this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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A more robust approach could involve combining multiple user engagement metrics like votes, reading time and number of comments, along with a system that sorts posts depending on how they compare to their community averages. This system would be less susceptible to manipulation by new accounts or brigading, as it would require genuine engagement across multiple factors to influence a post's ranking.
Incorporating User Engagement Metrics in Lemmy's Sorting Algorithms
In general I find that the comments that tend to contain the highest proportion of batshit insanity across the entire Fediverse - I'm talking reminding me of what it was like to argue with Magats on Reddit - are those from lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml. e.g., ignoring 90% of what I say while hyper-focusing on a single thing, which they manage to twist into sounding as if I said the exact opposite, while demanding that I provide proof of all of my points, and ofc offering none of their own proof in return, plus what "proof" is offered ends up supporting my own point rather than theirs... It's fucking exhausting.
And moreover it's relentless. So it would seem that my options are to either move to Lemmy.cafe - the only one who has defederated from all of the big 3 - or block such people one by one, or just put up with it, since user blocking those instances does virtually nothing. Also, they could easily create an alt, on let's say lemmy.world, to accomplish their anonymized downvoting fetishes.:-P
Do you recall if people are allowed to vote on your content after you've blocked them? Even if so though, those user blocks of instances (as compared to user blocks of users) would not block downvotes (they don't even block showing of content, plus notifications can even still be sent just by tagging the recipient's username), so someone who downvotes but never speaks up by commenting would go unnoticed.
Anyway, my own preferences aside, I'm trying to think of what would encourage people to post content more often, and reducing the overall level of toxicity present in the Fediverse seems like it would greatly help with that (even if that ends up being something that you have to curate yourself via blocklists, with mods and admins being unwilling and unable to keep up with such).
allow me to be the batshit representative from lemmy.ml to argue with you :P
Honestly, I just hate the instance bashing. Most people didn't have a real informed "choice" when it comes to their first instance. This seemed like an instance with good uptime and connectivity to me compared to the single admin instance I had before, the only factor that really matters to me. I see what you're saying about % of users, but those people exist on every instance and like you said, they can just jump over and make a new account. If I'm being judged by the .ml next to my name and not the content of my reply, then they were really never going to listen to anything I had to say regardless, so I've decided to stay with this instance.
I think you're seeing more arguments on those instances because it's more of a melting pot. People who all agree with each other's perspectives and have similar life experience aren't going to have a lot to discuss besides patting each other on the backs and talking about subtle nuances of the subject matter. I do agree with your entire premise of the downvotes, which is why I'm replying to begin with. I like the thought of a downvote system, something that would hinder off-topic or abusive material, but it's just horribly abused by users.
A proper system would see two competing articles and the one which provides the most information with a legible format would be upvoted the most. Now it's which one has the most comments, what user uploaded it, what website was the article published on, which headline is catchier regardless of the article's own words being taken out of context, what instance/community is this being posted on, etc etc.
Maybe I'm just confused and using this site and reddit wrong. From my conversations about downvotes, my understanding is less time is being spent on reading the article or links, and more just running through upvoting/downvoting like it's tinder matches. I don't get it because it's not like youtube suggestions where you're creating an algorithm for your likes/dislikes. You're just creating a general feed of populace attention-seeking content and creating the pattern for a hive mind to form.
I think any of the many solutions would be a step forward, votes being public (all your other interactions are public/not done anonymously, and likes/dislikes has no commonality to democratic voting so people need to stop conflating the two), blocking any downvotes like lemmynsfw.com successfully implemented (you can still report off topic, etc), can only dowvote in joined communities or content you've engaged with, and many other ideas. All sorts of solutions that will stop us from going down the same path as Reddit, luckily we have instances to experiment different approaches with that we can point to for data in the future. I guess I prefer more of a forum style but those always get overtaken by zealous admins/site ideology and eventually hyperactive community members meaning it's hard or not worth the effort to actually engage with the drama surrounding the subject you want to discuss (even some shroom forums get like this, absolutely crazy).
Sure!
Yes, my whole "spiel" there left out how my blocking lemmy.ml leavs out a whole huge swath of innocent bystanders who, exactly as you said, simply joined a large instance and had no concept of what was going on, plus back then it wasn't even happening yet to the extent that it is now.
Speaking of, a large number of instances defederated from hexbear.net, and in response it seems that a large number of people - the kind for whom "no means yes" simply created lemmy.ml alts to get around those. Thinking deeper about what that means and extrapolating forward implies then that if lemmy.ml were to ever be defederated from by a large number of instances as well, then those people would simply create alts on lemmy.world (or something) instead.
So it boils down to an ideological POV: must I be exposed to literally everything online with no way to have any filters (some people want this and that's cool), or am I allowed to curate my experiences? More to the point, some things such as NSFW content are really quite friendly on the Fediverse - so long as it is labelled, the people who want it can get it, while those who do not (for whatever reason - maybe they'd like to have it at home but they are literally at work and don't want that tension, so they turn it off?). Unfortunately, both (a) toxic people and (b) extremist content ("extremist" from the perspective of people in the western world, particularly USA - which granted is very much skewed wrt the rest of the world, but... it is what it is) are not labelled at all. Therefore new people walk right into it, see things that they do not want - much as if NSFW, or worse yet NSFL, were to not be labelled - and then leave the Fediverse. So I am saying: it would be good if things could be labelled appropriately, for the sake of maximum friendliness and welcoming.
But as it is, things are NOT labelled, or if they are, the labels are buried elsewhere. When I first switched from Kbin to a Lemmy instance, I made the mistake of replying to a content on ChapoTrapHouse on hexbear.net. I had no idea what that community was - it's whole purpose is to dunk on people!? - and I am not saying that the community should not "exist", but DAYUM! A warning would indeed have been nice. And now, I do not need such a warning personally - I KNOW - but every person that I tell about Lemmy irl, in the next conversation comes back with negative things to say about it, in how it has such extremist content. So they do not join, and this effect magnified by everyone in the mainstream lowers the overall amount of content across the Fediverse. Thus, this isn't about any one post, any one community, or even any one instance. Good fences make good neighbors. If people on hexbear.net or occasionally some on lemmy.ml disrespect others boundaries, then it makes sense to block them. Though I am having quite a pleasant conversation with you personally, and have done so with others from lemmy.ml. Overall though, on balance, I find it necessary to block that instance. Which I note barely matters - e.g. you replied to me here, and I got the notification for that, I could see your comment, you can see mine... this is the weakest type of "block"/"ban" that I have ever heard of, so much so that the name is really improper, as it barely blocks anything at all.
And no, they don't exist on every instance. Or yeah, surely they do, but not in the enormously large numbers that we are talking about here. I will preemptively say that I get a lot of batshit insane replies from lemmy.world too - so yeah, lemmy.ml is not the only one like that. However, the proportion of responses is different, probably b/c I (who lives in the USA) shares more ideologically in common with someone from lemmy.world. So perhaps they would go off on a rant against something that I say, but the "trigger" to make that happen is less likely to happen. I have not done a scientific study, with controls and such - I am just speaking of my personal experience, which I see is shared by a LOT of people across the Fediverse.
It sounds like you are just being counter-cultural, which I have done more than a little of in my life, so I support that. You seem willing to bear the consequences of that, e.g. you risked me not replying to you, although then I did so... hopefully that shows that the "judgement" of the .ml next to your name is not a firm yes-no but merely a slight bias.
So about down-votes: personally I want to receive down-votes, if people do not enjoy receiving my comments. That is helpful feedback, and helps guide me to submit future content more in line with people's receptivity. The problem comes when the down-votes are from people that I do not respect. An example would help here: let's say that I submit a youtube video for my favorite hard rock band to a tiny niche community, specifically for hard rock music, and let us further say that people downvote it for these reasons: (1) they do not like the music - fair; (2) they do not like youtube - okay... I guess... still fair; (3) they do not like hard rock music at all, but saw my post while browsing "All" - these people are not Subscribed to this community, and are improperly abusing the system of down-voting away from "this content is not a good match for this community" to "I do not (personally) enjoy this content". The latter type would be much better handled by blocking that community entirely - but people refuse to abide by the rules, and maybe do not even know what they are, if they are new. Oh and also (4) I managed to piss off a troll, who then goes to my Profile and down-votes literally everything they see, until they get tired of hitting the "Next" page (ironically I don't think this has happened to me, which I would expect given my instance-bashing behaviors, but I have seen others where it has, mostly those who post in more political communities).
As you said, yes the creation of the hive mind. IF people would use it properly, then it would not be that way, but again, people refuse or are not able to so... here we are.
And one reason for that is that we have so few developers - Rust is a very hard language to learn, and those devs I suspect are prickly to work with (given their moderation practices on lemmy.ml, mass-banning people from communities they've never even heard of, so would they similarly reject someone's actual code, not based on the integrity of the code but rather on some offhand remark that they make even on some other instance, possibly even taken out of context?). I have ENORMOUS respect for the Lemmy codebase that has been developed so far... but I also wish that it could move forward more quickly. Maybe Mbin/Sublinks/Piefed will do so, as they are written in languages that more people already know.
Also there are enormous barriers to running a personal instance - CSAM attacks to name one, hardware and especially network bandwidth to name another - but what it would take would be for someone to spin up their own instance, and try out a new system of voting. Nothing really is stopping anyone from doing so except... it's hard. Otherwise, beggers cannot be choosers, so we wait for an actual developer to do something. And in the meantime we talk about a subject that we find of interest, but it won't lead to any changes. Probably. Maybe - though also, maybe not, b/c perhaps one day there will be a poll put out by the developers, and with enough people answering that, we could ask for a change that we would like to see in the code? :-)