Too many communities require news articles

2 days ago by stinkytofuisgood to c/fediverse

In my opinion.

It's fine, but it's too common in online communities (including Lemmy) and it discourages people from posting their original thoughts or events that they find important and relevant, since something needs to come from a 'real news source' or an 'online article'.

I can make a website right now and call it "The Daily Pragmatist" or some shit and people won't bat an eye.

Reality also is that many reach conclusions based on titles alone anyhow. I can't see how it would be worse, since the body of the post is always going to be a tad more accessible than opening a new website. And we see how little people want to work to gather their knowledge, on the whole.

I get removing crappy content, but what about when thoughts are backed up with sources and opinions are relevant to overall discussion?

And separately, what's up with aversion to 'non-standard' forms of expression? I would argue that something like the show 'The Rehearsal' by Nathan Fielder, is an equally valid way to deliver real and important news to people. I wouldn't be alone in this sentiment.

Imo this shit is busted and dumb.

Edit: for those that agree in part or in whole, if you have the bandwidth for it, consider making your own community! Lemmy is still relatively small and your local instance might be even more so. It's not impossible to get a community going, and if it fails - oh well!

oeuf 22 points 2 days ago

I strongly agree.

I find personal viewpoints way more interesting to read and easier to relate to. And I'd also like to post more of my own, but it doesn't seem to be the 'done thing' for some reason, which is off-putting. I don't know if there is a genuine thought-out reason for this on the part of moderators, or whether it's some kind of unconscious internet tradition 🤷

It's a missed opportunity for connection between people.

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stinkytofuisgood 7 points 2 days ago

Subconsciously engrained way of doing things, I think you've hit the nail on the head!

Huge proportion of people here came from Reddit, and I guess it's easier to do things the way we're comfortable with. But that seems antithetical to the spirit and purpose of Lemmy and the Fediverse

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chemical_cutthroat 15 points 2 days ago

The comment section is a great place to post your well thought out and sourced opinions. I'd rather read the source up front in the post and then get opinions from strangers in the comments than the other way around.

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RickyRigatoni 8 points a day ago

Modern journalism is just opinions from strangers.

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chemical_cutthroat 2 points a day ago

Depends on where you get your articles. I avoid opinion pieces and articles from known offenders.

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chicken 15 points a day ago

Original content is good, but something I see sometimes and really dislike is unsourced screenshots of text, or otherwise something that contains factual claims that do not point you to a way to read more and verify them. Even if it happens to be true, normalizing that increases our susceptibility to misinformation by making it more difficult to detect and call out.

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stinkytofuisgood 5 points a day ago

Totally

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betterdeadthanreddit 15 points 2 days ago

Most of the ones with article requirements also have rules about source reliability/reputation so your idea about making a new site to post your thoughts and linking to that wouldn't work for long.

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Fizz 6 points 2 days ago

Do they? the sources on most news here are extremely low quality. I can't count the amount of times ive read the article then read the reference material and it completely goes against what the article claims.

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stinkytofuisgood 2 points 2 days ago

It would still gain traction before somebody noticed. And what does that say about the community?

Do they agree with the content of your 'fake' site? Do they just want to hear something they agree with regardless of the source?

I totally get your point. It's still busted and dumb.

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technocrit 0 points 21 hours ago

Most of the ones with article requirements also have rules about source reliability/reputation subjective viewpoint

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RickyRigatoni -1 points a day ago

And then they let people post articles from the daily mail.

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CobraCommander 2 points 16 hours ago

Or BBC

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RickyRigatoni 1 point 16 hours ago

So many BBC articles look like they're literally lifted from daily mail lately. Disgusting.

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jimmy90 1 point 4 hours ago

lol how's the news in russia?

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TheFeatureCreature 15 points 2 days ago

It bothers me about how news/article-centric Lemmy is in general.

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Nighed 6 points 20 hours ago

It's a link aggregator at heart, much like Reddit. It's easy content that can trigger discussion.

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brucethemoose 9 points 2 days ago

I respectfully disagree.

If you want a place to discuss opinions, that’s what comments sections are for. Or communities dedicated to discussion.

But news communities are generally rooted in facts. For current news, that means sourced, methodological journalism. Discussion stems from facts

I can make a website right now and call it “The Daily Pragmatist” or some shit and people won’t bat an eye.

This is one of the worst issues plaguing Lemmy, IMO. People post stuff from outright tabloids, random Tweet screenshots, and those kind of websites Wikipedia will outright reject as a source. This is a huge problem, but it means that communities should be more rigorous about information hygiene, TBH. They need to be stricter about what is allowed as source.

Reality also is that many reach conclusions based on titles alone anyhow.

I hate this too. But to fight it, I think Lemmy needs to steal the “community correction” thing Twitter does, so people would see community consensus right below the headline.

And I am very serious about this. I will die on this hill.

I’m not saying more discussion spaces shouldn’t exist, that’s great; but news communities should be for news.

Honestly... I have gotten close to deleting my Lemmy account and leaving, because the information hygiene is getting as bad as Reddit here. I did not come to Lemmy to engage in conspiracies and misinformation.

And the community feeling the opposite is not making me feel any better. I’ve seen other Reddit clones do down like this.

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stinkytofuisgood 3 points 2 days ago

I think we actually agree but there might be a partial misunderstanding. There was an example another commenter made of their experience with Xcancel. I think that explains it a bit more clearly.

Edit: this comment

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brucethemoose 3 points a day ago

Eh. I still (respectfully) disagree.

I think that’s newsworthy; but it should have linked the dev announcement, or GitHub thread, or wherever the information was sourced from.

If /c/technology won’t allow direct posts from developers, that is indeed a problem for /c/technology, as that’s a first party source for topical news.

But to make my position clear:

If that poster was intended to post without a source, that should be against the rules. It’s how I would moderate /c/technology.
There are other communities to post that to.
Hence, I don’t agree that this issue should be generalized. Communities need to straighten out sourcing rules to be more practical, especially to allow topical first party sources, but I don’t think they should loosen sourcing rules.

If Lemmy/Piefed has discoverability issues for small communities or an under moderation issues, I think those are structural, and we should change how the site works to address them.

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stinkytofuisgood 6 points a day ago

Fair enough. Let's agree to disagree! 🫲

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technocrit -1 points 21 hours ago

If you want a place to discuss opinions, that’s what comments sections are for.

People who arbitrarily ban content also arbitrarily ban comments and users.

But news communities are generally rooted in facts.

Curated "facts" from hegemonic sources.

This is one of the worst issues plaguing Lemmy, IMO.

Not IMO.

news communities should be for news.

Whose news? There's a deep assumption of objectivity here that is completely wrong.

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brucethemoose 1 point 12 hours ago

Well... Our points of view are so far apart, I don't even know where to begin to reconcile them.

Sourcing, information hygiene, proof, and science are irrefutably central to the way I wish to interact with the world. It should be the bedrock of any healthy online community structure, IMO.

Places where that's not enforced are place people just echo what they want to hear, in my experience. Whether its true or not is secondary, as apparently information hygiene is too "heirarchal" and constricting.

I don't want that. I don't want anything to do with the Fediverse if that's what it becomes, and it sure feels like many users want that.

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Shoshin 7 points 2 days ago

Posting news articles is low effort and just perpetuates the propaganda game. I would be supportive of pushing news to their own communities, or even a toggle to hide all common 'news' site links, to help get back to dialogue about topics not defined by a newscycle.

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HubertManne 6 points 2 days ago

i have no problem with posting news article provided you copy and paste the content or at least summarize what you as the poster thought about it. Like you read and what about it made you want to share it and what insights did you get from it. don't just hand me a leaflet about a place I could visit though. eff that. im here to interact here and don't intend to go to those other places on the internet that I avoid.

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greatwhitebuffalo41 6 points a day ago

Yeah exactly this. Not every news site is available in every country. And for the love of God, the fucking people who post paywalled articles...

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HubertManne 5 points a day ago

yeah when I see a link without anything else I feel its not about the subject of the post its about driving traffic. sorry. not interested.

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greatwhitebuffalo41 4 points a day ago

Exactly. If you post a link AND your opinion of it or, what you took from it, that's one thing. You're not fostering conversation posting a paywalled link with no commentary.

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stinkytofuisgood 3 points a day ago

To me it just shows lack of care in the topic. So easy to link an article. Not so easy to rub a couple brain cells together, I guess

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EmilieEasie 5 points 2 days ago

I never really thought about this. What are some examples of communities that require an article that you think would be better if they didn't?

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stinkytofuisgood 4 points 2 days ago

/c/technology in lemmy.world

That's one example

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antonim 5 points 2 days ago

Had that one in mind myself. I wanted to post a thread when Xcancel/Nitter shut down for good (it was initially announced they would close it due to being sued by Twitter, then they reopened for a few days, and closed again). There was no news articles about it at the time, so there was nothing to link to, even though many users would find it worth knowing about.

In general I suspect that community is undermoderated.

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stinkytofuisgood 4 points 2 days ago

That's a perfect real world example

I would've been interested to hear that

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technocrit 2 points 21 hours ago

Most of lemmy.world is completely hegemonic/lib. news, worldnews, etc.

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arran4 5 points a day ago

Link aggregators and short form text platforms have been displacing forums for decades. Probably because we are more receptive towards being advertised to than being mused / argued to.

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stinkytofuisgood 4 points a day ago

God how I wish forums would see a resurgence. Back in the day they were so vibrant and fun!

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arran4 1 point 14 hours ago

Yeah. I would love to see some diversity. I suspect the biggest issue is centralization makes things so much easier to navigate and the experience more streamlined. However sadly substantially more commercial.

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fratermus 1 point 5 hours ago

I miss newsgroups. They still exist but it's basically a wasteland.

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tal 4 points 2 days ago

I don't think that it's a problem to have news-only communities. It's easy enough to create communities that do do original content, and if people want that, then they can subscribe to it.

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stinkytofuisgood 5 points 2 days ago

Yeah that's what I meant to express by saying "it's fine".

Moderators are free to moderate as they please, just as I am free to think it's a largely widespread and pervasive problem overall.

Totally a place for 'news-only' communities which enforce certain websites or articles, but my point stands!

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dusk 2 points 2 days ago

I'm new to piefed, I'm wondering why I don't have a downvote option?

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CombatWombat 6 points 2 days ago

Some piefed instances turn it off -- iirc piefed.blahaj.zone does as well. Piefed the software supports it, but maybe rimu turned it off for the default instance? I still can downvote from my instance.

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dusk 6 points 2 days ago

I'm on piefed.social, seemed a logical option, I did find it odd that out of the box they have lemmy.ml and quokk.au blocked, couldn't find out why, feel like I don't know something that others know

I have a lemmy.zip account as well, but it has been hitting errors recently, so I thought I would try piefed

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CombatWombat 4 points 2 days ago

I quite like quokk.au, especially their sports community; I don't really recall why rimu is beefing with them, though I have a vague recollection that I thought it was somewhat overwrought. I don't think you're really missing out being defederated from lemmy.ml though. Most of all, though, I think you should avoid default instances whenever possible.

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dusk 4 points 2 days ago

my lemmy account is only 3 months old, I have no knowledge of the politics/squabbles between the instances, or even a decent understanding oh how it all works, so far it seems to integrate weirdly/awkwardly.

I only have about 30 subscriptions, 1/3 of them are slrpunk, with .ml, and .world making up a large portion of the remainder, that will no doubt change over time.

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dusk 4 points 2 days ago

Thank you, I will have a look in settings, it's needed because "Imo this shit is busted and dumb."

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stinkytofuisgood 2 points 2 days ago

As in, you're quoting me because you think my post's content is busted and dumb? Or do you dislike that I said that?

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dusk 2 points 2 days ago

Yes

To be fair, the majority of articles these days are also busted, often deliberately so.

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dusk 2 points 2 days ago

I went into settings, deselected 'federate votes' then looked it up to see what it means... and reselected it, didn't change anything else, didn't find anything that appeared to be to do with downvotes, but now I can downvote, for no apparent reason.

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stinkytofuisgood 3 points 2 days ago

I'm not sure because I don't use piefed, but at least on Lemmy you can definitely downvote. Maybe try downvoting from another app or desktop?

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jumping_redditor 0 points 20 hours ago

some lemmy instances disable downvoting, iirc blajha is one.

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stinkytofuisgood 1 point 16 hours ago

Oh neato, didn't know that!

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Nouvellalia 2 points 7 hours ago

I got chastised on /news when I posted about an ABC article being censored and removed, because there wasn't an article about it being censored and removed.

I included original links and archive links and articles talking about abc facing ongoing censorship. But no news source had written an article about this particular act of censorship.

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technocrit 2 points 21 hours ago

The arbitrary and subjective restriction of alternative content helps maintain the hegemonic narrative.

That's what requiring articles from the NYTimes, NPR, etc. is really about.

Liberalism 101.

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PattyMcB 2 points a day ago

I feel like if the rules say only articles, then a screenshot of a tweet is breaking the rules. Just sub to different communities if full discourse is what you're interested in. It's out there.

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