General Discussion
Welcome to Lemmy.World General!
This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.
πͺ About Lemmy World
π§ Finding Communities
Feel free to ask here or over in: !lemmy411@lemmy.ca!
Also keep an eye on:
- !newcommunities@lemmy.world
- !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
- !new_communities@mander.xyz
- !communityspotlight@lemmy.world
- !wowthislemmyexists@lemmy.ca!
For more involved tools to find communities to join: check out Lemmyverse!
π¬ Additional Discussion Focused Communities:
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca - Note this is for more serious discussions.
- !casualconversation@lemm.ee - The opposite of the above, for more laidback chat!
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk - Into video games? Here's a place to discuss them!
- !movies@lemm.ee - Watched a movie and wanna talk to others about it? Here's a place to do so!
- !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world - Want to talk politics apart from political news? Here's a community for that!
Rules and Policies
Remember, Lemmy World rules also apply here.
0. See: Rules for Users.
- No bigotry: including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- Be thoughtful and helpful: even with βsillyβ questions. The world wonβt be made better by dismissive comments to others on Lemmy.
- Link posts should include some context/opinion in the body text when the title is unaltered, or be titled to encourage discussion.
- Posts concerning other instances' activity/decisions are better suited to !fediverse@lemmy.world or !lemmydrama@lemmy.world communities.
- No Ads/Spamming.
- No NSFW content.
I saw a post earlier today suggesting quite a lot of those political posts may be coming from bots or paid actors. And considering those post more often than not also carry stigmatization and faith-like views, even if it's made by actual users, I think it's still a good call to at least keep a lower tolerance, maybe avoiding the rage-click posts and communities and sticking to more informative posts instead.
Do you think Lemmy is big enough to attract that kind of attention? I would be genuinely surprised if it does.
My theory was that the content just floods over from other sources. Where there are bots / paid people. Anecdotally I've not seen the classic bots like you see on Twitter and Reddit here yet.
Yes.
Lemmy has gotten quite a bit bigger since the Reddit API fiasco about a year ago, a lot of people who left reddit for lemmy tended fairly progressive/left leaning, seeing the writing on the wall and how enshitification was going to get so much worse as reddit was preparing for its IPO. These are the kinds of people that various special interest groups want to discourage voting. I mean most of the subreddits I was a part of devolved into awful botspam as mlre and more people left, and reddit really only exists for weirdo right wingers, and even the porn subreddits really degraded in quality or were just shuttered for being unmoderated.
Even though this lemmy instance is a global site with users from all over the world, users from the US still likely makes up a signification population here, and by extension, makes this instance a big target for election propaganda trying to dissuade the generally progressive potential voters here from voting by reminding us how bad genocide Joe is for slow rolling weapons to Israel or how he's forgotten about Ukraine because its not still in the headlines or some other propaganda.
If size is of matter, I would imagine it's due to being small, but with great potential for growth and diffusion, instead.
But like you said, and perhaps in a lighter point of view, it may indeed just be that same diffusion picking communities with established cultures already, instead of potential bots and paid actors.
Some apps have keyword filters that might also help :)
European here, I avoid most news, be it US or EU.
I created !yurop@lemm.ee to share light hearted and positive content about Europe.
So yeah, you are not the only one.
It is time to take refuge in the Subscribed tab of your Lemmy app or choice
I've been blocking channels and users left and right (no pun intended). Most of the time it's just bots arguing with bots anyways.
How dare you say Iβm arguing with ~~other~~ bots.
I come in here specifically to catch up on US election coverage. It's better than other news feeds I have. I totally understand why it's annoying but I also appreciate it for myself. People seem to be more real in the comments compared to other communities. The articles at the top aren't what I find elsewhere. Sorry you have to work so hard to curate your experience though.
I banned all mainstream communities because otherwise my "all" feed was essentially "trump bad". It's unbearable.
The problem, however, is, that once elections are over I'll have to figure out which communities to unblock. Otherwise I am going to miss out on pretty much all the content lemmy has to offer.
Communities should have tags or something that I can just filter out of my feed
Voyager and Connect allow to filter keywords
I took a two week break from Lemmy and other engagement sources and it did wonders for my mental health. I'd recommend trying something similar.
For me, even just making the switch from Reddit to Lemmy has done quite a lot for mental health and really helped reshape my social media diet into something much better.
On Lemmy I encounter a lot fewer true assholes on the platform (theres still snark and sarcasm and inside jokes, but I liked that aspect of reddit), it's a lot slower of stream of content, the posts take longer to change so I don't get stuck in an infinite scroll of perpetually new content, and I've rebalanced where I'm spending my time online, more informational and wholesome side of youtube and a discord community that I found that I really like.
But yeah even taking a break from these every so often is still a good idea.
Yea that can't hurt. It's just hard to do IMHO a lot of muscle memory.
Too much political content regardless. I came for the tech focussed discussions, not for reddit 2.0.
Luckily banning communities and choosing a homeserver that does not federate with instances I dont like gets me along. I enjoy the organicness and interaction and hope it never goes away. Also its getting a little crowded everywhere...
I did the same thing as you, blocked all political communities. My quality of life is much better now.
I hope Lemmy continues to grow as other sites keep getting worse. That will probably help round out the content. I'm only too well aware of how widespread American politics is as I have dealt with it my whole American life. I don't blame you for avoiding it, and have only started recently engaging with it. Though, compared to other social media, I find Lemmy to be more mild in the intensity and range being pushed around the site. I expect it will increase over the next few months. As for advice, if it makes you angry/upset, then yeah, keep political instances blocked. I learned how to ignore it, but that took time. 196 is still pretty great tho. Hope you find your peace and enjoyment from the community. Ask more questions, and you'll probably find what you're looking for.
I filter out anything that makes me angry with voyager, still needs some added terms, but my feed barely has US politics in it, the odd one slips through, also ticking that box in the Lemmy website settings to block bots makes a difference.
As an American I block almost all political news content online except for my local news. I feel like that sort of content gets into everything online not just Lemmy, it's absolutely obnoxious.
To bad there isn't an easier way to filter out posts without having to block entire communities. It seems the election has infiltrated all of them. I can understand how frustrating that must be for nonAmericans. An option to leave out posts that contain keywords would be useful. I use it a lot when doing a Google search.
Most lemmy apps will allow filtering of keywords. Personally i use Connect.
as someone kindly (not really kindly) informed me that I should curate my own experience here.
Delivery of the message notwithstanding, definitely do curate. It takes weeks whittle All down to only topics that interest you, but tackle it one community at a time and you'll get there. All is about the only thing I browse now - I've blocked a TON of communities that don't interest me, and the experience now if much, MUCH better.
I strongly recommend also using a key word filter - many of Lemmy's apps have this feature, and IIRC there's a "RES" of Lemmy floating around the web somewhere, but I neglected to bookmark it and don't remember what it's called -_- ...if you happen to know what I'm talking about, please drop a link!
Anywho, if you're tired of US politics in your Lemmy, chop it!
Me just browsing /all/
Another poster suggested Piefed, tried it and even without an account much better. With an account, it's supposed to have keyword filters.
Lemmy made by people who don't wsnt filters.
Don't get your political coverage from social media. Look for reputable news sources. I block all the political communities.
I have the keywords politics, trump, Biden, Harris, Republican, Democrat, Israel, Palestine, and a bunch of other shit blocked, and I still see way more of it than I'd like. The amount of political content is fucking staggering, and you cannot block it all. I know, I've been trying for a year now.