Every day, I see absolutely moronic comments getting upvoted while perfectly reasonable takes are downvoted. This would be a great opportunity to curate your feed by blocking these users en masse. Active curation like this is the only way to make social media even half-tolerable.
Whether you use it to filter out toxic users or to build an echo chamber, I think everyone should be free to do so. No one should be forced to share space with people they feel bring no value to the discussion - or, worse, make it more toxic.
Upvoted as unpopular, per the rules of the community.
I don’t think this would be an even remotely good feature.
You never know why someone specific up/downvoted a piece of content¹; at most you can pull up some possible explanations, but if you treat any as certain you’re just assuming². As such you’ll be blocking a lot of people based on things that you don’t even disagree with.
- not even when the person announces why they’re up/downvoting something, like I did.
- treating something uncertain as if it was true. The bane of social media.
You are going to love reading this:
https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
It’s nowhere close to what you asked for, but I think you’ll find that “in spirit” it leads to the same end. i.e., PieFed penalizes people who downvote all the time, and then labels their accounts, visible to everyone else (on PieFed). It does not block anything but labels them as someone who does such. It also alters the counting of votes (again, solely within PieFed though - these aren’t sent out to the wider Fediverse) to prioritize the ones from people who have more upvoted content than downvoted, i.e. people with higher reputation. Anyway it’s fascinating that people are investing effort into thinking about such matters.:-)
But if you truly don’t want downvotes at all, then there are instances that have disabled them, e.g. https://reddthat.com/.
Alternatively, if you want to block only tankies, there are indeed ways. e.g. Lemmy.cafe and quokk.au have both defederated entirely from the big 3, so they will never see your content in the first place. PieFed has defederated from two, and I routinely see my content having downvotes visible from other instances but my content when viewed from PieFed.social has no downvotes at all (the same as any other Lemmy instance that would have defederated them).
Though if you just want to hide content from them, that’s significantly harder to do but not impossible: https://piefed.social/post/307636.
As for “moronic content”, that’s just a feature of social media altogether (https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb). We all would do better to pay attention to that. In some sense, it is extremely difficult to avoid though - see e.g. the recent USA election - but on the other hand, if you curate carefully where you send your content, then you may get better reception.
The thing is, you can do whatever you want… but so too can they. But we don’t have to put up with their actions - we can do better.:-)
Blocking this, banning that. The result will be a bunch of filter bubbles where people only see what confirms and validates their own prejudices. Echo chambers, as you call them. I agree that this is a better scenario than a cesspool of cynicism and hate and negativity, but surely we can do better.
If the objective is incentivizing good behavior, here’s another idea: reward upvoting and make it costly to downvote. Details TBD but other forums have done it and it works.
If the objective is incentivizing good behavior, here’s another idea: reward upvoting and make it costly to downvote. Details TBD but other forums have done it and it works.
A simple way is to make downvotes “cost” more clicks. For example:
- if you want to upvote someone, you click the arrow up button and you’re done.
- if you want to downvote someone, you click the arrow down button, then a pop-up confirming it.
It isn’t too much of a deal if you downvote people sparingly, but if you’re consistently downvoting others it would get annoying.
Additionally, PieFed has a feature in line with your idea: up/downvoting people gives you “attitude”, and if your attitude is too low (too many downvotes in comparison with upvotes), a warning mark appears near your username. Mods can also use this as a piece of info to decide how to handle you, as users who are consistently downvoting others are typically combative.
OK but there are people you just don’t want to see and that shouldn’t be able to bother you. Just because you project what you would do on others doesn’t mean that others will do that. The current block on Lemmy is just a hide feature, every other social media has a working block feature.
A echo chamber comes when toxic assholes can troll normal people out of Lemmy, wich is the current state of matter.
I can already block entire instances along with every single user there. I don’t see why I should care if that’s what someone wants to do.
At least you postet this in the right community.
I assume you aren’t trolling, so here is what will happen when implemented: After about two weeks you will have blocked everyone who isn’t you, your alt accounts or a bot.
“Creating an echo chamber” is said a lot when people talk about blocking, banning and defederating. Sometimes it is justified, sometimes it’s utter bullshit. What you suggest, blocking people because you don’t like how they vote, is beyond bonkers. And I say this as someone who at times can be quite trigger happy with the block feature.
PS: “Everyone but me is a moron” is the mark of the moron.
“Everyone but me is a moron” is the mark of the moron.
I’ve heard it phrased: “If you’re surrounded by assholes. Maybe you’re the asshole.”
Sounds like projection…
After about two weeks you will have blocked everyone who isn’t you, your alt accounts or a bot.
Why is this an issue for you?
It’s an issue for society.
Why?
…because if you stop listening to other opinions you end up in a divided society that has no way of healing.
What about Lemmy instances defederating others? We not hearing from people on Twitter, Threads, Facebook, Truth Social and Gap either, and what about the block feature in itself? If what I’m asking is ‘issue for society,’ then are these not?
I don’t think anyone is in the position to dictate what everyone’s social media feeds should consist of. If someone wants to make them a perfect information bubble, devoid of different opinions, then let them. That’s of no harm to me.
Nobody is saying to you that blocking shouldn’t be available. They are saying to you that blocking large numbers of people to create a bubble is harmful to you and the wider community.
Hence blocking people who agree with a certain post is going too far. The action is too heavy handed for the “crime”. It would be a harmful feature. It’s"shooting people in the head for laughing at an edgy joke" levels of heavy handedness.
My blocklist is already over 500 users long. I don’t block people for disagreeing with me. The bubble I’m building for myself is a bubble free from unreasonable assholes.
However, you didn’t really answer my question. Blocking an entire instance is already a feature. That’s way more ‘heavy handed’ than what I’m suggesting.
Why are you in a online community if you want to be alone?
It’s right in his manifesto. He’s being FORCED to share space with all us undesirables.
Filthy casuals
Why do you assume I want to be alone?
We got 50k users and every other day we have people bitching how they need more blocking features.
I want to post shit publicly but also chose and pick who can see and not see what i posted and who cant and cant react to my shit posts.
Main character syndrome?
I think it just needs to make a actually working block feature where a blocked person doesn’t see your content anymore and isn’t allowed to comment/vote on it.
I’m not necessarily against that either but personally I couldn’t care less if a blocked person can see my posts and comments. There’s even one commenting on this thread. What I use the feature for is to get them out of my sight. If they want to write me angry comments that I’ll never see, then have at it.
