Fediverse Frustration: The Homogeneous World of Lemmy Feeds

Submitted ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

Fellow Fediverse wanderers, I’ve got a bone to pick with our current Lemmy experience. 🌐

The “All” Feed Syndrome

Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the “All” feed looks across different Lemmy instances? It’s like we’re browsing the same curated content, just with different window dressings. The posts, upvotes, and discussions feel increasingly uniform - a far cry from the diverse, decentralized dream we signed up for.

My Wishlist: Local Votes Only

What I’m craving is a simple setting that would:

Filter posts based ONLY on local instance votes
Showcase truly instance-specific content
Break the algorithmic echo chamber
Highlight unique community perspectives

Imagine seeing genuinely different content on lemmy.world vs sh.itjust.works vs [your favorite instance]. Right now, it feels like we’re just shuffling the same deck of cards.

A Call to Developers

Is this technically feasible? Would love to hear from the community about:

Potential implementation challenges
Interest in such a feature
Alternative solutions to content diversity

Who’s with me in wanting a more genuinely decentralized browsing experience? 🚀

#lemmy #fediverse #decentralization

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Comments

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Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Showcase truly instance-specific content

Local feed

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- Binette@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  ^
  
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remon@ani.social ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the “All” feed looks across different Lemmy instances?

Yes. That’s how it should look.

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- Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Strongly disagree. This is just recreating what already exists, using a technology that’s actually not great for it. Each website’s connections should in some way resemble what that website is tailored to. And we don’t need a network of websites that are tailored to “looking exactly like every other website, because we couldn’t be arsed to pick a niche”.
  
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  - remon@ani.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well, I strongly disagree right back.
    
    Especially smaller instances regularly have reliability or federation issues, so it’s vital for me to be able to hop to an alt account and still the same all feed.
    
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  - Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    And we don’t need a network of websites that are tailored to “looking exactly like every other website, because we couldn’t be arsed to pick a niche”.
    
    That’s the whole point of the Fediverse, and Lemmy instances. Mastodon instances look like each other, to an extend.
    
    And even here, lemmy.dbzer0.com and lemmy.world default themes look different.
    
    If you want a truly different layout, there is fedia.io/m/floatingisfun
    
    But that’s a unique case, because Mbin allows community-based themes
    
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- lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Exactly! That’s why it’s called “All” and not, say, “Some” or “Maybe”.
  
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- misk@sopuli.xyz ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s because there’s no algorithm but that’s not what OP is after I think. We already have scaled sort which adjusts score based on community size. What’s suggested here is to have some sort of sort/scaling that would assign higher weight to votes from local instance. This is a great idea that promotes decentralisation and I wouldn’t discard it like that.
  
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    there’s no algorithm
    
    There are several algorithms to choose from. OP is upset because they don’t like the default one. They don’t seem to understand that they can change it.
    
    What’s suggested here is to have some sort of sort/scaling that would assign higher weight to votes from local instance.
    
    But why?
    
    promotes decentralisation
    
    Decentralization is not the same thing as fragmentation. What you and OP are suggesting is the latter.
    
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  - remon@ani.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Ok, but then this should be a seperate feed from “all”.
    
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donuts@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Isn’t that what the local feed is for? All means, well, all.

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LambdaRX@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Don’t browse all, but curate your own feed by subscribing to communities.

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- veeesix@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’ve never really understood how people could browse exclusively by All. I barely have enough time to keep up with my own hobbies and interests, let alone everyone else’s.
  
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  - Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Same. Every time I see someone complaining about the all feed I wonder if they came from 4chan’s b board or something.
    
    How many places on the internet expect you to regularly use some sort of all feed? 9gag maybe? Did people regularly use reddit’s all feed, despite it being crammed full of garbage and vote farming? I think I used it for like 5 seconds when I first started there before I gave up in disgust and started picking communities intentionally.
    
    Do you set up your newsreader with all of everything? You want all the sports, all the pop culture, all the tech, etc etc?
    
    I just don’t get it. All is always going to be garbage on every service just because the world is a big place, and that’s fine.
    
    Now, rant aside, I did actually find his idea of an all feed where local instance voting is all that gets counted kinda neat. I don’t have any problems with that being an available option if someone wanted to work on it.
    
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- reseller_pledge609@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Use All to get started. Check it out now and then for some variety and maybe to find new communities. But absolutely curate your own Subscribed timeline.
  
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- sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This one million times.
  
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ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Break the algorithmic echo chamber

Showing things by a local vote only would do the exact opposite of this. The majority of Lemmy could be said to be fairly liberal moderate thinking folks, so globally that tends to be what gets reflected in the votes. There are however a handful of notoriously aggressive tankie instances who will pile on and ban at the slightest whiff of someone disagreeing with their perception. Allowing posts from more neutral places like .world to be viewed on these instances through a filter only of their local votes is only going to reinforce that already existing view.

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sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

The “All” Feed Syndrome

Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the “All” feed looks across different Lemmy instances? It’s like we’re browsing the same curated content, just with different window dressings. The posts, upvotes, and discussions feel increasingly uniform - a far cry from the diverse, decentralized dream we signed up for.

It’s called All for a reason?!

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- poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It never is “all” though. It is all communities subscribed by any member of your instance right now. On smaller instances it is noticably different from larger ones.
  
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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Right?
  
  I stopped reading after that.
  
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4Robato@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think it’s a bad idea to have each server have one topic which I know is often how Fediverse is sold but I think it’s not good.

I don’t know you but I have more than one interest and I don’t want a server to be about one interest and that’s it. I want the server to be fair and have rules about discrimination and so on. I can choose the topics I want to follow thanks to federation that’s the whole point, the server should focus on the moderation side.

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- Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Servers per language/country make sense. It’s nice to be able to see content relevant to your language/country in Local.
  
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  - 4Robato@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    A language is not a topic that’s why it makes sense and rules on servers that are on your language (and probably your own country) probably will have rules more aligned with your vision too. It makes sense on a moderation point of view.
    
    A server that is about technology or art, doesn’t say anything about how they might allow their users to behave. I just think it’s misleading and the focus of a server shouldn’t be about things you like but the way you like to be treated and how they manage your data which is at the end what they handle.
    
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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I don’t know why you would want that.

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poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is already implemented and coming with Lemmy 0.20.0 afaik. Not precisely with this goal in mind, but more general to give instance admins more customizability over vote federation.

I kinda agree that it might be interesting to lean into the idea to have the all feed further curated by what instance members are interested in. It already is to some extend, but the bigger the instance the more it gets dilluted out right now.

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db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5340

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5088

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5087
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