We have a hook into the account creation process via the api, and when a new accout is created we basically mimic the user inserting personal instance blocks directly in the db. We also pm new users on account creation so we include info on how to remove the blocks there. It’s about the best in-the-middle solution i can do at the moment!
I agree fully with you around the moderation tools built in - it really needs some development. We do a lot via our bot to try and provide some better tooling and especially focus on the onboarding part of a new user. I think 1.0 includes some improvements here.
I can’t say how effective all of this work has been for user retention, but I’m hoping it helps get a few people away from reddit!
Nice! I tried to look around but I can’t seem to search within the c/Home community - going to https://lemmy.zip/search and clicking the drop-down for Community, and putting in “Home” just shows a list that ends without showing the actual !home@lemmy.zip community. So that’s another Lemmy tool that could use some loving care and attention! Or maybe you have created it specially? In any case I thought I would share that experience in case it helps.
What I did manage to find was that there are 33 local subscribers at e.g. https://lemmy.zip/c/ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net (so not zero, though unknown how fully “active” that would be, and anyway even if it was not, others located on that instance could be), while on the other side the upvote vs. downvote ratios present in e.g. https://lemmy.zip/post/31884041 seem strongly on the negative side against Hexbear, and yet not entirely so (and yet I cannot see the votes purely from local users?).
From what I do see, I do not envy your position: lemmy.zip is going to struggle with people not wanting to speak up as often as they could for fear of commentors brigading their offerings. I myself almost left the Fediverse when those comments kept coming in for WEEKS and WEEKS after I stopped responding to a reply made to a post stumbled upon via browsing All, which happened both on Hexbear.net and again on lemmygrad.ml. And yet the only way to fully stop the trolling would be defederation, which at a guess some insignificant fraction (even if still mostly minority) of users on lemmy.zip may be against. You could do a poll to find out I suppose?
Edit: I found an example post in r/RedditAlternatives complaining about toxicity on Lemmy. Here is one of the comments therein (not from OP but as part of the overall conversation):
If their experience is anything like mine, it’s populated by mostly far left wing Americans who were banned from Reddit for being too extreme. I disagreed with someone about a topical left wing American position and received death threats. In fact I’ve never received that many death threats on Reddit. Lemmy is extreme.
(end of edit added section)
But it’s a problem not just for one instance to face and rather for the entire Threadiverse really: we are a “Nazi bar”, allowing such users to come here even if we are not “that way” ourselves, and by allowing them, condoning their actions even as we try to reach out to new users from Reddit who we will expose to them.
On the other hand, I don’t know how much trolling actually happens outside of their actual communities, and after these instance blocks being put into place, if no other complaints are submitted about them by Lemmy.zip users… then that indeed may has solved (most of) the problem!? So I fear that only defederation may be sufficient, but I respect the process to try other things first if that’s what you want to do.:-)
We have a hook into the account creation process via the api, and when a new accout is created we basically mimic the user inserting personal instance blocks directly in the db. We also pm new users on account creation so we include info on how to remove the blocks there. It’s about the best in-the-middle solution i can do at the moment!
I agree fully with you around the moderation tools built in - it really needs some development. We do a lot via our bot to try and provide some better tooling and especially focus on the onboarding part of a new user. I think 1.0 includes some improvements here.
I can’t say how effective all of this work has been for user retention, but I’m hoping it helps get a few people away from reddit!
Nice! I tried to look around but I can’t seem to search within the c/Home community - going to https://lemmy.zip/search and clicking the drop-down for Community, and putting in “Home” just shows a list that ends without showing the actual !home@lemmy.zip community. So that’s another Lemmy tool that could use some loving care and attention! Or maybe you have created it specially? In any case I thought I would share that experience in case it helps.
What I did manage to find was that there are 33 local subscribers at e.g. https://lemmy.zip/c/ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net (so not zero, though unknown how fully “active” that would be, and anyway even if it was not, others located on that instance could be), while on the other side the upvote vs. downvote ratios present in e.g. https://lemmy.zip/post/31884041 seem strongly on the negative side against Hexbear, and yet not entirely so (and yet I cannot see the votes purely from local users?).
From what I do see, I do not envy your position: lemmy.zip is going to struggle with people not wanting to speak up as often as they could for fear of commentors brigading their offerings. I myself almost left the Fediverse when those comments kept coming in for WEEKS and WEEKS after I stopped responding to a reply made to a post stumbled upon via browsing All, which happened both on Hexbear.net and again on lemmygrad.ml. And yet the only way to fully stop the trolling would be defederation, which at a guess some insignificant fraction (even if still mostly minority) of users on lemmy.zip may be against. You could do a poll to find out I suppose?
Edit: I found an example post in r/RedditAlternatives complaining about toxicity on Lemmy. Here is one of the comments therein (not from OP but as part of the overall conversation):
(end of edit added section)
But it’s a problem not just for one instance to face and rather for the entire Threadiverse really: we are a “Nazi bar”, allowing such users to come here even if we are not “that way” ourselves, and by allowing them, condoning their actions even as we try to reach out to new users from Reddit who we will expose to them.
On the other hand, I don’t know how much trolling actually happens outside of their actual communities, and after these instance blocks being put into place, if no other complaints are submitted about them by Lemmy.zip users… then that indeed may has solved (most of) the problem!? So I fear that only defederation may be sufficient, but I respect the process to try other things first if that’s what you want to do.:-)