I’ve noticed a lot of posts lately that are just spam for slopware, often not even having anything to do with self-hosting. As sad as I am about it, I’m pretty close to unsubscribing to keep spam out of my Lemmy feeds.
Before doing so, though, I wanted to ask if there was any formal policy or rule for the community that could help cut down on thr spam, and if so, what would be most useful for me to do when I see a spam post? That I’d, is the Report button the right tool, is there some other way to let moderators know?
But what’s the point of downvoting on Lemmy? It doesn’t seem to affect visibility. Or maybe there’s a setting somewhere I need to adjust?
The point is signaling to other people that it’s not worth their time. I sort by new so I often see these slop posts as well, but other readers very quickly downvote it into oblivion so if a post is older than say 15 minutes I generally will know not to read it even if it sounds interesting at first glance. A mod will come by later to actually delete it if that’s warranted, but until then downvotes suffice.
I typically sort by “top six hours” and I’m barely aware of the problem OP is talking about. So yeah, it seems like downvoting works.
Depending on your sorting method, downvoted posts will be featured less favorably in list views. You will immediately know that a heavily downvoted post is not worth your attention. Some clients might let you filter displayed posts based on vote counts or up/down ratio.
My instance has downvotes turned off (which I like). That action only benefits people who care about downvotes.
The better option that helps everyone is to report bad faith posts.
Looks like your comment is receiving downvotes just fine…
Maybe this thread is a lesson in how downvotes have a purpose and why instances turning them off is silly puritanical nonsense that serves to aid bad content more than anything else it purports to achieve.
On your instance, yes. Those downvotes get dropped on my side, so I can’t see them, and neither can anyone else on a non-downvote instance. My proposal would address the issue of slop for everyone, whereas downvote proponents are just saying, “Yeah, well my way is better. Lemmy is only for people who do it my way.”
If this thread is a lesson in anything, it’s that the bad habits of Reddit carried over, and people are so fucking lazy, they can’t be bothered to click the report button.
If anything you’re the one being obtuse and saying your way is better and that people must adapt to your way. Downvotes are the default behaviour of the software and the “reddit-like” experience of Lemmy
If better means “more inclusive,” then yes. It’s better. Did I say to stop downvoting? No. Did I tell people to abandon their downvoting-enabled instances? No (though have a look and see how I’ve been told multiple times to leave mine).
Dunno why people are hellbent on excluding people who don’t want optional downvotes when non-optional reporting exists.
But do go on about how I’m excluding the poor instances with downvotes by recommending an inclusive action that they also benefit from.
You’re supposed to report posts that break instance or community rules, not whatever you happen to consider to be “bad faith”. You can’t moderate based on intent, only actions, otherwise you’re asking for a thought police where only the popular opinion is permitted to exist.
Besides, even if your instance has disabled downvotes, other instances can still see them.
This isn’t Reddit. Mods aren’t beholden to some set of standards handed down by moneyed interests. They’re real people with (hopefully) common sense and a desire to create something better than Reddit.
That’s my point. If instances like mine can’t see downvotes, it’s excluding people like me, because people can’t be bothered to report. Furthermore, all it is is a popularity contest. “A bunch of people don’t like it” is no guarantee you won’t, nor does it demonstrate that the content is in fact garbage; it just shows a bunch of people don’t like it.
I’d love to know what an actual moderator would think if you imposed your idea on them.
If you mean a mod from this comm, I’d love some clarity on this matter, too.
But as a general application, what would that tell you? Moderators aren’t some special class of people; they’re regular people who volunteer.
The better question is: what would you do if you were a moderator? Would you want to review and remove a post that was potentially AI slop, or would you keep it and let users rely on downvotes and sorting?
For my part, if a particular community’s mods aren’t interested in clamping down on AI slop, then I know where I don’t want to be.