sanity_is_maddening

Please. No algorithm, please.

And I don’t use the Hot or Popular filters because I think they do possess some of the same undertones of that perverse incentive that algorithmic social media has. It would be advisable to kill this before the lemmyverse grows too wide.

Just chronological in all options: Home. Local, and All. But allowing to filter any of them through themes or subject. Piefed is already toying really well with some of these concepts.

This alone allows a lot more of the other small instances and communities to be seen. And removes those perverse incentives to “climb” that corrupting ladder that makes some people post controversial and deranged posts that seek the reward of getting more attention. Algorithms rewarded this. The Hot and Popular filter options of sifting through them rewards this too. And we all know it. And we are seeing its’ effect already. In an ideal world this wouldn’t be a problem. But we know these will keep being hijacked to that end.

And these don’t help the small and the thoughtful communities to arise as we want them to.

I personally set my home page to be the list of the communities I follow and decide what I’m in the mood for. The voyager app is also great for this. And all are set to chronological.

So summing up, my suggestions are:

-kill the Hot and Popular filters. Chronological feed only.

-Add subject filters instead.

-List of Communities followed as homepage. It let’s you know what you’re in the mood for.

These will help everything including the smaller instances and communities to be seen. This isn’t about my preferences. I do this to remove my own tendencies to fall prey to the rage bait catching my attention as a starting point. Because I’m no better. That’s the point. Media Experts as soon as 2008 said this ingrained reward loop is a problem because disgust and rage are the reactions that track the most immediately and lock on in the history of all media. If we want Lemmy to be better, we have to make it so. This already doesn’t have ads and algorithmic suggestions to nurture engagement, which is great. So this is the only thorn that remains from the dark legacy of social media. Nobody would be shutting up anybody. It’s just not rewarding shitposting. If I can disable it myself, the space at large is still falling prey to it as I would if I was using it.

PS: Also, Crossposting obviously helps smaller instances and communities to get noticed too.

My kind of heroes. People who seek to better the world without seeking attention while doing it.

And there’s an app to help contributing to openstreetmap.

Here’s a link to it on f-droid…

https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/

While I do share your deep frustration regarding how the attention scale tips a lot more for the frivolous in the face of calamity, I have to say the way you are commenting is just a good example of how to not communicate with others in behalf of a cause.

You could harness the enthusiasm of people for this cause and redirect their attention to other issues, by claiming that this is a good example in how we can indeed fight back against the many injustices that are reigned over us.

If you instead intend to belittle people into it, you’ll get nothing but what you are getting here, which is… well, you can see for yourself.

Not to mention that you might be successful in demotivating people even further.

I try to raise as much attention as I can to Permaculture and syntropy or the syntropic method, and try to promote movements such as Degrowth, Veganism, Zero Waste and I never shut up about Precision Fermentation. But there’s a reason why I don’t call myself an Environmentalist, a Vegan or a Zerowaster and so on… even though in practice I technically do practice all these things - well, not all, not Precision Fermentation because I don’t have the money or infrastructure to do it, otherwise I would, and that is why I probably can’t shut up about it. But I don’t use distinguishing labeling to describe myself that may generate a sense of otherness to others. There’s literally nothing different about me because I do or practice any single one of these things or all of them. Any person can choose to do any of them or all of them at any point, and the only obstacle might be that they didn’t have the knowledge as to how or they didn’t or don’t have time and support to learn it.

When fighting for the environment or fighting fascism (It’s literally the same fight against the capital influence that dictates these conditions because of the few that want to thrive at the cost of everything else), it needs to start with making people feel less alone in the face of it all, and then reaffirming their sense of belief that any difference that they can make is a difference worth making.

You’re doing quite the opposite here. And believe me when I tell you this. Because I am on your side. Even your feeling of anger and resentment is one I share when seeing the apathy and complacency in the people around me everyday. I just learned my lesson that the pessimistic attitude and outbursts got me nothing but alienation. And from time to time I still need someone to do the same for me as what I am doing here for you now, someone needs to snap me out of all the rage and loathing because it accomplishes exactly the opposite of what I want to happen in the world.

I apologise if my very long message feels condescending, or if it makes you feel like telling me to go fuck myself. If it does, remember this… I’m on your side. I really am.

Yeah, RFK does sound like he believes the craziness he’s spewing. He’s gonna get a lot of people killed, that’s for sure. He already has. But the people who believe that he’s only gonna get the dumb side of Americans who believe him killed are so wrong. That’s not how this works. I get a lot of Americans on vacation where I live in Portugal. And it’s also true all over Europe and the rest of the world. And it is terrifying to think of the very probable outbreaks and who knows what else to come.

And thanks, I’ll use Wikipedia to read more about Lysenkoism over the weekend.

Thank you for the reply.

Thank you for clarifying. I’m sorry if I jumped in with my interpretation. I know who Lysenko was. But not much more than that he was a biologist who kept denying science in behalf of the state. So I didn’t know if that was what you meant and that is why I apologised in the advance if I was misinterpreting it.

But yeah, state dictating science. And the U.S. really seems to be headed to that level of catastrophes you described. I need to read more about Lysenkoism. Like I said, I didn’t know much about Lysenko other than he was a scientist betraying science for the state propaganda. I don’t even know if he believed the nonsense he was spreading. But then again, I don’t even know if the ones doing the same now do either. And I have a hard time reading up on people like that. Makes my stomach turn in revolt.

But as a permaculture enthusiastic and someone who has a project with his girlfriend that uses syntropic theory, I’m very curious to read about what kind of nonsense were they applying to farming back then. Do you have any suggestions to read? Like a book or an article? Or should I just put Lysenkoism in a search engine and eventually find the farming part? Would love to know more about this, so if you have some pointers, I would much appreciate to learn more about this.

I think it is comparing the Soviet’s movement spearheaded by a biologist named Trofim Lysenko to the the current lobbying to destroy science’s credibility. It was akin to the current lobbying against scientific integrity that started in the U.S. and bled everywhere else. People will immediately think of the hacks that move through the podcasts these days, I’m sure you can think of a few too. It’s using a veil of pseudoscience to confuse the layman and advance the purpose of a few under another veil, one of an ideology. Lysenko was very much like the figures of today like that kermit the frog imitation that passes for scientific expert on the “dumbtube”. I don’t want to name these horrific hacks. They’re already taking too much of the bandwidth as it is and for far too long. And I hate that most people that think they’re too smart to fall for their crap, fall right into the next trap, which is to go argue and generate more visibility for them. These people never learned the old online code “Do Not Feed The Troll”. We spotted them and let them starve. But I compared them more to Gremlins, because they multiply. The grifers spot the grift and chime in for the take.

I hope I didn’t misinterpreted the comment you asked about. But Lysenkoism is a great shorthand to describe it all indeed.