Use the block button early and often if you value your sanity. Some people exist in the Fediverse solely to fuck up others’ day. Some entire instances almost seem dedicated to it even, or at least I can see no functional difference from where I stand. Reddit doesn’t have instances, so that part is new, but it’s not hard, it’s in your settings -> blocks -> scroll down to instance. Doing this can improve your experience here by like 99%. You’ll discover over time which ones you want to block.
I was going to say that although Reddit had a reasonably coherent hive mind, Lemmy is far more similar to eachother in our points of view.
But maybe that’s made more extreme because I’ve blocked so many voices that I don’t agree with, just because I’m not looking to spend my free time debating anymore.
I think Reddit is more exclusively USA-focused, with side-notes of UK and others, whereas Lemmy is more global. Therefore in Reddit that was more left-leaning than rightwardly so you mostly saw divisions between like young people vs. older ones - e.g. should a downvote be for something you don’t personally like or something that does not add to the conversation.
Like if someone submitted a guide for how to fix a toilet (to a let’s say home fixing sub) and it started to go viral then would you downvote it bc you don’t want to see that in your r/popular feed, or upvote or leave it alone bc it at least matches what it set out to be? Which really reflected the slide of the platform away from its roots as a forum board and into true “social media”, where interactions are monetized and hence the more the better, never mind that more downvotes leads to less people willing to submit actual content.
Although that’s over now, as the social media aspect won, so it’s all just that now, and therefore for most of us here, not worth visiting any longer. i.e. if I left the Fediverse, I still would not return there.
But here, I think it’s your block list, because I see a HUGE diversity of opinions. e.g. there are (a few) right-wing conservatives who actively support genocide so long as it is their own side doing it, and there are extremist left-wing tankies who also actively support genocide so long as it is their own side doing it, and too there are blue maga who soft-core support the doing of genocide so long as it is their side that needs to win, plus there are a few who even don’t support genocide, imagine that. :-P
I see a lot less of those extremes though after blocking hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and finally I added Lemmy.ml. Also, while places such as [email protected] exist and are active, they are tiny.
I’ve blocked more subs and people than what I have subscribed to. I don’t agree with the lemmy hive mind when it comes to politics so I had to block every person and sub that pushes a political agenda in order to enjoy the platform, it took a while and new subs and/or people show up now and then but now my feed is just the things I want to see.
Sadly that also ment blocking a lot of subs that would have been interesting had not 95% of the posts been actually pushing a political agenda instead of being either news or a discussion about something non political
I don’t mind explicitly political news, or even actual political communities, but nonetheless I feel you there bc when a community like memes explicitly asks to not include political matters, but then it gets inundated with political themed non-memes, it is highly annoying to see how little consent actually matters.
Whatever a community sets out to do, the rules should matter to people, but sadly there are a very large number of those for whom consent means nothing, apparently, only what they can get away with bullying a moderation team into accepting.
I kept switching instances - first as Kbin.social stopped working and then due to extreme slowness and connectivity issues at others - so I found it easier to block whole instances than individuals. That leaves me unable to communicate with some people on those instances who might be worthwhile, but that is a trade-off that I am willing to make since I found the interactions with people on those instances overwhelmingly negative, as in I would rather have left the Fediverse entirely than have to put up with that, though now that instance blocks exist I am glad to have that option instead:-).
Great addition - I just wanted OP to be aware of what is possible, like if you continue to get notifications for multiple weeks after mistakenly making a comment on Chapotraphouse that didn’t bash Biden hard enough and then cease responding anymore yet continue to get those notifications daily… you don’t have to leave the entire Fediverse, it is possible to just separate yourself away from that source of (nonconsensual) noise.
But the further away you stay from politics communities(and news, and memes, and maybe other popular ones), the less controversial content you have to deal with. Many communities are outright tiny, and most (numerically anyway) I would wager are very non-toxic, and even friendly. But the bigger ones are worth a warning imho.
Use the block button early and often if you value your sanity. Some people exist in the Fediverse solely to fuck up others’ day. Some entire instances almost seem dedicated to it even, or at least I can see no functional difference from where I stand. Reddit doesn’t have instances, so that part is new, but it’s not hard, it’s in your settings -> blocks -> scroll down to instance. Doing this can improve your experience here by like 99%. You’ll discover over time which ones you want to block.
I was going to say that although Reddit had a reasonably coherent hive mind, Lemmy is far more similar to eachother in our points of view.
But maybe that’s made more extreme because I’ve blocked so many voices that I don’t agree with, just because I’m not looking to spend my free time debating anymore.
I think Reddit is more exclusively USA-focused, with side-notes of UK and others, whereas Lemmy is more global. Therefore in Reddit that was more left-leaning than rightwardly so you mostly saw divisions between like young people vs. older ones - e.g. should a downvote be for something you don’t personally like or something that does not add to the conversation.
Like if someone submitted a guide for how to fix a toilet (to a let’s say home fixing sub) and it started to go viral then would you downvote it bc you don’t want to see that in your r/popular feed, or upvote or leave it alone bc it at least matches what it set out to be? Which really reflected the slide of the platform away from its roots as a forum board and into true “social media”, where interactions are monetized and hence the more the better, never mind that more downvotes leads to less people willing to submit actual content.
Although that’s over now, as the social media aspect won, so it’s all just that now, and therefore for most of us here, not worth visiting any longer. i.e. if I left the Fediverse, I still would not return there.
But here, I think it’s your block list, because I see a HUGE diversity of opinions. e.g. there are (a few) right-wing conservatives who actively support genocide so long as it is their own side doing it, and there are extremist left-wing tankies who also actively support genocide so long as it is their own side doing it, and too there are blue maga who soft-core support the doing of genocide so long as it is their side that needs to win, plus there are a few who even don’t support genocide, imagine that. :-P
I see a lot less of those extremes though after blocking hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and finally I added Lemmy.ml. Also, while places such as [email protected] exist and are active, they are tiny.
I’ve blocked more subs and people than what I have subscribed to. I don’t agree with the lemmy hive mind when it comes to politics so I had to block every person and sub that pushes a political agenda in order to enjoy the platform, it took a while and new subs and/or people show up now and then but now my feed is just the things I want to see.
Sadly that also ment blocking a lot of subs that would have been interesting had not 95% of the posts been actually pushing a political agenda instead of being either news or a discussion about something non political
I believe they’re called communities in the fediverse, not subs…
(Former long time Redditor)
I don’t mind explicitly political news, or even actual political communities, but nonetheless I feel you there bc when a community like memes explicitly asks to not include political matters, but then it gets inundated with political themed non-memes, it is highly annoying to see how little consent actually matters.
Whatever a community sets out to do, the rules should matter to people, but sadly there are a very large number of those for whom consent means nothing, apparently, only what they can get away with bullying a moderation team into accepting.
I kept switching instances - first as Kbin.social stopped working and then due to extreme slowness and connectivity issues at others - so I found it easier to block whole instances than individuals. That leaves me unable to communicate with some people on those instances who might be worthwhile, but that is a trade-off that I am willing to make since I found the interactions with people on those instances overwhelmingly negative, as in I would rather have left the Fediverse entirely than have to put up with that, though now that instance blocks exist I am glad to have that option instead:-).
This is not universal, I’ve blocked maybe seven people and two communities and I’m as good as ever, over a year into using Lemmy.
Blahaj.zone is already a pretty intensely curated experience as far as I recall
Great addition - I just wanted OP to be aware of what is possible, like if you continue to get notifications for multiple weeks after mistakenly making a comment on Chapotraphouse that didn’t bash Biden hard enough and then cease responding anymore yet continue to get those notifications daily… you don’t have to leave the entire Fediverse, it is possible to just separate yourself away from that source of (nonconsensual) noise.
But the further away you stay from politics communities(and news, and memes, and maybe other popular ones), the less controversial content you have to deal with. Many communities are outright tiny, and most (numerically anyway) I would wager are very non-toxic, and even friendly. But the bigger ones are worth a warning imho.