Open source, tunable locally running content discovery and search with crowd sourced share preference models (like, people who like x probably like y)
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Technology
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Saw it in my feed btw
Idk man, the universe is an algorithm.
Everything I did, am doing, and will do, are all part of the algorithm. I have no control. Free will is a lie. Even the act of me typing this comment, is not of my free will. The neurons are making me do it. AH FUCK STOOOOP IT YE FUCKING NEURONS, BAD NEURONS...
Everything is fine, I have free will, disregard everything above, that's the other half of the brain in this body that's being weird.
THERE IS NO FREE WILL
AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
You did not choose Lemmy. Lemmy chose you! Accept your fate. Accept Determinism.
Reddit is clearly the Bad Place.
Lemmy users reading this:
LOL
I was actually thinking about my experience with Lemmy as I was reading this article, particularly how the scrolling is made to generate rage. I don’t filter my feed and just view “all”, but I don’t think I’ve once walked away from Lemmy not in a bad mood.
Now that may be observation bias or something, or a function of how I don’t tailor my own experience, but regardless, Lemmy leaves me angrier when I leave then when I open the app. I’m trying to cut back and eventually quit.
Viewing all? Yeah there's your problem. Subscribe to things you want to see, and never even think about the rest.
It's how I've kept my sanity for years using social media. Sticking to subscribed feed which is hobby/entertainment related stuff, and using aggressive filtering options if I decided to venture into all.
Same when it comes to youtube using newpipe and freetube so I stick to my feed and hiding stuff like trending videos, recommended videos, popular videos, and comments.
Turning a platform into being as minimalistic as possible has been my favorite method of consumption.
and how do you discover new things?
Once in a while I skim the communities list. Other users make recommendations too.
@catloaf @thebeardedpotato I go one further and subscribe to feeds in mastodon (feel a bit like an impostor though 👀
The scrolling is only made to generate rage if you browse all (your issue) or curate a feed with rage bait 🤷♂️ you can fix it in seconds if you want.
You can also set filters in some clients. And other micro feed like software (piefed) can put filters for your user.
Or browse by new. Seems to work for me.
Setting up my own instance ended up being pretty good for me since it meant I had to manually subscribe to every community I want. The quality of "All" posts depends heavily on the instance you're on.
You could also use the Subscribed feed
If you're on an instance with only 1 user, they're the same thing. But yes, Lemmy's a lot better if you just subscribe to what you want.
What? No, use "All" to browse through federated instances and then subscribe to any interesting communities across the whole Fediverse. Then stick to the "subscribed" feed and only occasionally recheck "All" if you're bored and looking for new communities with none in particular; otherwise, run searches for them.
Let me explain how it works when you self host like me:
- "All" starts out completely empty, there are no federated instances to find this way.
- You then have to browse communities on other instances and subscribe to them on your own instance. Only then will posts start showing up in "All".
- Since there's only 1 user, the list of communities in "All" is the exact same list of communities in "Subscribed"
For most people yes, you can just browse "All" unless you're on a smaller instance, since someone on your Instance has probably already subscribed to the community you're looking for.
Huh, I didn't realize that All including all federated communities must be a Thunder-specific feature.
A bit of a random question: on a single user instance, if you subscribe to a community, then later unsubscribe from it, would that community still show up in your All feed?
I think it would show up in All still, but only posts that were synced while it was subscribed I think?. I haven't really checked if posts would disappear again. On the "Top Day" view I use, the "All" posts are identical to "Subscribed"
Just ban political communities
I was so fed up with IG and explored mastodon/pixelfed for a bit, and it felt like a lot of weight off my shoulder when looking at the feed(s) knowing that there is no machinery feeding me straightup BS. The "feed" was behaving exactly as it used to during the days when RSS was a thing (remember those?).
like.. wow... I have control over this! and I don't have to spend too much energy filtering off BS. That convinced to explore alternatives like Lemmy.
I joined today. :)
Welcome! Just FYI, lemmy.world blocks the piracy instance (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
can you elaborate? or should I assume that means I can't follow "communities" from privacy instances?
*piracy
Yes, that's one of the restrictions. I also think you can't see your users' comments. (perhaps posts too, I am uncertain)
If you're not interested in following something there or it's not a topic you're interested in, it's alright. You could always create another account somewhere else or browse their instance anonymously.
The good thing about Lemmy is that you can always switch to another instance in the future. I started for a few months on .world and then moved to lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Welcome! I hope you have a great time here and I'm glad people are moving :)
Ooooops, I didn't realise @[email protected] meant _piracy_🏴☠️ it was late when I replied.😅
Anyway, thanks for letting me know!
They only specifically block the piracy community on db0’s instance, to my knowledge. It’s definitely not a full instance ban anymore
It was such a weird argument to block it as well. The justification given was that they were concerned that they would be held legally responsible if users saw piracy content on their website.
It was such a bizarre argument. It seemed more like they had decided on personal grounds that they wanted to block it, and then tried to come up with some kind of external justification. It was the lack of intellectual honesty that pissed me off more than the fact that they'd done it.
Yeah, just wanted to let you know since that instance is very active and has several big communities
He’ll, I still use rss. Newsify!
Yes! Full agree
Continues scrolling lemmy
Lemmy is not controlled by some sort of curated algorithm. You have full control over the sorting and what goes on your screen in a way that mainstream social media services do not allow.
If you think there’s something addictive or otherwise wrong about your feed, fix it. “The power is yours!”
Agreed, I was mostly joking, but there are still algorithms that drive the hot and controversial sorting. The fact that you can look up how those algorithms work is also a major difference.
And usually by “algorithm” people mean a feed that is curated to you specifically based off all the data they’ve vacuumed up. Hot/controversial have a clear set of rules about upvote/downvotes over time and they apply exactly the same to everyone, so everyone sorting by hot for instance on a thread or community is seeing the exact same thing
at least everyone sees the same thing when they click that button. tiktok will literally send you so far down a niche that you'll try to talk to your friend about some huge trend you've been seeing for a week with millions of views and they'll have never heard of it before because their feed was giving them an entirely different trend
NOOOO! (Angry yelling)
Has Lemmy ever noticed how much the Anglophone web speaks like advertisers now?
I'm off to Youtube now to watch some content. Gotta get that new content! Thanks to modern networking technologies I'll never run out of content! Does the non-English web do the same? Are the French and Russians and Chinese similarly indoctrinated?
Let's rewrite some Wikipedia entry intros to see our adopted term work its wonders:
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni[a] (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo,[b][1] was an Italian content creator of the High Renaissance.`
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English content creator who wrote content under the pen name of George Orwell.[2][3]
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American content creator. Dubbed the "King of Content", he is regarded as one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. Over a four-decade career, his content broke racial barriers in America and made him a global figure. Through content, he proliferated visual performance for artists in popular music; popularizing content including the moonwalk (which he named), the robot, and the anti-gravity lean. Jackson is often deemed the greatest content creator of all time based on his content and subscribers.[1]
After watching Content on Youtube I'll probably visit the zoo to marvel at the meat. Then later I might load Pornhub and watch some meat. By then it'll be time for some dinner, so the butcher will fix me up with some meat.
This language demeans all creative endeavour. It trashes our ability to communicate. When read out loud it's infantilising too.
You missed a few terms.. how about “influencer handle” instead of “pen name,” for example?
The Russian web is full of that.
This language demeans all creative endeavour. It trashes our ability to communicate. When read out loud it’s infantilising too.
Yes. It makes it appear as if everything real didn't have any meaning and were just some similar mass, like wine or garum.
While the important people and processes are the middlemen controlling the routes. Or like with USSR, where the real was subject to the administrative and the political.
Since history rhymes, I love how Denmark got absolutely thrashed by Hanseatic cities when it became too dependent on its role as a controller of a big route.
What's wrong with the word "content"? What word would you use to describe the things shared in places like Lemmy?
It subordinates all creative output to the priorities of advertising. On Lemmy (in fact any web forum) I'm a member and a discussion participant. I don't 'make content' for it - it suggests the only value in my posting to a Lemmy is to 'attract eyeballs'.
The ability to dress and chisel marble and have your creations still talked about half a millennia later, and being the most recognizable singer on the planet, aren't fungible.
I brows Lemmy by all and then I filter out the communities I don't want to see. This lets me see the new communities that pop up and decided if I want to sub to them. I have around 300 blocked.
Yeah sometimes there is some overzealous people making some quite strange communities by the handfull at one go though, but yeah, blocking everything you don't like is the way to go IMO too.
*raises hand*
Uh, this is a Lemmy’s sir
I only browse by subscribed and I have half of Lemmy banned ngl I hate algorithmic feeds and corpo social media in general I don't use it, I don't see any ads online ever, and I'm often shocked by their quantity outside, I don't know how others just do only algorithms like it's nothing.
Or you can aggressively tailor them. I still use FB because I enjoy several industry and hobby groups there. With a few FF plugins and proactively closing any ads, FB is completely usable and enjoyable.
Any social media you can’t control like this is definitely problematic, but I haven’t explored too many other platforms to see if they can be tailored. I did abandon Threads because it’s a right wing toxic troll hellhole with a shitty design, so some can’t be “fixed”.
I really enjoy being introduced to new things based on what other people like me enjoy.
I ready mbin by all > active (I take the approach of banning magazines I am not interested in rather than being in a subscribed bubble) and the few Japan-related (tax/legal/resident) subredits that haven't moved here yet by newest (only subscribed communities there of which I have like 5). I watch videos from my subscribed list until there's nothing left (rare) so rarely use any kind of algo feed. I watch twitch only for people I follow. I don't use any other social media for now (I did just start a business, so that will change somewhat since I need to advertise and get engagement).