his/her browsing experience is shaped by this choice in a natural manner.
As an very rough example, this could mean that in discussion-centric instances text posts would be ranked higher because users in those instances tend to upvote them more often. This would also mean that less interesting stuff is not filtered but lower in the ranking. Those seeking such experience (it does sound attractive to me) would have higher incentive to join smaller and more focused instances. Maybe they wouldn’t be so small then or they’d have to vet new users and it’d be a terrible idea. Still worth considering imo.
Ulrich@feddit.org 23 hours ago
That’s what communities are for. Like…I don’t understand.
misk@sopuli.xyz 22 hours ago
Community has no control over who uses it except for federation policy. Random people browse communities through „All” which leads to random downvotes, ignoring community rules and so on. I believe that idea that makes Activity Pub so nice is that you can use various apps and platforms as distinct ways of browsing and communicating with people want to do it differently.
Ulrich@feddit.org 22 hours ago
If you don’t want everyone to be allowed to participate, then you’re simply using the wrong platform. Lemmy also supports private instances.
misk@sopuli.xyz 21 hours ago
How does this prevent anyone from participating? This kind of sort would make one engage less with some content and users they don’t want to. You could do it for efficiency, mental health or whatever reason you come up with. Having an option of increasing importance of your local instance in shaping what you see is just one more way of tweaking your experience without affecting others. It’s dangerously close to „the algorithm” but works without being a black box.
OPs issue is not solved by private instances because it cuts off contact entirely. You might as well set view to Local and ban other instances in your client.