this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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I came to Lemmy cause Reddit went to shit, so I get that people want to bash it and I also understand that most of the users of Lemmy are from the US and the shit show that's happening there right now, but I am absolutely tired of these 2 types of posts being the only thing in my feed, I open this app because I want to learn new interesting things, and maybe see some funny and creative stuff, there's enough negativity and stress in my life and I don't need more of that on my only social media app. How do I filter these topics from my feed and which communities can I join to improve my feed.

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[–] prototype_g2@lemmy.ml 9 points 11 hours ago

Lemmy does not have an engagement based algorithm. It does not over analyze your every move to keep you on the site. This means you will have to do content curation yourself.

First of all, the block button exists, use liberally.

Second, the subscribe button exists, so use it to curate a nice subscribed feed

Third, I do believe there are third party clients (lemmy apps made by others) that have a word filter feature which allow you to automatically hide post and comments which contain certain keywords. (I think Voyager has that. Download mobile app here. Use the site version of the app here. Keep in mind that it uses lemm.ee as its default instance.)


But yeah, content curration is kinda just left up to you. Subscribe, Block. That's it.

Alternatively, you could join a "themed instance", that is, an instance made to house a particular community or interest, like that star-trek instance, but Lemmy does not have enough users for those to be able to exist.


If you want creative stuff, might want to have a look at !artshare@lemmy.world? Sorry, I don't have much for you.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 11 points 17 hours ago

The key is that you need to subscribe to the type of content you want to see. There's no company here deciding what your feed is going to be.

@BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world, what kind of stuff are you interested in? I'm happy to help you find related communities :)

[–] Global_Liberty@lemmy.ml 14 points 18 hours ago

Did you try subscribing to your interests?

[–] Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml 2 points 12 hours ago

Check your subs.

[–] Contemporarium@lemm.ee 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I noticed that too. I’m American but don’t give a shit about politics because it’s just too upsetting.

Go to the communities posting about it and click the 3 dots in the upper right hand corner and block the sub. I had to do this over the course of about 2 days while subbing to ones I enjoyed.

Still learning how to navigate this site and find communities I enjoy, but for the most part I’m not seeing the politics anymore. Hope this helps at least a little

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you for sharing!

!communitypromo@lemmy.ca can help to discover active communities as well

[–] Contemporarium@lemm.ee 2 points 16 hours ago

Sweet thanks!

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 3 points 18 hours ago

Average dotworld experience.

[–] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago

I have two feeds: one is "subscribed" for all the stuff I'm actually interested in, and the other is "all", for when I'm up for a bit of US politics, Reddit-bashing and weird German memes..

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 day ago

Hey OP, I just want to say from experience the reddit bashing usually dies down a bit after a quick spike of reddit refugees like we're seeing now.

[–] Delphia@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What I think you need to do is have multiple accounts, I have one with a LOT of filters. "Trump, Drumpf, Trumpist, MAGA, Elon, Musk, Tesla, Rep, Republican " you get the idea. Any community I have no interest in blocked, plenty of users who go into benign subs and bring up politics blocked...  Its my relaxing feed. NSFW filter on

 I have one with the only filter being the nsfw one. I see the whole disaster.

I have one on Lemmy.nsfw... for reasons. Filter by local... 



I have one 
[–] P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Why is your comment a code block?

[–] bitcrafter@programming.dev 3 points 11 hours ago

I for one appreciate it when the AI let us know up front that we are conversing with a machine.

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago
[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 43 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Those are the most popular posts. I recommend trying to find communities that you like and subscribing to them, then read the subscribed feed.

[–] Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I recommend finding communities you don't like and blocking those, then browse the all feed. Otherwise you get 3 posts a week.

[–] Madbrad200@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

That's not true. I've got a pretty active feed of subs, you just need to spend time curating a good list

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[–] digdilem@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 day ago

I know - it's exhausting.

All social and news streams are absolutely being flooded by American politics right now. It's mad and crazy stuff, but there's only so much someone can take before it really starts to affect ones mental state.

And Lemmy partially started as a not-reddit, so I guess it's normal that people come to vent.

So - positive stuff you can do!

Subscribe to more communities that do interest you. Leave less space for the other stuff to come in. You can also block communities from your main feed very easily if you're being given stuff you don't want from them.

Youtube (with adblock) is hardly affected (or if it is, I don't see it). That brings lots of interesting and creative content.

Going out into the world if you're able. Reconnecting with nature, and also being reminded that people, by and large, are usually nice to you if you're nice to them.

And I've been picking up old games and playing them more. Escapism is not such a bad thing.

[–] undystains@lemm.ee 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The majority of folk that migrated from Reddit probably did so because of reasons related to those two things.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The earliest exoduses were socialist political communities banned from reddit (particularly /r/chapotraphouse who formed Hexbear, and /r/GenZedong who landed in Lemmygrad). Then, the most recent exodus is related to censorship related to Luigi Mangione, a US political issue, coinciding with a strong sudden re-emergence of global anti-American [government] sentiment due to diplomatic catastrophes with a range of former allies.

In fact, the founders cite reddit's corporate nature and its pro-US-imperialist, racist stances as their motivation to create Lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html

So I'm not surprised at all that the default feed is covered in political topics, it's always been a strong topic here and it's just gotten stronger. But there's probably enough activity now that one can filter it out and still have enough action to keep it fun.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I was kind of hoping for more Western African culture, news and discussion from this Mali-based server.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

Well there's some lovely anti-imperialist coups going on in West Africa recently, here please read these 30 news articles about Burkino Fa

[–] P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 0 points 18 hours ago

Unfortunately, the ML from lemmy.ml is appropriation and it actually means Marxist-Leninist

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Use a filter and remove everything dedicated to US politics and Reddit to reduce the quantity by 80%

Clearly you don’t frequent the NSFW forums

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 day ago (6 children)
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[–] Vanth@reddthat.com 97 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Set your default view to the communities you subscribe to. Don't subscribe to communities that overlap with politics or reddit.

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 71 points 2 days ago (3 children)

You do know you could have just asked how to curate your feed without whining, right? I mean, if there's enough negativity and stress in your life, why bring negativity with you?

I mean, I could give you the advice without snarkiness about it, but I want to make the point that it not only isn't necessary to complain about what content is there, it's counterproductive. Just ask what you want to know, and you'll get better answers.

The first step is to curate your feed.

There's three options: all, local and subscribed. All is going to pull in every instance and community that your instance is federated with, and has been visited by someone from your instance. To curate that feed, you block communities that present content you don't want to see.

For the subscribed feed, obviously, you only get the things you choose to subscribe to, so it takes as long or longer to set up as blocking on all. So you'll have to search your interests directly if you don't want to scroll all to find things to subscribe to.

The local feed is only content from your instance. You can block things as they come up and trim away things you don't want to see, but you'd be better off taking a few days to check out what instances have the least communities that feature content you don't like, then join one of those and that way need to do less blocking.

However, some apps offer filtering, if you're on mobile. Afaik, all the popular ones do, and most of the less popular ones, so you'd need to go to your app store and see what looks best to you.

You can usually filter keywords that way. I filter some of the more repetitive names that pop up in political communities so that it isn't the majority of my feed, but still lets in some that if I blocked communities, would restrict my feed too much. That's just an example of one way to go about it.

I prefer filters over blocks most of the time, with blocks being reserved for communities that are totally unpleasant, or aren't useful for my needs at all. Filters in an app let you really fine tune things.

For you, I think a hybrid approach via an app will work best. Filter the term reddit, block any communities that you find that are based on reddit subjects.

Then, block political communities that are US specific, and slowly filter out via terms like democrat, republican, and the usual politicians. That way, you'll avoid us issues without missing out on news that's relevant to you and your needs.

I don't think you'll get as well tuned via browser, even when alternative front ends.

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I'm starting to see that most Canadians are more interested in american politics than in their own countries politics. When a gigantic behemoth is wounded, and about to fall, you get a lot of rubberneckers. Sadly, I include myself in this list.

[–] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I feel like we always have been - the Trudeau Sr. quote comes to mind:

Living next to you [The U.S.] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.

Only more so now that said beast is trumpeting, stomping its feet and shitting everywhere.

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 19 hours ago

That's a good quote! Thanks.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago

If it's falling towards you, it is indeed good to pay attention to that. Also, please accept my apologies that our bullshit is spilling over the line.

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[–] darkfyre@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago

Do you mean to tell me you don't also have a bunch of Linux memes?

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't see much of that stuff. I mostly subscribe to foss communities and I mostly see relevant stuff about foss and tech. Subscribe to communities pertaining to your hobbies/interests and your feed should reflect that

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[–] doug@lemmy.today 54 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Why are there obituaries in the obituaries column?

Customize your feed and/or block whatever you want to filter it, buddy. There’s a Reddit exodus because of American-centered events, so you’re going to see American-centric news and Reddit-bashing stories in some default feeds for a bit. Filter it out and move on.

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How to use Ublock Origin to filter keywords out

Also you can block certain instances/communities/users. You can practice blocking users on me first!

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Are you talking about Lemmy.world, or Lemmy.ml? Either way, I'd say to look for an instance that more appeals to you.

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[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Try another planet which is not on fire, sorry for going all political on you!

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