Fellow Fediverse wanderers, I’ve got a bone to pick with our current Lemmy experience. 🌐
The “All” Feed Syndrome
Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the “All” feed looks across different Lemmy instances? It’s like we’re browsing the same curated content, just with different window dressings. The posts, upvotes, and discussions feel completely uniform - a far cry from the diverse, decentralized dream I signed up for.
The Dream vs. Reality
What I imagined:
- A small film-focused instance with an “All” feed curated by passionate cinephiles
- A German instance showcasing content relevant to German users
- Niche communities with truly unique content bubbles
What we got:
- Homogenized content across instances
- US-centric discussions dominating global communities
- The illusion of decentralization without the benefits
My Wishlist: Local Votes Only
What I’m craving is a simple setting that would:
- Filter posts based ONLY on local instance votes
- Showcase truly instance-specific content
- Break the algorithmic echo chamber
- Highlight unique community perspectives
Imagine seeing genuinely different content on lemmy.world vs sh.itjust.works vs [your favorite instance]. Right now, it feels like we’re just shuffling the same deck of cards.
A Call to Developers
Is this technically feasible? Would love to hear from the community about:
- Potential implementation challenges
- Interest in such a feature
- Alternative solutions to content diversity
Who’s with me in wanting a more genuinely decentralized browsing experience? 🚀
#lemmy #fediverse #decentralization
Showcase truly instance-specific content
Local feed
^
I think it’s a bad idea to have each server have one topic which I know is often how Fediverse is sold but I think it’s not good.
I don’t know you but I have more than one interest and I don’t want a server to be about one interest and that’s it. I want the server to be fair and have rules about discrimination and so on. I can choose the topics I want to follow thanks to federation that’s the whole point, the server should focus on the moderation side.
Servers per language/country make sense. It’s nice to be able to see content relevant to your language/country in Local.
A language is not a topic that’s why it makes sense and rules on servers that are on your language (and probably your own country) probably will have rules more aligned with your vision too. It makes sense on a moderation point of view.
A server that is about technology or art, doesn’t say anything about how they might allow their users to behave. I just think it’s misleading and the focus of a server shouldn’t be about things you like but the way you like to be treated and how they manage your data which is at the end what they handle.
Break the algorithmic echo chamber
Showing things by a local vote only would do the exact opposite of this. The majority of Lemmy could be said to be fairly liberal moderate thinking folks, so globally that tends to be what gets reflected in the votes. There are however a handful of notoriously aggressive tankie instances who will pile on and ban at the slightest whiff of someone disagreeing with their perception. Allowing posts from more neutral places like .world to be viewed on these instances through a filter only of their local votes is only going to reinforce that already existing view.
Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the “All” feed looks across different Lemmy instances?
Yes. That’s how it should look.
Exactly! That’s why it’s called “All” and not, say, “Some” or “Maybe”.
That’s because there’s no algorithm but that’s not what OP is after, I think. We already have scaled sort which adjusts score based on community size. What’s suggested here is to have some sort of sort/scaling that would assign higher weight to votes from local instance. This is a great idea that promotes decentralisation and I wouldn’t discard it like that.
there’s no algorithm
There are several algorithms to choose from. OP is upset because they don’t like the default one. They don’t seem to understand that they can change it.
What’s suggested here is to have some sort of sort/scaling that would assign higher weight to votes from local instance.
But why?
promotes decentralisation
Decentralization is not the same thing as fragmentation. What you and OP are suggesting is the latter.
They can change sorting and view but they will not get anywhere near their stated purpose. OP wants instances to gather people that share similar interests or beliefs so that his/her browsing experience is shaped by this choice in a natural manner.
As an very rough example, this could mean that in discussion-centric instances text posts would be ranked higher because users in those instances tend to upvote them more often. This would also mean that less interesting stuff is not filtered but lower in the ranking. Those seeking such experience (it does sound attractive to me) would have higher incentive to join smaller and more focused instances. Maybe they wouldn’t be so small then, or they’d have to vet new users and it’d be a terrible idea, or maybe it would lead to even more centralisation which would be even worse. Still worth considering imo.
OP wants instances to gather people that share similar interests or beliefs so that his/her browsing experience is shaped by this choice in a natural manner.
That’s what communities are for. Like…I don’t understand.
Community has no control over who uses it except for federation policy. Random people browse communities through „All” which leads to random downvotes, ignoring community rules and so on. I believe that idea that makes Activity Pub so nice is that you can use various apps and platforms as distinct ways of browsing and communicating with people that want to do it differently.
If you don’t want everyone to be allowed to participate, then you’re simply using the wrong platform. Lemmy also supports private instances.
How does this prevent anyone from participating? This kind of sort would make one engage less with some content and users they don’t want to. You could do it for efficiency, mental health or whatever reason you come up with. Having an option of increasing importance of your local instance in shaping what you see is just one more way of tweaking your experience without affecting others. It’s dangerously close to „the algorithm” but works without being a black box.
OPs issue is not solved by private instances because it cuts off contact entirely. You might as well set view to Local and ban other instances in your client.
Ok, but then this should be a seperate feed from “all”.
OP still wants to see all federated content but through a local lens, hence suggestion it could be implemented as a sorting option.
Strongly disagree. This is just recreating what already exists, using a technology that’s actually not great for it. Each website’s connections should in some way resemble what that website is tailored to. And we don’t need a network of websites that are tailored to “looking exactly like every other website, because we couldn’t be arsed to pick a niche”.
Well, I strongly disagree right back.
Especially smaller instances regularly have reliability or federation issues, so it’s vital for me to be able to hop to an alt account and still get the same all feed.
And we don’t need a network of websites that are tailored to “looking exactly like every other website, because we couldn’t be arsed to pick a niche”.
That’s the whole point of the Fediverse, and Lemmy instances. Mastodon instances look like each other, to an extend.
And even here, https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ and https://lemmy.world/ default themes look different.
If you want a truly different layout, there is https://fedia.io/m/floatingisfun
But that’s a unique case, because Mbin allows community-based themes
Don’t browse all, but curate your own feed by subscribing to communities.
I’ve never really understood how people could browse exclusively by All. I barely have enough time to keep up with my own hobbies and interests, let alone everyone else’s.
Same. Every time I see someone complaining about the all feed I wonder if they came from 4chan’s b board or something.
How many places on the internet expect you to regularly use some sort of all feed? 9gag maybe? Did people regularly use reddit’s all feed, despite it being crammed full of garbage and vote farming? I think I used it for like 5 seconds when I first started there before I gave up in disgust and started picking communities intentionally.
Do you set up your newsreader with all of everything? You want all the sports, all the pop culture, all the tech, etc etc?
I just don’t get it. All is always going to be garbage on every service just because the world is a big place, and that’s fine.
Now, rant aside, I did actually find his idea of an all feed where local instance voting is all that gets counted kinda neat. I don’t have any problems with that being an available option if someone wanted to work on it.
Use All to get started. Check it out now and then for some variety and maybe to find new communities. But absolutely curate your own Subscribed timeline.
This one million times.
Isn’t that what the local feed is for? All means, well, all.
The “All” Feed Syndrome
Has anyone else noticed how painfully similar the “All” feed looks across different Lemmy instances? It’s like we’re browsing the same curated content, just with different window dressings. The posts, upvotes, and discussions feel increasingly uniform - a far cry from the diverse, decentralized dream we signed up for.
It’s called All for a reason?!
Right?
I stopped reading after that.
It never is “all” though. It is all communities subscribed by any member of your instance right now. On smaller instances it is noticably different from larger ones.
was this written with chatgpt or was your account hacked?
I’m not really sure why you’re bringing this up again, either, as it seems like you already accepted this two months ago. https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/675872/-/comment/3762401
I was just about to ask, this writing style reminds a lot of LLM’s.
That was two months ago and now I’ve changed my mind stalker.
So, you resort to name calling? Why should any of us engage with you?
I don’t know why you would want that.
This is already implemented and coming with Lemmy 0.20.0 afaik. Not precisely with this goal in mind, but more general to give instance admins more customizability over vote federation.
I kinda agree that it might be interesting to lean into the idea to have the all feed further curated by what instance members are interested in. It already is to some extend, but the bigger the instance the more it gets dilluted out right now.
