I seriously. I’m for realiously. I got like 8 different furry subs in my block list and filtered out terms like ‘yiff’ etc. You’d think the algorithm would have picked up that I’m not interested in that shit but I still can’t scroll a half hour without a wolf boner adorning my screen.

I know I can simply block all NSFW content but that’d just be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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[–] 144 points 4 months ago (5 children)

There is no algorithm.

Are you looking at the feed of everything that is posted on your instance?

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Technically, "show all posts in reverse chronological order" is an algorithm :P

    (I know what you mean, and I agree overall, but I couldn't resist the silly nitpick about semantics!)

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Since we are nitpicking: "show all posts in reverse chronological order" is not an algorithm, it's a description of an outcome of an algorithm. The algorithm is the specific steps the computer needs to take to make it so. There can be different algorithms that sort posts chronological, all with the same outcome.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    I'm also a little annoyed by the fact that people use "algorithm" to refer to a "recommendation system" for social media. "Recommendation system" is really the term that one should use, and on top of that, one should really say that the system as a whole is using a heuristic to come up with the best-possible content rather than an algorithm.

    ...and looking at the Wikipedia page for "algorithm", apparently they even explicitly point this out:

    In contrast, a heuristic is an approach to solving problems without well-defined correct or optimal results.[3] For example, although social media recommender systems are commonly called "algorithms", they actually rely on heuristics as there is no truly "correct" recommendation.

    It's probably not going away, since it's entered popular usage, but it really isn't a correct use of the computer science terminology.

    It's kinda like someone decided to start calling the cylinders in a car's engine "the metal thing"...which they are, but are far from the only "metal thing" in a car. Then they accidentally messed up the classification and called it "the plastic thing". I mean, yeah, I get what people mean from context, same way an auto mechanic could interpret "the plastic thing" to mean "the cylinders", but it kind of gnaws at my soul every time I see it.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    No no no! The "show all posts in reverse chronological order" cannot be a description of an outcome; it is phrased as a request or a command. The outcome description would be "posts get shown in reverse chronological order"! Also there is no way to show all posts, that's not really possible with finite resources.

    Unless you were thinking of an algorithm that prints out text "show all posts in reverse chronological order", then you are completely right in that being the outcome.

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  • [–] 113 points 4 months ago

    Block the furry instances. There is no algorithm, and it's a good thing.

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  • [–] 73 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (13 children)

    Instance blocking pawb.social and yiffit.net should get rid of most of it.

    edit: to combat some misinformation in the thread below: Blocking instances will only block communities from that instance, you can still interact with the users on other communities.

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  • [–] [S] 21 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    That seems to have done the trick, thanks.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Note that that's also going to block content from users from that instance, not just communities hosted on that instance.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Yiffit.net has been dead for awhile, I thought?

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Blocking instances will only block communities from that instance, you can still interact with the users on other communities.

    As long as you're on lemmy. Piefed does it stupidly.

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  • [–] 58 points 4 months ago

    Theres no algorithm lol

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  • [–] 28 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Only 8? Rookie numbers there mate.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Only 8 blocks. Found his problem!🤣

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I have zero blocks. I think its silly.

    But I don't browse by all either.

    Did we look at Usenet (when it existed) and just aggregate it into a single basket? I don't think so, I treat this the same: add what I want to see, never see the rest. Done.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Posted by MutantTailThing...

    Just a normal man. An innocent man... most certainly NOT a dog wearing a Groucho Marx disguise (a pair of fake glasses with accompanying nose and toothbrush moustache).

    Hmmmm....

    Lt. Doakes (from the TV show Dexter) sits in his car suspiciously viewing something, he just can't prove it yet.

    Although yeah, people posting the stuff they like generally works like that. Stuff you gotta block. And yeah not an easy task blocking each community.

    Don't you have blurring turned on at least? I think that's default right, and it would certainly help with that adorning problem you mentioned while not disabling all NSFW.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Sometimes I have a habit of unblurring at home, suddenly did it instinctively at work and realised what I'd just done to a literal NSFW filter.

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  • [–] 55 points 4 months ago*

    Welcome to the old internet.

    There is no algorithm. Lemmy doesn’t “figure out” anything.

    There is lots of furry porn.

    We love you.

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    No algorithm here, so that's why nothing is changing if you are not actively getting rid of it. But I' still wondering why I don't have the same issue. Barely see any porn at all here, even when using the "All" filter. I can't believe no one on my instance is looking at porn at all, so there should be some in all.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Some instances block stuff like that so you don't need to block it yourself. Does also mean you can't opt in while using that instance though.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I thought so too! But I checked the "instances" link on the bottom of my instance and pawb.social and yiffit.net (to just use OPs problem as an example) are on the linked list and not on the blocked one.

    So... pretty puzzled about how OP is showered by porn.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago

    There is no "algorithm" in the common use of the word - there is no machine learning black box running what you see, if you can read source code you can see exactly what it's doing: see the listing types, and how those types are used and sorted. Either you've subscribed to a furry community (I'm assuming not if you're complaining about it), or you're on all and seeing the content because other users are upvoting it.

    The site is filled with furry porn because the internet is filled with porn and this site is filled with furries.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Lemmy is a haven for the various kinds of material that, for one reason or another, has no place in commercial surveillance-capitalist social media, so you can expect lots of furry porn, horny anime and other such material alongside the Marxism-Leninism, calls to boycott Israel and frank talk about mental health and disability.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Wait, horny anime doesn't clog everyone else's feeds?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I get the anime, but not the furry. Maybe I need to review my instance blocks.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    Note that OP's home instance is lemmy.world. Your home instance is lemmy.zip.

    Content on a community on a remote instance only shows up when browsing All on a home instance if at least one user on that home instance has subscribed to that community. So it could just be that there are more dedicated furry pornography aficionados on lemmy.world, users who are doing a determined job of seeking out and subscribing to furry pornography communities.

    The user you're responding to, @SpikesOtherDog@ani.social, is complaining about too much sexy anime clogging his feed up. He has ani.social as his home instance, which is an instance dedicated to anime. So he's going to see all of the anime posted to ani.social when browsing All, since it's local content, stuff in communities on ani.social, not remote.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    Subscribe to groups that interest you, block groups, instances and users annoying you. Stick to your subscribed feed.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    How do you get all the furry porn? I've been here for two years and barely see any.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    If you don't see anything at !transyiff@lemmy.blahaj.zone or !yiff@pawb.social then you probably have NSFW content hidden in your settings.

    Try https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=furry&nsfw=true for some other communities.

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  • [–] 20 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    I haven't seen a single furry anything, or any type of porn for that matter.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    No need to subscribe, just browse all and every now and then there's someone methed up and horny and the new of all is filled with nsfw posts.

    As long as they're in one community it's not hard to block but idk if I can personally block instances. I'm sure it's possible but eh. But I don't want to put nsfw filter on either as not all nsfw is porn.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    There aren't any proper algorithm on Lemmy, unfortunately you do need to block them yourself. They usually are in a single instance, so you could simply block that.

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago*

    Because IT people run Lemmy, and IT people are surprisingly often furries.

    Also there is no "algorithm" in the way people usually mean it. For better or worse, there is just a few basic ways of sorting your feed.

    Finally, in my entire 3 years on here, I've never seen any NSFW furry stuff. Now, I rarely ever use the global feed, and my instance isn't a general purpose mega-instance, so that probably plays a large part in it.

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Where are you seeing all this furry porn? Asking for a friend, who wants to see more furry porn.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I got it all blocked and then someone spun up like 30 AI porn communities and I had to block those too...

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  • And more importantly, where can I find it

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Is there? I never noticed. I never blocked anything, but then again, I only see what I subscribe to.

    Which is the second point: there isn't an algorithm. No need to block anything, just pick what you do want to subscribe to and ignore the rest.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    Lol try BlueSky if you think there is a lot here.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    I ended up creating an account just to block communities/users. At the time there was a poster posting to his own instance that was federated with lemmy.world, and he was reposting nothing but reddit posts, and the volume was such that they had to go. With no algorithm there's no way to just see subscribed stuff without losing out on discovering new things.

    And just a tip, Lemmy will let you export (to JSON) your configuration options to include who you've blocked.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    TIL I need to sub to a whole instance. Cheers OP.

    .... unzip

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    User 1 browsing by All: Why are there so many wolf boner pictures all over my page? The content that I want to see is news updates on European Union treaty updates and related discussion. What the hell is wrong with Threadiverse users that they want to view this stuff?

    User 2 browsing by All: What is all this boring diplomatic stuff? Why can't there be more wolf boner pics? What the hell is wrong with Threadiverse users that they want to view this stuff?

    User 3 browsing by All: Why do I have to dig through all these wolf boner pics to get to my fox boner pics? What the hell is wrong with Threadiverse users that they want to view this stuff?

    :blobcat_laughing: 1
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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago*

    I have no idea what youre talking about. I havent seen a single furry porn since I joined like a year ago...

    Edit: 2 years ago

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Filter your home Feed by Subscribed only, not All so you'll be sure to only see the stuff you want to see.

    That's how I use Piefed/Lemmy and if it was not for that filtering tool, I would have given up a long time ago... Too much noise and too much weird stuff ;)

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Yeah, I just don't think that trying to view everything posted to the Threadiverse and blacklisting what one doesn't want to see is really something that will scale.

    Like, imagine viewing a combined feed of every Web page that someone puts up anywhere on the Web. That's got a lot more volume than the Threadiverse does in 2026. The signal-to-noise ratio is just going to be unworkable.

    Maybe someday, someone will build a recommendation system that profiles users and tries to suggest what they want, but I'm pretty bearish on the prospect of individually-curated killfiles. It didn't scale on Usenet and that had clients with more-powerful blacklisting functionality than do Threadiverse clients in 2026.

    I really think that as of 2026, the most-scalable route is whitelisting what one does want to see. Find communities that have content that one is interested in, subscribe to those, browse Subscribed.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I know it's because I don't have many, but my subscriptions are pretty much dead (somewhat niche stuff). More general stuff (like this comm that is not hard to find anyway due to activity) feels like filler and some other comms I might visit might have stuff I don't want to commonly see (like new accounts made for blatant self-promotion).

    Relates to @zxqwas@lemmy.world and @whaleross@lemmy.world (why someone would be browsing /all)

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    A lot of mines are too and that's ok with me. I mean, I don't need new/fresh content every minute, or every day. For me it matters a lot more to not be annoyed by low quality content and not waste my time with those. Time I can then spend elsewhere/doing something else than scroll ;)

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    I use boost for lemmy on my phone. I filter out certain key words for topics that I have zero interest in. Works a treat.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    I block them as they come up. Individual users seem to be good about posting it to specific communities, so I typically just block the community, but I'm pretty sure there are some users that I've blocked entirely because they (as far as I can tell) only post furry content. I haven't seen any furry content on my lemmy feed for at least a year now, I think.

    Part of it is also the instance where you registered your account. I think lemmy.world not only has more furry communities, but is also federated with more instances that have furry content. I'm not an expert on how federation works though, so someone with better understanding might step and correct me. Also, I don't think there's an algorithm on lemmy...but I might be wrong about that too.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago

    Filtering your feed isn't anybody's job but yours. If you want to be spoonfed and controlled, that's what big tech does.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    My first few months on Lemmy were spent on /all because there was so little activity overall. However, that led to seeing a lot of porn or fetishes I had no interest in showing up in my feed.

    So I just blocked those /c’s as they showed up.

    Took a little while but it worked out.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Weirdly enough, I got a long blocklist of communities in languages I don't understand, mostly German, those often showed up while I browsed [all].

    Porn rarely shows up for me, even hentai. I've yet to see a furry porn post while browsing [all]. I wonder if this has something to do with the home instance? I even have "Show NSFW posts" on, so it's not that.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Weirdly enough, I got a long blocklist of communities in languages I don’t understand, mostly German, those often showed up while I browsed [all].

    You can exclude German in your language preferences.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    The problem is that a lot of lemmy posts are "undetermined", including lots of those german posts. From my instance, if I select any language when creating a new post, it doesn't create the post. If I put it back on "undetermined", it works.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I peruse all and do not have this issue. I may have blocked a furry porn community or two but I have several non porn furry stuff not blocked and it has not been an issue there. I even set my settings to show nsfw because there are some people who think a skimpy bathing suit or such is nsfw.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Seriously, I blocked maybe 3 communities, have no specific terms blocked, have NSFW enabled, and might see an anthropomorphic hyena with abs maybe once a month but without the clitordick. I'm super curious if this dude is just exaggerating or maybe there's some underground furry subscribe specifically targeting him.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I had to block the NSFW because there was Just. So. Much. Of. It. 😒

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Lemmy is very popular with tech savvy people and tech savvy people are disproportionately represented in the furry community.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I browse /all for the most part. There are about 20+ communities on my block list so I don't see a bunch of furry/trans/penises.

    The downside to the fediverse is all the repetitive communities across different instances.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    More furry porn for me

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Probably just yiffit.net and pawb.social being themselves. I, for one, don't mind it, but I can understand why people don't wanna associate with it.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago
    [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    Subscribe to communities or magazines you want, I never see any of that stuff. Maybe it helps that I'm on mbin too.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I mean, it's just the people that are on here. If you're not on the list below you are most likely not a part of a major subgroup on Lemmy.

    • Tankie
    • Communist
    • Socialist
    • Anarchist
    • Trans
    • Furry
    • Linux user
    • Self hosting
    • Programmer
    • Tabletop RPG
    • Star Trek (makes sense, lgbtq+ friendly space socialists)
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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    There is sadly no algorithm here

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago

    don't hate us because you anus!

    1000004202

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 4 months ago

    Man I’ve really stirred the hornets nest on this one

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  • [+] -8 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    You use the word 'realiously' and therefore you're invalid in your concern. Here's an idea - stop looking for it and stop being in denial.

    Case closed.

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