Id expect more voting and less comments in political posts just because people may want to avoid direct conflict with other users. I’m iffy on the whole up/down thing in general though.

Love the words. Once of my early positive impressions of lemmy was coming across longer form comments. It’s so hard to get thoughts across in tweet format especially when we’re all completely anonymous with potentially wildly different perspectives. I’m following your ideas here and I’m rarely opposed to experimentation. I have learned from experience that there’s more to successful implementation than is apparent before you start and even the best plans can’t account for real world testing.

It’s been a couple days now but I think that manipulation of automated processes is sort of what I was alluding to when I didn’t want to commit to an idea. People will figure it out and fuck with it.

I guess my approach is more about patience and subtle changes (outside of experimenting in small time limited areas). What we’re talking about would be a major change in the context of lemmy and it’s too complicated to predict the outcome of something like that. As a fun thought, there is some point in the history of reddit that would have set it onto the path it arrived at today. Maybe awards? The voting system? The composition of moderators? Changes should be done cautiously and gradually. Onboarding is a pressing problem, but I think it could be treated in isolation until a sites-wide solution is more obvious. Lemmy is doing great! Lemmy users are capable of self managing the issue of ideological influences across instances, even if it appears haphazard it seems to work, maybe, for now. Loads of problems to address outside of this as well.

I’m also a fan of sudden chaotic changes. I have a ‘be careful but also break it if you want’ thought process. I love the theory of evolution and I think as much as we want to be careful things are going to happen we don’t want and can’t predict and it can be fun to just throw a wrench in the motor and see where it takes us.

strategic user blocking helps, I dont like that problem either.

The key to every “killer app” on a new system, even ones that start out mimicking the old paradigm, is enabling something that couldn’t be done on the old system.

This makes me think of my biggest gripe with the social media I use and it’s the lack of feeling safe, and I don’t mean that I want to be sheltered or have content hidden from me. I’m tired of living in the giant melting pot.

I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll try to spend more time in this community, it doesn’t pop up on my main feed that much but I usually find the topics interesting. I think there are a lot of directions lemmy could go and I don’t want to commit to one idea yet. Categorizing sounds like a big effort even if it’s automated.

I think my user blocking has been effective since I don’t see content like that coming out of .ml. ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ should be a day 1 block for new users.

I just checked and in the last year I haven’t had to block any instance except nsfw, which is surprising because I never see grad users in my feed. My lemmy experience has been more variable from low effort, snap judgement, or reddit-like comments coming out of .world.

I still haven’t done that but have noticed a lot of calls to do it. It’s not all bad on .ml, I’d never make it my home instance but it’s no where near lemmygrad levels of CCP loving tankie trash

Same here but I remind myself that multiple things can be true at once just like I can feel multiple conflicting emotions or hold conflicting thoughts or opinions.

babies born into bleak future by humans who forgot to consider whether or not it’s in the best interest of anyone but themselves

Obviously both

Obviously both

Engagement and retention are both important. If the solution to retention is to walk away then the solution to engagement is to not be engaged that doesn’t track to me. Maybe the idea is to avoid phones, the internet and TV entirely which is not an idea that is grounded in reality.

This one is less interesting to me for some reason, I think it’s an easier assumption to make or maybe it’s that the argument about harmful algorithms gained traction over a decade ago.

This is an earlier paper but is a solid primer that touches on it

The researchers positively showed that news and updates on Face-­‐ book influence the tenor of the viewing Facebook-­‐user’s subsequent posts

Here’s an entire book about it or an article.

Social media addiction has emerged as a problem of global concern, with researchers all over the world conducting studies to evaluate how pervasive the problem is.

Lately when an article or comment interests me I’ve been attempting to dig into it and make sure my beliefs hold water, I like to be skeptical but informed. Here’s some stuff I found and it’s here if you’re feeling open minded or curious.

Canadian Gov on weed and addiction

Contrary to popular belief, people can become addicted to cannabis. Continued, frequent and heavy cannabis use can cause physical dependency and addiction. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medication/cannabis/health-effects/addiction.html

Communities of people who struggle to stop using cannabis. Many first hand accounts from long term users: https://old.reddit.com/r/leaves/ https://old.reddit.com/r/addiction/ https://forum.weedless.org/

A podcast with Mathew Hill

Addiction The addictive potential of cannabis is another critical area of discussion. and explore the concept of cannabis use disorder, noting that while cannabis may not be as addictive as substances > like opioids, it can still lead to significant dependence 1. Hill explains that the criteria for cannabis use disorder are similar > to those for alcohol or opioid use disorders, including the potential for life disruption and risky behaviors 2.

There’s no question that people can develop cannabis use disorder. I mean, it’s definitely a thing.

Mathew Hill’s lab is not against cannabis. It’s focus is on understanding THC in the body.

our lab is particularly focused on how it regulates stress responses, affective behaviour, and feeding and metabolism.

They are tweaked to improve engagement, not at all as vanilla as that.

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Very true. I’m definitely softer on Zuckerberg and his company after owning a couple oculus headsets, my misery is less, I live another day. It feels like doing something I know I shouldn’t do but I can’t help but enjoy it.

Meta will brick my headset unless I tell them my birthday within 30 days, and just by using the device it links to multiple emails, my phone number, phone, and laptops. The OS feels cooked to grab data and many of the TOS agreements say it explicitly.

https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/accounts/account-settings-and-management/why-we-ask-for-your-birthday/

I feel like lemmy is in a decent place right now. The main page is busy enough with a good amount of OC and alright discussion. It’s a lot to ask for 1000+ active niche communities. I have a few things that bug me and I’m not sure ballooning members would fix it: reddit-like anti-social behaviour, excessive reposts, and posts about MAGA people. I’ve blocked a lot of communities, some users, and very few nsfw instances.

30% is insanely low. If I only paid 30% for housing I could retire in my 40s.