cross-posted from: https://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.
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.