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.
Also, consider individual communities, in case you don’t browse the home page. /c/Technology for example. There are many positive innovations that can be talked about. Instead - Right now, the posts in order, summarized in the same format as my post would be: 1. Corporation bad (ally bank). 2. global warming dystopia (Texas heat) 3. corporation bad (Netflix raising prices) 4. corporation bad (Elon Musk sued) 5. regular post 6. corporation bad (playstation store crap) 7. regular post 8 through 11 is corporation bad and AI dystopia news.
I suspect you should unsubscribe from communities with names like “Mildly Infuriating” or “Lemmy Shitpost” if you object to ragebait.
This is not due to subscriptions - the same thing can be seen logged out. Additionally, communities you are not subscribed to show up in the home feed - you would need to block such communities to not see content from them. You could make the argument that one should really just browse communities you’re interested in without viewing the home page, which is fair. However, take technology for example. There are many positive innovations that can be talked about. Instead - Right now, the posts in order, summarized in the same format as my post would be: 1. Corporation bad (ally bank). 2. global warming dystopia (Texas heat) 3. corporation bad (Netflix raising prices) 4. corporation bad (Elon Musk sued) 5. regular post 6. corporation bad (playstation store crap) 7. regular post 8 through 11 is corporation bad and AI dystopia news.
Your home feed is only things you are subscribed to…
You can set what your Home feed displays. Instead of letting it default to Local/All set it to Subscribed
This. That way you’ll only see what you explicitly care about and have joined. You can select the “subscribed” button at the top or make it permanent by changing your profile settings, which means you won’t have to manually select “subscribed” when opening Lemmy.