First, I want to say how great it is to see success in a social media platform not owned by some giant cooperation. That said, right now we are at a turning point where we can still change the platform in major ways and I think we all have a shared interested in Lemmy becoming the best it could be.
Let’s face it, Reddit had many problems even before the API changes. The toxic herd mentality, over and under moderation at the same time, small posts getting drowned out by already big ones and so much more. As you probably are already aware of, social media can quickly end in filter bubbles, extremization and bringing out the worst of the human psyche. These are not problems simply fixed by better moderation. Rather, these are problems resulting from the engagement driven design of most platforms (Post controversial statement -> many comments -> Post gets delivered to more people -> even more engagement -> …) I want Lemmy to be a place that brings people together instead of dividing us apart.
Therefore, I wanna start a conversation on what design changes Lemmy should implement in the future to make sure the platform remains humane and everyone can engage in respectful conversations.
I think a good starting point are the recourses of the Center for Humane Technology, like their course on Foundations of Humane Technology
I’m looking forward to hearing your opinions and ideas on this :)
Maybe controversial …
Enable us to follow people as on microblogging platforms like masto. A person, if they’re open, has varied opinions and interests. Plus, as there id a personal relationship, a posture of respect is natural. It isn’t hard to get a varied feed once you follow enough people. Combine that with subscribing to communities, and the cross-pollination and you should naturally get a more varied diet of posts.
If you don’t want to wait for that feature in Lemmy, you can interact with Lemmy users and communities on other AP speaking platforms. Kbin seems to do this in an all in one approach, but you can easily follow Lemmy users in Masto too. I’ve been splitting between Lemmy for communities and Masto for people so far.
That’s a great idea, but I don’t know if it fits this platform. What makes Lemmy (and Reddit) great for me is that I can follow specific communities (specific video games, movies, kinks…)
Well there’s no reason we can’t have both. Kbin is experimenting with this by providing two separate interfaces, and seems to be working well. Other platforms kinda mix things up too like Facebook, friendica and hubzilla (last two being on the fediverse though not particularly popular).
Tbh, I do find the micro blogging interface in Kbin to be very confusing. It almost feels like two sites smashed into one.