The current default “Homepage” value is “All”. That makes sense for users with zero subscribed magazines, so they see something.
But for users with one or more subscribed magazines, the default value for “Homepage” needs to be “Subscriptions”.
That’s partially just because subscriptions mean little if the default frontpage ignores them. But there’s a more important reason than that.
The current situation is that posts in m/Conservative are heavily downvoted, and barely upvoted. (Whatever your politics may be, consider if this was happening to you.) As more ex-redditors join, this problem is likely to worsen.
Eventually moderators need better controls, to say things like “Only members can vote”, etc.
But for now, a very easy fix is to change the default value of “Homepage” to be “Subscriptions”. Of course, “All” should still be a selectable option for those who prefer it.
It’s really not brigading by definition. Brigading is a conscious and coordinated effort by many people to target a post or community. There is nothing conscious or coordinated about random people randomly seeing a post and downvoting it.
Brigading is not the right term. Unpopular is.
- This is likely unavoidable because the majority of users of sites like this are not conservative. They trend toward the younger demographics. Millennials overall in the U.S. are 60% left-leaning. Gen Z are almost 70% left-leaning. What you’re noticing may only become more pronounced after kbin re-federates. The fediverse is far more international then Reddit ever was and international and non-English posts are not filtered out by region like on Reddit. Conservative US politics are generally farther right than most right-leaning parties in the developed world. So you may be downvoted by international users as well that actually intentionally view magazines or posts with the conservative tag.
Really the only way to avoid this is to create your own instance and de-federate. This is precisely why the far-right social media platforms (like Truth Social) have had to isolate themselves. They’re simply a significant minority on the internet.
I was tired of seeing US politics on reddit, the r/conservative sub was one of the most brain-dead subs
We may disagree on politics, but you underscore my point. Minority viewpoints should not be fed to everyone by default. If you’re a Leftist browsing your kbin homepage, and you see some conservative message you dislike, of course you’re going to downvote it. The question is why’s that showing up on your homepage by default.
Yup, technically I would stay away from any western politics (especially American) since I live on the other side of the globe but here we are
You’re the third person to point out that it’s technically not brigading. I think that’s splitting hairs, because it’s happening by design, but I hear you. I don’t know the right present participle, but it seems like a moot point.
To everything you wrote after that, I wholly agree. I don’t think this really is about politics, though, so much as it’s about unpopular perspectives held by minority groups. IMHO the platform should encourage a diversity of thought.
Yes, I could create a defederated instance, or I could just go hang out on Gab or TruthSocial. I was hoping I’d find a more well-rounded community here, like I had on reddit. It’s worth noting that reddit is strongly left-leaning, but has a bunch of conservative communities that thrive due to its configuration. But again, this isn’t just about politics — it’s about minority groups.
I don’t think you’re being entirely unreasonable, I’m just not sure it’s possible.
It’s not happening by design, that would imply intent or bias on what the site shows on all. It’s happening naturally, all literary shows everything to everybody. Claiming it’s by design is like saying it’s by design when your entire office votes “no” to you banging on drums during the workday. It might be they just don’t like that idea.
Remember that the situation, the configuration you’re referring to, only existed on Reddit because those subs banned people left and right, and people blocked them. In other words, they were and are isolated. r/conservative would ban people for any dissenting comment, and conservative subs got delisted from r/all for a variety of reasons by the Reddit admins.
The only way to achieve what you’re describing would be to do the Reddit thing and pre-select magazines for the “all” tab, rather then them truly being all. Even if subs were the main page, people will still flip over to all regularly, just like they flip over to new.
You may just have to be content knowing that people that subscribe to /m/conservative go there intentionally despite the posts falling down on the all tab. Maybe there will be more people here that agree with you and the situation will change.
when your entire office votes “no” to you banging on drums during the workday
Heh
On reddit, I never looked at r/all, and I don’t know how many people did, but it’s something you only ever see if you seek it out.
My gripe here is just about the default “Homepage” value. Most people don’t change defaults, and it would be more appropriate to default to “Subscriptions”. That would mostly solve the problem.
Sure, a few people could still choose to go to m/all and see things from other communities. But how often does that happen? I don’t think it’s common enough to worry about.
You may just have to be content knowing that people that subscribe to /m/conservative go there intentionally despite the posts falling down on the all tab.
Sure, but this really isn’t about that magazine specifically. It’s about all minority groups with unpopular viewpoints.
I like your username, btw.
This level of control is generally handled at the instance level.
If you want to host a magazine and control interactions on it, host your own instance.
There should only be one instance IMHO. And it should be able to support widely diverse communities.
I mean, not to be rude, but if you just want a single instance with many communities, you’re describing Reddit.
Correct. Many of us who left reddit for kbin are fed up with reddit’s governance and policies, not its platform architecture. Kbin seems to have been chosen as the world’s probable reddit replacement, so here we are.
Fair enough, honestly.
kbin is part of the Fediverse. It is one instance of many.
I draw your attention to the sidebar:
Create your own instance Clone repo and develop fediverseSeveral communities who have more difficult interactions with others have already followed this route.
Encouraging fracturing into factions does no good for anyone. The internet needs a frontpage, and for years that was reddit. Now it seems to be kbin, maybe. Under the hood it may be a distributed system, but in practice normal people want a single website where a wide diversity of topics and opinions is embraced and protected.
Maybe, but it won’t be kbin, or other Fediverse sites.
It’s a common enough opinion to want one site to handle everything, but that’s not how this is set up.
Honestly I think it is. Much as the underlying architecture expects federation, each instance competes in a market of commoditized goods, which leads to coalescence. So if the fediverse thrives at all, it will be with one giant instance. Perhaps there’ll always be a few other tiny instances for nerds (I use the word lovingly) who value that sort of thing, but normal people don’t understand the concept of an “instance”, and just want to show up at a .com to feast on data.
At any rate, even if you’re right about federation, any social media service should seek to accommodate a wide diversity of ideas, opinions, and perspectives.
instance competes in a market of commoditized goods, which leads to coalescence.
Any user on one instance can interact freely with users and content on another instance as if they were on that instance, unless there are specific restrictions put in place, or one of the two instances has blocked the other. This is rare and often to prevent brigading, as your main post complained of.
So, not really. Normal people understand the concept of email. I don’t agree with the “It’s too complicated” suggestion. It’s been presented confusingly in this mad rush, sure.
At any rate, even if you’re right about federation, any social media service should seek to accommodate a wide diversity of ideas, opinions, and perspectives.
I think that’s entirely up to each instance. Not every instance has to be about everything or for everyone. Again, that’s the point.
With regard to federation, that’s true, but consider the bigger picture. A major news outlet discusses the up-and-coming website kbin, and a hundred million people show up to create an account. A popular search engine returns search results linking to kbin, and nobody says “I could click on that, but I have an account at some other instance, so I’ll just manually edit the URL.” The bigger picture is that the world wants a single instance.
With regard to the diversity of of ideas, opinions, and perspectives being up to each instance, I suppose I agree with you in principle, though I would find it deeply disappointing if any platform intentionally wanted to create a hivemind and actively silence dissenting voices. But if that’s where I am, then I suppose I’ll have to leave.
They don’t really need to understand the concepts of an instance within the federation system because ultimately you join whatever instance you want and search and then you can subscribe to anything you want it doesn’t matter whether it’s a one entire instance or one tiny instance in the federation.
There are already many observable instances (pardon the pun) of confusion, even among us early adopters. Time will tell if you’re right or if I am.
The internet needs a frontpage
Does it though? The Fediverse feels a lot different to Reddit, which many here are taking as a positive. As others have mentioned, if you want a conservative safe space then go make one.
@10A Or people just don’t want to see it. It is not brigading. As I don’t want people putting photos of their masculine genitals in my eyes, I don’t want to read about conservatism in my /all or /sub. Do whatever you want on this site, but don’t complain when people disagree. That’s called opinion.
That’s my point, @pasci_lei. It’s natural to downvote something you dislike. And the site’s set up to show everyone everything by default. So any community breaking with the hivemind is naturally downvoted by users who are not members of that community.
The whole point of a voting system is to do exactly what your trying to stop. If you don’t want people to vote on your posts maybe you should find a platform that doesn’t use a voting system.
It’s impolite to vote unless you’re a member of the community. And by “impolite”, I mean it’s extremely rude. Members of the community have free reign to vote as they see fit. The result is the community’s content is weighted according to its own values.
I think gimping and entire platform of discussion so you can build an echo chamber is foolish. I get you don’t want to interact with the rest of the platform because your content is unpopular but I’d rather promote free interaction than pander to unpopular communities.
People downvote because they don’t want to see or simply disagree with the content. It’s not complicated, and it’s not brigading.
But here is the beautiful thing about federated instances. Anyone can create a nen instance for themselves, or find an instance that is better suited to to the topic. Go and be free!
Brigading is a coordinated effort that starts in one or more external communities and is directed at a specific target. That’s not what you’re describing.
Perhaps it’s the case that a Conservative community is just unpopular among users browsing /all? This isn’t a strictly USA politics thing. You’re getting international users seeing this content too.
Even with your proposed change - which I think I agree with, but not for the same reason - nothing is going to prevent users from browsing and potentially downvoting submissions.
If there is this much sensitivity to meaningless Web points (seriously, there are no karma totals here), then I think a better solution might be to find or start an instance run by people who share Conservative values and have that instance control the desired level of federation with other instances.
I think people are just seeing the posts and downvoting because they dislike it. A lot of the early magazines here that existed when I first joined catered toward people that conservatives shun at best and actively discriminate against at worst. I think those people don’t feel good about it so you see downvotes. I’m sure that given enough time you can show them that your brand of conservatism doesn’t mean shunning them with discriminatory and hateful social conservatism.
This is an ignorant and entitled take. You pass right wing ideology as deserving of special treatment and you indignantly pass conservatism as a minority voice needing to be heard. The federated community doesn’t have algorithmic preferential treatment nor does it need to imitate Reddit’s worst qualities because your ideology in unpopular. It’s a community’s responsibility to make itself appealing to the masses if it wants acceptance. You want a place for right wing discourse on a platform dominated by capital L Leftists. I personally would hate to see a fascist gateway community form on such a small platform like this. While you have the freedom to think and speak, you don’t have the right to preferential treatment or your voice to be heard or liked.
I’m so sorry I came across that way. You make me sound awful. I’m not asking for special treatment whatsoever. I just think the default setting for Homepage should be Subscriptions. I think that would improve the site’s overall quality for anyone who accepts default settings.
Edit: Lest anyone think this is just about politics, consider the following magazines that were just created:
- m/UniversalPictures
- m/KatyPerry
- m/UniversalStudios
- m/DreamWorks
- m/Pixar
Whatever kbin was before, it won’t be for long.
It’s not precisely brigading since it’s not coordinated, but it is confusing. I generally don’t go into subreddits/magazines I disagree with and just downvote everything. Maybe another solution here is to allow magazines to not be included in all?
You can change your default homepage in settings.
