Underrated benefit of lemmy is like minded people will tend to join the same instances and if I don't want to interact with those groups I can just filter the whole instance.
A lot less annoying then endlessly filtering content by community and user
On the other hand, learning to deal with people you dislike is a useful skill. If everyone segregates themselves into opposing factions there will never be any progress.
Of course, I've personally blocked about 600 people...
Personally I kind of don't want everybody to be like-minded, because that becomes an echo chamber. What I'm after on Lemmy is people willing to explore subjects objectively, without beating the bushes for enemies or competing for upvotes.
People talk about filter bubbles, but there's a nuance here: on Lemmy, you're not being served up whatever the platform owners think you should see from an opaque algorithm. You're going to, by default, see cesspool content. You have to choose to block it.
The downside of that is the filter bubble or echo chamber effect. Question is whether Lemmy should be a fun experience for you or something to broaden your horizons a little
There are some instances that lean in specific directions, but there are also several that are kind of just melting pots. For the most part I don't need to use blocks too frequently, but there are definitely some spaces/users that I find are too hostile that it gets in the way of their intended messaging. But then, that line is going to be different for everybody.
I think a bit the opposite: I'm really worried about the trend to give people only information they care about. I think it's essential to be able to have information about everything. Of course there will always be stuff you don't care about but having it automatically filtered out is dangerous in my opinion.
In GAFA-powered social networks, you are only given pieces of information about your own opinion, you never have something that make you question yourself about your opinion.
The power of independent and open media like Lemmy is to not rely on such biasing algorithms.
Yes, most people will want to do this at a minimum with Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml (actually most instances already have defederated with the second, but it doesn't hurt).
If other instance users post on a problematic instance by accident or because there's a useful community, I wouldn't want those hidden.
Then again if it, preferably, only hides the users of the problematic instance, that doesn't really solve the core issue of bad actors being enabled in the fediverse 🤔
Any system model that eventually encourages echo chamberism should not be in use, even if the intent is to change the system before echo chambers occur, by then it will be too entrenched to just change
So far I find it to be nonsense. Call the US a terrorist nation for couping democratically elected leader in favour of dictators for over a hundred years, get downvoted and banned by amerophiles. Call China or Russia terrorist nations for literal genocide, wars and international strongman bullying, get downvoted and banned by tankies.
Can't say retard because that's a slur but idiot is fine despite it meaning the absolutely same thing, also calling someone slow but in french is also fine.
People are so hardcore pro privacy would literally rather see child rapists go free and child porn platforms stay online, than to have to tolerate the police scan outgoing connections for a specific IP for three days.
Lemmy feels more and more like extremist echo chambers without any actual discourse or exchange.