Kinda cool. To be honest I’m mostly posting this to test it.

Edit: It works!

The right may not have good ideas, organizational skills, charm, ethics, understanding of economics, history, or politics, or strength in numbers, but they do have the one thing more important than all of these.

Money!

I read that but it also seems to indicate that she’s a third generation monarch in her family. Maybe it’s not officially hereditary but it’s a bit sus. Not to mention that monarchies are bad for reasons beyond their (typically) hereditary nature.

I also think the presidency is a harmful institution but I know most people aren’t there yet.

On the one hand, awesome to see young women having a role in leadership. On the other hand, monarchy is pretty much the worst form of government.

I’m not sure I agree. For comparison, here’s a recent article on Gaza from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/blinken-warns-israel-hamas-best-last-chance-end-gaza-war-2024-08-19/

Yes, it’s written from a western perspective, but there’s a clear attempt to include opposing perspectives including Hamas and ordinary Gazans. You see no such attempts from the Cradle’s reporting.

It’s true that all media is biased but that does not mean it’s equally biased. There is a big difference between the unavoidable bias of your own unconscious views on a topic and actively spreading misinformation. I am not very familiar with the cradle beyond these few articles but they appear to fit the latter category while Reuters and similar publications fit into the former.

Overall I think the assessment by the bias ranking seems fair, and the post removal even encouraged you to post another source on the same topic, so it’s not saying that this issue cannot be discussed. While I don’t necessarily agree with the mod’s action, it doesn’t seem like it’s an attempt to silence Palestinian voices either.

Here’s one: https://thecradle.co/articles/syrian-president-assures-russia-of-unwavering-support

I dunno, seems pretty biased to me. Even if it’s mostly quoting politicians, uncritically repeating their propaganda without any caveats is questionable at best.

Not a bad idea. I lack the skills myself but if anyone is interested in such a thing, let me know. I’d be happy to support in any way I can.

Yes, the complexity is certainly one of the downsides to what I’m proposing, which is one reason why I was curious if people thought the complexity would be manageable. Sounds like you think not?

Just to clarify, my thought is to leave this up to users/admins to choose their own algorithm, which would transparently describe how things are weighted. For me, I would like to weigh factual information most highly, then kindness, with raw popularity at the bottom. But others might feel differently, especially if there were even more types of reactions than the three main categories I described.

For new users or those who don’t understand the system, it would be fine to have a default sort, maybe configurable by your instance. It could be as simple as just adding up the positive and negative votes, which would make it identical to the current system, or we could just guess at some different weights. Let me people try them out—not everyone will engage but I hope enough would to help iron out the wrinkles and see what works best.

The reason I included the negative reactions is to help distinguish between unpopular but constructive content, which I believe is very valuable in disrupting the echo-chamber effect, and content that is actually just bad, rude, insulting etc. and not contributing to anything.

Often, when there are guidelines on how to vote in platforms or communities they instruct people not to downvote for mere disagreement but people do it anyway. So by separating the disagree downvote from the “this is just objectively bad” vote, I think this can help curate a more positive environment. The goal is that if a comment or post is getting more than a few of those reactions, it should be hidden or maybe even flagged for moderation. But posts that are merely unpopular can stay as long as they are factual and polite.

Interesting that you say that, because I was imagining that each type of vote could be represented by a different emoji. I think people would get it if we picked the right ones. But care would be needed to avoid those that could have multiple meanings.

Maybe something like this:

Agree - 👍

Disagree - 👎

Friendly/kind (not sure the best word) - 🫂

Hostile/rude - 🤬

Factual or insightful -💡

Incorrect - ❌

You could add others but those seem like the most common and useful signals I would want to send while voting.

Another idea would be to just open it up and let people use any emoji to react. Some platforms already do this but it can get more confusing in terms of how to interpret and incorporate all of that information into ranking algorithms.

When I first joined Lemmy, I made a really big effort to make my interactions more positive than they were on Reddit. But the problem is that this required effort, and I am afraid over time my resolve might have eroded as the fediverse became just another online space instead of something new and distinct. This is a good reminder, but I wonder if this solution of just trying to be better is really sustainable for me or others? I’ll keep trying but we may need a more concrete change to get where we want to go.

I am curious if it’s time to evolve user engagement beyond up and downvotes. While they were relatively innovative at the time they were introduced, it’s been some years and we’re still here using the same system.

The biggest problem with voting as content curation is that people vote to communicate very different ideas and reactions in different circumstances. So people are sending the same signal to a well-researched, respectful but dissident perspective and to content that is rude, violent, hateful, incorrect etc.

This could be solved by allowing more diverse reactions. People will always want an agree or disagree button, so give them that. But we could also vote on how factual a post is, how polite a post is, how uplifting a post is, etc. We could then build algorithms that prioritize quality content instead of just the current popularity contest. Ideally I’d like multiple transparent algorithms that the user can choose from (or leave a default chosen by their instance) so that users can choose what kind of content is most valuable to them.

One concern is whether this would be too complicated for people to understand or engage with properly. I’d be curious to hear what others think: would this just devolve into upvotes and downvotes again or could this be a better system?

I meant the anonymity of the platform itself, not its users. In other words, most people just don’t know the platform exists, likely including people running bot farms and similar. I’d like to see evidence that this activity is taking place in Lemmy before jumping to conclusions.

Actually Lemmy is probably less anonymous for users than other platforms because you have a bunch of unrelated admins all separately monitoring unusual activity.

Is there evidence they’re on Lemmy? I find this hard to believe given the anonymity of the platform.

I think it’s more likely that these are just weird people with weird posting habits. It’s totally plausible that there is a foreigner or immigrant who has a passionate interest in Palestinian topics and they didn’t want to engage with those questions which are phrased in a very hostile manner. Playing dumb is sometimes a fun way to respond to hostile people honestly. Drives them crazy.

But sure, they could be a shill. I can’t prove they’re not. I personally doubt it.

What do you mean by support? Like ideological support or more direct support?

Yeah I didn’t comment on that because I’d have to see the whole context to make an assessment. I’ve definitely been known to respond with hostility when accused of being a shill (though that rarely happens since my views don’t line up very well with any authoritarian groups that tend to be behind these efforts). So I could see a sarcasm or willfully playing dumb being mistaken for a different kind of obfuscation.

There are lots of foreign people who take an interest in US politics, I don’t think that’s sufficient evidence personally.

But it’s really hard to prove or disprove anyone is a shill so who knows.

It’s weird because I also commented in that thread and my comments were arguably more confrontational. But I didn’t get banned for whatever reason.

They did say I would be banned in any socialist space for truthfully talking about the history of Leninism but they didn’t actually do it.

The tankie takeover of online left spaces is a problem but I’m not sure what to do about it. I guess try to politely point out that it’s not just a harmless difference of opinion whenever it comes up in more neutral spaces. Their preferred system means the murder of dissidents. That’s not what left politics should be about. And maybe try to create more open and non-violent left spaces where the truth can be discussed.

I really, really, doubt there are actual shills on Lemmy. People that hire those types of people don’t know we exist.

But there are lots of weird people with weird beliefs about politics.

I don’t think it is failed. It has reached self-sustaining levels for many topics. It will need further growth to make smaller, niche topics self-sustaining. Whether this growth will take place is an open question. I know my instance is growing in terms of activity, but I’m not sure how others are faring.

But as long as it isn’t shrinking, I think it’s well-positioned to absorb more growth as users discover it or become disillusioned with Reddit or other sites in the future.