Rules
I know everyone in the fediverse hates the idea of recommendation algorithms because they're easily abused and gamed on the other platforms, but I still think either apps or dedicated recommendation services that can be tweaked/inspected by the users could be a welcome addition.
As it is now, I basically have my app set to browse all and I block communities/instances I'm not interested in, but if it grows larger I don't think that would continue working.
I'm all for simple privacy friendly recommendation algorithms. I even thought of ways a privacy friendly recommendation algorithm for PeerTube could be made. Though I don't need one in Lemmy. My subscribed feed is good enough imo
100%, my main issue with all the "new" social medias coming out is that they lack a recommendation algorithm which basically blocks growth for any small communities (/creators depending on platform) and does not allow me to have an interesting feed.
On Xitter I always browsed the For You page and on the daily found new creators that posted interesting stuff that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Now I just browse like you said on All and blocking communities I don't want there, but its already obvious to me there's wayyyy too much news and nothing else there. All I see is Trump Trump Tesla Trump and a bit of memes inbetween.
Have you tried adding a keyword filter using Ublock? !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca has a pinned post with a guide on how to do it
Its not that I don't want that content at all, its that my entire feed is filled with it that is the issue.
I personally have an alt for news that I check once every few days. Being able to block Trump and Musk all of the time is quite nice.
Everything still feels fairly new to me, but I feel it’s great for things you know you’re interested in. In terms of discovery though I feel there isn’t an integrated tool to encounter new stuff you’d like necessarily. I like music for instance, I went out of my way to find the music I like. Now finding a subgenre I could like, but haven’t heard about yet, would be more difficult since there’s not an algorithm recommending it to me. I feel that’s all the more reason to spread the things we like through word of mouth. Organic growth is the heart of this type of medium after all.
Smaller communities do have it harder at first, there’s no guarantee your intended audience encounters the content you’re sharing after all. Although there could be a huge audience, but not a lot of posters. I’ve seen a mix of both of these cases so far. You can tell the interest is there since there’s may be a several dozen people subscribed to an instance no one has posted in ever or for months. Although I’m sure if activity happens again, people would be happy to engage with those interests.
Lemmy is too small for content discovery to be a big issue IMO. Around this time of day – when prime evening hours for engagement are falling mostly over the empty Pacific ocean, the feed is rather slim pickings while watching the All feed. There are not enough people to support they ultra hyper niches I am most interested in. That is not a matter of discovery it is a matter of size.
Getting into the broader fediverse, that needs some work. Like use my account here to create credentials on other fediverse platforms and things will grow much faster.
Yep there's far fewer posts than reddit but it's much higher quality. So I spend less time scrolling but actually read more
Yeah I feel most communities don’t stand a chance. Smaller communities are now split between multiple instances. A small subreddit that would get 2-3 posts a day is now 6 separate Lemmy communities on separate instances that post once a week.
It could be better, could be worse. I've looked for stuff, not found it then stumbled upon it the next week. Right now it's small so it's not a problem
My Observation: Once a post ages, it will be thrown onto into post-purgatory, a heap of dead and forgotten posts, forever, while the discussion keeps going on the 10 newest posts max.
"Solutions" I found to this:
Integrating randomness might help, so old posts are not buried completely … add a random page similar to wikipedias special:random article. This might also help to get a feeling for the real average content in a community.
It does not, people use New comments. We just interacted in a post that was 9 days old
I would say 9 days is quite young. The oldest post on lemmy is 6 years old.
I use the web-interface, which by default shows you hot posts on the frontpage, you need to do some clicking to find newest comments/oldest comments but there is also no inbetween.
You can configure your default sort in your account settings. I have mine on New Comments.
I set it now in my option as well, that should boost interactivity on the fediverse, right? May I ask if you found "New comments" sort option better?
I wish there where more sort options, some of which should introduce some randomness-factor to ease discovery of (for example) 3-year old content.
May I ask if you found “New comments” sort option better?
Yes, as it allows me to find posts like yours
It's very good right now; I appreciate that it's based on recommendations from other users rather than an algo, keeps the feed clean.