Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world Quadhammer @lemmy.world 9 mo. ago

Thought experiment: Is it possible to ban posts across all feds about trump, elon and similar topics for a week?

Not only would I like to not hear about any of the assholes or shitty crap going on for a week, id like to not talk about them either. Is it even possible?

Not for like censorship reasons but for more mental health and logic reasons. Do people's moods improve? Is more interesting and funny content generated? Does the media/news algorthym absolutely shit itself?

Yes yes I'm sure you can filter out what you don't want to see personally and what not blah blah blah, but I mean for us. All of us. Maybe we just need to ignore the fuccbois for a bit. Imagine a world without them

39 comments

As you mentioned yourself: Filter it out + block users and communities you don't like. It's usually the same users posting anyway.

People will still want to talk about stuff that you don't care to know or see, and as long as it's within the rules of the instance there's nothing really wrong with it IMO

Forcing all users to share your view of the fediverse for 168 hours would likely be a major cause of annoyance, and stretch our volunteer moderators out pretty thin...
Its unhealthy to ignore and hide away from problems of the world.

If you want to avoid that sort of content, either setup keyword / instance blocks to control what you see, or go offline entirely for some time.

To follow your suggestion though - theres no one person/team that controls the fediverse. To get, for example, all trump posts banned across all the fediverse you would need agreement from all instance admins to agree to it, and enforce it
- Its unhealthy to ignore and hide away from problems of the world.
  
  I'd argue it's unhealthy to obsess over the same topics every day/week/month/year but okay a week off from it is "unhealthy?" Nah.
  
  To get, for example, all trump posts banned across all the fediverse you would need agreement from all instance admins to agree to it, and enforce it
  
  Yeah I kinda figured. Could the whole fediverse ignore man babies for a week? I bet no, but I'd love to be surprised
  
  There is a huge range between “entirely ignore” and “obsess over”. Vastly more nuance you are just ignoring.
  
  I’d argue it’s unhealthy to obsess over the same topics every day/week/month/year but okay a week off from it is “unhealthy?” Nah.
  
  So don't obsess about them and/or take a week off if you need to.
  
  But why should your personal issue with some topics affect everyone else?
  
  I'd argue it's unhealthy to obsess over the same topics every day/week/month/year
  
  Then stop obsessing over them.
  
  And stop projecting your obsession onto the entire fediverse.
- Its unhealthy to ignore and hide away from problems of the world.
  
  Got a source for that?
I’ll decide what I see and don’t see, thank you very much.

What kind of chump would support a paternalistic idea like this?

Go back to being a Reddit admin and stay there if you want to force restrictions on other users for their own good.

Edit: Another idea is for you to start your own Lemmy instance. IMO, PaternalisticChumps.world has a great ring to it.
- Yeah okay keep feeding the monster then here I've got one for you "Go back to the Washington Post and write an article about how this post oppressed you so much"
Use Sync for Lemmy and the keyword filter is your friend.
No, it's impossible to do that on the feediverse, that's the whole idea of a decentralized network.

That being said I never read stuff about either of them, so the best idea for you might be, like we say in Brazil, stop getting scabies to scratch yourself.
Find a community with content that you like aside from some annoying topics.

Create a new community with mod rules restricting some content (e.g. "news no politics"). /r/CasualUK did this, explicitly banned politics.

Attract new users who have the same preference.
- grow up and stop fantasizing about controlling people
  
  Elect better leaders in the first place
  
  Get something better to talk about
If you want to live in a bubble, use filters, the rest of us can just continue to live outside.
- You're already in a bubble buddy it has a Koch/Murdoch trademark stamped on it
  
  I support neither.
  
  Rich because Koch and Murdoch control the fediverse
If you're pushing for restricting certain views for a few days, that's still censorship. You can argue whether it's justified or not, but it's still censorship.

Regarding whether it's possible or not; technically it is. There are certainly instances or groups of instances that have imposed strict federation requirements and closed themselves off in little bubbles, for better or worse. You'd probably not get the entire fediverse on board though, especially if it's "just an experiment".

Also, these people are political figureheads; blocking discussions about them won't actually solve anything. People will still talk about their policies and opinions. If you block that, people will argue about what should and shouldn't be blocked (hint: it isn't self-evident).

I think the system we have works fine. Explicit political things are usually behind comment warnings (on Masto). Many communities have "no politics" rules (although imo moderators should be better about that...).

Also, there is so much bad news on the fediverse that doesn't traditionally count as politics. Imo it's a bit naïve to assume that banning discussions about certain people will magically make people happier.
- I was merely suggesting taking away the children's stage. Perhaps people just have to decide they're bored of the subject on their own. Too bad there's a billion dollar media machine committed to that not happening
Why do you want to control what other people say so much?
- I feel like none of you read the post
  
  We did. You basically said you would rather we all stopped talking about fuccbois instead of you filtering it out client side.
  
  but I mean for us. All of us.
No, it's not, and it'd be an example of the decentralization working as intended.

The benefits of being able to have many communities for the same thing can really shine here. As an 'experiment', make a lemmy instance of your own, ban all discussion of these topics, and create communities for the things you like there while enforcing the new rules. If the benefits of not discussing those topics are worthwhile to people, they'll start interacting with your instance and you'll have made a nice thing for yourself. Otherwise I guess you can keep to yourself in the bubble that you were seeking to create.
You're getting the response you expected, and that's just how it is, but I am here in solidarity with being so FUCKING BORED of having to hear about these motherfuckers all the time.
- Yeah it's like giving dumbass unruly kids a mic and a stage and then encouraging bad behavior
We just really need a good customizable keyword filter. I tried the Lemmy Keyword Filter userscript, but it was unreliable for me. There are always a handful of topics that I just don't want to see. Either for a few days, a few weeks, or forever.
Nope, people will not be going along with that. I guarantee it.

Blocking even a decent fraction of all the shrilly political ragebait here takes real work, it's no wonder it's going to hell.
- I would guess that it's possible to do automated sentiment analysis on text and then provide sort/filter options ranking posts by level of upset.
  
  Hmm.
  
  I suppose that someone might try to abuse that by going to a post and then just posting a bunch of upset comments, get the post hidden.
  
  Maybe do it at the comment level.
  
  I bet if we build just the right collection of electronics, code, and the iron will to proceed, we could get 100 instance admins to control humanity in vats and feed preprocessed junk information into their brains. It could be like a nightmare, but a nightmare we control!
  
  It's probably easier to just start curating a bunch of filters - I already wrote a couple as a hacky instance block, because that functionality is unavailable on kbin.
You can ban them for yourself by monitoring your own internet use, deleting mobile apps (and/or disabling notifications) and reducing news consumption in general. All of which are pretty solid protocols for most people to follow 365 days / year, actually.

I'd check out Leechblock NG (for Firefox and Chrome) if you need a short vacation from Lemmy or any other websites.
No, it's not, and it'd be an example of the decentralization working as intended.

The benefits of being able to have many communities for the same thing can really shine here. As an 'experiment', make a lemmy instance of your own, ban all discussion of these topics, and create communities for the things you like there while enforcing the new rules. If the benefits of not discussing those topics are worthwhile to people, they'll start interacting with your instance and you'll have made a nice thing for yourself. Otherwise I guess you can keep to yourself in the bubble that you were seeking to create.
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You want to make the world a better place :)

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