I don’t block entire instances, but I block every single community I’m not interested in - which probably adds up to over 500 by now. I tried blocking all the mean or extremist users, but that ended up completely killing my feed, since that seems to be about 80% of active commenters. So nowadays, I use content filters to screen for keywords in comments and posts. My list of keywords is quite substantial and keeps growing every week. At this point, I’d say about 50% of the threads on my homepage get filtered out. While I can’t know exactly how many comments are being hidden, I’d imagine it’s about the same.
Funnily enough, even after all that filtering, a significant portion of what still gets through is full of mean, snide remarks, tribalism, toxicity, negativity, doomerism, hopelessness, and that classic crabs-in-a-bucket mentality. A smart person would probably just give up and bail - but I guess I’m not that smart.
I have stopped using the “All” feed for that reason, it’s best to find communities that you’re interested in and only look at those in my experience. Finding them without the All feed is the challenge though. I’ve found Lemmy to be quite nice when it was new, but it seems this is the way all communities go when they reach a certain size.
My app ( Boost) used to have a “random subreddit” button that I really liked, but it got removed a couple years ago when reddit changed their TOS, but something like that could be really nice
I don’t block entire instances, but I block every single community I’m not interested in - which probably adds up to over 500 by now. I tried blocking all the mean or extremist users, but that ended up completely killing my feed, since that seems to be about 80% of active commenters. So nowadays, I use content filters to screen for keywords in comments and posts. My list of keywords is quite substantial and keeps growing every week. At this point, I’d say about 50% of the threads on my homepage get filtered out. While I can’t know exactly how many comments are being hidden, I’d imagine it’s about the same.
Funnily enough, even after all that filtering, a significant portion of what still gets through is full of mean, snide remarks, tribalism, toxicity, negativity, doomerism, hopelessness, and that classic crabs-in-a-bucket mentality. A smart person would probably just give up and bail - but I guess I’m not that smart.
I have stopped using the “All” feed for that reason, it’s best to find communities that you’re interested in and only look at those in my experience. Finding them without the All feed is the challenge though. I’ve found Lemmy to be quite nice when it was new, but it seems this is the way all communities go when they reach a certain size.
Using “All” is the best way to find those. How else are you really supposed to?
My app ( Boost) used to have a “random subreddit” button that I really liked, but it got removed a couple years ago when reddit changed their TOS, but something like that could be really nice
If everywhere you go smells like shit, it might be time to check your own shoes.
As if a smug metaphor, delivered in the exact same dismissive tone I was criticizing is supposed to prove me wrong.
Pot, kettle.