It struck me recently that as the quality of content on the internet has arguably gone to shit, in the form of increasingly frequent ads plastered everywhere, paywalls or superficial/dumb blog posts or mainstream media articles, the basic idea of a link aggregator platform can naturally lose its quality, or struggle to maintain a level of quality, and so lose its appeal.
I think I can see this on lemmy (which is my favourite fediverse platform) to some extent and have probably noticed it on somewhere like hackernews to an extent too. I see a link that has an interesting/important sounding title on an interesting/important topic, then click the link and see an article or web page that maybe is just not worth my time.
I’d be curious how many people upvote a link here without reading the cited article/page?
All of which is sad and speaks to general problems with media today, with AI garbage, of course, probably about to make it worse. But regarding the fediverse and lemmy, I think it maybe raises interesting questions.
Obviously the idea of a link aggregator is to seek out and share “the good stuff”. But maybe talking about where that generally comes from needs to be a more prominent and open question? Or maybe I need to subscribe to fewer news communities? More ambitiously though, maybe, at least over time, it will get more important or valuable to lean into the forum-like or even blog-like aspect of lemmy where it’s increasingly all about the “OC” here, especially as engaging with actual humans with actual personal thoughts gets more and more valuable over time? Could private, maybe even invite-only communities even be of value here?
Thoughts?
Neal Stephenson predicted this (of course). Google, reddit, and others in the cohort are effectively ‘shallow web,’ easily searchable and manipulated by SEO. As such, you get 10-15 sites with all the same content, reducing the quality of your searches and the overall quality of web content.
It’s an effort to get clicks and monetize.
There’s no coming back from it.
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Algorithms have become so powerful that for a forum community to form, there are so many hurdles.
Biggest issue right now are the information “silos” that any algorithm-led social media platform algorithm will choose for you. It’ll show you similar content, but rarely from the same person because there are just so many people posting content online that there’s always a next better thing, a trend to chase. People who chase those trends end up exhausting themselves and replaced by others who are willing to be more different and engaging, until they get burnt out as well.
I used to follow a few forums, and I loved the mindless scroll of Reddit, but I found myself going back to YouTube or Instagram when I slid further into the doom scroll mentality. Those forums have now gone, due to increasing costs of hosting, and being unable to monetise a community to a sustainable degree. Reddit have understood the value of user attention and platform control to push their ads, got greedy, and locked everything down. Instagram (and meta) are, in my opinion, the leaders in algorithm based social networks, and they drive the trends without being in direct control of them.
The emotional rollercoaster that I’ve caught myself experiencing, where I get a photo of a friend suggested to me, and I start subconsciously comparing myself, only for the next post to be a soothing, highly targeted video that the algorithm knows I would enjoy and it dulls the emotional impact of the previous post, making me forget about it. The algorithm doesn’t care how you feel, but it knows what will make you engaged.
My reply became a bit of a rant about algorithms, but that’s where we’re headed. In fact, a friend has a theory that suggests that we’ll be reduced to a burst of quick content blocks. Inputs of little importance, like yes/no questions, because only us, humans, can make those little decisions that will add up to something bigger. When we get exhausted we get our rest and back in the machine we go. What would the bigger thing be? Who knows.
Gosh look at me, I sound like one of those internet prophets that talk out of their arse.
So just to make sure I understand where you’re coming from (hope that’s not rude) …
Algorithmic feeds are so addictive and controlling that active human generated forums/blogs are just unlikely to gain enough momentum to form. And, projecting into the future (with a good dose of dystopia, that’s a trend unlikely to change such that human activity on or consumption of the internet is likely to devolve to an incredibly simple and subjugated form … ??
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I have lots of thoughts on this one. I totally agree that the amount of junk out there is on the increase. One of the reason I like Reddit/Lemmy is to crowd source the findings for worthwhile content. I think the secret is being selective of what you subscribe to. I also use reeder by Readwise and let it summarize using AI anything I throw its way. I then use the summary to decide if I even want to read the full content. I’m staring to pay more attention to platforms like Substack and paying for content. In general the problem you highlight is one that I think AI can’t help greatly in fixing. Maybe an AI that knows you and can pre read something and tell you if you should even bother.
I wish people wouldn’t use Lemmy as a “link aggregator”. Instead of posting links to other peoples content how about having an original thought for once. Why is Lemmy acting as the comments section for some other website?
Because that’s literally what it was made for? On https://join-lemmy.org/ the first thing it literally says is “Lemmy, A link aggregator for the fediverse.”
I’ve never really heard of this concept as I come skipped straight here from forums 15 years ago. People wrote posts about things they were interested in and people discussed it. Very rarely did someone simply post a link to another website with no comments of their own. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Very rarely did someone simply post a link to another website with no comments of their own. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Yea I’m with you on that. I can imagine a community/instance setting that prevents.
I think that’s a superficial take. For instance, elsewhere in the documentation it says
Lemmy can also function as a blogging platform. ...(see here). Moreover, at the beginning of the documentation it saysLemmy is a selfhosted, federated social link aggregation and **discussion forum**.(see here).Not that the documentation defines what is possible on the platform … its features do.
Beyond that “link aggregator” is a generic term for reddit-like platform, and can often implicitly include all of the interactions that don’t include linking to external sources.
Sure, but it’s inspired by reddit, where link posts are first-class features. You could always create an instance that doesn’t allow link posts. I don’t think you can create a community and disable them like you could on reddit.
To be fair join-lemmy also advertises the software as “blazing fast” with “powerful mod tools” and if there are two phrases I’d associate with Lemmy those aren’t it.
(OK compared to Mastodon Lemmy is blazing fast, but that’s cheating considering of how slow Mastodon is)
It can be fast, on small instances. I’m on lemmy.world where it is often slow, or even complete unresponsive, due to its size (both in terms of data and as a target for attacks).
But the mod tools definitely suck.
Lemmy is blazing fast on a medium or small instance. Especially compared to modern Reddit
Yea, this is kinda my sentiment. I like link aggregation. As a means of creating a feed, it’s fine. But I think there’s a lot of links here without much discussion in the comments, which kinda defeats the point IMO.
Beyond that, yea, I’m with you … lemmy as a forum and/or blogosphere seems a much more interesting prospect to me. Comparing to the microblogs, for instance (eg mastodon), and there’s something to having actual people writing their own posts and thoughts (albeit in mostly relatively superficial 500 character snippets which part of why I dislike microblogging).
But I think there’s a lot of links here without much discussion in the comments, which kinda defeats the point IMO.
Music communities are a good example of this - wall of links with no discussion whatsoever. They’re basically useless. It was like this in Reddit, and it’s basically the same shit here.
The main difference between link aggregator and classic forum is a tree-like discussion that creates the idea of OP - a central part of the discussion, as opposed to more organic discussions on classic forums, where every post is equally important.
I’m not a really a social media person, so in a way I think I’m ignorant of the cultures that persisted on Reddit, Twitter etc.
I don’t think I ever realised how much Reddit users were after a lurking doom scrolling experience. I understand it, but honestly, at some point you surely look at yourself and wonder whether this is worth doing. But then I hear about people here scrolling through
Alland wanting the slickest mobile app and realise that that’s what some people here want too. Which, I suspect, comes back to karma farming … who’s making posts suitable for doom scrollers? People who want upvotes? It’s not a great culture overall TBH (if I’m on to something here), and it’s something where a microblog platform really does have a leg up.I don’t think I ever realised how much Reddit users were after a lurking doom scrolling experience. I understand it, but honestly, at some point you surely look at yourself and wonder whether this is worth doing. But then I hear about people here scrolling through All and wanting the slickest mobile app and realise that that’s what some people here want too.
Actually I never thought of Lemmy from doom scrolling perspective, although I had awful experience with “all”, even after blocking all politics- and news-related communities. Nowadays I try to not leave Subscribed tab at all, to not provoke my anxiety.
I believe filtering by keyword is a way to go. I do it with ubo and feel safer than ever - even if something could sneak into my subscribed feed, it’ll be blocked by ubo. But it sometimes doesn’t work for some reason, so I still can’t browse all.
Which, I suspect, comes back to karma farming … who’s making posts suitable for doom scrollers? People who want upvotes? It’s not a great culture overall TBH
I disable score visibilty and sort posts by “new comments” - I believe there’s no need for scores in Lemmy. Well, at least we don’t have karma thing, it was really annoying on reddit.
and it’s something where a microblog platform really does have a leg up.
I never used twitter or any other microblogging social media. How is Mastodon compared to Lemmy? I can’t wrap my head around microblogging for some reason.
I never used twitter or any other microblogging social media. How is Mastodon compared to Lemmy? I can’t wrap my head around microblogging for some reason.
I really don’t like the format, but mastodon, for the most part from what I’ve seen (been there since Nov 2022), has a pretty talkative culture that is often criticised for being a bit too serious. Here’s an example of a post/thread I just pulled form my home feed (see here]. But it’s still microblogging and mastodon is a pretty brutalist platform and I’m not a huge fan of its dominance on the fediverse. Also, basing everything on following people gets pretty messy and annoying pretty quickly. Though the upshot is that you actually go get to know people, which is something lemmy lacks and could improve on (by allowing you to follow people too).
Compared to lemmy, the culture is, on average, less shitpost-y, bit more “serious”, less mainstream (tech and LGBTQ) but also fewer extremes politically (though that’s probably not true actually).
In the end, it actually shits me that the two platforms can’t interoperate better, as there isn’t any good reason other than the two platforms lacking appropriate features, with mastodon kinda being the more annoying culprit in that IMO.
Thanks for sharing, I’ll give it a shot. Glad to hear I’m not the only one having trouble with microblogging - it seems people nowadays are really quick to adapt to a new platform, while my social ineptness holds me back.
basing everything on following people gets pretty messy and annoying pretty quickly.
What about following tags? I heard you can do this on mastodon.
it actually shits me that the two platforms can’t interoperate better, as there isn’t any good reason other than the two platforms lacking appropriate features, with mastodon kinda being the more annoying culprit in that IMO.
I have my hope for kbin, although they still have a lot to improve, I think they’re moving in a right direction.
Yep you can follow tags pretty easily. I find tags pretty ambiguous though and many don’t use them frequently (including me). But they’re definitely easy and the best way to find people.
Well I don’t vote on things I don’t read, but indeed so many links are so garbage.
Slide for Reddit had this neat browser built-in that would pull just the text like in reader mode. It didn’t work all the time, but damm, so good. Normal web pages are just sickening.
Ideally link aggregators should contain the entire article, but who really wants to do that, especially since often even selecting all text is a pain.
I’m a bit of a news junkie, but I always pay attention to the link being shared. Is it a reliable source? Is it paywalled? Is it a tabloid just spreading rumors and disinfo? You’re right that a link aggregator is only as good as the links being shared.
Or maybe I need to subscribe to fewer news communities?
That’s my take: curation. It only mitigates some of the issues and you still need to put some effort almost everyday, but it’s the only way for me to make it beareable.
The first thing I did on Lemmy was to set the homepage to “Subscribed”, and only went to “All” a few times to populate a small inital list of communities. From that point, you can organically discover the rest.
I also recommend an RSS reader, it’s the best way to get control of “your homepage”.
But I’ve never tried the other option you mention: more private circles (paid substacks, discords, …), so I cannot compare.
