Am I the only one feeling that the quality of discussion here felt big time after big instances got created and federated (think lemmy.world)?

TLDR : we can block communities we dislike but we have no choice but to interact with instances we dislike. (Also main points in bold in the text)

I have barely any interest in conversations here compare to before and I feel it is due to a lot of very bad takes and nonconstructive comments being the norm now. I can’t help noticing/feeling like the majority of them comes from the same instances.

I was annoyed from the early days (before Lemmy got some traction after the reddit debacle) that I had to block all the ‘meme’ communities and some others. This is a sample from my block list :

cryptocurrency
Memesich_iel@feddit.deShare
Funny Videos, Images, Memes, Quotes and more Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world
Political Memes@lemmy.world>
Greentextmemes@lemmy.worldmemes@hexbear.net
RPGMemes @ttrpg.network
ADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
SurrealMemes@sh.itjust.works
Microblog Memes@lemmy.world
Memes@midwest.social
Star Wars Memes@lemmy.world
Risa@startrek.website
Memes@sopuli.xyz196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
solarpunk memes@slrpnk.net 
Funny@sh.itjust.works
GenZedong@lemmygrad.ml
AI Generated Images@sh.itjust.works
Lord of the memes@midwest.social
Furry@pawb.socialScience Memes@mander.xyz
Comics
People Twitter@sh.itjust.worksich_iel@feddit.org

This is fine by me as at least I have a way to not bother and not be bothered by those communities I have no interest in. I feel like some conversation that could be interesting and deep get bombed by the sheer amount of terrible interaction from other instances.

There are surely better and worse instances, and depending of our interests we’ll have preferences. Because of the way federation works now I cannot filter out the ‘noise’ and things like “top of week” is… not going well in my opinion. There is no community-blocking equivalent way of blocking votes/post/comment for specific instances.

When I read ‘Hacker News’ it is so refreshing to see such a community with deeper interactions and sourced arguments and points. I feel like I am learning things there. It would be perfect if not America-centric, start-up minded place (also only about tech there). But the moderation there is amazing.

I am starting to give up on the current state of Lemmy now and looking for non-federated places that would have better communities. I haven’t found any yet (not that I’ve searched that much). I feel like there might be a way around all-federated or isolated silo choice here. I guess that would also imply a lot of technical work (thank you very much too all who contributed to Lemmy so far).

  • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone
    0·
    2 months ago

    I can block instances on Voyager. I assume that only blocks them when I’m browsing on Voyager though and I have no idea how it handles votes/posts/comments for any blocked instance.

    Best of luck with your endeavours to find a place you want to hang out in.

    • viking@infosec.pub
      0·
      2 months ago

      Blocking instances works with the OG Lemmy, but they didn’t build the function into the app, you’d have to go through the website (that one time only).

      Or can you block all users of a specific instance with Voyager?