Lemmy is being filled with ragebait and doombait from new accounts. This is what drove me and others away from Reddit.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/1795192

Take this screenshot for example. This is the front page of Lemmy right now. Virtually every post will make the reader feel bad and depressed. It’s all doombait, ragebait - and if it’s a meme, it is usually a meme that leaves an annoyed taste in your mouth at someone or something.

This is what drove me and many others away from Reddit, and a decentralized platform does not have to have this problem in theory - but it Is currently experiencing it now. Reddit has no reason to change their depressing content because it drives much engagement and creates revenue. But, for a decentralized platform to just be filled with ragebait and doombait is not good and exposes inherent problems with the platform right now.

What’s more is that most of these posts are posted by accounts created in the past month, leading me to believe that people from Reddit who are used to getting karma dopamine from getting people riled up are just doing the same thing here.

I don’t really know how Lemmy can fix this problem - it is something that we really need to be aware of as a community. Don’t just upvote something because it makes you annoyed and you want more people to see it - perhaps we need to downvote ragebait and doombait when we see it so that the platform doesn’t become a depressing echo chamber.

crowsby,
crowsby avatar

This is one of the things that I'm struggling with right now as well. My reddit experience was heavily curated in favor of smaller subreddits, to the almost complete exclusion of top subreddits. The thing is, since Lemmy is so new, it hasn't had the opportunity to build up a diverse array of specialized communities the same way. So basically right now all we have are mainly versions of the "big" Reddit communities, along with ones that decided to emigrate here from Reddit.

But it turns out, content from "big" communities is often the same low-effort, lowest-common denominator stuff regardless which platform is hosting it. Memes, clickbait, and ragebait permeate the top results, because well shucks, that's what people want to see and engage with, apparently.

I'm hopeful that if/when Lemmy continues to grow, that it'll become home to more active specialized communities. In the meanwhile, I've been trying to improve the experience as much as possible by A) trying to subscribe to more communities and B) slamming that block community button like I'm playing Hungry Hungry Hippos.

realcaseyrollins,

It should be considered that Lemmy's culture can be quite political at times and is pretty staunchly to the left as well, so as long as you're here, you'll continue to see content like this until you curate your homepage a bit. This isn't really a problem though, it's not hard to unfollow or mute a community on your end.

meldrik,
@meldrik@lemmy.wtf avatar

Subscribe to the communities you want to engange with and stay away from “All”. Problem solved.

Flaky,
@Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Re: the Chromium bad one - I’ll be honest, the Firefox fanboyism was strong on Reddit too, and stronger actually because of how many people used Reddit back then. It’s just that because Lemmy is mainly populated by tech nerds that you’ll see them much more on the meme communities.

DougHolland,
@DougHolland@lemmy.ml avatar

To improve your Lemmy home page, let’s fight climate change and end corporations’ ownership of Congress and America.

RealM,
RealM avatar

Have the same issue personally. I hope blocking those communities makes the frontpage better.

blazera,
blazera avatar

Yeah i dont believe thats what drove you away from reddit, considering you joined 3 weeks ago.

mp3,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

Or you could subscribe to other communities that aren’t feeding you that, and block accounts you consider as doomers.

muddybulldog,

There is no “front page of Lemmy”.

I suppose the ALL of your particular instance could be considered the front page of YOUR Lemmy but it’s not the front page of mine.

ingy, (edited )

One man’s “doombait” is another man’s “topic that should be taken seriously” I suppose ¯*(ツ)*/¯

TheButtonJustSpins, (edited )

You dropped this:

Ignacio,
Ignacio avatar

The main problem I see is that news outlets, people, and link aggregators like Lemmy/Kbin, mainly focus on the negative side instead of the positive said.

For example, focusing on the negative side would be "Climate change is here and we are doomed". Focusing on the positve side would be "These are the things you can do to alleviate climate change". Climate change is the main topic in both information sources, but changing the focus means better discussions, less ragebait and doombait, and a healthier environment for all of us.

Linking to news outlets won't change that, because we all know how they work. But I agree with OP, ragebait doesn't benefit anyone and only harms our mental health.

Unsubscribing or blocking communities/magazines is something that we can do, but that also prevents us to read other kind of news that are posted on those communities/magazines.

luna,

"These are the things you can do to alleviate climate change" That's still negative. It's blaming climate change on people instead of corporations and governments, a trend started by bp

Ignacio,
Ignacio avatar

It's just an example. I could write another one, but that's the one that came into my head at that moment, the easiest one for me to be understood.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

My feed is mainly memes and porn. Maybe you should browse with different options.

It also seems you're confusing news you don't like with 'doombait', 'ragebait' and 'corporation bad'. Really, this post is the most distressing one i've seen on lemmy or kbin recently.

TinyPizza,
TinyPizza avatar

I've been here a month and have to agree. This feels like the most troll post I've seen, but is closely followed by similar ones asking the Fediverse to be more palatable to "normies."

original_reader,

I posted news about climate change myself. Not for upvotes, but because I’m invested in the topic.

If you don’t want such news, unsubscribe, block or just scroll past.

Rachel, (edited )

Two of the posts in the screenshot are from lemmy shitpost. Didn’t you post this in the wrong community? Now it seems you are rage baiting or concern trolling, and I don’t think you had that in mind.

blanketswithsmallpox,
blanketswithsmallpox avatar

He only posted the same topic 4 times in 4 different communities. It's almost like ragebait concern troll AB7ORH7D is being a troll lol.

Ilflish,

I’m in agreement with most in the replies. And the easy solution to both is to just fill your front-page with the good stuff and block stuff. Basically I blocked all news subreddits (except upliftingnews) and followed smaller communities instead of generic ones. Then stopped using All.

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