This may be an unpopular option since I've already seen it across lemmy, but the ____porn communities. I'd like to browse pictures of nice landscapes or exotic cars without worry about someone around me noticing "PORN" on my screen.
At this point it seems very old internet, something that made sense when those communities were established, but now is unnecessary gratuitous and not socially acceptable.
Damn, I had forgotten how obnoxious that was on Reddit. Blocked all of those years ago because it was just unnecessary and a gross way to qualify otherwise unremarkable photos.
All the mindless circlejerking and echochambers. I hope the federation helps split up communities about the same topic which should help prevent echochambers from being as strong, and keep people seeing more information and opinions about the same topic.
I was so tired of seeing blatant lies and misinformation being spread just because it fit people's narratives. Like those "dawn project" tesla videos, people hate musk so much (which I'm sure all the much worse billionaires love), so they feel they must hate teslas too, so they keep spreading those videos that have been debunked and proven incredibly questionable that were made by a competitor that's been failing to compete. That's just one tiny example. Don't even get me started on the outright lights and misinformation people spread about crypto.
And of course if anyone ever tried to correct anyone, share actual facts, real articles from trusted sources, anything that went against a particular thread's circlejerk, you would just be harassed, personally insulted, and downvoted immediately. It was so hilarious and sad spending time responding to someone's bullshit with real information and a real argument just for them to do a one-liner personal insult based on nothing, because they knew they didn't actually have anything but the circlejerk is all that really ever mattered.
I'm ranting, but this attitude people have of just not caring about reality when the lies fit what the circlejerking hivemind wants is one of my biggest gripes about modern internet and it's incredibly dangerous. It's exactly the mindset that trump supporters have that allows them to believe whatever the fuck they want and that led to people dying at the capitol, and it's the type of mindset that will eventually lead to far worse things if social media companies don't do more to combat misinformation and echochambers.
Reddit and hating people is really strange. They hate Musk, which is fine. But the arguments are always how bad the cars are. (They're not), hiwbhis rocket blew up (it was predicted it would) without admitting he owns the most successful car brands right now, and is big in space programs.
Also with Trump. Disliking him is great. But reddit focuses on his hair and skin colour instead of exposing his shitty politics or disregard for national security.
Reddit sucks at informative chooses because every challenge to an established echo chamber gets glassed in an instant.
Safe spaces for fascism. Spez let The_Donald and its imitators fester for years, thus turning Reddit into a de facto Nazi Bar. Thus years of harassing non-fascists & minorities, brigading, spouting bigotry, disinformation and toxicity while the admins yawned.
Unfortunately fascist spaces will exist and cannot be prevented because of the core nature of Lemmy/fediverse architecture. Anyone can start their own instance and post whatever they want.
However, if the main popular instances defederate with them, then most users won't have to see those posts.
Karma-whoring. It's already started with the stupid "upote my can of beans" posts... Dude nobody cares about your internet points, either activity participate or fuck off to Instagram.
There's just no need for it.
I like the ability to upvote/downvote posts for visibility, but a karma or point system just encourages whoring, which leads to a dirth of lazy and low quality content
On that note, Lemmy should hide the score and just sort based on it. Having a visible score drives people to say things they think are popular instead of what they actually think.
The one benefit of Lemmy is that you can see the total upvotes and down votes. So if a comment has 5k up votes, you'll also see that it has 4k down votes.
Rather than 1k up votes like on reddit. This makes it far easier to see if bullshit is being spewed rather than just bot spammed up votes as often. It makes bots less effective imo. But what do I know, I'm no social media developer lmao
the upvote/downvote system is still problematic, because its roots are in exploiting addiction mechanisms via giving people that dopamine rush when they get high upvotes, and making them chase that high again.
I really miss the pre-social media days when we had forums instead of...whatever reddit/lemmy are, when there was no upvotes, no karma, no nothing. You just made a post, and people replied to it. interaction without gamification.
This is my #1 also. So many people "just asking questions"
I also hate the circlejerk of people going "I cannot possibly comprehend being gay/trans/disabled/whatever but I let them do what they want!" They're not aliens, you can listen to them explain what they are going through and have empathy. It's not very complicated.
Their moderation policy basically allowed any abhorrent view as long as it was expressed in a "civil" manner.
Trolls and racists could say things like "well, in my humble opinion, black people are just inherently violent and unintelligent" and anyone who got irate and called them out would get a warning and/or banned.
There is a decent argument historically that communism and other left movements are extremist, racist, and anti-lgbtq. When you start banning concepts, you open your communities up to several things.
Group think
Banning of other radical ideologies that you may agree with
You alienate those people from exposure to better concepts
You jump start compaction cycles for large scale propaganda organizations that could lead to actual violence
I provided four reasons why this was relevant and you jumped from communism to whataboutism? Talk about being intellectually lazy (Or a state-sponsored account)
There is a decent argument historically that communism and other left movements are extremist, racist, and anti-lgbtq.
We're talking about today. On a relatively new community. Frankly, I see no reason to tolerate the bigots you're so keen on coddling until they take over and make this another version of reddit's the_donald, complete with organizing nazi rallies. Particularly not with the vague and spurious "there is a decent argument" hand wavy FUD that you didn't explain as a justification. Are a lot of people saying it?
Moving onto your 4 points, let's look at how they worked so well over at reddit, with all the virtuous acceptance of intolerance and nazi-coddling they've done, shall we?
Group think
No, reddit has never had groupthink. Not for an instant. Thank god they let the bigots in otherwise they'd have groupthink!
Banning of other radical ideologies that you may agree with
Post anything on conservative even slightly counter to their bigoted orthodoxy and see how that goes. Hell, suggest that fascism is not amenable to reason and must be opposed with force anywhere on reddit and see how that goes.
You alienate those people from exposure to better concepts
They had abundant exposure to better concepts on reddit. Look how well that's worked so far. Clearly the answer is to let them spread their shit all over lemmy.
You jump start compaction cycles for large scale propaganda organizations that could lead to actual violence
the_donald literally promoted and helped organize a nazi rally where Heather Heyer was run over and killed by a nazi's car. On lovely ol' bigot-coddling reddit. The sub was not banned for years afterwards. I do not want that for lemmy. I left reddit the instant an alternative that didn't welcome bigotry got enough users.
Not everywhere has to entertain bigots. There's already too many places that do. A community that welcomes bigots is unwelcoming to everyone but bigots. But holy shit, does it ever drive engagement.
"This."
These comments add nothing to the discussion. I get that people want to show their support an argument/content, but that's what upvotes are for. If you want to show your support for something, then at least try to think of something worthwhile to add to the discussion while expressing your support.
A tolerance for the propagation of disinformation.
Room for disagreements is necessary, but so is stopping people who never cared about agreeing in the first place. Giving the dishonest this freedom has only silenced the honest by burdening them with layers of crap to cut through before their speech is heard.
Sponsored posts, banner ads, algorithms, and other advertising-industry fuckery.
A reply that's just "r/(some subreddit name)."
A robot trying to sell stolen fan art printed onto t-shirts.
People childishly self-censoring non-sweary words. "Sex" isn't a bad word, but writing "s*x" suggests you probably shouldn't be allowed on social media at your stage of development.