cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58189605
What it looks like:
Here’s an example of such a post: https://sh.itjust.works/post/58082125
They uploaded an image and then included a URL as the body/text.
On Lemmy, it looks like an image post, with a small expando to the right of the title that you can click to show the body:
Why you should stop doing it:
- It makes high-quality posts look the same as low-quality ones.
I automatically downvote most image/meme submissions and posts with bad/non-descriptive titles for quality control. Linking directly to a source is how you make a high-quality submission. You can include screenshots or quotes in the body of the post.
I could start clicking the expando next to the title to check if a source was provided, but there’s going to be a user option to block image posts in the next lemmy update (v0.20), so that format is not good since lots of people will start to automatically block them.
You can put images in the body of the posts.
Why should anyone care?
Low-quality, easy-to-digest content will dominate and drown out everything else if no one does anything to limit it. It degrades the internet and our brains.
A blog that elaborates:
The Cargo Cult of The Ennui Engine https://medium.com/@max.p.schlienger/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-890c541cebcb
People who do it won’t stop because that’s the way to get most upvotes. You’d have to stop people from upvoting them which isn’t feasible because they’re dumb. The only way to solve this is through moderation.
The defaults can make a difference. I implemented this feature on my personal instance, and now that image posts are hidden by default, I no longer interact with them consciously or subconsciously. The most engaging looking things on my front page are high effort posts that promote discussion like the OP. A LOT of people don’t change defaults, so it might change what gets engagement if Lemmy does it.
I also implemented this for comments, so if you drop a pepe.jpg as a response, you’ll have to use some words to get me to click on it.
I’m not sure that’s what OP wants.
The problem with images with text snippets is that they will dominate communities that allow mixed content, pushing quality stuff out of most commonly used views based on popularity metrics. At the moment I simply avoid places where that’s happening as I still like things like c/eurographicsnovels.
But yes, text content is much more likely to be unique and interesting.
So instances can set user defaults? If so, it would be nice if some instances started to set the defaults to block images. It should help with quality.
It’s a personal project, and a single user instance, so I can view the data however I want, here’s what the front page looks like with all inline images changed to links.
https://scrapetacular.ydns.eu/latest
I also ignore upvotes and downvotes on my instance as I don’t think they’re a good measure of quality.
The instance owner can change what is shown by default in the web UI for their users, but I think a lot of people use apps like Blorp, which will not be affected by this.
Blorp dev here. I’m not saying I will add this, but I would be open to investigating respecting the instance hide image setting within Blorp.
There’s a good chance of upsetting everybody here :)
Do you go with, the instance setting, the community setting, the user instance preference, the Blorp default or the user app setting.