this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Is there a way to derank certain magazines on user side? Something between full blocking and full allowing a magazine? (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago by quortez@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social
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Some instances and groups are very chatty (*gestures to /lemmyshitposts), so much so that they dominate the All page.

I knew that there would be a point that browsing /all would no longer be a pleasant or feasible experience, but I quite liked having a pulse on what everyone in the #threadiverse (that kbin.social federates to, anyway) are thinking. But right now it seems @memes is dominating everything.

I don't want to fully block them from showing up in my feed, but i don't want to let them full send either. Would it be feasible to add a feature in future releases to be able to adjust the algorhythm on the user-side that would allow for mutes, or deranking it in your feed, instead of outright blocking it?

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[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 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.

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.

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.

I dislike the idea of "federations devoted to a topic"

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?

[–] tables@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

Reddit did it fine.

So you want the insightful posts being hidden from a mag because someone else in the same mag spammed memes?

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.

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.

No, that wouldn't happen with my proposal.

Sorry but I don't want that.

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.

/all will soon become unusable anyway. It was great at the beginning, but the more people join and the more it will become unusable.

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.

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit did it fine.

Reddit has one unique instance only.

Reddit had moderation everywhere.

Still reddit is flooded by low effort content.

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.

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.

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.

No, they would probably post their useful information in a federation which promotes quality.

"just because you don't want to click the block button a couple of times"

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.

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.

You won't win this race. Eventually people wanting quality will rejoin people wanting quality on another federation.

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.

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?

[–] tables@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PabloDiscobar@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'd at least hope you were arguing in good faith, but you're obviously not

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?

Being in an instance with people who share similar topics is fine. Defederating from general instances, though, just puts you in a small bubble.

Wow, what a colossal waste of time it was. I spent time explaining the thing and that's all I've got in return.

I don't understand why you reject that any other solution other than defederation might work when it has worked for Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc.

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.