Despite not subscribing to political communities and having a large number of content filters based on keywords, my feed here is still for a large part all negative articles and ragebait. Elon Musk this and Israel that. Microsoft ruining windows, AI ruining internet, right wingers and capitalism ruining the world, police being racist and shooting innocent people, companies demanding workers into offices, privacy being under constant attack from all sides… And all this despite the effort I go thru to block that from my view. I can only imagine what the unfiltered feed is like.
I get that this is all important stuff but holy shit it’s depressing when that’s all I read here every day. Sure, some of it is legitimately news worthy but lets be real here; much of it isn’t. It’s just to get you riled up and engaging with the post. It’s the exact same thing all major social media recommendation algorithms are doing; feeding you content that causes outrage to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. Do we really need to know about every stupid thing Elon says or every police shooting where the victim is black?
It’s no wonder so many people, especially younger ones feel absolutely miserable from day to day. It can’t be healthy to live like this. I feel like this kind of media diet is pretty much equivalent to eating fast food every single day.
I try to filter out most of this negative stuff, but it has a downside. You become disconnected from the raw information feed if you don’t occasionally just look at it. For short periods, it’s tolerable, but then I just re-enable all filtering to reduce my cognitive load.
If I need to be cheered up, I prefer to look for science articles or news since these are generally about unbiased progress.
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Absolutely. One thing I miss about Reddit is having an active personalized feed of positive/neutral content.
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I find this to be an interesting take.
I feel like Reddit had significantly more negativity if you compare now to the 2016 election cycle.
There is a major difference, though… Reddit also had stronger niche communities (at the time). Those communities are largely marginalized now, but I guess they are likely still larger than here.
So you’d see the political stuff, but then you’d see your favorite game got an update. Those distractions are admittedly less numerous here.
This said, the astro-turfing on Reddit was insane. Way, way worse than anything I’ve seen here. The worse thing we have here is Lemmy.ml. They are far worse than astro-turfers, since they just straight up delete comments and ban people that dissent from their propaganda.
But if you block them, or join an insurance that has defederated them, then you’re alright. Fair warning, my instance has not done this… yet.
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Agree. Lemmy seems to have like… Some sort of progressive LGBTQ friendly black pill folks or something. Completely resigned to doom posting, always negative. Always looking to kneecap. Always bringing up macro scale issues on micro scale events. Calling for violence, saying society is guaranteed toast.
I just want to say, thank you for still being here and trying to change it in a good direction.
Can we not create the communities we wish to see on Lemmy ourselves? I know it might not be full of people at first, but if it at least exists, people who want to interact about said topic in said community can find it eventually and do so, and it can grow over time. Or is this not how it works? Is my logic flawed in any way?
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Is the audience for it not here or does the audience not find smaller communities? I for one just browse whatever loads up on Jerboa, and created an account mainly to have some control over what I see (i.e., blocking stuff I’m not interested in). I don’t know that I’d find smaller communities if they don’t get more popular or popular communities get less active to the point of these smaller communities showing up. I don’t know that I can search for anything but communities (on Jerboa, at least). Is there even a search for general, idk, posts and stuff? Not denying maybe the audience isn’t here. Just think maybe finding smaller communities isn’t as easy (or maybe it’s just me, idk. I’m not even looking for specific communities, tbh. Lemmy is my “eh, I’m not doing nothing right now. Imma just check this app on my phone”)
There is not enough activity to sustain niche communities.
Is there nothing that can be done about it? Maybe have some sort of community to find smaller communities. Maybe people just don’t know (and maybe don’t look for or find) there’s a community they might like
Same here. I don’t know if I could in good conscience go back to Reddit, but the constant doomposting makes Lemmy seem more and more unattractive by the day - and that’s after applying a hefty amount of post filters.
I keep telling myself that if I just stick it out, we’ll eventually get enough users to drown out the negativity, but some days I wonder if we’ll ever get there when that’s like 95% of the feed.
I think you are doing something wrong if you still see this things.
- Make an account.
- subscribe to wholesome subs.
- browse by subscriptions.
- just see wholesome content.
Bonus points if you create the account on a wholesome instance so you can browse local too.
I’m not necessarily looking for “wholesome” content, though. I’m looking for interesting content.
Also, there isn’t enough content to browse just a few subs, and there are a lot of communities being created that i would miss out on, and “opt-out” is generally my preferred way to browse.
At the risk of burying my reply I was about to post at the top level ….
Is it just me that this is a technical problem? Is it just iOS? I get logged out multiple times per session, such that one of the reasons I browse all is so I don’t need to login yet again until I want to post something. (And I use an older iPad with a fingerprint reader that is neither fast nor reliable). Of course the other reason is lack of content, but I’m trying to do my part there. But laziness is a big deal.
For those people recommending finding a project: can I recommend “with a side goal of bringing a Lemmy Community to life”? I recently adopted a new community for a new hobby of mine. I found it existing but empty, so can only speculate it was created during Rexxit. I’ve been trying to post twice a week to see if I can draw people in, and it has gotten up to double digit subscribers, but definitely a work in progress. Anyhow, now my focal point in Lemmy is to eagerly check whether anyone posted, and to see if there is a response I can take to encourage more. All the doom and gloom takes a bit of a back seat
I think one of Lemmy’s issues is that everyone wants to create a community instead of contributing to what’s here. People expect to have all the “niche hobby” communities like Reddit had right off the bat, but we don’t have the mass of people to support that - especially when you can have multiple communities for one topic across instances. Everything dilutes to nothing.
So we end up with nearly a 1:1 user/community ratio and every community either gets abandoned or only has 1 power-user posting.
I think the solution is essentially what you’re doing - to take existing communities and breathe life into them. Start out small and focused, and then branch out when it feels necessary.
Honestly reddit has gotten less negativity because a lot of it moved here. I still use reddit I use both reddit and lemmy.
Got back from a lemmy break recently because I couldn’t stand the negativity and needed a while away from it
I’ve been alive long enough to tell you this has been going on since long before Lemmy and it also never stops. Newspapers were a thing before social media existed, and they also tended to draw a much more sordid and depressing picture of the world by focusing most of their reporting on negative things instead of positive ones.
I believe this is basically an evolutionary trait in humans – we tend to give far more attention to negative stimuli than positive ones because it used to be necessary for our survival. Those people who missed the sabretooth tiger sneaking up on them while they were having fun simply did not make it long enough. However, in the modern era, this has become somewhat of a problem because it can be exploited to sell newspapers and clicks, and while paying attention to all that negative input probably won’t kill you, it’ll at least make you extremely depressed.
The only remedy I have is to make it a habit to pay more attention to positive things in life – at least enough to create a solid counterweight to all the negative stuff. Either turn off the computer from time to time and go outside to chill, or do other things that relax you like listening to music or making art. Or you could take a page out of Mr. Roger’s book and “look for the helpers” when consuming doom and gloom stories on the web – i.e. make it a habit to look for the good in the bad to avoid losing hope.
HTH
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Even if you ditched the internet for a while, the real world is fucked and getting more so every day and the only way you still wouldn’t notice is if you live in a little bubble completely isolated from the rest of existence.
I disagree. On the internet it seems like the world is burning (and it kind of is) but outside in the real world sun is shining, birds are singing and people are being polite to eachother. Those two places are in no way equivalent.
In the real world your bubble is super small and it tends to be pleasant that is because you intake a lot less information and data about what is going on.
The internet and global community has TONS of information that someone focused on their life won’t exactly notice. There is ways even on the internet to surround yourself with just positivity and fun. But the fact of the matter making people feel negative gets more clicks and drives more money.
Take a break enjoy your life. Check in on the internet occasionally.
The horrible things we see on the news, whether through traditional or Internet consumption, are being experienced by real people. The kids starving in Gaza aren’t ai generated.
Believe it or not, I do try to think of this as a positive. Not the things that are happening obviously, but they’ve always been happening. It’s a positive thing that people are so much more aware and engaged with the world. It may be a huge hit for the individual’s mental health, but this awareness and engagement is the way such things will eventually be prevented. So, congrats to being more aware and engaged with global atrocities compared to previous generations?
In this sense, the issue in Ukraine has especially hit me. I thought imperialism was a thing of the past. All those deaths and injuries from both sides, disregard for lives, all caused by one person’s imperialist ambitions and his ego.
And what are we meant to do about that?
If you’re in a country that is providing the bombs. You can try to stop that from happening.
Worth noting I agree with the general point of this thread. I just disagree with people saying problems like Israel’s genocide are none of our business and that nothing we do can have an impact (again assuming you’re in somewhere like the US or UK that provides bombs and diplomatic cover)
The world is actually burning though, and there are fewer birds, and people are tired and stressed all the time, and money is tight, and this is all in the real world, no internet required to experience any of that. The internet may expose you to others struggles that don’t affect your real world, but it still affects theirs. The ability to commiserate is what helps a lot of people cope with their real world, and might even invite insight on how to end some of those struggles.
Do you live in the country far from a city. In the UK where I live there’s been a rise in homelessness, roads are packed full of cars, the water treatment companies are poisoning our rivers and beaches, I saw the environmental agency destroying a habitat that was home to several birds, old victory buildings getting knocked down in anticipation of student accommodation, high street in my city has betting shops and casinos, local shops can’t compete with the corporations. Its grim
I live in a country with multiple problems right now, but I’ve grown to be aware that the more I actively look at negative commentary on the current situation (most are online given anonymity), the more I get into panic mode, which clouds my longterm thinking of trying to get into a better situation (whether it’s self-soothing, changing state policies by any measure, relocation, etc)
I like Bubbles.
which I currently am. :(
the real world is fucked and getting more so every day
Okay I know we have climate change and that is seriously bad.
But the world today is vastly, vastly better than the world 50 years ago. I agree that the world is still fucked but it was more fucked yesterday. Let’s not let the doom newsfeed turn us blind to the fact that the world has in fact gotten better over the last many decades.
Here’s your moment of zen ……
Sometime during the last school year, my state enacted a new financial aid program for instate college tuition. On April 29, we got a big surprise refund of most of the tuition we paid for the last school year for my son! College costs are finally getting attention!
What do you expect? You’re on lemmy. Half the userbase is doomers, dude.
let’s look at this in a positive way: “half of them are not!”
So you’re a “glass half empty” kind of person, which now means you’re a positive thinker.
There’s something about social networks and doom-porn. I have no idea which causes the other, but those tend to walk together.
At least lemmy isn’t heavy editorialized into increased doomerism.
I think the cgp grey video about thought germs gives a high level overview
One of Lemmy’s most toxic communities are the Linux people. I’m actually a huge fan of Linux, but the simple fact I use Windows as well constantly earns me personal attacks and extremely negative responses.
My solution (to this and many other issues you describe) is honestly to not read the replies any longer… I just say my bit, and I leave.
I’ve also taken to watching comedy shows that touch upon numerous topics of all the crazy shit going on. The Daily show has been a great outlet for me, and I’m not even a Democrat (I’m independent). It’s just nice to see a popular form of media clearly states “yes, this is crazy. You’re not crazy, THIS is just f*king crazy.”
Edit: For example, Trump recently claimed he never said “lock her up” the other day to Hillary. I saw this on Lemmy first. John Stewart’s reaction a day or two later was perfect, and pointed out the gaslighting taking place.
I just feel like you have to find ways to laugh at all this crazy stuff… So comedy shows help. Just keep your guard up whenever consuming politically charged media, of course.
Hey you might not read this since it’s a reply, but John Oliver does a pretty good job also! Last Week Tonight on HBO but they also post all their main stories on youtube.
I just don’t see this toxic linux user thing at all.
Every second post is a meme about Linux users telling people they’re idiots for using Windows, but I’ve never seen Linux users abusing Windows users.
I’m sure that it happens to some extent, but it seems entirely possible to be active on lemmy without encountering a toxic Linux user.
Check out the Uplifting News community :)
Thank you for this suggestion!
I don’t know how to on desktop, but on the Voyager app, I can block posts that include whatever words I want. My experience on here has noticeably improved since blocking certain words, like Musk, Trump, and Israel.
There’s a genocide going on with what appears to be more or less the full support of the countries that make up the defence union my country is a part of.
There’s war in Europe.
I find those topics worthy of discussion, and any social media where this is not actively discussed seems to me to be a smokescreen more than anything.
Of course tragic realities like the genocide we are complacent in, climate change, war in Europe, Russian propaganda and the rise of the far right is going to be actively discussed. It concerns more or less everyone who uses this platform, and they are the most important issues of our time. It’s not about negativity, it’s about coming to terms with reality and seeking to understand it.
That said, the communities I follow are largely apolitical stuff that interests me. Woodworking, knitting, gardening, owls, art, and the Fediverse. With the exception of !europe@feddit.de and !energy@slrpnk.net, I let the political stuff come through the cracks rather than actively following it.
I also have a Piefed account on which I follow news communities but actively filter out Trump and Musk. I can see how Amercians still feel the need to talk about these men, but at the end of the day they’re just fascist attention whores.
Yes, which is why I have every politics and politics-adjacent community, and entire instances blocked.
I’ve unsubscribed from worldnews and technology yesterday. I couldn’t bare to read yet another scareporn article pretending to be tech news.
The posts and comments were making me feel worse faster than the interesting information were making me happier.
I’ll probably take a short brake and try to sort the news from clickbate and propaganda later, possibly creating a new, properly moderated community.
IMO the issue isn’t that there’s too much negative content, but that there isn’t enough of everything else. I’d encourage people to post, engage with and signal boost other kinds of content they’re interested in. May just be that politics and social issues are some of the most popular interests in the community.
Yes! I agree, and I just stated a similar point of view. I think we need more positive distractions during this US election cycle.
