It seems anytime I try to check out Mastodon it is always some negative political view or affiliation of why X, Y & Z is bad. Is this just what most people like boosting or is it a sign of botting to push negativity over the more positive headlines?

I do understand I can switch to any Mastodon instance I want and stick to a small community, however I like keeping up with trending topics in the world. Maybe the most popular accounts in the Mastodon community likes to rise up pitchforks every minute.

  • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A lot of the people who have fled Twitter to Mastodon are the most… online, with strong political opinions.

    Even though I usually agree with them, I find it exhausting and the opposite of fun to be bombarded with outrage politics 24/7, so I’m pretty careful about the accounts I follow.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Mine is all amiga and Commodore 64 games. Not the exact scenario I was expecting when following #retrogaming

      • danielton@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, not what I’d expect either. The lack of an algorithm is one of the things I’m not crazy about on there. It took me months to get into Mastodon at first because I got tired of the complaints about Elon. I only know one person on the platform too. But I do like the cat pictures.

        • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I expected more console games that 80s computers, not that I’m complaining. Just not a world I was familiar with

  • dobeltip@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I follow digital art hashtag and now my feed full of art and furry art. But it’s better than looking at US politics posts that i never understand.

  • colonial@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is why I can never get into microblogging/Twitter-type platforms. Character limits and one-click reposting mean that what little discourse you get is shallow, and ragebait is consistently pushed to the top.

    I’m not going to say that Lemmy or (especially) Reddit completely avoid this, but you generally get much more insightful conversation and can opt-in to political communities.

    There was a thread on [email protected] recently asking people for their unpopular political opinions, and it actually wasn’t a total shitshow!

  • Oyster_Lust@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s easier to bitch about what’s wrong than to actively do something to make it better.

    • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean plenty of people bitching are doing what’s within their power. This is a reductionist and bad faith argument

  • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People have been trained by corporatist ad-click-driven "angagement"1-oriented antisocial media that all online communication is rage-fuelled.

    No, wait. This doesn’t explain BITNET, FidoNet, USENET, etc. which predate such antisocial media by decades…

    New theory: people online tend toward being assholes because they’re not in imminent danger of taking a punch to the nose for it.


    1 “angagement”: a portmanteau of “anger” and “engagement”

  • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    That seems to be the case for social media in general. Reddit, Twitter, Lemmy, Mastodon… They all have the same political rage-bate content.

  • Pasta Dental@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’ve deleted my main Masto account, I am so tired of the “if you like x then you hate y” which is just so frustrating and counterintuitive to a constructive debate. If you don’t agree with their opinion it’s because you are a racist Nazi that supports the genocide of trans people as well as being pro-billionnaire…

    The main example of this is the whole Meta Threads federating with Activitypub, if you somehow see good things with this, it’s because you support giving a platform to Nazis and transphobes, which is just so far from the truth.

    The weird negative point of mastodon is it massively facilitates being stuck inside an echo chamber because you can literally defederate with any instance that might have any hint of someone who doesn’t agree with you

    And so in the end I find myself going to Twitter more than I’d like because people I want to see the content people I follow post there and I can’t just create myself a safe garden of opinions I think are “objectively” wrong

    • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Weird. I don’t see any of that on my Mastodon feed.

      It’s almost as if I get to choose what’s displayed in my feed instead of having it force-fed to me.

      I’m thinking that perhaps someone didn’t learn how the system works and how to use it and instead just read #Explore. For a sane experience in Mastodon, you need to build a feed by hand (no algorithm will do it for you), build filters by hand, and in general you’re far more in control of your experience than you are at places like Echs. I’ll peek into #Explore every so often to find new people to add to my feed (and many more people to block from it!), but other than that I don’t use it. Precisely for the reasons you cite here.

  • mesamune@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Try blocking individuals who are pushing negativity and sharing the good stuff. Be the change you want to see in the world.

  • ittu@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve seen posts praising free school lunch getting passed by a few states.

  • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use Tusky and I never see these trending posts. It’s great because I’m sick of the tedious political shite from all sides on Twitter, I don’t need it on Mastodon as well.

  • Cam@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Check our Nostr, yeah it has a politicial bias but its not prone to censorship unlike mastodon and twitter.

      • Cam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It is full of bitcoin maxies. It needs more people that are not crypto people on there.

        • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The problem is that cryptobros are the kinds of people that drive away non-cryptobros. If you go to a site as a normal person and see nothing but cryptobros, you’re not going to have an incentive to stick around, now, are you?

          • Cam@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Someone got to break the ice. Lemmy used to be very tech savvy, still us but now there are other topics to discuss. You gotta get on there and post into the void, get the ball rolling.

            • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Lemmy used to be very tech savvy, but not repulsive. Cryptobros are repulsive (and not just because of the cryptocurrency shilling!). What’s my incentive to stick around?

              • Cam@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Like I said, someone got to break the ice. You don’t want to do that and that is fine and I get it.

                People need to join and create their little own corners on Nostr were you discuss other topics and maybe a rule in these corners will be no crypto shilling and not be repulsive. Eventually these corners will grow in size to were Nostr is not just crypto bros.

                • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Or, far more likely, Nostr will remain a place for cryptobros. And that’s fine. Keeps them out of my spaces.