What should I keep in mind when creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course
What should I keep in mind when creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course
Okay Lemmy Champions… I want to spread the news and increase participation. What do you think about requiring an assignment in which college level comp students need to practice critical thinking skills in the subs of their choice at Lenny? What suggestions would you make relating to each an assignment? What negative unforeseen consequences am I not seeing? Thank you.Very
Every single person without exception that I've ever told about Lemmy (even/especially those with PhDs) tells me upon our next visit, often with somewhat of a horrified look on their face, that it contains extremist content, then promptly never wants to discuss Lemmy ever again.
Sexually explicit content is easily turned either on or off at will as the user may choose at any given moment. However, "extremist content" cannot bc those who share such refuse to display the same level of sensitivity to self-label it as is done for porn. Granted that it likely surges in waves, but that only means that their first impressions of the Fediverse may or may not be formed by let's say 4 of the first 10 posts that they see calling for the actual, not-really-joking beheading of landlords.
Yes, you can block it (as I choose to do), but again I'm talking first impressions here, before people have even decided if they want to look at 10 more posts, or simply walk away - and let's be honest the latter is a heck of a lot easier than having to learn the intricacies of how the Fediverse works currently. We are nowhere close to the level of e.g. Wikipedia where you (1) click, (2) read, (3) repeat.
Also, I realize that X at this point might be similar? (Honestly I don't know, I don't have an account thus cannot see it directly without one.) On the other hand, it is grandfathered into the public consciousness, having once been Twitter. Therefore a more apt comparison might be Truth Social. Like Truth Social, many people take one look at the Fediverse, and never want to return. Which perhaps should give us pause - bc if something is too extreme for Redditors even then dayum - but setting aside any judgement atm, and most definitely not wanting to impinge upon anyone's freedom of speech, I am saying that the content on the Fediverse most definitely does not seem to match expectations of a "mainstream audience". Particularly not ones not used to dealing with computer coding i.e. Linux (though the people I've been mentioning it to are coders even).
And ofc that depends on what instance you choose to access it from - Mbin would provide a very different experience than, let's say, Lemmygrad.ml, and Lemmy.cafe (the only instance I've ever heard of that has defederated from "the big three") again more than a little different from lemm.ee or mander.xyz, that opens the floodgates wide and barely blocks anything (which makes me wonder how they control CSAM? perhaps they ban anyone who attempts to subscribe to anything related).
I am glad that you remained... but since you asked, I thought I would bring it up.
Keep in mind that this isn't necessarily a conversation about mere preference: you might literally be fired, depending on the rules of your institution, and how much it enjoys freedom of speech. e.g. I would wonder about someone in Germany exposing college kids to a pro-Nazi post (I hear they are EXTREMELY serious about such, and even so much as a symbol posed in a slightly positive light...), or someone in the USA, cough Florida cough, to a post that is critical of Trump or "God" (meaning Trump again, somehow 🙄), or daring to say something like "God loves people, regardless of sexual preference", plus notice how far down I got into this message without even bringing up the Gaza situation at all. People can be quite litigious, and colleges can be quite authoritarian, and therefore I for one would be extremely wary of such - the same as including Truth Social in an assignment - until such time as the Lemmy experience allows itself to become more presentable to a mainstream audience.
Although maybe you can take this feedback and find a way - like proposing to go to mander.xyz but stating explicitly some warnings about keeping the button set to show only "Local" posts, while if you browse "All"... then you have gone beyond the assignment and ventured out into the big wide world and therefore might be exposed to more ah... "variety" of content then you may have realized ever existed!? 😁
Edit: although I blocked it months ago (not b/c I'm offended fwiw, I just find that instance extremely juvenile and an enormous waste of time), browsing [email protected] over the past week I could well see someone wondering what the heck I am talking about - they really aren't that bad, and certainly nowhere close to 4/10 advocating for literal murder. HOWEVER, the USA election season is ramping up over the next couple of months, and I suspect that everyone will once again see what I am saying with their own two eyes very soon now. But if it helps, here is a very short list of examples:
- Example, search comments for the word "guillotine"
- Example "Guillotines are too nice for AirBnB owners; They should be thrown feet-first into a wood chipper." - I mean... regardless of truth or falsehood on this one... :-D it can be kinda shocking to mainstream normies, yes?
- Example
TLDR: Lemmy's content can be rather... "adult", but unlike NSFW the violence tends not to be labeled at all, and therefore could trigger a complaint, and therefore should probably have a disclaimer/warning if you are going to mention it. Well, now you know!
Edit 2: I also am aware that places like Reddit, X/Twitter, and FaceBook also depict violence. However (1) not nearly as much, or as blatantly - e.g. perhaps you have to join a sub to see it, or see/click through a NSFW/spoiler tag; (2) they have a ToS that they at least claim to follow, e.g. remember that guillotine fuck spez in the latest r/place, with the blood splatter? but that type of thing tends to get removed, more often than it does here; and (3) authoritarian colleges (whose nearly sole purpose these days remember is to increase shareholder value) are going to like an authoritarian social media website, rather than one that is loose and open, e.g. many Fediverse instances don't even require email sign-ups, yet their content is allowed to be spread out to all of the others (unless they are explicitly blocked, iirc?).
Right or wrong, literal advocating for actual genocide or not, what matters here is what happens to OP as a result of mentioning Lemmy, and how desperately they need that job or not. And again I'm saying that every time I've even so much as mentioned Lemmy to someone, I see a noticeable cooling-off of our friendship for awhile, so it's definitely got some "issues" that can - and probably should - keep it out of the mainstream.
I popped off of mobile to reply to this but I do not believe that even on a keyboard I will be able to express my gratitude for your thoroughness, reason, and wisdom here.
Yes -- turns out I have a pretty sweet gig and I want to keep it.
Your points reminded me that before Reddit imploded, I had an assignment that I agonized over for many of your excellent points here. The previous president of our school applauded me for teaching A Clockwork Orange. Academic Freedom and all that. But we have a new president and I just don't want to risk it. In fact, my reddit assignment was tied specifically to: r/TIL. That was it. I had huge warnings about traveling beyond that sub.
As I read your contribution here, I was stunned that I had just "gone native." I personally just avoid the ugly on Lemmy and do not even notice it or react to it.
The short version here is this: thanks for your kind and erudite wake up call. WTF was I thinking? I did one term use Lemmy in an assignment where I created kind of a private group called: our class or something like that. Ostensibly this was just where we could reach out to one another to discuss class topics... but the shadow agenda was moving people off corporations and onto the Fediverse. It's so frustrating that they do not care about privacy or anonymity. Oh -- when I had them all try to create accounts in class, we ran into an IP blocker likely created to stop briganding or something.
Anyway -- I'll keep thinking about this -- maybe find a more gradual way to introduce elements of the fediverse... like TIL videos or something to begin.
You are very welcome:-).
My journey was similar, and in fact from what I hear of people talking, that applies to most and probably all of us (e.g. regardless of what people "say" about opening themselves up to a wider expression of ideas, we all tend to retreat to places that are comfortable or familiar - the only difference is whether we honestly acknowledge that an instance admin has done the work for someone of outright banning people who have dissenting opinions, vs. whether we implement those efforts by ourselves).
Personally I had to put in MONTHS of effort to make the Fediverse "usable", as I switched around between various instances. My start was Kbin.social, which before it went defunct I noticed how much friendlier the Fediverse seemed, compared to Reddit!!! But when it stopped working I switched over to startrek.website and then to my current account at discuss.online, neither of which block hexbear.net (and the former is quite rare in not even blocking lemmygrad.ml, as most others do). The "feedback" to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse and something in lemmygrad.ml, which persisted for WEEKS and WEEKS, each, after what I considered a fairly innocuous comment, almost convinced me to drop social media entirely... but I persisted, and after finally blocking lemmy.ml, I am now quite happy with it. Ofc my personal user blocklist is still quite long - but blocking the big 3 immediately improved by experience by >95%.
Likewise, you can ditch a lot of news stories that have the most clickbait titles by blocking the bots that post them, while retaining the rest of the community that may then have content that you actually want to see. Unfortunately, nearly everything in Lemmy is "opt-out" rather than "opt-in", but... it is what it is, and it can be workable, as we both (& everyone else here) have found. Also, there are shining beacons of hope - e.g. check out [email protected], which is now #9 if you type "news" in the list of communities on your instance and sort by user count, but when it was told to me it was MUCH further down the list iirc, and therefore quite buried and exceedingly difficult for newer people to find, but avoids a lot of the spammy [email protected]. i.e. I am saying that if someone wanted "news", but less of it and only some of the most interesting stuff, then this "Interesting Global News" fits the bill, yet is opt-in rather than opt-out:-).
And therefore our monkey-brains forget all the pain that came before, to get us to this point.:-) Which is healthy, b/c why carry forward that negativity when you don't have to?:-P But then when people looked at me with such a horrified expression on their face, I literally could not figure out why, at first, b/c my own experiences are so VERY different than theirs. Also those kinds of posts don't dominate everyone's feed every day, also we keep hearing of places like X/Twitter that do somewhat similarly so... at some point, isn't that up to you, to curate your own feed, just like literally everywhere else? Like, why would you stay on Reddit but not try out Lemmy then, when this aspect is the same?
But then again, I am a Unix programmer, and most people do not think like us:-). i.e., not everyone is willing to RTFM in its entirety prior to being able to make realistic use of anything here. Also, anytime there is a major election in the USA or UK such posts have a way of popping up all over the world... but since then they have receded (it looks like?), and thus again we forget, until it comes back around again.
Mind you, like you, I would love to see more content-creators here on the Fediverse!!! I mean, I am here, and would benefit from such, and college students are exactly the crowd that might do so - creative people letting off steam by posting interesting material, presented in a funny way? Yes please!:-) But... yeah, all of the aforementioned "issues" are definitely more than a little bit of a minefield, for the uninitiated.
Also, this is where we enjoy chatting, but there is very little to no actual "content" on the Fediverse atm - everything is posted here from elsewhere, and unlike even Reddit, I am not aware of e.g. answers to technical questions given here that exist nowhere else. So like you said that you wanted to share a video but... off the top of my head, I cannot even think of one that would qualify. I did post a Super cool video on viruses in [email protected], but it only got 3 upvotes - I thought at the time in large measure b/c I posted it immediately after someone else also posted the one (oops, I hadn't seen it), and yet that one likewise received no (net?) upvotes. Oh, and both of these of course are merely links to YouTube. So... we aren't all that receptive to "content" of a nature that isn't news, comedy, maybe fuck-cars, and everything technology but most especially GNU+Linux (sort that community Top for this year and see precisely what I mean), oh and ofc nostalgia e.g. Trogdor the Burninator, obviously.
So... it's hard to justify sharing even a video, with all the variety of pitfalls that also await. But... maybe you'll find a way? Being forewarned is forearmed after all, so now you can go forward more safely!:-)
If I were to create an assignment, I would make a learning goal the purpose. Learning critical thinking is a good goal, but I wouldn't peg it to Lemmy. If the point is thinking critically about social media sites, then you could offer suggestions of places to look, including Lemmy.
Really nice idea... there's a whole lotta garbage out there for students to wade through.