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?
If I see AI slop I downvote. Shouldn’t that generally take care if it if everybody does it?
No. My instance doesn’t have downvotes. You downvoting a post does nothing for instances like mine.
Report that shit instead. There’s no reason it needs to stay on the Fediverse.
You’ve just traded down votes for the report button.
I say they are two different use cases. There is often a very wide gulf between a comment that I feel does not contribute to good discussion and one that is so heinous that it needs to be removed. Most of your comments for instance: pretty naive and banal adding little good to the discussion overall, but I don’t feel that you’ve said anything hateful, obscene, or aggressive enough to warrant total removal. Usually I just downvote and move on, especially when I don’t want to hear that person’s bad take reply on my own point of view. I’ve made an exception here for you simply because you are trolling all over this thread, seemingly inviting downvotes. But, I’m going to block you and move on because you’ve killed any interest I have in this thread or the larger discussion. I still don’t think your comments rise to the level of reporting.
Reports and blocks aren’t a replacement for downvotes and if your instances doesn’t federate downvotes you shouldn’t use them that way.
Maybe consider moving to an instance that includes basic functionality?
It’s not basic functionality. It’s optional, and I don’t want it. So, no thank you.
The insistence that everybody experience the Fediverse in a particular way is what makes centralized services garbage and prone to enshittification.
Wouldn’t it be better to just make downvotes clamp to zero?
I get not liking the rat race of up vs down votes, but the scoring is designed to help spam prevention itself.
I don’t know that I’d be on board for clamping to zero. You would have to decide if you are going to have a weighted zero (i.e. secret negative tally), and if so, why bother with clamping? If not, why have downvotes?
Scoring just demonstrates popularity. It’s a voluntary poll, and it has no bearing on the quality or validity of someone’s comment. I’ve seen good posts go unnoticed, and I’ve seen bad ones get lots of points. Voluntary polls are almost useless as a metric, and especially for a system like this one where all you have to do is click a button, it’s even less useful than one where you are required to write a statement about why you voted the way you did.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be allowed to have downvotes as a way to gauge popularity, if that’s a metric they want to use to filter their content, nor do I think they should be forced to experience the Fediverse my way. I am however saying that reporting helps everyone, regardless of whether downvoting is enabled or not (plus it has the added benefit of potentially removing content that doesn’t belong; server space is a premium here, after all). We have options here on the Fediverse, and it’s a small ask to use the reporting feature and not assume there’s a “correct” or “standard” way to experience Lemmy. We can create something better than Reddit.
“Having common functionality around certain types of fediverse content is centralization.”
Not having. Enforcing.