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?

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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).

    • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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 All and 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.

        • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.orgEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • Lucia [she/her]@eviltoast.orgEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              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.

              • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                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.