this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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It's not just memes but also unrelated content to the magazine. There are spammers out there, hunting for quantity.
The short answer is probably: you can't. You say you don't want to block the mag, but how would you make the difference between useful posts and spam from the same mag? You can't, it's just too much content to sort out.
The only reason why we did not defederate was a lack of content. Once kbin.social is filled with enough users federation won't be necessary anymore and it will be seen as a way to introduce cheap content to prime newborn instances.
Can you tell the difference between lemmy.ml, beesomething and lemmyworld or the cohort of attempts at lemmysomehing? No. There isn't much difference. The idea was that instances would specialize into a theme but it did not happen. People want the mass. They want to be where the buzz happens.
Yes, in theory you can use any instance as a point of entry but in reality people want to join the biggest party. So the only difference between instances is mostly moderation. And somehow the initial link that people saw in their original community to find their new instance. Like many of us did with /r/redditmigration
This is all about sane default settings. If your instance allows everything and let you chose what you don't want to see then you are trapped into a whack-a-mole game against a million moles. You will lose your mind blocking stuff constantly.
Either
People won't have the patience to block the meme spammers. In short: the blacklist system we are using no cannot handle the increasing load of meh content, we have to use the whitelist method.
In the end it will come to a federation made of instances with the same moderation policy. It will work because this policy will enforce the best content possible and will attract the people looking for quality content. So the people complaining about "defederation being a fascist practice" will stay on the old global federation, nothing will be forced upon them, while other people looking for quality will silently leave for instances with better federation standards. The most motivated people will bootstrap the concept, probably people passionate with hardware or another hobby.
Lemmy.world won't be on their federation list. Too bad for them but it's their fault for creating an account on a spammy instance.
This state where everyone federates with everyone (except criminals) comes to an end. We will have many different federations, not a single one.
I don't think your answer addresses what the OP is talking about at all and it's getting kinda scary that the immediate answer to every small issue people have on the Fediverse seems to be defederation. People do love their echo chambers apparently.
I want to be federated with lemmy.ml and lemmy.world and etc and I'm fine that they're generic instances. They don't need to "specialize" and I don't even think that was the point. Maybe people assumed Kbin and Lemmy would follow the tracks of Mastodon where indeed some instances were created as specialized art or technology instances, but I don't even think that's really a great idea.
But I do agree that some communities are a lot more active than others - like meme communities - which leads their posts to drown out other smaller communities. I don't think the problem is the "quality of the content" - I don't want anyone controlling the "quality" of the content either, as long as it's within the rules, because that's just way too subjective - for example, you seem to think all meme accounts are spam, whereas I don't think they are at all - I think people are allowed to have fun.
What I want, and I think that's what the OP is talking about, is simply to have a way to slow down the posts from the more active communities - kinda like how Reddit didn't show you all of the content of a very active sub when you were on your main feed, but only the hottest threads, and you'd get a mix of threads from very big active subreddits and smaller more inactive subreddits. I love the LOTR meme communities, for example, but I don't want to see all of their posts on my main feed, since it drowns out discussions from other smaller communities. All we need for that is a limit to the amount of threads you can be shown from every community on your main feed.
I dislike the idea of "federations devoted to a topic" because they get boring really fast unless your whole personality centers around that single topic. I created an account on fosstodom once since I do contribute to FOSS and like seeing discussions about it, but eventually it got boring because, naturally, no one talked about anything other than software and people didn't engage on other topics - which is probably fine if software is the one and only thing you like having in your life, but I would dare say is not fine for most individuals with a balanced life and different hobbies.
Yes, this exactly.
I did address the point. My conclusion is it cannot be done reliably by an automated system and that we have the choice of blocking manually or defederating.
Then I already mentioned why it cannot work reliably: "how would you make the difference between useful posts and spam from the same mag? You can't, it's just too much content to sort out."
So you want the insightful posts being hidden from a mag because someone else in the same mag spammed memes? Because that's what you will get. Sorry but I don't want that. I want to be out of this meme bubble. We are slowly encountering the same problem than reddit had.
Nope, I did not say "devoted to a topic". I said "In the end it will come to a federation made of instances with the same moderation policy."
I said "moderation policy", I didn't say "topic". I said that hobbyists would start the process, but they will probably federate with other hobbyists from other domain as long as they share the same moderation policy.
/all will soon become unusable anyway. It was great at the beginning, but the more people join and the more it will become unusable. You didn't really think that all instances would always be federated, right?
Reddit did it fine.
Mags should moderate themselves. Going back to the Reddit analogy, if a subreddit mixed memes and useful content, and I didn't want to see memes, I'd stop following that subreddit. That's why most informative subreddits usually banned memes. If I follow a meme subreddit though, I expect to see memes. I don't expect to see nothing just because someone else decided to defederate from every instance containing memes.
No, that wouldn't happen with my proposal.
Neither do I, but that's ironically what we'd both get if we followed your suggestion of defederating from "generic" instances. Most useful and informative communities I follow right now are on lemmy.ml and lemmy.world. If we defederate from them just because you don't want to click the block button a couple of times, we would both lose access to most informative communities in this space.
If, however, we simply filter some of the most active communities' content out, and enable users to keep blocking out stuff they don't want to see at all, you can get a good mix of all the content you follow, and you can still go directly to the communities in which you want to read every single thread and read every single thread. We could even have a /sub and a /filtered-sub, where in the first one you'd see aboslutely everything, and in the second one you'd have a Reddit style sub tab with a mix of content of the various communities you follow.
And that's fine IMO. /r/all was unusable on Reddit, too, and I think that's fine because it's not made for you or me. Some of my friends loved /r/all, though, and refused to use the sub only view. I think like on Reddit, /all is meant for people who want to see content from absolutely everything and like living in chaos, basically. I personally don't see the point of that, so I'd rather follow /sub. But I want /sub to have all of communities I follow, and not have most communities arbitrarily cut out because, again, you alone don't like memes.
Reddit has one unique instance only.
Reddit had moderation everywhere.
Still reddit is flooded by low effort content.
This is not reddit here. This is more like chaos. Reddit is an example of an instance completely defederated, with only one authority. You cannot expect the same here when you federate with everyone.
No, they would probably post their useful information in a federation which promotes quality.
As if I was the problem. We are only one month in. What do you think will happen in 6 months? Do you really believe that new users will follow your routine to block every sub posting trash? Of course they won't! They will follow the link to a federation that fit their style. Why not? What's the big fuss about federating with a select group of instance? Whats the drama about? I don't get it.
Every time someone mention defederation it's like we kicked a hornet's nest. People will run away from memes. And defederation is an adequate tool for this. You can stay if you want, other people will leave.
You won't win this race. Eventually people wanting quality will rejoin people wanting quality on another federation.
Fine, you are welcome to stay with the meme enjoyers. It makes me wonder why you are not on reddit. If reddit "does it so well" why didn't you stay on reddit?
I'd at least hope you were arguing in good faith, but you're obviously not. I pointed out specific features of Reddit which, in my opinion, worked fairly well, and I pointed out how they could work here as well. That doesn't mean I had any reason to stay in Reddit.
You've mostly deviated from the subject and assume that most people are exactly like you, hate memes and all "thrash" content - by your definition that everything you dislike is thrash. I disagree with that. I think most people like generalist topics, thus why they flow towards those communities.
Mastodon, having existed for longer, is a good example. The main generalist instances are far bigger than the specific tech or art ones. But, because they haven't defederated from each other, everyone can sit in their favourite instances, in which the local content most suits their tastes, but still interact with one another. You can go on fosstodom and mostly see FOSS related topics on the local view, while being able to interact with more generalist instances like mastodon.social at will. If fosstodon had defederated from mastodon.social, it likely would've lost many of its users as they'd probably not like being in an instance that forbids general content.
Being in an instance with people who share similar topics is fine. Defederating from general instances, though, just puts you in a small bubble. I don't understand why you reject that any other solution other than defederation might work when it has worked for Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc.
Can't you just say "I disagree with you" instead of accusing people of arguing in bad faith? What's so hard with explaining why you left reddit?
Wow, what a colossal waste of time it was. I spent time explaining the thing and that's all I've got in return.
The mass of content is different, the type of content is different. I don't know why you compare them. Reddit is the closest example of what we are aiming for and you refused to answer why you left reddit.
I'm done, I'm not spending more time with this.
I'm not so sure that people want to join the biggest party. I follow a lot of similarly named/themed magazines/communities because I don't want to miss interesting or informative content. The content i like might not get that much engagement (upvotes or boosts). I guess this is similar to what I followed on Reddit.
Right now kbin.social has the categories Subscribed and All (this is what I see on mobile). Maybe we need a Favorites category as well for the mags/comms we like the most.
I like to check out memes but there has been a flood of them. So I don't subscribe to those mags/comms because I know I will find them easily on the All queue regardless.
ETA: I love that there is no algorithm showing me more of what I've already engaged with or more of what it thinks I want. I like being exposed to new stuff that I didn't know I wanted to read about.
And the mass of this new content is memes and low effort. There is no miracle. It worked at first because of the people who joined initially, we left reddit for a reason. But some people are already feeling the crowd effect and the fediverse hasn't reached his maximum intensity yet, far from it. So expect the default fediverse federation to get worse and worse, because spammers want a public.
I see no other direction for the people who want quality content to create their own federation. Sure you can put some limiters here and there but the fundamental problem will remain. No one ever said that everyone should federate with everyone.
I think we should give it time and see how things go, but there will probably be a lot of changes on the federation thing.