Comment on Creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course

OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

Every single person without exception that I’ve ever told about Lemmy (even/especially those with PhDs) tells me upon our next visit, often with somewhat of a horrified look on their face, that it contains extremist content, then promptly never wants to discuss Lemmy ever again.

Sexually explicit content is easily turned either on or off at will as the user may choose at any given moment. However, “extremist content” cannot bc those who share such refuse to display the same level of sensitivity to self-label it as is done for porn. Granted that it likely surges in waves, but that only means that their first impressions of the Fediverse may or may not be formed by let’s say 4 of the first 10 posts that they see calling for the actual, not-really-joking beheading of landlords.

Yes, you can block it (as I choose to do), but again I’m talking first impressions here, before people have even decided if they want to look at 10 more posts, or simply walk away - and let’s be honest the latter is a heck of a lot easier than having to learn the intricacies of how the Fediverse works currently. We are nowhere close to the level of e.g. Wikipedia where you (1) click, (2) read, (3) repeat.

Also, I realize that X at this point might be similar? (Honestly I don’t know, I don’t have an account thus cannot see it directly without one.) On the other hand, it is grandfathered into the public consciousness, having once been Twitter. Therefore a more apt comparison might be Truth Social. Like Truth Social, many people take one look at the Fediverse, and never want to return. Which perhaps should give us pause - bc if something is too extreme for Redditors even then dayum - but setting aside any judgement atm, and most definitely not wanting to impinge upon anyone’s freedom of speech, I am saying that the content on the Fediverse most definitely does not seem to match expectations of a “mainstream audience”. Particularly not ones used to dealing with computer coding i.e. Linux (though the people I’ve been mentioning it to are coders even).

And ofc that depends on what instance you choose to access it from - Mbin would provide a very different experience than, let’s say, Lemmygrad.ml, and Lemmy.cafe (the only instance I’ve ever heard of that has defederated from “the big three”) again more than a little different from lemm.ee or mander.xyz, that opens the floodgates wide and barely blocks anything (which makes me wonder how they control CSAM? perhaps they ban anyone who attempts to subscribe to anything related).

I am glad that you remained… but since you asked, I thought I would bring it up.

Keep in mind that this isn’t necessarily a conversation about mere preference: you might literally be fired, depending on the rules of your institution, and how much it enjoys freedom of speech. e.g. I would wonder about someone in Germany exposing college kids to a pro-Nazi post (I hear they are EXTREMELY serious about such, and even so much as a symbol posed in a slightly positive light…), or someone in the USA, cough Florida cough, to a post that is critical of Trump or “God” (meaning Trump again, somehow 🙄), or daring to say something like “God loves people, regardless of sexual preference”, plus notice how far down I got into this message without even bringing up the Gaza situation at all. People can be quite litigious, and colleges can be quite authoritarian, and therefore I for one would be extremely wary of such - the same as including Truth Social in an assignment - until such time as the Lemmy experience allows itself to become more presentable to a mainstream audience.

Although maybe you can take this feedback and find a way - like proposing to to to mander.xyz but stating explicitly some warnings about keeping the button set to show only “Local” posts, while if you browse “All”… then you have gone beyond the assignment and ventured out into the big wide world and therefore might be exposed to more ah… “variety” of content then you may have realized ever existed!? 😁

source
Sort:hotnewtop