i have no problem with posting news article provided you copy and paste the content or at least summarize what you as the poster thought about it. Like you read and what about it made you want to share it and what insights did you get from it. don't just hand me a leaflet about a place I could visit though. eff that. im here to interact here and don't intend to go to those other places on the internet that I avoid.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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Posting news articles is low effort and just perpetuates the propaganda game. I would be supportive of pushing news to their own communities, or even a toggle to hide all common 'news' site links, to help get back to dialogue about topics not defined by a newscycle.
It bothers me about how news/article-centric Lemmy is in general.
The comment section is a great place to post your well thought out and sourced opinions. I'd rather read the source up front in the post and then get opinions from strangers in the comments than the other way around.
I respectfully disagree.
If you want a place to discuss opinions, that’s what comments sections are for. Or communities dedicated to discussion.
But news communities are generally rooted in facts. For current news, that means sourced, methodological journalism. Discussion stems from facts
I can make a website right now and call it “The Daily Pragmatist” or some shit and people won’t bat an eye.
This is one of the worst issues plaguing Lemmy, IMO. People post stuff from outright tabloids, random Tweet screenshots, and those kind of websites Wikipedia will outright reject as a source. This is a huge problem, but it means that communities should be more rigorous about information hygiene, TBH. They need to be stricter about what is allowed as source.
Reality also is that many reach conclusions based on titles alone anyhow.
I hate this too. But to fight it, I think Lemmy needs to steal the “community correction” thing Twitter does, so people would see community consensus right below the headline.
And I am very serious about this. I will die on this hill.
I’m not saying more discussion spaces shouldn’t exist, that’s great; but news communities should be for news.
Honestly... I have gotten close to deleting my Lemmy account and leaving, because the information hygiene is getting as bad as Reddit here. I did not come to Lemmy to engage in conspiracies and misinformation.
And the community feeling the opposite is not making me feel any better. I’ve seen other Reddit clones do down like this.
I think we actually agree but there might be a partial misunderstanding. There was an example another commenter made of their experience with Xcancel. I think that explains it a bit more clearly.
Edit: this comment
I strongly agree.
I find personal viewpoints way more interesting to read and easier to relate to. And I'd also like to post more of my own, but it doesn't seem to be the 'done thing' for some reason, which is off-putting. I don't know if there is a genuine thought-out reason for this on the part of moderators, or whether it's some kind of unconscious internet tradition 🤷
It's a missed opportunity for connection between people.
Subconsciously engrained way of doing things, I think you've hit the nail on the head!
Huge proportion of people here came from Reddit, and I guess it's easier to do things the way we're comfortable with. But that seems antithetical to the spirit and purpose of Lemmy and the Fediverse
Most of the ones with article requirements also have rules about source reliability/reputation so your idea about making a new site to post your thoughts and linking to that wouldn't work for long.
Do they? the sources on most news here are extremely low quality. I can't count the amount of times ive read the article then read the reference material and it completely goes against what the article claims.
It would still gain traction before somebody noticed. And what does that say about the community?
Do they agree with the content of your 'fake' site? Do they just want to hear something they agree with regardless of the source?
I totally get your point. It's still busted and dumb.
I don't think that it's a problem to have news-only communities. It's easy enough to create communities that do do original content, and if people want that, then they can subscribe to it.
Yeah that's what I meant to express by saying "it's fine".
Moderators are free to moderate as they please, just as I am free to think it's a largely widespread and pervasive problem overall.
Totally a place for 'news-only' communities which enforce certain websites or articles, but my point stands!
I never really thought about this. What are some examples of communities that require an article that you think would be better if they didn't?
/c/technology in lemmy.world
That's one example
Had that one in mind myself. I wanted to post a thread when Xcancel/Nitter shut down for good (it was initially announced they would close it due to being sued by Twitter, then they reopened for a few days, and closed again). There was no news articles about it at the time, so there was nothing to link to, even though many users would find it worth knowing about.
In general I suspect that community is undermoderated.
That's a perfect real world example
I would've been interested to hear that
I'm new to piefed, I'm wondering why I don't have a downvote option?
Some piefed instances turn it off -- iirc piefed.blahaj.zone does as well. Piefed the software supports it, but maybe rimu turned it off for the default instance? I still can downvote from my instance.
I'm on piefed.social, seemed a logical option, I did find it odd that out of the box they have lemmy.ml and quokk.au blocked, couldn't find out why, feel like I don't know something that others know
I have a lemmy.zip account as well, but it has been hitting errors recently, so I thought I would try piefed
I quite like quokk.au, especially their sports community; I don't really recall why rimu is beefing with them, though I have a vague recollection that I thought it was somewhat overwrought. I don't think you're really missing out being defederated from lemmy.ml though. Most of all, though, I think you should avoid default instances whenever possible.
my lemmy account is only 3 months old, I have no knowledge of the politics/squabbles between the instances, or even a decent understanding oh how it all works, so far it seems to integrate weirdly/awkwardly.
I only have about 30 subscriptions, 1/3 of them are slrpunk, with .ml, and .world making up a large portion of the remainder, that will no doubt change over time.
It's definitely the case the fediverse requires a lot of specific, technical knowledge to really grasp, and that the onboarding story for new users is pretty confusing, especially since the most significant decision you make (what instance to host your account on) is the first decision you make, before you even see any content. It's a problem I've been thinking about for many years, and still haven't found a good solution for. Other some bland reassurances that "you'll get the hang of it eventually," all I can say is that every time I talk about instances, it feels like the scene from Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan's new friends explain the various high school cliques.
Thank you, I will have a look in settings, it's needed because "Imo this shit is busted and dumb."
As in, you're quoting me because you think my post's content is busted and dumb? Or do you dislike that I said that?
Yes
To be fair, the majority of articles these days are also busted, often deliberately so.
Gotcha.
Hope you enjoy piefed, I learned about it shortly after joining lemmy.ca, and while I liked the look of it I just haven't had a reason I've seen to make another move.
I went into settings, deselected 'federate votes' then looked it up to see what it means... and reselected it, didn't change anything else, didn't find anything that appeared to be to do with downvotes, but now I can downvote, for no apparent reason.
I'm not sure because I don't use piefed, but at least on Lemmy you can definitely downvote. Maybe try downvoting from another app or desktop?