I came to Lemmy cause Reddit went to shit, so I get that people want to bash it and I also understand that most of the users of Lemmy are from the US and the shit show that’s happening there right now, but I am absolutely tired of these 2 types of posts being the only thing in my feed, I open this app because I want to learn new interesting things, and maybe see some funny and creative stuff, there’s enough negativity and stress in my life and I don’t need more of that on my only social media app. How do I filter these topics from my feed and which communities can I join to improve my feed.
The majority of folk that migrated from Reddit probably did so because of reasons related to those two things.
The earliest exoduses were socialist political communities banned from reddit (particularly /r/chapotraphouse who formed Hexbear, and /r/GenZedong who landed in Lemmygrad). Then, the most recent exodus is related to censorship related to Luigi Mangione, a US political issue, coinciding with a strong sudden re-emergence of global anti-American [government] sentiment due to diplomatic catastrophes with a range of former allies.
In fact, the founders cite reddit’s corporate nature and its pro-US-imperialist, racist stances as their motivation to create Lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html
So I’m not surprised at all that the default feed is covered in political topics, it’s always been a strong topic here and it’s just gotten stronger. But there’s probably enough activity now that one can filter it out and still have enough action to keep it fun.
Lemmy does not have an engagement based algorithm. It does not over analyze your every move to keep you on the site. This means you will have to do content curation yourself.
First of all, the block button exists, use liberally.
Second, the subscribe button exists, so use it to curate a nice subscribed feed
Third, I do believe there are third party clients (lemmy apps made by others) that have a word filter feature which allow you to automatically hide post and comments which contain certain keywords. (I think Voyager has that. Download mobile app here. Use the site version of the app here. Keep in mind that it uses lemm.ee as its default instance.)
But yeah, content curration is kinda just left up to you. Subscribe, Block. That’s it.
Alternatively, you could join a “themed instance”, that is, an instance made to house a particular community or interest, like that star-trek instance, but Lemmy does not have enough users for those to be able to exist.
If you want creative stuff, might want to have a look at [email protected]? Sorry, I don’t have much for you.
Third, I do believe there are third party clients (lemmy apps made by others) that have a word filter feature which allow you to automatically hide post and comments which contain certain keywords. (I think Voyager has that. Download mobile app here. Use the site version of the app here. Keep in mind that it uses lemm.ee as its default instance.)
[email protected] has a pinned post with a guide on how to block keywords
Check your subs.
I block the news and politics communities. That helps tremendously
Set your default view to the communities you subscribe to. Don’t subscribe to communities that overlap with politics or reddit.
I also set keyword filters so I don’t see that stuff in case they start sneaking into my favorite communities
Which communities are you in 😁
J/k
It would be a nice feature to be able to share subscription lists. You could even swap them in and out depending on what content you’re looking for.
I haven’t seen any Reddit bashing in a good while actually. American politics however, I have lots of in my feed. But you can filter them out, I don’t because I’m lazy. I just scroll past those.
How to use Ublock Origin to filter keywords out
Also you can block certain instances/communities/users. You can practice blocking users on me first!
Sort by “hot” instead of active.
Pretty sure mine is sorted by “hot” too and politics still appear. Let me go check it.
Well, politics will always appear, but sometimes the same posts stay at the top of people’s feed in the active sort.
I don’t see much of that stuff. I mostly subscribe to foss communities and I mostly see relevant stuff about foss and tech. Subscribe to communities pertaining to your hobbies/interests and your feed should reflect that
And block the ones that are filled with content you don’t want. I’ve spent the last six months or so fine tuning my feed and see lots of stuff that’s interesting to me and very little that I don’t want.
Those are the most popular posts. I recommend trying to find communities that you like and subscribing to them, then read the subscribed feed.
I recommend finding communities you don’t like and blocking those, then browse the all feed. Otherwise you get 3 posts a week.
i did that and my feed is still filled with politics there are so many to block its neverending
I feel the same same way about Linux posts and pervy anime. Blocking communities is how lemmy dispenses dopamine.
That’s not true. I’ve got a pretty active feed of subs, you just need to spend time curating a good list
There hasn’t been a post in /sailing in 2 years. Depends what you’re looking for I guess.
Sucks for you if your only interest is sailing.
No, for real: I have subscribed to over 100 communities and my “subscribed” feed is always full of stuff.
Lemmy is definitely rough if you’re into niche communities, true. So was Reddit in its early years though, to be fair.
“To Be Fahr.”
There’s also “hide this post” and “hide all viewed posts” but you have to actually click on them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just like Reddit, you need to curate your feed. Don’t browser all/local, browse your subscriptions. Here’s a list of subs that aren’t political https://lemmy.world/post/16327122 - subscribe to ones that interest you.
Also feel free to liberally block communities. It’s trivial to do.
My are there obituaries in the obituaries column?
Customize your feed and/or block whatever you want to filter it, buddy. There’s a Reddit exodus because of American-centered events, so you’re going to see American-centric news and Reddit-bashing stories in some default feeds for a bit. Filter it out and move on.
Do you know of any prospecting forums?
As others have said: filter filter filter. Lemmy is small enough still that you can massively curate by blocking communities and even users where you don’t like what they post.
You do know you could have just asked how to curate your feed without whining, right? I mean, if there’s enough negativity and stress in your life, why bring negativity with you?
I mean, I could give you the advice without snarkiness about it, but I want to make the point that it not only isn’t necessary to complain about what content is there, it’s counterproductive. Just ask what you want to know, and you’ll get better answers.
The first step is to curate your feed.
There’s three options: all, local and subscribed. All is going to pull in every instance and community that your instance is federated with, and has been visited by someone from your instance. To curate that feed, you block communities that present content you don’t want to see.
For the subscribed feed, obviously, you only get the things you choose to subscribe to, so it takes as long or longer to set up as blocking on all. So you’ll have to search your interests directly if you don’t want to scroll all to find things to subscribe to.
The local feed is only content from your instance. You can block things as they come up and trim away things you don’t want to see, but you’d be better off taking a few days to check out what instances have the least communities that feature content you don’t like, then join one of those and that way need to do less blocking.
However, some apps offer filtering, if you’re on mobile. Afaik, all the popular ones do, and most of the less popular ones, so you’d need to go to your app store and see what looks best to you.
You can usually filter keywords that way. I filter some of the more repetitive names that pop up in political communities so that it isn’t the majority of my feed, but still lets in some that if I blocked communities, would restrict my feed too much. That’s just an example of one way to go about it.
I prefer filters over blocks most of the time, with blocks being reserved for communities that are totally unpleasant, or aren’t useful for my needs at all. Filters in an app let you really fine tune things.
For you, I think a hybrid approach via an app will work best. Filter the term reddit, block any communities that you find that are based on reddit subjects.
Then, block political communities that are US specific, and slowly filter out via terms like democrat, republican, and the usual politicians. That way, you’ll avoid us issues without missing out on news that’s relevant to you and your needs.
I don’t think you’ll get as well tuned via browser, even when alternative front ends.
Any tips on filtering? I mean, I still care about some important international political topics, I just don’t care much for trump, JD, musk etc. Also, Democrat and Republican might be present in other topics not about the US political system, right? Are there wildcards/regex/something else I could use? Some best practice guides?
Honestly, it depends on the app. I only use a few. Sync, boost, and connect only seem to handle full words, no wildcards afaik.
Eternity though, it has all the options for filters. Tbh though, I’m not great with regex, so I don’t use that on eternity. It has it though.
Generally, I only filter the stuff that clogs the feed. Filtering trump tends to cut out repeat posts that link to the same article, but since he’s not always in the title, some news about him gets through, which is about where I like it.
Filtering parties definitely cuts out some foreign news, since plenty of them reference the parties. I haven’t gotten flooded with those terms being allowed now that the election is over, it’s a fairly manageable rate.
I guess what I’m saying is that I adjust what I filter fairly often. When there’s a surge in a topic, I check the headlines and titles and pick what is going to filter most of the posts, but not all of them.
Like, right now, on sync I’m filtering “stocks” to reduce the tesla stuff without it filtering out other news around the company. If I filtered tesla entirely, I’d miss protests and such.
- Block a shit ton of political and Reddit communities
- Subscribe to everything else
- Only browse Subscribed
Is there some secret fourth option where you complain non stop to your instances admins to defederate from instances you don’t like to save you the trouble of blocking them yourself?
This is the way to go!
Knakkers!
