Why are trending posts on Mastodon mostly negatively politically oriented?

It seems anytime I try to check out Mastodon it is always some negative political view or affiliation of why X, Y & Z is bad. Is this just what most people like boosting or is it a sign of botting to push negativity over the more positive headlines?

I do understand I can switch to any Mastodon instance I want and stick to a small community, however I like keeping up with trending topics in the world. Maybe the most popular accounts in the Mastodon community likes to rise up pitchforks every minute.

buckykat,

Most of what’s happening in politics is bad

raiun,

You’re not wrong.

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

A lot of the people who have fled Twitter to Mastodon are the most… online, with strong political opinions.

Even though I usually agree with them, I find it exhausting and the opposite of fun to be bombarded with outrage politics 24/7, so I’m pretty careful about the accounts I follow.

CIWS-30,

Same. I stay away from and just keep to my feed of people I actually follow. And I make sure to unfollow those who are too stressful to hear from constantly.

I agree with almost all the of all politics all the time people who constantly post negative things, but it's too tiring to read them, especially since knowing about it does me no good and I can't do anything about it anyway. I already vote and donate as much as I can, and I live in a Blue state so anything outside of my area's just not possible for me to influence.

I've found it's better just to ignore it and focus on positive things that make my life better.

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

It’s the worst part of social media, in my opinion. If you’re ingesting that stuff 24/7, you’d think the world was ending every week.

We aren’t built to process that volume of information without it warping our perception.

maltasoron,

It’s why I’ve gone back to reading an old school newspaper. The format naturally limits the amount of bad news they can fit in a day, and it has regular sections on art, culture, philosophy, nature etc.

Oyster_Lust,
@Oyster_Lust@lemmy.world avatar

It’s easier to bitch about what’s wrong than to actively do something to make it better.

raiun,

Well said, unfortunate reality.

ttmrichter,

Because it’s one or the other. This dichotomy isn’t even slightly false.

ShunkW,

I mean plenty of people bitching are doing what’s within their power. This is a reductionist and bad faith argument

Karlos_Cantana,
@Karlos_Cantana@sopuli.xyz avatar

Everyone has the ability to change the things around them. People want to change the world. That is an unrealistic goal to start with. What you can change directly and immediately is your family/household. Then you can move to your neighborhood. As you change the things closest to you, then you can slowly move out to larger things.

Going on a worldwide platform and bitching may make you feel better, but it does nothing to change things and just makes people avoid you.

ShunkW,

So every single action you ever take is to affect change directly? Seems that you’re not affecting change by posting here. Sounds like you’re bitching about people bitching. That does nothing. Kinda makes me wanna avoid you.

Let people bitch. It’s not hurting you in any way, and might even raise awareness of issues to people who aren’t familiar with a particular issue.

RxBrad,

It gets a lot more bearable once you setup a Politics filter that blocks dozens & dozens & dozens of keywords (mine is up to 66 words so far)…

https://lemmings.world/pictrs/image/9c492523-4601-4bcb-8d24-af5eb17596d3.png

richieadler,

Lobotomizing yourself is faster.

Aux,

Glad to hear it from someone with experience!

richieadler,

Nah, I’m not brainwashed into thinking that politics is intrinsically evil.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

Nah, you can’t aim the icepick properly yourself. Believe me, I’ve tried.

ArcaneSlime,

You have a word list I could borrow?

RxBrad,

Here’s what I’m rolling with right now… I try to nuke everything even vaguely political…


<span style="color:#323232;">GOP
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Trump
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Biden
</span><span style="color:#323232;">conservatives
</span><span style="color:#323232;">elections
</span><span style="color:#323232;">voter fraud
</span><span style="color:#323232;">senate
</span><span style="color:#323232;">senator
</span><span style="color:#323232;">house of representatives
</span><span style="color:#323232;">whitehouse
</span><span style="color:#323232;">reproductive rights
</span><span style="color:#323232;">pro-life
</span><span style="color:#323232;">pro-choice
</span><span style="color:#323232;">2nd amendment
</span><span style="color:#323232;">gun control
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Marxist
</span><span style="color:#323232;">MAGA
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Pelosi
</span><span style="color:#323232;">climate change
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Parliament
</span><span style="color:#323232;">koch
</span><span style="color:#323232;">murdoch
</span><span style="color:#323232;">desantis
</span><span style="color:#323232;">politician
</span><span style="color:#323232;">fascist
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Rudy
</span><span style="color:#323232;">leftis
</span><span style="color:#323232;">liberal
</span><span style="color:#323232;">antisem
</span><span style="color:#323232;">right wing
</span><span style="color:#323232;">supremac
</span><span style="color:#323232;">on strike
</span><span style="color:#323232;">hateful
</span><span style="color:#323232;">elect
</span><span style="color:#323232;">liberals
</span><span style="color:#323232;">republicans
</span><span style="color:#323232;">democrats
</span><span style="color:#323232;">republican
</span><span style="color:#323232;">democrat
</span><span style="color:#323232;">congress
</span><span style="color:#323232;">abortion
</span><span style="color:#323232;">communist
</span><span style="color:#323232;">socialism
</span><span style="color:#323232;">socialist
</span><span style="color:#323232;">capitalism
</span><span style="color:#323232;">capitalist
</span><span style="color:#323232;">fascism
</span><span style="color:#323232;">vax
</span><span style="color:#323232;">global warming 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ukrain
</span><span style="color:#323232;">covid
</span><span style="color:#323232;">proud boy
</span><span style="color:#323232;">cops
</span><span style="color:#323232;">police
</span><span style="color:#323232;">defund
</span><span style="color:#323232;">minimum wage
</span><span style="color:#323232;">billionaire
</span><span style="color:#323232;">the government
</span><span style="color:#323232;">injustice
</span><span style="color:#323232;">human rights
</span><span style="color:#323232;">climate crisis
</span><span style="color:#323232;">democracy
</span><span style="color:#323232;">private healthcare
</span><span style="color:#323232;">public healthcare
</span><span style="color:#323232;">labor contract
</span><span style="color:#323232;">on strike
</span>
ArcaneSlime,

I fucking love you. Seriously thanks.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

This is perfect. My current list just contains 10 different ways to block posts about covid.

danielton,

I don’t know. I picked some hashtags to follow, and now my feed is full of cats.

TORFdot0,

Mine is all amiga and Commodore 64 games. Not the exact scenario I was expecting when following

Plopp,

Wait, what did you expect when you followed ?

TORFdot0,

I expected more console games that 80s computers, not that I’m complaining. Just not a world I was familiar with

danielton,

Yeah, not what I’d expect either. The lack of an algorithm is one of the things I’m not crazy about on there. It took me months to get into Mastodon at first because I got tired of the complaints about Elon. I only know one person on the platform too. But I do like the cat pictures.

eezeebee,
@eezeebee@lemmy.ca avatar

That sounds a lot like twitter

raiun,

I guess that is what happens with a Twitter replacement, still the same Twitter community.

Callie,

at least on here, if you notice they’re all coming to the same instance, you can just block the instance. assuming they’re not on large one

Chozo,
Chozo avatar

"Trending" is going to show you the topics that are getting the most engagement. Political content almost always gets a lot of engagement, because people will argue back and forth with each other, and each new reply will boost that post further up the ranking. It's just the nature of that particular sorting method.

dobeltip,
@dobeltip@lemmy.world avatar

I follow digital art hashtag and now my feed full of art and furry art. But it’s better than looking at US politics posts that i never understand.

Xavienth,

How do you follow hashtags?

lazycouchpotato,
@lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world avatar

It’s currently not possible on the official Android app (unsure about iOS) but you can do so on the website and third party apps. I’m using Tusky on Android as it reminiscent of one of my favorite dead apps Flamingo for Twitter.

donio,

In the default Mastodon web UI you can simply click on a hashtag and then press the “Follow hashtag” button. If you want to follow a hashtag that’s not showing up in your feed yet then you can search for it and then click on it in the search results. If you don’t see the “follow hashtag” button that might mean that your instance is running a very old version of Mastodon. Hashtag follows were added in version 4.0 which came out at the end of last year.

One caveat is that hashtags follows only show posts that “make it” to your instance either because they were created locally or because another user on your instances followed the person who posted them. In practice being on an instance with a sizable user base or an instance that’s oriented towards your interests should work well.

exu,

Same, digitalart and also pixelart fill a lot of my timeline.

colonial,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

This is why I can never get into microblogging/Twitter-type platforms. Character limits and one-click reposting mean that what little discourse you get is shallow, and ragebait is consistently pushed to the top.

I’m not going to say that Lemmy or (especially) Reddit completely avoid this, but you generally get much more insightful conversation and can opt-in to political communities.

There was a thread on !asklemmy recently asking people for their unpopular political opinions, and it actually wasn’t a total shitshow!

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

By “not a total shitshow” do you mean that it actually contained unpopular opinions or do you mean it was not filled with extremists.

colonial,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

Actual unpopular (but not extremist) opinions.

flamingo_pinyata,

Just like any discourse on politics ever. It’s less common to hear people praising a decision than criticising.

On a tangent, that’s why it’s important to loudly say when you agree with something, rather than quietly assume it’s just normal. Regardless of which party it comes from. Politicians are very sensitive to public perception.

explodicle,

That’s why I’m always arguing for higher taxes. I feel like not enough people are in favor of higher taxes.

ttmrichter,

I’m with you. Zero taxes on the bottom 50%. Progressively higher taxes as you go up that scale until you crack 100% for the tippy-top.

cstine,

If you want to keep up with trending topics, find news outlets you believe provide you the proper coverage of what you’re after, and just follow the RSS feeds instead.

Mastodon/Lemmy/Reddit/Facebook/Twitter are there for people to post hot takes on the news, not just share the news. RSS is the way to go if the news is what you’re after, and not people commenting on the news.

Kaldo,
Kaldo avatar

RSS doesn't have trending or any sort of curation though, the news sources usually have 10 garbage click bait articles for any one that you might be interested in. I haven't found a way to make it work as a reliable way for trending news, yet at least.

raiun,

Fair point. Appreciate your perspective.

Strafer,

I found the better way to use Mastodon was to follow users/hashtags of interest and then filtering out most of the topics which produce ragebait. It means my feed isn’t as busy but I also get none of the ragebait.

ttmrichter,

That was my strategy too: follow hashtags of interest, and as I identify users who consistently say interesting things, follow them as well. Occasionally poke into “Local” and ferret out one or two more interesting users (and a whole bunch of users to block!). Oh, and make VERY heavy use of filters: filtering on hashtags, chiefly, but also key words that tend to get associated with asshats.

independantiste, (edited )
@independantiste@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’ve deleted my main Masto account, I am so tired of the “if you like x then you hate y” which is just so frustrating and counterintuitive to a constructive debate. If you don’t agree with their opinion it’s because you are a racist Nazi that supports the genocide of trans people as well as being pro-billionnaire…

The main example of this is the whole Meta Threads federating with Activitypub, if you somehow see good things with this, it’s because you support giving a platform to Nazis and transphobes, which is just so far from the truth.

The weird negative point of mastodon is it massively facilitates being stuck inside an echo chamber because you can literally defederate with any instance that might have any hint of someone who doesn’t agree with you

And so in the end I find myself going to Twitter more than I’d like because people I want to see the content people I follow post there and I can’t just create myself a safe garden of opinions I think are “objectively” wrong

ttmrichter,

Weird. I don’t see any of that on my Mastodon feed.

It’s almost as if I get to choose what’s displayed in my feed instead of having it force-fed to me.

I’m thinking that perhaps someone didn’t learn how the system works and how to use it and instead just read . For a sane experience in Mastodon, you need to build a feed by hand (no algorithm will do it for you), build filters by hand, and in general you’re far more in control of your experience than you are at places like Echs. I’ll peek into every so often to find new people to add to my feed (and many more people to block from it!), but other than that I don’t use it. Precisely for the reasons you cite here.

CIWS-30,

This is also why I stopped going to Mastodon. In addition to negative ragebait politics being almost the only thing that's trending (and I have too much of that in my life already) there's no real nuance or tolerance for anything outside the echo chamber.

You DO get called a racist nazi transphobe for stepping outside the box or trying to support people, ideas or places that might not be 100% perfect or pass the strictest ideological purity test. I thought Liberal Twitter was pretty exclusionary and echo-chamber-y, but Mastodon's a lot worse.

Callie,

ragebait gets clicks. just look at twitter, what got the most engagement was ragebait meant to make you mad, which for the most part works

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

I thought the selling point behind most Twitter like services is that it's focused on negative positioning. E.g. things that are negative focused get more attention and engagement

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