FOSSDLE PieFedLemmy User Feedback and Improvement Thread: Share Your Complaints, Suggestions, and Ideas
submitted by PumpkinDrama edited
I'd like to invite you all to share your thoughts and ideas about Lemmy. This feedback thread is a great place to do that, as it allows for easier discussions than Github thanks to the tree-like comment structure. This is also where the community is at.
Here's how you can participate:
- Post one top-level comment per complaint or suggestion about Lemmy.
- Reply to comments with your own ideas or links to Github issues related to the complaints.
- Be specific and constructive. Avoid vague wishes and focus on specific issues that can be fixed.
- This thread is a chance for us to not only identify the biggest pain points but also work together to find the best solutions.
By creating this periodic post, we can:
- Track progress on issues raised in previous threads.
- See how many issues have been resolved over time.
- Gauge whether the developers are responsive to user feedback.
Your input may be valuable in helping prioritize development efforts and ensuring that Lemmy continues to meet the needs of its community. Let's work together to make Lemmy even better!
I've used Lemmy for a while and just recently felt like I was missing a feature for the first time: I'd love if there was some kind of mod mail functionality. One of my posts was removed by a moderator and I wanted to ask why, but I obviously didn't know which mod did it, so I just randomly messaged someone from the list. There should be a more "elegant" way to do this, like some kind of functionality that allows a user to send a message directly to the community or the moderation team itself.
Just fyi, since the mod log is public you can look up who removed your post.
Every time I've looked it just said "mod", even though sometimes I'm pretty sure it's been an admin.
The default Lemmy UI doesn’t show it I think. Voyager and Photon show the mod, not sure about other clients
It just says "mod" for me.
I just realized that the default Lemmy UI doesn’t show it. Photon shows it and Voyager to. There are probably more but I know those two show the mod.
The moderator is only given if the action was taken on your local instance
That’s not true:
Option for default comment sorting. you can change the default sort only for posts, but not for comments, comments always sorted by Hot, and you have to manually change it each time you open comments.
In Voyager you can set this up, but it would be useful in the webui as well.
Every day for the last 15 months I have been hitting Top on *every. single. post.* Every day I hope that tomorrow will be the day this completely obvious missing feature has been added.
On a related note, threads ought to be able to have the default sorting changed at least by a mod, if not by the user who posted them. For example, the recent hurricane megathreads ought to have been defaulting to sorting by new.
It would be nice if there was a way to handle instance/user migrations. If an instance gets their domain name taken away, there's no way AFAIK for the admin to say "Here's our new location, with a verifiable signature". Likewise there's no way for a user AFAIK to move their account with a verifiable signature that the new one is still them. Ideally this could all happen automatically with signatures getting synced automatically and all that.
I'm sure it would be a lot of work and no idea if ActivityPub would get in the way, but it would give people a lot more assurance that they didn't pick a server that will screw them over by going down.
It totally would. In ActivityPub, all objects (like users and posts) have an identifier that includes the domain name. For instance, your ID is
https://midwest.social/u/m_f. That's what identifies your user. There is no way to change an ID - the point of an ID is after all that it stays the same and still refers to the same entity. This is a pretty serious limitation of ActivityPub right now unfortunately.I wonder who was the idiot who made a persistent ID for identity reliant on a third party factor that can be trivially taken away.
Any plans for solving it that are known?
Not as far as I am aware - I don't think you can really fix it within the protocol, i.e. without a breaking change. Then you may as well make a new protocol.
I think there's a FEP that could (or fixes) this. To my understanding ID can be any URI, so there are better ways. I guess it's hard because it would brake a lot of stuff or how mastodon is build.
Any FEP trying to fix this will be incompatible with existing instances, so I don't really see how it's gonna work.
Yeah, it sucks. But I think that at a certain point it will need to happen if we want to make ActivityPub better with better portability.
A mute community in addition to block community. There are communities i may not want to see in my feed, but I might want to look at them. Currently my only option is to block and then offi want to check them out i have to unblock.
One thing you can do there is to take advantage of federation and jump to an instance where you are not logged in, which will then display *all* of the comments. On the web UI, the multicolored Fediverse icon works fantastic for this purpose, as it will jump straight to the comment that you want to see (although the hidden ones would be below that, or perhaps you would rather go to the post itself).
e.g. for me, I am reading your comment at https://discuss.online/post/12642239/11643668, but the multicolored button would take me to https://sopuli.xyz/comment/12447782, which I do not have an account on hence nothing under that would be blocked for me there.
Yes, that will allow me to read the community, it will not allow me to interact/post/reply.
Oh absolutely that is correct - once you've "blocked" something, you cannot then interact with it later, as it is a rather hard cutoff. I suppose you want to see something like a "remove from my feed" - basically a "hide this community from me until I want it" - rather than an actual, full-on "block". Which is notable then that e.g. a user block of an instance is even softer than that, allowing you to see and reply and receive replies from people (though you don't get notifications for those, unless they specifically tag your username). So community blocks are harder than people would like, and instance ones are softer, so they really aren't hitting the sweet spot in-between.:-)
Yes, I suppose I want that too - a "community *hide*" option, rather than full community block:-).
Yeah, hide community is better verbiage than mute.
Hopefully they'll work on stuff like this - but I don't know their prioritization.
It would be nice if communities that are similar enough could "share" a comment thread, so you don't end up with comments scattered over many different communities for the same link. The mods could toggle something in the settings and say "This other community is good and we'll be OK sharing posts with them". You also wouldn't have to explicitly crosspost.
Consolidated View: * Create a "Consolidated Thread" view that aggregates comments from all related posts into a single, cohesive conversation. * Provide an option to switch between individual instance views and the consolidated view.
Merge comments from similar posts into a single view
It might be helpful to be able to set default per community for something like this. For example, !dailygames@lemmy.zip, it would be a jumbled mess to have it be all in one thread
Neat, thanks!
Thank you!!
User-Driven Linking: * Allow users to suggest links between related posts, with a voting system to confirm relevance. * Create a "Related Discussions" section for each post, populated by user suggestions.
I want something like that too, although it's worth noting that the implementation corner-case details could be horrendous.
There's got to be a better way to do cross posts. When people/bots crosspost, my "All" feed gets cluttered with multiple copies of the same post. Maybe something like a drop-down showing all the instances and communities it's posted to.
Edited to fix autocorrect...
I don't know if this was requested before but I really want there to be a way to see all comments throughout crossposted threads. It sucks that there are so many crossposts that have like 1-2 comments each. I want to see all discussion about a post at the same time.
Some apps will collapse those into a single post, but not all of them, and not all the time. It would be nice if that were better.
Dynamic Linking System: * A system that automatically links related posts across different communities and instances. * Allow users to see all related discussions in one place, regardless of where they were originally posted.
I will suggest filtering, by term and by source URL. I think it would help customize individual feeds, making it easier and perhaps more comfortable navigating the news.
Example A: term filtering: This should be fairly obvious. Say I'm a Linux user who could care less about KDE. But people keep gushing over it in the Linux subs I subscribe to, and the damn developers keep pushing new releases that also get posted. Argh! Filter out posts (maybe even comments) that mention KDE, Bob's your uncle. And I can still enjoy all those delicious GNOME posts. Definitely not a real world inspired scenario.
Example B: URL filtering: Simply(!) filtering out link posts by source URL. Not a fan of Fox News and/or WaPo? Filter out one site or the other by root URL, like
*.foxnews.comor*.washingtonpost.com. Me, I'd gladly filter out all and any YouTube links unseen by default. That's a constant noise generator I could genuinely live without. But I digress.I hope the examples illustrate my point because I could clearly never explain a feature request succinctly nor to the point.
Reminds me of Custom Feeds * Inspired by Firefish's Antennas feature * Similar to Reddit's multireddit functionality * Follow specific users, communities, and instances * Include/exclude tags or keywords * Choose post types (posts, comments, or both) * Set custom feeds as default
Yeah, more or less right. On Mastodon I'm a heavy filter user, so loads of terms and hashtags just GTFO. I don't see anything near that capability baked into Lemmy.
And I have to say, the more I think about it, the more important link source filtering is. Given how many posts are links to external sites I think it would be a great feature to sift out the chaff before you even have the chance to roll your eyes at it!
I don’t see it mentioned, so maybe it’s not a popular thing, but the ability to tag a post. Often time this can be annoying, but it can help in filtering posts in certain types of communities.
What do you m mean by rage a post?
Serves me right for typing w/o my glasses on! I guess there could be a fun answer to what “raging a post” might entail, but I can’t think of one. Corrected.
Show saved items in order they were saved, not original post date. If I come across and save something from 6 months ago, when I go back into saved items, it's sorted way back i stead of being the first item in the sort list.
This was supposed to be fixed in a server update, but doesn't seem to be.
My biggest issue is that when I post, I'm torn between sharing in the community of the largest instance or in the instance I prefer the most. Posting in the largest instance offers more visibility for my post, but it feels like I'm not supporting the instance I truly like. The communities are too fragmented.
I think "cross posting" but like as a symlink would be great for this - i.e. if you click on the post in either community, you see the same comments
Something like multireddits or Kbin collections would solve this, but it would still take a lot of effort to turn all similar communities into a single group. I really hope there is an automatic way to solve this.
Multicommunities have been funded: https://join-lemmy.org/news/2024-09-11_-_New_NLnet_funding_for_Lemmy
I personally like distributing my posts between instances that I feel are trustworthy as it provides backup instances (thereby increasing the bus factor) which should cover the unfortunate situation of an instance shutting down.
Since we're all federated I'm no longer forced to put all my eggs into 1 basket like reddit🤗
Feel free to crosspost! The entire point of the web is that it has connections.
I think multi-communities (which have already been improved for funding) will push Lemmy forward big time. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818
This is definitely my biggest request
Keyboard navigation. I know about https://github.com/vmavromatis/Lemmy-keyboard-navigation but it's annoying that I have to use an addin/userscript for such a basic feature.
You can use the Photon frontend instead.
Photon doesn't exactly have keyboard navigation, i've been working on it though
I really wish Lemmy had tags like RES
Comprehensive Tagging System
Actual functional user blocking. I don't want users being able to see my comments and reply to them when I have blocked them and I was totally surprised when they did.
It's concerning how this happened to you before…
Yep, and it wouldn't be very far back in my history if you want to see it. My last comment in that convo started with "ugh". I was talking about transgender issues with someone who was extremely argumentative and kept strawmanning my beliefs so I told them in no uncertain terms that I was done with the conversation and blocked them. Later I decided to unblock them and discovered that they had replied not only to that final comment continuing to tell me I'm a bad person for their strawman interpretation of what I said, but to another comment I made in a different thread.
So this person who is actively insulting me also has the ability to follow me around and continue insulting me, and blocking them just makes me unable to defend myself.
Did not read the entire thing, but I see that you were arguing with a Hexbear user. Here's my tip for you: don't try to get on trouble with people from hexbear.net, lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad.ml. I don't want to generalise these instances, but there certainly are many delusional people around there. Stay safe.
I know about Hexbear and wanted to mention that it was a Hexbear user but this ironically happened just a moment after I made my own Hexbear account. I know some of the users there are extreme, particularly that user, but the community overall I find worth it.
That said I have to wonder what you mean when you say to avoid getting in trouble and to stay safe. Is there a history of people being harassed or harmed by those groups?
Yes, there actually is. Two examples that I can give on top of my head is one user who allegedly still gets some messages by someone complaining in a comment they made many months ago, on a chapotraphouse post, and there's also the Fediseer page, that shows the instances that censored Hexbear and their reasons to why, which include harassments.
There were several issues on GitHub regarding proposals on how to solve the low visibility of small instances. However, after the Scaled Sort was implemented, all those issues were closed, yet the problem persists. I continue to use Reddit the same as before because I primarily used it for niche communities, which are lacking here. The few times I've posted to a niche community here, I've either received no answers or been subject to drive-by downvotes, likely from users not even subscribed to the community. As a result, I now only post on Lemmy when the post is directed to a large community, and I use Reddit for the rest.
Help promote longer discussions by using the sidebar to display comments initially sorted by "New". Give options to filter comments by Community, Local, Subscribed, Mod View or All.
We need an RSS feed for saved posts, but the Devs seem to think it would be a privacy issue. Now idk what kinda Fucked up porn They're saving on Lemmy but I just want to read the articles I save on here in my RSS reader.
Just implemented it for fun on my instance (lemmings.world). Sadly you need to be a user of that instance for it to work. When logged in you go to https://lemmings.world/rss/init, afterwards a link is shown (among other information) that looks something like
https://lemmings.world/rss/4e6490fe0613f6e2e03cd420f71df14476e769b57604652921c1a7b2150f0888- that is your personal RSS feed of stuff you saved with a URL that cannot be guessed automatically (the hash is entirely random).It could be made to work for all instances, but that would take me a while. You can also ask the admins to install the app on their website (it's open source and can be found at https://github.com/RikudouSage/LemmyPersonalRss).
Cool feature!
I would like to have the ability to follow a Lemmy user, in the sense of seeing their posts in unblocked communities.
Downvotes are an inherently unequal proposition, as they are now implemented. This allows everything from near and dear friends who respectfully disagree to randos with day-one accounts who don't even know what a community is all about, to brigading events organized in a larger community (possibly on Reddit or in Matrix or Discord or such). e.g. iirc I can user-block someone or even an entire instance, but in retaliation they can see my profile and downvote everything I have ever done, or have a bot do so within seconds of new material coming out. Which would affect its discoverability.
Potential solutions would be to make them no longer anonymous, and/or when you block a user or an instance then they can no longer downvote that content - just like a user-level defederation. As it is now, user-level blocks are extremely weak and even notifications can be delivered by simply tagging someone's username.
There are instances where downvotes are disabled, if you don't like them you can just use an instance like that.
Downvotes are public and not anonymous, but they are hidden in Lemmy ui. Afaik you can see who downvotes your posts from Piefed or Mbin. See this thread: https://lemmy.world/post/18805474 or this: https://piefed.social/post/205362
MBIN makes upvotes visible, but PieFed doesn't. The thread you linked to is about PieFed anonymising votes, so they aren't revealed on instances like MBIN.
Lemmy: exactly - so you can either have all of downvotes or none of them, by picking such an instance, but there is really nothing in-between. Yet another example of "in-between" could be to show like downvotes from only members already subscribed to the community.
Mbin iirc doesn't allow downvoting at all and instead has its own system of "reduces", which does not federate at all with Lemmy, but instead acts as just another form of it. And yes those are publicly visible, which puts it ahead of Lemmy in this respect.
Piefed does the exact opposite of what I'm suggesting, even going so far as to hide the identity of downvoters from remote admins, who may need to know such things in order to ban someone who is being consistently abusive. I don't think this is a good experiment. Anonymous *polling* results would be awesome though, so it depends on which type of "voting" we are talking about here.
Mostly what I mean is that someone who posts content to the Fediverse has to expose themselves in order to do that. Whereas downvoting goes against that principle, allowing someone to do what looks to 99.99% of Fedizens as an entirely anonymous procedure.
Also, a viewer can block a poster whose content they dislike and thereby never have to hear from them again, but not vice versa - the recipient has *no choice* but to receive votes (up or down). Except, as you mentioned, by going to an instance that disables them entirely. Which does not help all the enormous number of members already in instances such as Lemmy.world.
Hence the roles of content creator vs. viewer are unequal, skewed in favor of the downvoters having more power than the posters. Which can inhibit content creation, and given how lack of content (especially niche) is the primary issue with the Fediverse, it seems like making the roles more equal would help.
Thank you for the clarification, I understand what is your issue now
A more robust approach could involve combining multiple user engagement metrics like votes, reading time and number of comments, along with a system that sorts posts depending on how they compare to their community averages. This system would be less susceptible to manipulation by new accounts or brigading, as it would require genuine engagement across multiple factors to influence a post's ranking.
Incorporating User Engagement Metrics in Lemmy's Sorting Algorithms
In general I find that the comments that tend to contain the highest proportion of batshit insanity across the entire Fediverse - I'm talking reminding me of what it was like to argue with Magats on Reddit - are those from lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml. e.g., ignoring 90% of what I say while hyper-focusing on a single thing, which they manage to twist into sounding as if I said the exact opposite, while demanding that I provide proof of all of my points, and ofc offering none of their own proof in return, plus what "proof" *is* offered ends up supporting my own point rather than theirs... It's fucking exhausting.
And moreover it's relentless. So it would seem that my options are to either move to Lemmy.cafe - the only one who has defederated from all of the big 3 - or block such people one by one, or just put up with it, since user blocking those instances does virtually nothing. Also, they could easily create an alt, on let's say lemmy.world, to accomplish their anonymized downvoting fetishes.:-P
Do you recall if people are allowed to vote on your content after you've blocked them? Even if so though, those user blocks of instances (as compared to user blocks of users) would not block downvotes (they don't even block showing of content, plus notifications can even still be sent just by tagging the recipient's username), so someone who downvotes but never speaks up by commenting would go unnoticed.
Anyway, my own preferences aside, I'm trying to think of what would encourage people to post content more often, and reducing the overall level of toxicity present in the Fediverse seems like it would greatly help with that (even if that ends up being something that you have to curate yourself via blocklists, with mods and admins being unwilling and unable to keep up with such).
allow me to be the batshit representative from lemmy.ml to argue with you :P
Honestly, I just hate the instance bashing. Most people didn't have a real informed "choice" when it comes to their first instance. This seemed like an instance with good uptime and connectivity to me compared to the single admin instance I had before, the only factor that really matters to me. I see what you're saying about % of users, but those people exist on every instance and like you said, they can just jump over and make a new account. If I'm being judged by the .ml next to my name and not the content of my reply, then they were really never going to listen to anything I had to say regardless, so I've decided to stay with this instance.
I think you're seeing more arguments on those instances because it's more of a melting pot. People who all agree with each other's perspectives and have similar life experience aren't going to have a lot to discuss besides patting each other on the backs and talking about subtle nuances of the subject matter. I do agree with your entire premise of the downvotes, which is why I'm replying to begin with. I like the thought of a downvote system, something that would hinder off-topic or abusive material, but it's just horribly abused by users.
A proper system would see two competing articles and the one which provides the most information with a legible format would be upvoted the most. Now it's which one has the most comments, what user uploaded it, what website was the article published on, which headline is catchier regardless of the article's own words being taken out of context, what instance/community is this being posted on, etc etc.
Maybe I'm just confused and using this site and reddit wrong. From my conversations about downvotes, my understanding is less time is being spent on reading the article or links, and more just running through upvoting/downvoting like it's tinder matches. I don't get it because it's not like youtube suggestions where you're creating an algorithm for your likes/dislikes. You're just creating a general feed of populace attention-seeking content and creating the pattern for a hive mind to form.
I think any of the many solutions would be a step forward, votes being public (all your other interactions are public/not done anonymously, and likes/dislikes has no commonality to democratic voting so people need to stop conflating the two), blocking any downvotes like lemmynsfw.com successfully implemented (you can still report off topic, etc), can only dowvote in joined communities or content you've engaged with, and many other ideas. All sorts of solutions that will stop us from going down the same path as Reddit, luckily we have instances to experiment different approaches with that we can point to for data in the future. I guess I prefer more of a forum style but those always get overtaken by zealous admins/site ideology and eventually hyperactive community members meaning it's hard or not worth the effort to actually engage with the drama surrounding the subject you want to discuss (even some shroom forums get like this, absolutely crazy).
Sure!
Yes, my whole "spiel" there left out how my blocking lemmy.ml leavs out a whole huge swath of innocent bystanders who, exactly as you said, simply joined a large instance and had no concept of what was going on, plus back then it wasn't even happening yet to the extent that it is now.
Speaking of, a large number of instances defederated from hexbear.net, and in response it seems that a large number of people - the kind for whom "no means yes" simply created lemmy.ml alts to get around those. Thinking deeper about what that means and extrapolating forward implies then that if lemmy.ml were to ever be defederated from by a large number of instances as well, then those people would simply create alts on lemmy.world (or something) instead.
So it boils down to an ideological POV: *must* I be exposed to literally everything online with no way to have any filters (some people want this and that's cool), or am I allowed to curate my experiences? More to the point, some things such as NSFW content are really quite friendly on the Fediverse - so long as it is labelled, the people who want it can get it, while those who do not (for whatever reason - maybe they'd like to have it at home but they are *literally* at work and don't want that tension, so they turn it off?). Unfortunately, both (a) toxic people and (b) extremist content ("extremist" from the perspective of people in the western world, particularly USA - which granted is very much skewed wrt the rest of the world, but... it is what it is) are not labelled at all. Therefore new people walk right into it, see things that they do not want - much as if NSFW, or worse yet NSFL, were to not be labelled - and then leave the Fediverse. So I am saying: it would be good if things could be labelled appropriately, for the sake of maximum friendliness and welcoming.
But as it is, things are NOT labelled, or if they are, the labels are buried elsewhere. When I first switched from Kbin to a Lemmy instance, I made the mistake of replying to a content on ChapoTrapHouse on hexbear.net. I had no idea what that community was - it's whole purpose is to dunk on people!? - and I am not saying that the community should not "exist", but DAYUM! A warning would indeed have been nice. And now, I do not need such a warning personally - I KNOW - but every person that I tell about Lemmy irl, in the next conversation comes back with negative things to say about it, in how it has such extremist content. So they do not join, and this effect magnified by everyone in the mainstream lowers the overall amount of content across the Fediverse. Thus, this isn't about any one post, any one community, or even any one instance. Good fences make good neighbors. If people on hexbear.net or occasionally some on lemmy.ml disrespect others boundaries, then it makes sense to block them. Though I am having quite a pleasant conversation with you personally, and have done so with others from lemmy.ml. Overall though, on balance, I find it necessary to block that instance. Which I note barely matters - e.g. you replied to me here, and I got the notification for that, I could see your comment, you can see mine... this is the weakest type of "block"/"ban" that I have ever heard of, so much so that the name is really improper, as it barely blocks anything at all.
And no, they don't exist on *every* instance. Or yeah, surely they do, but not in the enormously large numbers that we are talking about here. I will preemptively say that I get a lot of batshit insane replies from lemmy.world too - so yeah, lemmy.ml is not the only one like that. However, the *proportion* of responses is different, probably b/c I (who lives in the USA) shares more ideologically in common with someone from lemmy.world. So perhaps they *would* go off on a rant against something that I say, but the "trigger" to make that happen is less likely to happen. I have not done a scientific study, with controls and such - I am just speaking of my personal experience, which I see is shared by a LOT of people across the Fediverse.
It sounds like you are just being counter-cultural, which I have done more than a little of in my life, so I support that. You seem willing to bear the consequences of that, e.g. you risked me not replying to you, although then I did so... hopefully that shows that the "judgement" of the .ml next to your name is not a firm yes-no but merely a slight bias.
So about down-votes: personally I *want* to receive down-votes, if people do not enjoy receiving my comments. That is helpful feedback, and helps guide me to submit future content more in line with people's receptivity. The problem comes when the down-votes are from people that I do not respect. An example would help here: let's say that I submit a youtube video for my favorite hard rock band to a tiny niche community, specifically for hard rock music, and let us further say that people downvote it for these reasons: (1) they do not like the music - fair; (2) they do not like youtube - okay... I guess... still fair; (3) they do not like hard rock music at all, but saw my post while browsing "All" - these people are not Subscribed to this community, and are improperly abusing the system of down-voting away from "this content is not a good match for this community" to "*I* do not (personally) enjoy this content". The latter type would be much better handled by blocking that community entirely - but people refuse to abide by the rules, and maybe do not even know what they are, if they are new. Oh and also (4) I managed to piss off a troll, who then goes to my Profile and down-votes literally everything they see, until they get tired of hitting the "Next" page (ironically I don't think this has happened to me, which I would expect given my instance-bashing behaviors, but I have seen others where it has, mostly those who post in more political communities).
As you said, yes the creation of the hive mind. *IF* people would use it properly, then it would not be that way, but again, people refuse or are not able to so... here we are.
And one reason for that is that we have so few developers - Rust is a very hard language to learn, and those devs I suspect are prickly to work with (given their moderation practices on lemmy.ml, mass-banning people from communities they've never even heard of, so would they similarly reject someone's actual code, not based on the integrity of the code but rather on some offhand remark that they make even on some other instance, possibly even taken out of context?). I have ENORMOUS respect for the Lemmy codebase that has been developed so far... but I also wish that it could move forward more quickly. Maybe Mbin/Sublinks/Piefed will do so, as they are written in languages that more people already know.
Also there are enormous barriers to running a personal instance - CSAM attacks to name one, hardware and especially network bandwidth to name another - but what it would take would be for someone to spin up their own instance, and try out a new system of voting. Nothing really is stopping anyone from doing so except... it's hard. Otherwise, beggers cannot be choosers, so we wait for an actual developer to do something. And in the meantime we talk about a subject that we find of interest, but it won't lead to any changes. Probably. Maybe - though also, maybe not, b/c perhaps one day there will be a poll put out by the developers, and with enough people answering that, we could ask for a change that we would like to see in the code? :-)
Has anyone suggested any feature related to word list filters? Like, blocking any community, comment, post or user with a certain term in their name/title?
That or tags or something, I'd love to be able to block sports/anime/AI "art" altogether without my blocklist being gigantic
Me too, but I want to block political things.
Displaying profile bios more prominently and encouraging the display of them would help everyone know if the user shared links to their other accounts or other SNS links and whatnot
This would also help fellow moderators and admins know if the newly created user is a real admin/mod that created a duplicate account or is just an impersonator
Would love to have more freedom with relation to reply notifications. Such as muting a comment or a post.
I believe there’s been github issues opened and closed for atleast the past year but it seems to not be a priority for the devs. If I had the disposible income to put a bounty on the feature I’d pay for it but well I’m poor as heck.
I would love to be given a few minutes worth of grace to edit some minor spelling and/or grammar mistakes once I've hit the "post" button.
that or the ability to see what was before the edit, but I assume that has already been discussed
We are currently missing the ability to report user accounts.
Can't you report a comment for that?
Not really. A reported comment rarely even gets evaluated in the context of what it's replying to, let alone a long history. It might make sense to allow a user report to link comment/post examples of why a user is toxic to the user report. I know there are a couple of users I would've used that for.
Well, at least I review the user profile in question when banning people. And take the whole context into account. Makes it harder, but I can usually ban people with clear conscience.
So it seems you can now do this- Profile, Uploads shows you all your uploads. Go Lemmy!
There is, since version 0.19.4
https://join-lemmy.org/news/2024-06-07_-Lemmy_Release_v0.19.4-_Image_Proxying_and_Federation_improvements
Today I learned. Thanks for that!
I remember there was a lot of drama around this, I can't believe it's still an issue.
Nightmare on Lemmy Street (A Fediverse GDPR Horror Story)
Give Mods and Admins the ability to move posts to another community.
I think by default bots should not be allowed anywhere. But if that's a bridge too far, then their use should have to be regularly justified and explained to communities. Maybe it should even be a rule that their full code has to be released on a regular basis, so users can review it themselves and be sure nothing fishy is going on. I'm specifically thinking of the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot (I know, I harp on it too much). It's basically a spammer bot at this point, cluttering up our feeds even when it can't figure out the source, and providing bad and inaccurate information when it can. And mods refuse to answer for it.
Even large social media platforms have trouble dealing with bots, and with AI advancements, these bots will become more intelligent. It feels like a hopeless task to address. While you could implement rules, you would likely only eliminate the obvious bots that are meant to be helpful. There may be more sophisticated bots attempting to manipulate votes, which are more difficult to detect, especially on a federated platform.
For sure, it's not an easy problem to address. But I'm not willing to give up on it just yet. Bad actors will always find a way to break the rules and go under the radar, but we should be making new rules and working to improve these platforms in good faith, with the assumption that most people want healthy communities that follow the rules.
I’m particularly concerned about the potential for automods to become a problem on Lemmy, especially if it gains popularity like Reddit. I believe a Discourse-style trust level system could be a better approach for Lemmy’s moderation, but instead of rewarding “positive contributions,” which often leads to karma farming, the system should primarily recognize user engagement based on time spent on the platform and reading content. Users would gradually earn privileges based on their consistent presence and understanding of the community’s culture, rather than their ability to game the system or create popular content. This approach would naturally distribute moderation responsibilities among seasoned users who are genuinely invested in the community, helping to maintain a healthier balance between user freedom and community standards, and reducing the reliance on bot-driven moderation and arbitrary rule enforcement that often plagues many Reddit communities.
Grant users privileges based on activity level
That’s a very cool concept. I’d definitely be willing to participate in a platform that has that kind of trust system baked in, as long as it respected my privacy and couldn’t broadcast how much time I spend on specific things etc. Instance owners would also potentially get access to some incredibly personal and lucrative user data, so protections would have to be strict. But I guess there are a lot of ways to get at positive user engagement in a non-invasive way. I think it could solve a lot of current and potential problems. I wish I was confident the majority of users would be into it, but I’m not so sure.
Automatic OCR and filtering based on content in an image.
It seems when a user is blocked and comments on a thread, any comments under that are also blocked. It should only be blocking that user, not the thread?
It would be hard to get the context, and you could totally misunderstood the thread, e.g. from your hidden comment everyone get that replies are sarcastic, but you don't.
Maybe an "temporarily unhide blocked user's comment and replies" button to show the whole thread.
True. Another aspect is if there are one’s own comments in that thread, they don’t show up either. (Of course they still do in the Comments account section)
The decentralized nature of Lemmy, while appealing in theory, creates significant frustration in practice due to widespread instance blocking. Finding an ideal instance becomes a daunting task, as users must navigate a complex web of inter-instance politics and restrictions. This challenge is further compounded for those who prioritize factors like low latency or specific content policies. Lemmy's architecture heavily favors instance-level configurations, leaving individual users with limited control over their experience. The only reliable solutions seem to be either hosting a personal instance—a technical hurdle for many—or simply hoping that your chosen instance's admins align with your preferences and don't block communities you enjoy. This politicking ultimately undermines the platform's potential.
I agree, one thing that should be available when choosing an instance is to be able to easily tell the blocks from instances.
Also, IMHO, 90% of instance blocks are childish drama. Lots of instances with the same world view block each other because of admins fighting, and this problem is not exclusive to Lemmy, all activitypub platforms suffer from it.
The ideal model would be instances be more tolerable and use instance block as last resort only for SPAM or Crimes. And the user itself ban what they don't want to see.
I'm not sure on the technical aspect but I think "instance blocking" should be an OPT-IN message sent to users of the instance. For example, say lemmy.world wanted to block lemmy.ml, hexbear, and reddthat. Each instance is added to a "Suggested blocked instance" setting in your profile and a message is sent to the user notifying them the opt-in option is available. Could have a whole list with descriptions besides the instances for why the suggested block option is there. Users would be informed with an actionable option and not automatically opted in. Could just be a toggle-able switch list in user settings.
That just won't work. First and foremost, I won't be hosting illegal stuff, just so you can have your freedom. Think child porn and stuff. Happened multiple times on Lemmy and probably will happen again. If you haven't seen it, your admin most likely has and dealt with it.
And with stuff like Hexbear and other troll instances, I just don't want to deal with tens of reports a day, I simply block them because they're trolls.
If you want that kind of freedom, you have to create your own. I'm not gonna spend a significant amount of time on reports that can be avoided. And definitely not going to prison.
Example 1: when one side wants to bully the other, but the latter does not wish this, how do you solve this problem? Defederation it is then.
Example 2: when someone claims that the Tiananmen Square massacre did actually happen, that user gets blocked from all communities, including those they have never heard of, on lemmy.ml. This is not so rare - and this is straight from the Lemmy developers themselves, i.e. a feature not a bug. It does no good to pretend otherwise.
Example 3: when people refuse to label their kiddie porn properly, others must label it for them, or risk getting into trouble themselves, bc regardless of what some other website chooses to host, the federation model says that if *your* instance federates with it, then it is content that *you* are sharing as well. Though actually, I find the Fediverse mostly friendly in how it labels NSFW content, yet it refuses to label toxicity in a like manner - e.g. the brigading attempts organized on hexbear against other communities on different instances. If only a label could be affixed to Chapotraphouse, like "beware ye who choose to enter here...":-).
I find your comment extremely biased towards your own POV and desires, but overall there is much more subtlety and nuance in interpersonal connections, e.g. sometimes women choose the bear, and rather than say that it is "silly", it might behoove people to listen to why that choice may have been made?
When I go to Lemmy, I'm not logged in until I click on a post to read, what's up with that? I used to stay logged in.
sounds more like a potential browser/cache/extsnion thing than lemmy itself but what do i know
It started happening to me as well. And only on Lemmy.
lemmy-ui: Highlighting some words blindly in inline code is really annoying. For example,
systemctl --user cat emacspactl load-module module-switch-on-connectWorkaround: use multiline code blocks with defined language, e.g:
Drawback: you cant use it in a list or inline
Yes, fenced code block with specifying langauge may work as a workaround.
but I said "inline" explicitly.
The one feature that I'd love to see IMO: make it so Lemmy doesn't require Javascript to work to even view the main page. Come on we are supposed to be recovering the good web times of the '90s, why do I need a react json vue left_pad framework to produce a list of items that can just be consistently delivered by a HTML
[HTML_REMOVED]?Seems like there's basically no effort to address disinformation. I love the idea of the fediverse, but I've never told a single person I use it in well over a year because I'd be embarrassed if they ever visited and saw some of the content that gets upvoted here.
I mean, Lemmy devs are tankies, who participate in misinformation sharing.
If you see some, report it. Some of us admins of other Lemmy instances take disinformation seriously.
Literally had a Hexbear user double down advocating for violence towards America after I told them it’s not a constructive way to go about holding the leadership accountable.
Thank you for your efforts, I have so much respect for the people who are helping to build a healthy fediverse.
Does a report go to the instance's admin?
Do you have examples?
Do you have Hexbear and the .ml instances blocked?
Hexbear yes, ml no
Suggestion: Easy account migration between instances
Imagine you register to Lemmy.world, but realize you're missing half the content because it comes from Hexbear or Lemmygrad users. Migrating to Lemmy.ml is a solution for this
On old instance: Settings -> Import/Export Settings -> Export (as JSON), then on new instance repeat but Import (give it the JSON).
Also note that there is no single instance that is not defederated from something or another - e.g. lemm.ee that is famous for its inclusivity still blocks e.g. threads.net.
And several users of hexbear.net have indicated a desire to remove itself from the wider Fediverse (which probably won't happen, but I just wanted to point out that such matters are not always externally imposed, but sometimes arise from within).
Anyway Lemmy can't interact with threads.net.
I'm guessing they did it preemptively and as a gesture. Or perhaps some CSAM-containing instance took that name in the past:-).
Edit: yup, the first one: https://lemm.ee/post/851217.
I mean, you could run a personal instance that's completely open lol
Good point. There are *enormous* hazards with that though - especially for people in countries where the presence of CSAM on someone's machine that feeds it out to minors could potentially land someone in jail.
So perhaps it would be trivial for *you*, but not everyone is in that kind of situation.
I don't like hexbear. I feel concerned for their users.
There is no reason that you should. Like magas though, they have a right to exist, yet I would prefer that that happen somewhere not near me.:-)
True, didn't looked at this way…
There are (unfortunately) many profound similarities, and underlying reasons, e.g. both involve echo chambers that insulate them from the wider world, promoting childish modes of thinking (e.g. those who speak most aggressively "win"), such that whatever is "claimed" to be believed in, is not actually the case.
Most people want to block those instances, not access them.