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Kbin is currently designed to encourage brigading. The fix is easy. (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by 10A@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social

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The current default "Homepage" value is "All". That makes sense for users with zero subscribed magazines, so they see something.

But for users with one or more subscribed magazines, the default value for "Homepage" needs to be "Subscriptions".

That's partially just because subscriptions mean little if the default frontpage ignores them. But there's a more important reason than that.

The current situation is that posts in m/Conservative are heavily downvoted, and barely upvoted. (Whatever your politics may be, consider if this was happening to you.) As more ex-redditors join, this problem is likely to worsen.

Eventually moderators need better controls, to say things like "Only members can vote", etc.

But for now, a very easy fix is to change the default value of "Homepage" to be "Subscriptions". Of course, "All" should still be a selectable option for those who prefer it.

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[–] SpacemanSpiff@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s really not brigading by definition. Brigading is a conscious and coordinated effort by many people to target a post or community. There is nothing conscious or coordinated about random people randomly seeing a post and downvoting it.

Brigading is not the right term. Unpopular is.

This is likely unavoidable because the majority of users of sites like this are not conservative. They trend toward the younger demographics. Millennials overall in the U.S. are 60% left-leaning. Gen Z are almost 70% left-leaning. What you're noticing may only become more pronounced after kbin re-federates. The fediverse is far more international then Reddit ever was and international and non-English posts are not filtered out by region like on Reddit. Conservative US politics are generally farther right than most right-leaning parties in the developed world. So you may be downvoted by international users as well that actually intentionally view magazines or posts with the conservative tag.

Really the only way to avoid this is to create your own instance and de-federate. This is precisely why the far-right social media platforms (like Truth Social) have had to isolate themselves. They’re simply a significant minority on the internet.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're the third person to point out that it's technically not brigading. I think that's splitting hairs, because it's happening by design, but I hear you. I don't know the right present participle, but it seems like a moot point.

To everything you wrote after that, I wholly agree. I don't think this really is about politics, though, so much as it's about unpopular perspectives held by minority groups. IMHO the platform should encourage a diversity of thought.

Yes, I could create a defederated instance, or I could just go hang out on Gab or TruthSocial. I was hoping I'd find a more well-rounded community here, like I had on reddit. It's worth noting that reddit is strongly left-leaning, but has a bunch of conservative communities that thrive due to its configuration. But again, this isn't just about politics — it's about minority groups.

[–] SpacemanSpiff@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t think you’re being entirely unreasonable, I’m just not sure it’s possible.

It’s not happening by design, that would imply intent or bias on what the site shows on all. It’s happening naturally, all literary shows everything to everybody. Claiming it’s by design is like saying it’s by design when your entire office votes “no” to you banging on drums during the workday. It might be they just don’t like that idea.

Remember that the situation, the configuration you’re referring to, only existed on Reddit because those subs banned people left and right, and people blocked them. In other words, they were and are isolated. r/conservative would ban people for any dissenting comment, and conservative subs got delisted from r/all for a variety of reasons by the Reddit admins.

The only way to achieve what you’re describing would be to do the Reddit thing and pre-select magazines for the “all” tab, rather then them truly being all. Even if subs were the main page, people will still flip over to all regularly, just like they flip over to new.

You may just have to be content knowing that people that subscribe to /m/conservative go there intentionally despite the posts falling down on the all tab. Maybe there will be more people here that agree with you and the situation will change.

[–] 10A@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

when your entire office votes “no” to you banging on drums during the workday

Heh

On reddit, I never looked at r/all, and I don't know how many people did, but it's something you only ever see if you seek it out.

My gripe here is just about the default "Homepage" value. Most people don't change defaults, and it would be more appropriate to default to "Subscriptions". That would mostly solve the problem.

Sure, a few people could still choose to go to m/all and see things from other communities. But how often does that happen? I don't think it's common enough to worry about.

You may just have to be content knowing that people that subscribe to /m/conservative go there intentionally despite the posts falling down on the all tab.

Sure, but this really isn't about that magazine specifically. It's about all minority groups with unpopular viewpoints.

I like your username, btw.