OpenStars

Skill issue: git guud

Have a nice siesta!

POSIX compliance jealousy? 🤪

Find enjoyment while doing everyday tasks, check ✅

I am still stuck on "whomst".

...and loving it! ❤️😁

Not just good, he's gooder than that, he's the goodest!

PieFed's categories of communities / Topic areas does this. When I used Lemmy I never found anything remotely close to that, but perhaps the best was to (1) visit each and every community that you want to check up on individually, and/or (2) use New rather than Hot or Top... and then be prepared to block hundreds of communities that you never want to see content from, like sports or individual locations (cities, towns, stateships, regions, countries, etc.).

PieFed also combines all comments across all cross-posts, reversing the fragmentation effect from having too many communities split across many instances.

You all on Lemmy need to catch up!:-P

Reddit did this with multi-reddits. PieFed does this with categories of communities, Topic areas that are user customizable and shareable. Lemmy does not do this readily, although Blaze managed it... by making 50 different accounts, one per instance.

I presumed too much, my apologies. I thought you were talking about the "echo chamber effect", which is a topic of much contention among people who discourse about social media platforms. If you were simply saying that people like what they like and do not like what they do not like, then yes, that much is true - although in that case I am not sure why it needed to be said? - although even there, PieFed allows for more options to moderate such than Lemmy does, while remaining the same in other ways. But I am not trying to push you into anything that you do not want to know about.

Okay then to get back to the core of the issue and summarize: if you don't want to use something - a feature, a piece of software, whatever, then do not use it? It really is as simple as that.

I was saying that PieFed offers additional capabilities beyond Lemmy. If you choose not to avail yourself of those, that is entirely your choice, and I support you doing whatever you like in that regard!:-) But so too should others have the identical freedom. I am not debating that places such as 4chan (where anything and everything goes) may have merit or not, just that the subject under discussion was whether "Didn't piefed came with built-in echo chamber features", to which I was saying yes sorta but mainly no not really.

Mods on PieFed have one additional option beyond what Lemmy mods have: the latter can only "remove content" vs. "not remove content", whereas PieFed mods have a more middle-of-the-road option where they can choose to not remove content far more often, trusting that the automated filters will remove the content only for those users who have indicated their preference to not see such, rather than force a choice that affects all users one way or the other. To me that sounds like the literal opposite of the "echo chamber effect", from the standpoint of the mods, even though yes users can surround themselves in such a bubble if they so choose.

As too they could under Lemmy as well, requiring a bit of effort to block many users but it can definitely be done, whereas PieFed provides the option to use community-based moderation to achieve the same end, and in the process affects each item of content individually, while allowing users to not have to block other users, and thereby all content from them, to achieve this effect. e.g. I could see an icon for a highly contentious user who receives 10x more downvotes than upvotes, and choose to ignore that fact and respond anyway, or else be more measured in my response, or just read it and continue scrolling.

Think about that last option: I would be able to read the content in this scenario, even if I chose not to respond, whereas if I block the entire user account then I will not even see it in the first place? Blocking is a heavy hammer, whereas user labels are the gentlest of informational resources. Lemmy provides ONLY the option to either block vs. not block, both to mods of communities as well as to individual end-users of one another, whereas PieFed provides many alternate forms of nuance via tools that the users can use, or yes abuse, as they so choose.

More choices = freedom. More exposure of content is the opposite of an echo chamber effect. PieFed provides more choices to allow for more exposure of content than Lemmy does, which only offers the removal/block features without the nuances that PieFed allows for.

I hope this thought makes someone's day:-).

Also, conversely but similarly perhaps helpful:

Narrowly, yes you are correct. The comment I was originally replying to was:

Didn't piefed came with built-in echo chamber features, hiding downvoted comments by default and marking people who get downvotes with special marks?

I think in that scenario bans because downvoting patterns would be far more aggressive

Which is how we got into whether those features create echo chambers (as Lemmy already provides for as well) rather than facilitate user choices. I was pointing out how PieFed mods have one additional option beyond what Lemmy mods have: the ability to not remove a comment or post even if it is controversial and thus highly downvoted, knowing that they can rely upon the end users (those that want to) using those filters to ignore the content. i.e. PieFed allows mods to be more lenient, if they so choose, the very polar opposite of an "echo chamber effect".

Any system still allows for abuses, of course, and PieFed's all the more relies upon detection of systemic abuses. Although so too have several apps - I am not sure which ones offered such automatic hiding and removal features (perhaps Sync and/or Connect?) but its offering by PieFed was not entirely novel.

Furthermore this is an age-old problem: how to detect and remove spam while preserving legitimate content, how to filter pornography while allowing proper e.g. medical uses, how to stop cancerous cells while allowing the body to heal using cell division normally? Nothing will ever be perfect. Anyway, PieFed provides some features, which people can choose to use or not, as they please. I have argued that no they are not actually "built-in echo chamber features"... even while yes they can be abused towards that end of the spectrum (hence my original answer, "Yes, and maybe, plus no." - which was not intended to be entirely comprehensive, even if it did delve a bit into some details).