Fediverse

Adding for context that one reason for this is that Lemmy was created by radical (to remain consensual) leftists, and the default instance (also maybe the first big one) they administrate Lemmy.ml (ML stands for Marxist-Leninist) has the same leaning population.
But, so far, afaik, the software itself is still neutral, so you can find instances and communities that fit your needs.
However, this initial leaning is still going to surface from time to time even after spending time blocking the instances and communities you don't want to see, as users can move around freely.

Delete the All feed! It's just stupid. Subscribe to what you like. Maybe have a short glimpse at the All feed on a biweekly basis for 5min, but that's it.

but does every other post have to be about some political shit on the all tab,

There's a reason it's called the "All" tab and not the "Some" tab, and even then it's mostly making an effort.

The fediverse stuff is already set on the tooling for that. Set your feed view away from All to, say, Subscribed, and block the stuff you don't like.

I’m forced into this box that is my subscribed feed or I have to actively search out new communities because all is just a political circle jerk that I don’t care about.

Come on, this is not a problem. It's a feature. As another user said in another reply, having a algorithm curating your feed ends up curating you. It's even easier here than on reddit since you can even block whole instances! Block the ones that have the most political communities and you will be fine.

I agree with you on one thing, the lack of content on topics that are not tech or political related. But that falls on us, the users. I hope more communities will continue to grow in the future.

Not to mention the moment I came back I saw a fucking flow chart on the instances drama of the week.

I don't know, for me at least, it has been pretty funny, especially these days. You enter fediverse@lemmy.world, see the big pinned thread that says "Don't whine", and then hundreds of people whining. It gives me a chuckle.

I did a couple things to make my life comfy here.

I changed my default sort to be "new comments" - this gave me the biggest perspective change on Lemmy, I now see where there active conversations are and it makes the place feel more full of people and less pages and pages of empty threads. I also found a lot less political stuff this way, because it gets posted a lot but people only interact with a few of the political posts, so only those one end up floating to the top. I am finding myself getting less politics this way on Lemmy than I was on reddit

I blocked Lemmy.ml and hexbear. A lot of the wilder leftist stuff comes from there and once it was blocked I saw the amount of politics in my feed drop right away.

I believe you're somehow subsconciously expecting an algorithm to curate your feed.

On Lemmy that work is on you.

Hey, welcome back.

piefed.world hasn't really invested much into populating their Explore menu, to make finding communities easier.

I've just added a few feeds though, check out https://piefed.world/feeds

Also https://feddit.online/topics is an amazing directory of all the communities. It's a separate instance to piefed.world though so when you find good communities you'll need to manually copy their address into your piefed.world account. Or just move yourself to feddit.online...

I absolutely agree, I am also a leftist but constantly stewing in political news isn't good for your head, or even in a practical sense good for your ability to go actually get involved in stuff outside. You have to take care of yourself if you want emotional energy with which to do any real political labor

I wish we could come up with some collective strategy to create better balance cause this platform tends to share politics as common ground, and with not many people here that means a lot of what gets posted and engaged with is all just news and politics.

And yes, I know everything is political. AND, you need to be able to step away from the politics of the world and catch your breath and be mentally well. Any one thing dominating your time and emotional energy can become unhealthy quickly, especially when its all bad news or small victories that remind you of the broken bigger picture.

Balance is important. I'm thinking about creating a seperate account and blocking all the political communities and filtering by keywords so I can just be here for hobbies and folks chatting when I want that

Yeah, no matter your political leanings, you gotta approach the fediverse in reverse of the way reddit worked. Reddit, you went and subbed to the things you were interested in and only went to the all feed if you wanted random discovert.

With lemmy, piefed and mbin (or kbin, whichever is still in use), you have to default to the all feed because there's only so much activity per community, which means discovery is much harder and your subscribed feed takes months sometimes to get filled in with useful things. It's more efficient and enjoyable to spend the time pruning out the non enjoyed stuff from the all feed so that you have access to more things overall.

That's helped by app that have filters. You can weed out a lot of bullshit just with keywords preventing specific topics coming up even in communities you are in.

The fediverse is more work on the user's part to make work. I don't consider that a bad thing overall, but it does make it hard for ex redditors (aka r/effugees) to on board, and can be confusing for total newcomers to threaded forums.

Tbh though, ten plus years ago, the initial reddit experience for a noob there was worse in many ways. Hell, outright hostile at times, if you were a noob that dared speak your mind against the zeitgeist of a given sub. At least here, you usually only run into that if you're not fairly solidly leftist, or try to hate on linux. That's much easier to deal with imo.

There are real people still on Reddit?

Shocking

Notice what instances those posts come from and block them... Notice what users seem to post politics wherever. Block them...

I'll often block lemmy.world, and unblock it when really bored.

Gotta curate your feed.

I've been blocking communities that post news. It's a bit of a heavy lift at first because there are quite a lot. But my all feed is now a fairly pleasant place and there's still a decent amount of content. I don't expect it'll be much effort to maintain, either.

Some instances do curate the default communities. Programming.dev hides a number of communities by default:

https://legal.programming.dev/docs/hidden-communities/

Other instances may have similar policies.

To be fair the instance drama was unusually exciting in the fallout of the ban list.

But anyway. I got my ideal experience by joining .today, which doesn't block any instances, and only browsing my subscribed. It only took about an hour to get a solid list built up, one that I add to when I see things recommended or in the community promo groups. The front page of my feed is usually memes, comics, art and tech news.

i tend to stick to subscribed unless i want to read the worst opinions available

I feel like I’m forced into this box that is my subscribed feed or I have to actively search out new communities

I don't feel that this is a problem. I don't ever use the All feed, because I specifically don't want to see all. There's a lot of garbage I don't care about out there.

I have been trying to be the change I want to see if you check my profile I regularly post in meme subs non political just funny memes to be like “lmao”

This is... a weird change you'd want to see. Usually people want to see more signal and less noise.

Use block lists. I've blacklisted tons of keywords. Mostly political. If you're looking at an unfiltered feed then you're going to have a bad time.

Since I signed up to Lemmy I think I've spent about 30 minutes in the All feed. 5 minutes just now to remind me why I don't go there. You are your own algorithm. If all you subscribe to are meme communities, you ought to be able to drastically reduce political content in your personal feed. All and Local are for occasional excursions only.

If you want to make this place a bit less stressful, the most surefire way is to contribute the kind of content you'd rather see more of! Be the change that you want to see in the world, as they say.

I agree completely.

I see some people below saying "curate your feed". But this isn't viable because:

• it takes too much effort, even for a statistically frequent user
• doesn't work when you're logged out
• and this is the most important part - I don't want to curate myself into an echo chamber.

The problem is with the user base. The user base is extremely susceptible to low effort rage baiting. It's full of immature kids and intellectually dishonest users.

Lemmy is not the fediverse just part of it

Did you look at the all feed on reddit? If so there is no help for you anywhere, you make your own choices.

If I could block the usa on here, would I still see posts from people crying about left, leftist, leftism? Awfully ironic from a country where 1% of the people even vote left, let alone know what it is.

You just need a decent block/filter list. I scroll new/all and probably see 3-4 political posts daily.

I would be unable to use Lemmy/Piefed without a well-rounded block/filter list.