I’ve been pondering why there seems to be an abundance of options for instances to customize user experiences, while users themselves have limited control over their own preferences. Features like instance blocking and enabling/disabling downvotes can make it challenging to find an instance that aligns perfectly with your preferences. Personally, I already filter out instances based on latency requirements, leaving me with very few options. The introduction of the new URL blocking feature has me concerned that finding an instance I completely like will be impossible. Why aren’t there more user-centric customization features available on Lemmy to address this issue?
As a general rule it’s the admins that have to deal with legal and technical problems, so the features for admins are a much higher priority for development. Protecting whole instances is more important than user focused features because if instances get taken down that’s a whole bunch of users that need to find a new home.
In the meantime many of the third-party apps can take care of some of those features.
Gotta remember we’re at version 0.19.3. That’s still very much an early access platform with the quirks not quite figured out yet.