I would love to sometimes filter out any and all political posts, I think having this enabled as default on some instances would also be preferred by some users.
I’m a software dev, if it doesn’t require a lot of work I’m happy to make a Pull Request for this feature, but do people want this? Is there anyone I should maybe talk to before starting, or anything I should know?
Edit: I realise it won’t filter out ALL political posts, but even if it only catches half of the stuff, it could make the difference between being flooded with Trump/Musk news and not.
Some new users might turn away before knowing the can set filters etc. (which also aren’t perfect)
The ability to live a life without having to worry about politics is political in itself.
There are two races
White and “political”
There’s a number of problems with this.
It would only work if enough communities and instances adhered rigidly to similar editorial decisions about what is “political”. I don’t think that’s achievable.
Mods would have to do the heavy lifting in tagging/ untangling things.
It’s not going to be as simple to implement as you think.
Posts are already categorised by community. You can block the vast majority of political posts by blocking a few communities and users.
At times if filtered out keywords like Musk and Trump. You don’t really need to implement a feature for this. Just get posters to include a tag in the title of their post.
Looking at your other comments, you’re not going to be deterred by these criticisms, so my suggestion would be to find the git repo and create an issue to get some proper feedback from other contributors.
Maybe a general tag system, with community owners able to add tags that automatically apply to all posts, would be good? Otherwise there’s potential for special purpose tags like this to start piling up.
someone mentioned elsewhere, but worth repeating here i think: this already has a merged RFC and apparently someone is working on it
That’s a really good idea! Implementing that type of approach would account for accessibility, provides the each communities with options that individuals can use to curate their experience, and handles those factors while not blocking out or causing any complications with the wider fediverse.
I’m going to pile on too.
No. Bad idea.
Crying ‘pOLiTics’ is the weak persons way of trying to steer the conversation away from topics they don’t want to talk about.
In the fediverse, if you don’t like a topic, one already has the feature they need. That is the ability to keep scrolling to find a topic one is seeking.
Quit whining about politics and avoid those groups at the party. Or do the personal work and figure out how to be a useful part of the conversation.
Don’t build your big tech bullshit into our fediverse. Curate your own communities and user blocklists.
What an odd take. We can filter out NSFW work so why shouldn’t we be able to filter other things we are not interested in or are contributing to our poor mental health.
I for one have filtered out Elon Musk and Trump because it is nauseating. If I’m in a headspace where I want to see them then I can remove the filters but generally I want to stop doom scrolling.
Then stop doomscrolling! The software is already baked into your noodle. Play with your cat instead or whatever.
I am sorry if you cannot process the current reality unfiltered but you have already identified the mechanisms to use to protect yourself.
The reason it is a dumb and abusable feature is that the word ‘politics’ is MEANINGLESS in this context.
Don’t like gay people? POLITICS! Do you like gay people? POLITICS!
A ‘politics’ tag is a tool for automating bulk censorship that YOU can and should be doing for yourself, manually. The entire point of the fediverse is that it bypasses that centralized mindset.
You decide what sort of politics give you heartburn and adjust your consumption accordingly. Outsourcing that decision making to others is morally lazy.
Then stop doomscrolling.
Said to someone with ADHD isn’t really something I was able to do without putting things in place to aid me to do that. The same way I couldn’t stop using Reddit all day until I got an app that locked me out of things after a certain duration.
You may do well to try and understand that not all peoples brains work the same and some people need more assistance than others to do things that seem easy.
saying it bluntly is helping… doomscrolling is the problem, and it might not be easy to fix but it is the actual fix
You would do well to stop blaming ADHD and assuming you are the only one who leans that way. It is an excuse for nothing, nothing at all.
Stop doomscrolling!
If you need training wheels, then get a set. You are basically advocating that all bicycles include them by default. That’s not a mindset that I can be quiet about.
We can filter out NSFW work
I have that turned on, and I heavily lean on blocking communities and users, and I still get NSFW shit fairly regularly.
I’ve been on Lemmy for years and have yet to see a single nsfw post.
I didn’t realize they even existed.
Maybe it’s not a Lemmy thing and it’s an app thing, but Voyager has a setting to hide NSFW content.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/rfcs/pull/4
If you want you can code it up already. The design is finalised but dessalines and nutomic have other priorities right now.Phiresky is working on it already. You can help them out if you want.
ignores politics
“Hey, how’d I end up in this gulag?”
I understand your frustration, but ignoring it is dangerous.
looks out their window at explicit fascism at a global high point unmatched in any period of history considering how unopposed it is
Oh gosh what if communists put me in jail for being a nazi 😱
Anyway, good for you not ignoring politics I suppose
Politically-engaged people were far more likely to.enter the gulag system, not less.
You think that’ll protect you?
From Stalin?
Keeping up with the congressmen is 99% a waste of time.
You’re attention is saturated with shit.
Nah. Agitprop is a core function of lemmy
The same can be said for NSFW posts, but that seems to be managed fine.
If it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, but we can try.
Even if only “trending” political posts are marked correctly, it could make the difference between being flooded with Trump/Elon news or not
“Stuff in my feed I don’t want to see in my feed” is kind of the exact problem the Fediverse set out to solve. Nothing gets “injected” to a feed here so if you are seeing it, it’s a choice to continue to do so.
It really needs a proper tag system
Community tags are in development already if I’m not mistaken
This could certainly come in handy as something which I think would significantly improve accessibility. Like there are a lot of channels and communities which I don’t want to block outright and which I might vibe with sometimes but not always because of how it can be rather stressful to keep up with current developments. This is especially the case when those issues flow into areas that aren’t designated as news related or with doomscrolling. Like I imagine the biggest challengen with implementation is ensuring all instances have this and that all clients are able to make use of that feature but I agree that it would be valuable to take a break or to have my feed focus more on niche hobbies, memes, and other fun areas to dive into. Just my two cents.
News are quite anxious, and I understand that we have to take her of ourselves by categorize it. However all political contents do not bring anxiety. I’m sorry but ignoring people struggling for their lives with tag system is making hell places for them, not safe place.
I don’t see the point of that kind of contribution, and I must admit, I seems kind of suspicious to me
I see where you might be coming from especially given the impact that everything is having and how each of us can contribute towards a wider positive change by facing that more directly although I feel like most people have different objectives and capacities with Lemmy than rushing to encourage widespread legislative or systemic change. There is definitely value to be had with that approach although I personally am discouraged from posting or commenting on Lemmy with everything being compounded together. Some people do find diving into current geopolitical struggles to be exciting to dive into and I respect that wholeheartly but oftentimes, It’s just too much for me to want to keep up on. Not everyone is in a headspace where keeping up with everything is a welcoming or beneficial user experience. When I am here which tends to be a bit rare, I like using this platform to find funny memes, discuss about nerdy hobbies, and to find or make my own type of light to bring within this platform. Often that can be challenging and having additional options to narrow down on how I can curate my experience and to help figure out where other people share similar interests would certainly prove helpful.
