cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1795192
Take this screenshot for example. This is the front page of Lemmy right now. Virtually every post will make the reader feel bad and depressed. It’s all doombait, ragebait - and if it’s a meme, it is usually a meme that leaves an annoyed taste in your mouth at someone or something.
This is what drove me and many others away from Reddit, and a decentralized platform does not have to have this problem in theory - but it Is currently experiencing it now. Reddit has no reason to change their depressing content because it drives much engagement and creates revenue. But, for a decentralized platform to just be filled with ragebait and doombait is not good and exposes inherent problems with the platform right now.
What’s more is that most of these posts are posted by accounts created in the past month, leading me to believe that people from Reddit who are used to getting karma dopamine from getting people riled up are just doing the same thing here.
I don’t really know how Lemmy can fix this problem - it is something that we really need to be aware of as a community. Don’t just upvote something because it makes you annoyed and you want more people to see it - perhaps we need to downvote ragebait and doombait when we see it so that the platform doesn’t become a depressing echo chamber.
Not just in theory but in practice.
There is no one “front page of Lemmy”, switch to another instance and you get a radically different local feed. lemmy.world has soaked up the majority of users fleeing Reddit and so is going to also have a lot of the issues Reddit had and if you didn’t want the old Reddit experience then you are definitely on the wrong instance. The beauty of the threadiverse is that you can find an instance that works better for you - there are ones focused on specific interests that don’t really have much news and current affairs outside their remit, there are more right-leaning instances if you want some climate change denial and pro-corporate posts, there’s there are ones just focused on NSFW content and on and on. Shop around until you find something you like.
All this before we get onto the topic of the threadiverse being more left-leaning for historical reasons (as the early developers were) or that people are often driven to the Fediverse when they become sick of corporate shenanigans.
And all that before we take into account that the world is burning, a lot of politicians are corrupt and big businesses are taking it in turns to fuck most of us in the ass. So is that “ragebait” or genuine rage against the late stage capitalist/early stage Neo-feudalist dystopia we seem to be sleepwalking into?
However, if you don’t want to hear that then you don’t have to.
edit: just looking down my home instance, there’s posts on football, coffee, cycling, films, canals, music, games, etc along with a scattering of posts about politics. If you wanted less politics or a different flavour of politica, I am sure there’s an instance out there for you. I have seen a few people regretting moving over into a large, general instance because the “local” feed starts to look a lot like Reddit’s “all” and that’s not a problem with Lemmy, that’s just the nature of the instance you are on.