Welcome migrating redditors to the new US political news community. Please read
our rules Rules: 1. Post only articles, Title must fairly describe link
contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add
context or be more descriptive. 2. Must be articles relevant to US politic...
I guess it is a consequence of the Reddit migration where the habit is just keeping the old community name. But having C/Politics being US only on Lemmy.world, an instance that aims to be international (hence the name), seems weird to me.
Would have been cool to give up this assumption that everything is related to US by default when moving away from Reddit. I mean, even the canadian political news of Lemmy.ca is CanadaPolitics.
Lemmy.world is full of US-specific things. It's quite bizarre that US is probably the only major country that doesn't have its own instance. I've already noted it. And predicted it a month ago, but that didn't go anywhere.
But we’re working on it! Here at the CIA our goal is to give you the freedom every red blooded American enjoys! Like the freedom to never go to the doctor because of the cost! Being shot at school because religious nut jobs think Jesus wants it that way! Work your self to death to stay just below the poverty line! Watch as the social safety net your forefathers literally died for gets eroded away as you too embrace Christo-facism!
We can’t WAIT to bring this opportunity to your shores! Work with us in serving the billionaire working class and enjoy all the benefits above!
You could just sign up for Kbin. It already lets you block instances from it's front end. I can't speak to the diversity of something like kbin.social in regards to US vs elsewhere though. Personally, I think a language filter would be nice. For example instances (or even community/magazine level) could have a default language property and you'd be allowed to filter on that. It'd be a shame to block an entire instance just because it's in a different country.
In regards to "US-specific" instances, I think the issue is more that folks in the US see less incentive to shoulder those costs if they can't sell it. The charitable bodies willing to do this or that I'd even trust to do it are few and far between. All of this is just a theory though. I have nothing but my gut feeling to back it up. So take it with a grain of salt.
Personally, I think a language filter would be nice. For example instances (or even community/magazine level) could have a default language property and you'd be allowed to filter on that.
Wouldn't help with the US-defaultism-problem though. English is
a) spoken in Europe as well (I mean... that's where it's from)
b) lingua franca for all the world
The fact that most of the world can't really filter English discussions but English native speakers can filter almost everyone else's just by language alone is part of the problem.
I don't have a problem with default-US on principle. I don't want to filter out anything other than what I can't read.
And don't make assumptions. I can't filter based on language. I really think most people are just failing this whole fediverse concept. I'm not even on lemmy.world let alone even using Lemmy.
I can't filter based on language as far as I can tell on Kbin. I can already block communities/magazines, users, and entire domains for that matter. Kbin already "solved" this problem. My issue here is that it's not a problem. If an instance is general purpose and a community doesn't break any of its rules, I see no reason to be upset that someone took a community name before someone else. I'm not about to get behind the censorship bandwagon of majority rules (or maybe not even majority, just loud) taking over communities because they feel they can use the name in a better way.
Beehaw is a locked down walled garden instance that doesn't seem to actually want to be everyone's go to. That's fine, but it doesn't mean it makes sense for most people to join it.
Midwest.social is only specific to a small region of the US.
That's maybe a little unkind. If you had been working to nurture a small community (vernacular definition), you too would be super concerned about a sudden influx from Reddit. Assimilation would be impossible.
I disagree with the concept that there's a better place for anything. If my account is here, I will create a community/magazine here. I'm not going to segregate myself simply because of my location. You can argue that an instance should suggest naming conventions for localized topics. But it's up to the instance to require that. There's no real rules between instances at all. So I find the discussion that a community doesn't belong in a general purpose instance. If it doesn't conflict with the intent of the instance and the instance has no naming convention, it's first come, first serve.
Creating generic rules to apply to other instances aside from the protocol is simply not what the fediverse is about.
Edit to add: also, there's no default instance for a country either. Sure those that you mentioned exist, but there's no rule saying Germans need to put German specific things in feddit.de.
There's gonna be a lot of culture shock from authoritarians throughout the fediverse it would seem. Some people don't know what to do with a little freedom.
People are generally good with having their own freedom, where they get outraged is when they discover that other people have freedom. Obviously this situation can't be allowed so rules need to be made, and enforced, so those other people have to conform.
I don't know why some people are treating my complains like I'm some sort of Judge Dredd that wants to shoot everybody who makes a community I don't like.
I'm saying, be reasonable. I wouldn't be making a community on .world about some random 4th league football club or a hike trail in my country, I'd use an instance more suited for it. If you can't make a new community there, ping an admin to make it for you. It's not a big deal, and better for everybody: locals can find it more easily, and the others won't be bothered by it by default.
The reverse is also stupid, creating general-purpose comms on country-specific instances. Once instance blocking becomes an option, nobody will find them.
For real, how is it that every bloody country can make its own instance, but only the US can't? Doesn't it strike you just a bit weird? I'm no more interested what's going on in Oregon than in Frankfurt.
As far as I know, you can only create communities on your own instance. I don't like the idea of telling people that need to create accounts elsewhere becsuse their community isn't welcome.
A general purpose instance is general purpose. As long as it doesn't break any rules, it should be welcomed.
And segregating the fediverse is literally not what it's about. There shouldn't be forced segregation.
Instances shouldn't be localized unless that's its purpose. If there was a feddit.us that was general purpose, I'd be fine if someone from the UK created a football community first.
There's no such thing as a better place for something in the fediverse. There's only not acceptable places. And general purpose has a very low bar for acceptable.
I feel like most folks don't get the idea behind the fediverse and the multi-instance concept.
You just fail to see anyone else's point besides yours. I already addressed your objections, and you're unable to address mine, so I won't be repeating myself.
Your argument is "be reasonable" and then some subjective feeling about what you feel is personally reasonable. Your reason isn't objective. I addressed this in literally every comment in some fashion. Your feelings aren't an argument.
Edit: especially since you never addressed the technical limitations I mentioned in any way shape or fashion. That's a much bigger hurdle than your opinions about what fits in general purpose.
What limitations, that you can't make a comm on another instance? I literally did.
If you can’t make a new community there, ping an admin to make it for you.
You're also totally failing to see the upside:
locals can find it more easily, and the others won’t be bothered by it by default
And worst of all, you, nor anyone else apparently, can address this:
For real, how is it that every bloody country can make its own instance, but only the US can’t? Doesn’t it strike you just a bit weird?
Just explain how is it that Britons, Aussies and Canadians can make their own instances even if everyone is speaking English, but everything US has to be dumped onto lemmy.world and everywhere else? Why do you think people from around the world are more interested in Texas than Melbourne or Ontario? If you can't see why it can be annoying to people, well... I'm not surprised I guess.
I did give at least my gut reason why there isn't a US one. Pretty sure it was in direct response to you specifically. In fact I think it was my first response to you. But I could be wrong, maybe it was someone else.
I think I've also stated a few times why I could see it being annoying.
And I guess its news to me that you can moderate a community from a different server. Unless you're suggesting no moderation. Which can work for a time.
But overall, I find people replying without reading to be much more annoying. I guess I just don't understand the point of view of wanting to filter out non-local topics.
I also don't understand why you're upset if you feel there's a better instance for you?
Edit: searching by instance seems weird to me too. Kinda defeats the fediverse purpose. I'd rather just block a community if I truly never want to see it again. I see content from other instances though. I don't want to stop that.
Edit: also I'm literally not bothered by non-local topics. I just fail to grasp that concept. I just scroll past it if I really don't care, but sometimes I don't because I don't automatically not care what others have to say. I just don't have time to translate a bunch of posts so filtering those out would be useful, but I currently don't even have that and I honestly am not really bothered too much. I'll get multiple German posts in a row and... ...barely caused me any consternation. Certainly not enough to complain about it and suggesting ways that would affect more than just me.
Pretty sure it was in direct response to you specifically.
Ah yea, guess you did. So that was my bad in return, I thought that was someone else.
But I still maintain it's totally weird. There are general purpose Fediverse and Lemmy instances based in the US. All that's needed is for one to step up and try to be the local default. Again, if other countries can have that, and they are also paid for with donations...
And I guess its news to me that you can moderate a community from a different server.
Oh yes, you can moderate from another Lemmy instance no problem. No real problem there aside of general federation bugs, but the modding tools aren't affected by this, from what I see.
There used to be a bug that could brick a comm's visibility if a remote mod edited the sidebar, but that was fixed weeks ago. No issues since then that I know of.
Only kbin <> Lemmy inter-modding doesn't work afaik.
I guess I just don’t understand the point of view of wanting to filter out non-local topics.
It's not about blocking non-local topics specifically, but about blocking any topics I know I don't care about. If I don't care what's happening in Switzerland, I should be able to block feddit.ch. If I know I don't care about sports, I should be able to block fanaticus.social. If I don't want to see nsfw, I should be able to block lemmynsfw and pornlemmy. And so on. There already are tools to do it at least partially via apps and browser scripts.
If I don't care about what's going on inside US, whether it's farmers strikes or school shootings or NFL or some random local laws, I'll always be stuck with blocking every darn community individually, because US = World.
My time on this planet is limited. If I have half an hour to browse /all and I want to find some new stuff while also avoid stuff I know I don't care about, then it's a real annoyance. My blocklist is 10 pages long and most of it is US stuff... While I still keep bumping into new and new posts about this NBA team and that city. It's crazy.
Ed: and I don't want to sound too hateful (maybe that ship has sailed), but it simply is true that most stuff I don't care about is specific to some country, and most of that is indeed tidied up in separate instances.
Ed 2: as for search, well you can go to e.g. lemmy.ca and have everything about Canada in one place. Or mander.xyz and have all their science topics... Doesn't that make it easier to find stuff?
Interesting point. I've seen that some country instances have a !europe community. And I wouldn't be against a full instance either. It could be useful.
I am sure the fact they don't use they ccTLD ".us" (not even the government) is part of that mentality. The internet is kind of built to be usanian by default