While I don't entirely disagree, I'm a little confused by your description of the front page of lemm.ee, which we're both on. My front page when viewing All here is mostly memes/shitposts/news/technology when set to Active sort, is yours not?

I've admittedly blocked a fair amount and have show NSFW/bot posts disabled, but the communities you mention aren't affected by that.

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah I could've been more clear. I mean the All feed not Local. I went and updated my comment. And to be fully clear, I've got no complaints about lemm.ee. It's exactly what I want, e.g. show me everything and I'll decide what to block. That said, I know I'm not the norm.

Saying you blocked a fair amount is exactly what I'm talking about, so have I. A little bit of effort can really make the feed more palletable. We need to have a place where that is done by default. Maybe even an open source AI or even just an algorithm that tailors it to the user. I'm already glad Lemmy.world is much more moderate than lemm.ee, and we just need a place that goes all the way; NSFW blocked by default, several communities blocked-by-default (not defederated), and somehow prevents All from being flooded by niche memes. I love Linux and the memes (even if they get a bit repetitive) but we shouldn't have 3 of the top 10 posts be linux memes.

I tried to get my lab mate, a PhD in computer science and Linux Mint user, to get a Lemmy. He took one look at the all page, laughed, pointed out the circle jerk stuff and asked how some junk posts even made it to the all page and then said "yeah, no thanks" and has never touched Lemmy since. He was already 4 times more likely than the average person, but even he was instantly turned off.

[–] ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I gotcha. Fwiw I kind of agree, even beyond Lemmy I've been a little surprised some of these sites/instances haven't done more to tailor themselves to accommodate more folks or focus on specific demographics.

That's supposed to be one of the big perks of the federation approach, being able to create more distinct communities, but outside of a few, they largely seem to run the software as-is, maybe with some backend adjustments to help reduce the costs of operation or the like.

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and maybe that means I should try making such an instance. I don't have the funds for something like lemmy.world, but I've got the technical background. So maybe that'll turn into my winter break project