I think the fediverse might provide a supporting role in information sharing but it can’t really replace in person organizations.

Interesting. Is there a way to set this up so I could follow a user on pixelfed here on Lemmy for example?

And would you see just my posts or also a bunch of contextless comments? The latter might not be too useful.

Cool so it is possible. Seems like a good solution to the problem of automated communities that put out a lot of posts.

Oh that’s an interesting idea. Seems like it would be the ideal solution if it’s not overly difficult to implement. @poVoq@slrpnk.net FYI, not sure if this is something that you’d like to investigate. We’re discussing this RSS feed feature which seems quite useful but might create problems for the all view. If there is a similar option for the various Lemmit bots, it might solve that problem as well.

Ah, this is probably what I wasn’t understanding. Thanks for answering all of my questions. I can see how that might be a problem.

Seems like Mastodon needs some way to handle threading better before this could really work then. Kind of surprising that they don’t have that.

I still hope there is some way we can connect with the entire fediverse at some point in the future but we’ll have to see what form that might take.

Yeah Mongabay is on the list thanks to me, and I’ll have to check out the others.

I looked at a few sorting mechanisms and it does seem to be OK with the exception of new and scaled. Scaled in particular had a lot of posts from Mongabay, but maybe this is just because it was recently federated for the first time? I’ll check back and see if it subsides after a little while. I hope it does because while I don’t really use the all view, I know some people who do are very bothered by these types of frequent bot posts, including one of our admins.

Couldn’t you subscribe to a user the same way you do to a community, and see their posts show up in your feed? Is there some reason I am missing that can’t work?

I’m not saying Lemmy should change its whole schtick and become like Mbin, but if there is a small change that can allow more widespread connections across the fediverse, it’s hard to see the downside.

Well this is why I think Lemmy allowing individual follows is the best solution. It’s completely compatible with the interface here. If I am understanding correctly, your suggestion would only allow you to see people who opt into posting as part of those groups. But what I want is to be able to reach and communicate with anyone on the fediverse, no matter the platform. I think this is really only going to work by connecting individual users with one another, which there’s currently no way to do.

While Reuters is obviously written from a neoliberal perspective, I think as long as you are aware of that, their coverage is fine. It’s very fact based. It’s designed to provide information for investors who are trying to make money from current events, so they have an incentive to do accurate coverage, but of course they will mainly cover things that are relevant to the finance world.

Wow you can use Lemmy as an RSS feed? Will these posts overpower local stuff though?

Hopefully me clicking on these won’t mean the all view on my instance is now completely overtaken by this stuff…

How would that work exactly? Make hashtags into “communities” or something?

I think the interoperability of the Fediverse is its main advantage. We don’t need to be constrained by what we previously thought our focus was before the ideals of the fediverse were mainstream. If people don’t want to follow individuals there’s nothing that would force them to, but I think being able to connect with much wider portion of the fediverse would really help Lemmy grow.

If there’s another, better way to do this then I’m open to it but allowing the following of individual accounts seems like a very simple and easy way to accomplish this.

Thank you I had the exact same reaction! So unsafe!

I don’t understand this mentality. Reddit allows this, and it seems like it wouldn’t require much retooling of anything.

Sure, I could move to these other services but I don’t want to leave the slrpnk community. While I’m increasingly frustrated with the state of Lemmy and particularly the devs, our instance is still great.

So when is Lemmy going to support following users? Seems like a major missing feature to me.

Did they bring back the porn? I thought it was banned.

What about spam instances? Or is there another way that’s handled?

Well, there is a distinction between the the leadership and the populace. The context here was about the populace, since that is who is participating in these online conversations. I agree with you that the current government is an extreme right one. And yes many people did vote for this but I suspect many do not support his full agenda, they were just fooled into thinking this was the least bad option.

Unless you’re willing to go with a very closed off instance you’re still going to be interacting with the broader fediverse which is very left.

I don’t think that’s really going to change unless there is another big migration and I don’t necessarily want it to. But I would like if Lemmings would be kinder to one another and realize that not having read 800 pages of leftist theory doesn’t mean you’re an evil imperialist. Everyone is on their own journey to understanding the world and I think a lot of people here are so judgmental that they would be fighting with their own past and future selves if they could meet them. It’s OK to disagree sometimes. Yes, even when people hold harmful views. We all do to some extent.

Beehaw is definitely quite left but it’s more polite so maybe that would be better for normies that are willing to follow strict rules over there.