Kbin is currently designed to encourage brigading. The fix is easy.

The current default "Homepage" value is "All". That makes sense for users with zero subscribed magazines, so they see something.

But for users with one or more subscribed magazines, the default value for "Homepage" needs to be "Subscriptions".

That's partially just because subscriptions mean little if the default frontpage ignores them. But there's a more important reason than that.

The current situation is that posts in m/Conservative are heavily downvoted, and barely upvoted. (Whatever your politics may be, consider if this was happening to you.) As more ex-redditors join, this problem is likely to worsen.

Eventually moderators need better controls, to say things like "Only members can vote", etc.

But for now, a very easy fix is to change the default value of "Homepage" to be "Subscriptions". Of course, "All" should still be a selectable option for those who prefer it.

/kbin logotype
SpacemanSpiff,
@SpacemanSpiff@kbin.social avatar

It’s really not brigading by definition. Brigading is a conscious and coordinated effort by many people to target a post or community. There is nothing conscious or coordinated about random people randomly seeing a post and downvoting it.

Brigading is not the right term. Unpopular is.

  • This is likely unavoidable because the majority of users of sites like this are not conservative. They trend toward the younger demographics. Millennials overall in the U.S. are 60% left-leaning. Gen Z are almost 70% left-leaning. What you're noticing may only become more pronounced after kbin re-federates. The fediverse is far more international then Reddit ever was and international and non-English posts are not filtered out by region like on Reddit. Conservative US politics are generally farther right than most right-leaning parties in the developed world. So you may be downvoted by international users as well that actually intentionally view magazines or posts with the conservative tag.

Really the only way to avoid this is to create your own instance and de-federate. This is precisely why the far-right social media platforms (like Truth Social) have had to isolate themselves. They’re simply a significant minority on the internet.

10A,

You're the third person to point out that it's technically not brigading. I think that's splitting hairs, because it's happening by design, but I hear you. I don't know the right present participle, but it seems like a moot point.

To everything you wrote after that, I wholly agree. I don't think this really is about politics, though, so much as it's about unpopular perspectives held by minority groups. IMHO the platform should encourage a diversity of thought.

Yes, I could create a defederated instance, or I could just go hang out on Gab or TruthSocial. I was hoping I'd find a more well-rounded community here, like I had on reddit. It's worth noting that reddit is strongly left-leaning, but has a bunch of conservative communities that thrive due to its configuration. But again, this isn't just about politics — it's about minority groups.

SpacemanSpiff,
@SpacemanSpiff@kbin.social avatar

I don’t think you’re being entirely unreasonable, I’m just not sure it’s possible.

It’s not happening by design, that would imply intent or bias on what the site shows on all. It’s happening naturally, all literary shows everything to everybody. Claiming it’s by design is like saying it’s by design when your entire office votes “no” to you banging on drums during the workday. It might be they just don’t like that idea.

Remember that the situation, the configuration you’re referring to, only existed on Reddit because those subs banned people left and right, and people blocked them. In other words, they were and are isolated. r/conservative would ban people for any dissenting comment, and conservative subs got delisted from r/all for a variety of reasons by the Reddit admins.

The only way to achieve what you’re describing would be to do the Reddit thing and pre-select magazines for the “all” tab, rather then them truly being all. Even if subs were the main page, people will still flip over to all regularly, just like they flip over to new.

You may just have to be content knowing that people that subscribe to /m/conservative go there intentionally despite the posts falling down on the all tab. Maybe there will be more people here that agree with you and the situation will change.

10A,

when your entire office votes “no” to you banging on drums during the workday

Heh

On reddit, I never looked at r/all, and I don't know how many people did, but it's something you only ever see if you seek it out.

My gripe here is just about the default "Homepage" value. Most people don't change defaults, and it would be more appropriate to default to "Subscriptions". That would mostly solve the problem.

Sure, a few people could still choose to go to m/all and see things from other communities. But how often does that happen? I don't think it's common enough to worry about.

You may just have to be content knowing that people that subscribe to /m/conservative go there intentionally despite the posts falling down on the all tab.

Sure, but this really isn't about that magazine specifically. It's about all minority groups with unpopular viewpoints.

I like your username, btw.

pasci_lei,
@pasci_lei@kbin.social avatar

@10A Or people just don’t want to see it. It is not brigading. As I don’t want people putting photos of their masculine genitals in my eyes, I don’t want to read about conservatism in my /all or /sub. Do whatever you want on this site, but don’t complain when people disagree. That’s called opinion.

10A,

That's my point, @pasci_lei. It's natural to downvote something you dislike. And the site's set up to show everyone everything by default. So any community breaking with the hivemind is naturally downvoted by users who are not members of that community.

Echutaa,
@Echutaa@kbin.social avatar

The whole point of a voting system is to do exactly what your trying to stop. If you don’t want people to vote on your posts maybe you should find a platform that doesn’t use a voting system.

Xuerian,

This level of control is generally handled at the instance level.

If you want to host a magazine and control interactions on it, host your own instance.

10A,

There should only be one instance IMHO. And it should be able to support widely diverse communities.

Xuerian,

kbin is part of the Fediverse. It is one instance of many.

I draw your attention to the sidebar:

Create your own instance

Clone repo and develop fediverse

Several communities who have more difficult interactions with others have already followed this route.

10A,

Encouraging fracturing into factions does no good for anyone. The internet needs a frontpage, and for years that was reddit. Now it seems to be kbin, maybe. Under the hood it may be a distributed system, but in practice normal people want a single website where a wide diversity of topics and opinions is embraced and protected.

Xuerian,

Maybe, but it won't be kbin, or other Fediverse sites.

It's a common enough opinion to want one site to handle everything, but that's not how this is set up.

10A,

Honestly I think it is. Much as the underlying architecture expects federation, each instance competes in a market of commoditized goods, which leads to coalescence. So if the fediverse thrives at all, it will be with one giant instance. Perhaps there'll always be a few other tiny instances for nerds (I use the word lovingly) who value that sort of thing, but normal people don't understand the concept of an "instance", and just want to show up at a .com to feast on data.

At any rate, even if you're right about federation, any social media service should seek to accommodate a wide diversity of ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

hellequin67,

They don’t really need to understand the concepts of an instance within the federation system because ultimately you join whatever instance you want and search and then you can subscribe to anything you want it doesn’t matter whether it’s a one entire instance or one tiny instance in the federation.

10A,

There are already many observable instances (pardon the pun) of confusion, even among us early adopters. Time will tell if you're right or if I am.

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