You guys should spend more time curating your social media feeds, and less time complaining that the default algorithm/most popular content is "too American". Lemmy is as bad as you are lazy. OP complaining that there is "too much American politics" when all they seem to do is post in generic political communities, sometimes even directly referencing the US, is pretty stupid.
How do I curate American politics out of my communities? Genuinely wondering.
block the politics communities
The thread and OP are talking about specifically too much American politics and news, not all politics and news. How do I "stop being lazy" and specifically curate American politics out of my feed?
Use software that lets you block keywords
It’s hard bc we don’t have an extensive suite of filters, curation tools. We’ll get there eventually. Though idk if kbin or lemmy is going to move forward on features more quickly. Isn’t kbin largely a single developer?
Don't use All. Or if you do, block communities that are repeat offenders. With all social media I just stick to communities I am specifically interested in. Those generic, catch-all feeds that reddit popularised are absolute cancer and I have no idea why people flock to them. By their very nature they are full of doom scrollers who have little to no interest or experience in the topic of discussion, which usually leads to a lot of uneducated, low effort, bad faith comments from people who are preoccupied with inserting their political beliefs into everything.
If I just block all (world)news communities with american politics I'm just going to end up not getting any news at all. I care about stuff like tech news for example but some of the recent articles there are "U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Sues Tesla over Racial Abuse of Black Workers" or "The NYPD is deploying a 420-pound robocop to roam Times Square's subway station".
The implication you made was that if I stop being lazy I can curate american politics out of my feed. If your answer is to just block all news sources from my feed than that's not a solution at all.
Why are you relying on social media for news? Just get it direct from the source and you can skip the American bias that is inherent on all English language social media platforms.
It sounds to me like you are now moving the goalpost from 'don't be lazy, curate communities on lemmy' to 'block everything and go somewhere else for news'. Even if I do that, which is not what you initially said that can be done if I stop being lazy... What guarantee is there that other news outlets won't be US centric / biased?
That is a very dishonest framing of the discussion so far.
The original complaint was about Lemmy as a whole, which is why my initial response was tailored to that complaint. Your initial reply to me was also very broad and didn't mention news at all. It's only after I made a suggestion that you shifted the goalposts by claiming it didn't work for your use case - Lemmy as a news source - which you failed to mention up front when you were "genuinely wondering" how you could remove US politics from your feed.
OP's thread is about american politics being everywhere, if you read a sentence beyond the title. I did not change the subject from that.
I guess we have different definitions of curation. To me that's a way of filtering out stuff so only what is of interest remains. To you apparently curating means not using the platform at all, and replacing it with a different platform that will just have the same issue again.
Also, me using lemmy as a news source is not changing the goal post, it is asking for specifics on how to implement your proposed solution. If you say that getting US-centric content is a user issue because they are lazy to curate, and then I ask you how to actually apply that in practice, that's still the same discussion.
So maybe to simplify and go back to the original subject. You say generic big communities are bad and you block them to avoid what OP is complaining about and this is a solution that all non-lazy people should do. Can you recommend some communities here that can provide similar content to the big generic (worldnews/tech/politics/entertainment) communities that don't have US centric content or bias instead? Or are you saying something else altogether and you don't have a solution for the problem and I misunderstood again?
To you apparently curating means not using the platform at all, and replacing it with a different platform that will just have the same issue again.
??????????
If you're looking for guarantees you're gonna be disappointed bud
I use sync and I can block instances, communities, user and even filter out words. I would filter "Trump", "Republican", "PP", etc. When I see it often and is annoying I'll filter it out. Like when memes community were too much for me they all get blocked.
Filter users that post about it and keywords related to it
which
Now THAT's the American work ethic.
Its not as bad as reddit was, imo
I feel like it's about the same
This is true on almost all social media. There's an inherit USA assumption. People with kick off topics in news, pics, funny, tv, sports etc assuming you're in their context.
It's the most populous English speaking country so it's not that weird an assumption, even if you're not American. There are more English speakers in the United States than in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa combined.
Learn how to curate, jeez
As someone else has stated, reddit was way worse,
The big difference I see is that while there is a lot of US politics here, if you block those subs, it disappears.
On reddit, it was fuckin everywhere.
You could not have a discussion about any country in a specifaclly non-US sub without hordes of yanks pilling into the thread and either:
A: Dragging the discussion to the USA. Well, in the USA the law would work this way... followed by 30 more US centric comments drowning out the discussions from the actual country the story is about.
B: A bunch on yanks telling you how you are doing democracy/free speech/gun control/health care/or basically anything wrong and how you are all sheep who are about to be marched into concentration camps.
So, no can't agree. lemmy/kbin is much better with that shit that reddit has been for a decade or more.
Or worse. "Hey, here's a picture of a tree I took in Malaysia"
Comment: "Looks like a pokemon version of Trump, amirite guise harr harr!!"
"That tree fucked around and found out!"
"Y'all"
95% of my Lemmy browsing is on my subscriptions and local instance (aussie.zone). My subscriptions have a few communities on other instances.
I don't see a lot of US politics. Though I see more Australian politics than I'd generally seek out, to be honest.
I've been going through and blocking news from Nepal, India, and a handful of Middle Eastern countries left right and center, most of which I can't understand because I don't speak their language. If you're not blocking the Lemmy subs that produce the stuff you don't want I'm not sure we can help you.
Seems to be an "internet problem" and not so much a "platform problem".
They're stupid, loud and oblivious of the world outside their borders.
Just look at the rest of the internet, there's no "com.us", they're the default.
I wonder why lol
I've blocked all of them, it really is a big improvement.
I think I have RSI from blocking gay porn communities
I actually think the opposite. I'm on kbin tho, but I've noticed a lot more ESL speakers across the board. But also, I'm really only on aus politic magazines anyway
I'm on kbin too and I would agree.
Makes sense, because Kbin is made by a Polish developer and its first instance was Polish.
As an American, after getting somewhat comfortable with Lemmy, I've spent the last week since the blessed Boost app dropped blocking subs in All and local. Some of them are just active (politics), others are low effort pandering immature bullshit (political memes), even news-ish communities seem to have relatively high level of 24-hour biased political stuff. Might have to block them from local/all too.
My feed has definitely improved, I guess I took for granted how curated my feed was on Reddit, but pretty happy with what I have now after a bit of effort.
Did you know some random American gun person went to a Beetlejuice play? Apparently, this is of vital importance and everyone MUST know absolutely every single move that she made that night.
Oh no you had to see a headline and keep scrolling. You gonna be ok?
I won't lie, it was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. But I survived. I also survived the next 20-30 times it happened; it doesn't seem to get any easier though.
It shames me to admit this but sometimes I have nightmares of being stuck in a never-ending loop about Boebert and Beetlejuice. The other day, I caught myself looking in the mirror, I felt like I was somehow possessed and then the words came out of my mouth involuntarily, 'Boebert, Boebert, Boebert'. I can't accurately describe the relief I felt when nothing happened. Since then, it feels like it's finally over! Finally I can breathe easy and rest in—
Uhoh now you'll have to open a gun-themed BBQ restaurant and give your clientele food poisoning. It's the only way to break the curse.
lemmy seems to do a 'better' job (if you can call it that) of providing content similar to what you previously browsed than reddit ever did for me. There is also a LOT of american politics here, so you read one article, you are going to be fed many more.
The only real downside to lemmy is that most of the niche communities arent really active which is a shame, thats up to us to get it moving
Skill issue
As an American, it's annoying as hell for me too. Entrenched leftists and Trumpers are the worst.
Agreed. Hardliners on both sides are frustrating and annoying.
You're above it all, eh bud?
The blind support of a party? Yes. Yes I am.
Blind support? Republicans aren't doing anything good.
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