this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Hey folks -

The seemingly never-ending flood of Musk/Twitter news and commentary is getting to some of our users (and some of the mods, too), so we've decided to create a general Megathread for all things related to Elon Musk and X/Twitter.

This thread will be a general Musk catch-all, so we're including news about Musk acting the fool as related to any of his companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring). News about those companies that don't involve Elon can be posted outside this thread.

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[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 85 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I think it's a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can't scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.

I agree its not great with multiple threads but it's also not the end of the world imo. Users want to talk about these things. Let them.

It's not fun to post on megathreads because your comments get buried. At least it was like that on reddit.

[–] mifan@feddit.dk 39 points 1 year ago

To rid the feed of Elon news we now have a stickied post with Elon news. I feel like there’s a meme hidden there somewhere.

[–] Frog-Brawler@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s the reason I want a mega thread. I want to be able to scroll past anything Elon. Putting it in one spot is ideal.

[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 21 points 1 year ago

It's ideal for you since you don't want to discuss it, yes.

[–] limeaide@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Not only that, but it slows down discussion and more niche/focused topics are often missed

[–] Zetaphor@zemmy.cc 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think it’s a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can’t scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.

The problem is there are so goddamn many, to the extent that I'm working on a userscript that lets me entire hide posts that contain keywords. Checking my frontpage using Subscribed/Active, 5 of the first 20 posts are about this "news". And that's a full day after it happened, yesterday was far worse

Edit: The userscript is ready!

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Of course there are a lot of posts about it. There are big changes happening over at Twitter right now. It will obviously settle down eventually, but it’s an ongoing, pretty significant event.

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IMO the important thing is removing duplicates and pushing people to post to the most relevant communities (and for us regular users, only upvoting the post in the most relevant community). As well, Lemmy itself needs better means of combining the same post across many communities.

When I say removing duplicates, I also mean for a given event, not a literal duplicate link. We don't need 5 posts from different media sites on the same event unless a new one is significantly different.

That's the issue I've been noticing a lot. Every major news site wants to post their own opinion piece on how dumb Musk is (can't blame em) and it feels like every single one of those will get posted to some Lemmy community.

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago
[–] Hypx@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@mrmanager

@TheRtRevKaiser

If the mods really find it that irritating, they might as well ban all Musk-related news.

[–] prd@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

Don't threaten me with a good time

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This policy functionally does that, but they get to claim they aren’t banning the topics. We can’t talk about the ongoing changes/trainwreck of one of the largest social media websites in the world now on a technology discussion board. Can’t make this stuff up lol

[–] thedarkfly@feddit.nl 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the idea of a megathread is to give the opportunity to avoid a topic that is flooding the community to people not interested.

[–] CoderKat@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Mega threads should be per event though. Eg, "Trump gets convicted" would be a mega thread. You wouldn't have an "everything Trump related" mega thread.

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My guess is some of them simply don’t like people saying bad things about musk and just want to stifle discussion.

[–] zark@beehaw.org 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m pretty sure most of the people running Beehaw are more than happy with people saying bad things about Musk. But it does get a little spammy, it’s honestly not all that interesting after a while?

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I get that but all this solution does is effectively ban any discussions of Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, or Twitter.

[–] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Within 5 days the megathread will have 1 to 0 comments a day. And that's a generous estimate. You know this.

[–] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But that's not censorship. It's people choosing to disengage or no longer to contribute.

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Because lemmy, like Reddit, is not conducive to the concept of a megathread. It’s the format that’s the problem, not the contents. You expect people to constantly stop what they’re doing and deliberately navigate to an old megathread and then sort through all the comments/conversations happening with days - weeks even - of gaps between them? Nobody does that.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe, but Lemmy has sorting options that Reddit didn't, like Active and New Comments, so maybe we need to reevaluate megathreads for Lemmy

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There’s nothing to evaluate. Megathreads were designed to kill topics on Reddit (unless it was a MAJOR, developing, current event) and they do the same here. You’re the first person to comment at all in this thread in over a month.

[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most of the Musk and Twitter posts don't even have many comments as it is anyway. And when they do it's people saying the same thing over and over in multiple splintered comment sections.

Besides, I don't think lemmy is that way for megathreads yet like reddit can be. Partly because the userbase is smaller and more engaged, and partly because "active" sort exists.

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

People are treating this platform exactly like reddit because the churn of posts is exactly the same. You participate in the first hours or you miss it entirely.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No, people are annoyed by the constant articles he generates.

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So the solution is to all but ban any discussion of him or his companies, all of which are pretty important topics, particularly in US tech news?

I can't stand the dude, he's garbage. I wish he'd fade out of the limelight and let smart people take his companies forward. But to functionally ban any discussions because he's too present is a big over-correction.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

I don’t agree with it, I’d prefer people use filters (most clients seem to support them).

[–] prd@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or people could go on the other hundreds of websites that exist and talk about him there?

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Well the next time a community bans a topic you think should be allowed you make sure to remember this comment lol

[–] QHC@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is already a system for users to provide feedback on what articles they do or don't want to see.

[–] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 4 points 1 year ago

I'm not here to weigh in on the megathread debate as a whole, but assuming you're referring to upvotes and downvotes, Beehaw disables the latter.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree, and think megathreads should only be used when the scope is limited to prevent the same story from being posted multiple times

[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've noticed that there are tons of people who tries to tell others what to talk about, even what words they should use. What's going on... :)

[–] hoodatninja@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)