After commenting for a while in this thread… I think I agree, we need to go back to the forums and actually engage as users, it’s too easy to upvote/downvote and move on, that would only mean the post was actually useless or forgettable and makes posting propaganda extremely easy since nobody calls you out on it.
This old doomer agrees with you.
Yes and no, I agree we need a better alternative to only downvotes but adding a reason to be able to downvote will only make the problem worse.
They are removed to protect the sensibilities of the users, so instead of seeing ambiguous 100 downvotes, now you’ll have 70 downvotes with messages that might go from no or ew to horrible insults I’m not going to type here, if it was hurtful or discouraging before, it would get worse.
Sadly I don’t have the creativity to come up with a better way, the only alternative being to move to a forum where they can control as they please and categorise everything until the fediverse (or Lemmy at least) has the tools to give them their safe space.
The sellers were also a big part of the problem, people were downvoting and reporting them constantly, which was turning them away… Which… I mean it’s fucking Lemmy, such response against sellers should have been expected.
And they are still a problem, you can see them being very aggressive with their multiple posts (I call that spamming).
I think the other part of the problem is that a lot of people came expecting some sort of safe space/echo chamber where they could control everything from their instance, but the fediverse is way too open and diverse to achieve that (specially Lemmy with at least 3 big troll instances).
As a huge doomer, I don’t think tags would have worked because we are talking about people who went out of their way to troll that content, not normal users who might downvote or not and then block the community or user. I don’t know if removing the downvotes actually discouraged those trolls or if they are still going at it, but I am sure it didn’t help to increase the quality of the content.
Reposting is a huge problem on the NSFW instance, you can see the same picture/video on multiple communities with the same title or a small variation, sometimes it doesn’t even fit the community, but those are the sellers that they were trying to protect… Along with their cringe commenting bots.
They said it was discouraging men and lgbt+ users since they were constantly getting downvoted.
Also the sellers were getting constantly downvoted… If I had to guess, I’d say that was actually the reason, but that’s mere speculation.
I agree it doesn’t make sense, the fediverse is a public space but some people act like if it was a private forum or a closed space.
That was the beauty of the original memes and rage comics, something almost anyone could do and almost everyone knew what the template meant, no need to add a wall of text just to make it relatable or understandable
/old man rant
That’s what I said in my original and second comment.
I really struggle to find good accounts to follow on bluesky
I just follow a couple, so far I haven’t found accounts worth the follow, but just browsing the feed usually gives me enough content for a moment (I don’t browse it for hours).
most of the french accounts/content are inactive for months
There’s a Mastodon instance for my country (México)… but nobody fucking posts anything, a friend of mine tried it but all her posts were kind of normie content so she was ignored… hard, so she just deleted her account.
Also trying to check the content on others servers is cumbersome and a pain.
I even have a better content/experience on mastodon since they federated w/ threads and flipboard
No comment, I blocked threads and I don’t really use flipboard.
But beyond mastodon, it’s really sad that they leave the fediverse for now, hope they’ll comeback one day or another (on mastodon or any other plateform)
I don’t think the Fediverse is ready for the normal public yet, it requieres too much effort (yes, dedicating time to read every little detail to pick a server is annoying) only to find out there is no content for them, the UI is very not user friendly (generally speaking), that maybe they landed on an instance that doesn’t allow what they want or it’s just a propaganda server.
As I said about SimpleX… it needs to pretty-up if the plan is to welcome normal people, otherwise it’s just us.
Better content.
Mastodon is full of keyboard activism and news. Finding content for/from normies is not that easy and is usually ignored (0 retoots or so).
Bluesky has normie content along news and is still pretty left-leaning, a couple of artists/creators have an account there.
Finding porn/hentai is also easier than in mastodon (and you don’t have to check every detail of the servers to know if it’s allowed).
Tl;dr: Bluesky requires no mental effort to create an account and has normie content.
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Disagree, the downvoters would just pick a default reason and move on… maybe even turning one of the reasons into a troll motive.
Remember we’re talking about people who only care enough to go out of their way to mass downvote or even have scripts to do it for them; not normal users who up/down vote and move on (which weren’t the problem back then, as far as we were told).
Forcing a reason maybe would stop people who actually cared enough, for the rest it would just be a nuisance so they’d pick whatever (or the meanest option).
Honestly… after reading another guy’s comment, I am more inclined to just say fuck it and say we return to the forums, no upvotes or downvotes, things neatly categorized into their place (specially so sensible things can be hidden but still available) and if someone wants to interact they’d have to comment.