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
Yes. That’s how it should look.
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.
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
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 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.
But why?
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.
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.
…I mean that sounds like the entire point of what you’re proposing? I guess I’m still confused but I will agree that BlueSky-style custom feeds would be a super-nice addition to any social platform.
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.