great idea. I’m new to all this fediverse stuff. started with mastodon. social media needs to be more social again and less rage bait. we need good news. we need uplifting stories. we need cat pics.

The Fediverse is one of the precious few bastions where real talk can happen without algorithmic shaping and interference. News and politics are a fundamental part of society, and inseparable from real discussion. I disagree with the idea that to make the Fediverse better, we have to sacrifice these forms of discussion in favor of “anything else”.

Your call for stopping, slowing down, or posting literally anything else is inadvertently also a call for self-censorship in service of your personal ideal. You saying that this is the answer to the problem of attracting new membership is you expressing your own preferences and applying them broadly, and isn’t borne out by fact. People are not avoiding any of the major social media platforms due to these things, and it seems unlikely they are avoiding the Fediverse for this reason either.

The Fediverse’s lower membership is likely more of a complicated problem involving things like a broad lack of awareness of it, and the average person being put off by the technical-seeming complexity of it, which makes it appear less accessible. They are also reluctant to step outside of their existing communities, which is exacerbated by the fact that those communities tend to settle into those platforms that appear easier and more familiar.

Bottom line is, I respect your right to your opinions and your right to engage with the Fediverse according to your own needs, wants, and perspectives. I however strongly disagree with your call for community-wide self censorship in the name of filling the Fediverse with positivity at the expense of real talk under the premise of attracting new membership.

You’re more than welcome to spread as much positivity as you want wherever you want, and to distance yourself from anything you don’t personally favor. By all means start a community, encourage others to start communities based on your preferences. But calls for self-censorship on the Fediverse are problematic at best, especially given the circumstances we are currently living in.

I definitely want to see more non-news content, but I don’t think the threadiverse needs less of anything. If you wanna post news and politics, have at it! The rest of us just need to get on their level with all our other hobbies and interests.

Also, it’s discouraging to post in a niche community and always harvest downvotes from people that don’t like that you’re posting at all. I get it, there aren’t other NWSL/MLS fans out here, but could you please stop doing drive-bys and downvoting all my articles?

It’s really tough anymore to post positive content here. It feels like spitting on a fire to put it out.

I’m from the US, but I’ve always tried to include everyone in my posts, at the price of looking ignorant every now and then when I get things wrong, but it’s nice when I’ve had people from across the world remark how they’re pleasantly surprised to see something local to them being covered by a non-local. I’ve learned so much in return from just having brief interactions with users from other countries, just by showing some genuine interest in them, their languages, and their home countries. But outside of my own posts, it’s hard to find a place on Lemmy where there doesn’t seem to be things looking to drive a wedge between us.

I used to be able to jump into random posts, even if it was something I wasn’t very familiar with, to try to get conversations going, but so many news/political posts just feel rigged to get people riled up, and I’ll scroll through and not find anything to interact with a lot now.

Plenty of people tell me that I’m doing something important by doing positive stuff here. I really like the small community we’ve got of people that regularly interact. It’s hard to feel like I’m making any kind of difference though. I’m going to show up as long as people are talking to me, but there’s plenty of times I ask myself why I don’t just devote this time back into music or my volunteer work. I’ve dropped all my news and politics podcasts at this point because I’m sick of hearing it all. I censor myself on discussing animal rights issues because I don’t want to add to the pile of negative stuff to worry about. I’ll keep at it the best I can, but a lot of people here are sure making it an exhausting effort some days.

Great ideas and well articulated

We are living in a world full of conflicts and political tension that we never seen since the end of world war 2. You can’t expect people to post less negstive contents. If you talk about balance between negative and positive content I can agree

I’ve been blocking so many news communities because I go on Lemmy to have a good time. Every second post recently has been politics and I’m so sick of it. I am so for this