Day 1 users aren't taught who and how to block people. Instead, my personal friends have blocked Lemmy entirely. They are happy with the likes of Reddit, which tbf does have more support for niche issues, as this whole thread is discussing.

It is a difficult problem to entangle: how to compete with Reddit, and what specific steps we could do to help. One way that I was suggesting is to better separate the "I hate the Western world" posts from... you know, the places that said posts are talking about. Bc while it is most definitely possible for someone to curate their personal experience on the Fediverse (especially those who use Arch btw, or at least are okay with popping open and editing a config file somewhere), it would sure be more welcoming to particularly normies if that wasn't mandatory right out of the gate?

[–] mayo@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm not sure. Maybe I'll try to spend more time in this community, it doesn't pop up on my main feed that much but I usually find the topics interesting. I think there are a lot of directions lemmy could go and I don't want to commit to one idea yet. Categorizing sounds like a big effort even if it's automated.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Future updates to Lemmy already plan to include labels for communities iirc, although I am not sure about if instance labels would be included at first or not. And even if those are applied by instance admins, for maximum friendliness it seems like it would be good to reach out to the very communities that they apply to while making those labels. e.g. going from lemm.ee to Hexbear could perhaps say "come here if you aren't afraid to get dunked on and we will argue deep points together, though be warned that people indoctrinated by Western socioeconomic capitalistic thought processes may be in for quite a difference of opinion!". Lemmy.ml could be "we support older-style Marxist–Leninist thinking, but note that we strongly enjoy making fun of the West, so beware ye who enter here - we will educate you properly!"

Instead, visiting Lemmy.ml says "A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers", followed by a link to "What is Lemmy.ml" which as you can see is broken, pointing to a post that appears to no longer exist.

Perhaps this is all hopelessly naive - but it could be tried before abandoning it? I have been known to throw a jab or three at the expense of my own home Western nation (USA) - though it definitely comes across differently when done externally, and also by people who very much seem to not be joking when they talk about literally murdering people. (I mean, I am aware that that never happens in Russia or China, where someone can fall out of a window, then shoot themselves in the back of the head, then fall down a flight of stairs, then shoot themselves in the back of the head again, then fall down another set of stairs, and finally out of a second window... but in any case, this vehemence seems directed at the peoples in the Western nations, and regardless of its degree of truthosity - a word I made up entirely just now but wish that I could use from now:-D - it scares away the normies for sure.)

Anyway there are only so many instances, and only so many communities, and most do not need such a warning, or possibly the instance ones could be automated as applying to all communities on that instance. So it's very doable. As compared to now where it is full federation vs. full defederation, offering literally nothing in-between (unless you have an app that can implement a block of all comments from users on a specified instance).

Btw PieFed tries to avoid the need for all of that by an automated system of its own, applied to each user evenly across the board - e.g. if you have more downvotes than upvotes, then an icon appears next to your name (this system seems able to be gamed though, especially wrt such ideological differences where many would upvote while many others would downvote, each side having different ideals about what is to be considered worthy).

[–] mayo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Love the words. Once of my early positive impressions of lemmy was coming across longer form comments. It's so hard to get thoughts across in tweet format especially when we're all completely anonymous with potentially wildly different perspectives. I'm following your ideas here and I'm rarely opposed to experimentation. I have learned from experience that there's more to successful implementation than is apparent before you start and even the best plans can't account for real world testing.

It's been a couple days now but I think that manipulation of automated processes is sort of what I was alluding to when I didn't want to commit to an idea. People will figure it out and fuck with it.

I guess my approach is more about patience and subtle changes (outside of experimenting in small time limited areas). What we're talking about would be a major change in the context of lemmy and it's too complicated to predict the outcome of something like that. As a fun thought, there is some point in the history of reddit that would have set it onto the path it arrived at today. Maybe awards? The voting system? The composition of moderators? Changes should be done cautiously and gradually. Onboarding is a pressing problem, but I think it could be treated in isolation until a sites-wide solution is more obvious. Lemmy is doing great! Lemmy users are capable of self managing the issue of ideological influences across instances, even if it appears haphazard it seems to work, maybe, for now. Loads of problems to address outside of this as well.

I'm also a fan of sudden chaotic changes. I have a 'be careful but also break it if you want' thought process. I love the theory of evolution and I think as much as we want to be careful things are going to happen we don't want and can't predict and it can be fun to just throw a wrench in the motor and see where it takes us.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

We are already experimenting with Lemmy, daily. The Rexodus happened, bringing an influx of users to this platform, and that crowd now wants different things than the prior one. And normies would want still more divergent matters. Though it matters little what people want, and more what people will expend effort to build.