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.
The main problem I see is that news outlets, people, and link aggregators like Lemmy/Kbin, mainly focus on the negative side instead of the positive said.
For example, focusing on the negative side would be “Climate change is here and we are doomed”. Focusing on the positve side would be “These are the things you can do to alleviate climate change”. Climate change is the main topic in both information sources, but changing the focus means better discussions, less ragebait and doombait, and a healthier environment for all of us.
Linking to news outlets won’t change that, because we all know how they work. But I agree with OP, ragebait doesn’t benefit anyone and only harms our mental health.
Unsubscribing or blocking communities/magazines is something that we can do, but that also prevents us to read other kind of news that are posted on those communities/magazines.
“These are the things you can do to alleviate climate change” That’s still negative. It’s blaming climate change on people instead of corporations and governments, a trend started by bp
It’s just an example. I could write another one, but that’s the one that came into my head at that moment, the easiest one for me to be understood.