There is perennial discussion about what fediverse servers (Lemmy or otherwise) to recommend to new users. I have a proposal, perhaps not very original but I haven’t seen it made often.
Let’s just recommend that newbies pick an instance that is located close to them geographically. That’s to say: their country, their region, or (ideally) their town.
Some context. Personally, I am not totally sold on social media, federated or otherwise. The evidence is now pretty clear that it causes major social harms. One way it does this is by fuelling polarization around hot-button national and international debates, at the expense of local issues. Reviving democracy is going to mean boosting communities at a local level. This could be a small way to do that.
Well, if the true nature of the fediverse is to encourage people to silo themselves into echo chambers where they never have to deal with others who don’t already share all their values and opinions - if that’s truly the point of this thing - then yes, apparently I’m wasting my time here. I still hope there’s a better way.
Ah I believe this is the Either/Or logical fallacy.
People not wanting to see hate speech or propaganda does not mean they are in echo chambers. Those are two different things.
It also doesn’t stand with my original statement. Go set up your own instance that is welcoming. That would prove that it’s not an echo chamber and expand the fediverse. Win win from what I see. Let us know when it’s up.
You know that bad guys are now calling your ideas “hate speech” and “propaganda”, right? And they believe it as much as you do. How do you propose to get out of this mess if not by talking?
And I believe this logical fallacy is Moral Equivalence.
We’re not comparing here, I’m not biting on the rage bait. Again, the proposed solution stands. Set up your own instance and prove us all wrong, show us how to make this utopia you promise.
Since when am I proposing a utopia? I’m proposing that people talk to people in their physical communities. Nothing more ambitious than that.
There, that better? Show us how to do it, if it’s popular more will do it.
You’re just saying I should practice what I preach and get off LW, is that it? Can’t be bothered, but fair enough. My proposal here concerns new users.
Yes, that is my proposal. Many people complain saying there are better ways to host instances but no one is willing to practice what they preach and actually do it. If you want to see change in the fediverse then you should step up and do it.
New users have a choice when joining, you should make a new instance and convince the new users why they should join. I would support a toggle on join-lemmy which lets them see what servers are geographically close, but that would be irrelevant before you set up an instance to pave the way.
If you “can’t be bothered” then obviously you aren’t as passionate about it as you claim to be.
Since when did I claim to be “passionate” about anything? My proposal concerns new users, it’s in the title. I’m not a new user any more and I have a bunch of post and comments to my virtual name (not that it’s important, sure). But I now see that it would have been better if I had been pushed to another server when I signed up. Hence the proposal.