Edit: I just woke up when I wrote the original comment and I can see that it’s not the clearest piece of text I’ve ever produced. What I meant is that I fully agree with defederating (and I’ll do it on my instance), but I don’t think censoring Meta in the core technology (ActivityPub) is the way to go.
It literally is, do you not see the power dynamics here? If the fediverse is to defend itself it must at all cost not federate with Meta or we will end up like XMPP.
Meta doesn’t need Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon. They are competing with Twitter. Threads will probably have more users than the whole fediverse combined within the first few days.
That’s known, but it’s foolish to think that for example Mastodon isn’t seen as a Twitter alternative. Meta knows that and I think they want to not just be a corporate alternative to twitter, they want to make sure they are the alternative to twitter. The Fediverse has to take measures defending itself or Threads will overtake and stomp over everything, even if the sudden user surge might be appealing to some.
Changeable definitely, would have to think about whether default block is the smart thing to do. It’s hard, I really dislike Meta, but on the other hand if you go censoring instances by default, where does it stop?
IMO this should be the job of articles that tell you how to setup Lemmy, mentioning something like “Note that by default you also allow Meta the access to your instance which might mean privacy breach, here’s how you disable it.”
Many admins are lazy, and they expect their software to run well on sensible defaults, most won’t care and just go with whatever the devs consider to be fine. By choosing wether Meta is blocked or not by default the fediverse will have to take a stance.
Do we allow extremely powerful corporations that want to monopolize their influence but we get a user surge in the short term.
Or do we block them by default and anyone making an instance should make the concious choice to join the corpo-verse themselves so we can continue to foster a healthier alternative to whatever they are cooking.
Its not censorship and its not up to you, the instances are run by private people, they can defederate whatever they want. If you don’t like it use their “service” problem is that due to federation its very problematic to forward data to Facebook, especially for European Servers.
Arbitrarily blocking an actor at the protocol level is directly contrary to the entire point of decentralized protocols in the first place.
I know, Meta bad, but the fact of the matter is that they probably won't be defederated by everyone, actually, because the idea of being able interact with your real friends and family and other people you know is going to be enticing.
I want their products to fail so miserably that they regret coming here, and if i have to host several bot instances to spam the worst shit imaginable on their shitty platform. I don’t want Facebook to be a part of the internet in the future, they can go bankrupt. They don’t deserve the internet.
I know there won’t be a Meta filter in activityhub, its just a wish.
Reddit didn’t keep their deadline for the API implementation. I’ve still got Boost installed and it’s still working, nsfw posts however went away yesterday. You can still get nsfw if you use revanced apparently but I’m just checking reddit now out of curiosity.
Perhaps it’s not completely implemented everywhere. You can go to r/BoostforReddit if you want to read more about it. Idk and honestly idc either, the whole thing is kind of a shitshow. When Boost stops working without patching I’m out of the reddit ecosystem for good.
I agree, but I don’t think Facebook is going to openly promote the ability to choose instances or explain federated software. I’m pretty sure everything that makes the fediverse cool is going to be hidden from users.
If this allows at least people to discover how the fediverse works (even if I doubt they will push people to it), it will be a great victory, because it’s the biggest pain for newcomers imo.
Also the simple fact that the fediverse is mentioned will hopefully bring more people here.
Nothing good will come from meta, ever. They will alway look for a way to corrupt any social media to their favor in order try to dominate the Web. At this point of the internet history anyone giving a speck of trust to them is dream walking into a disaster waiting to happen.
Very good example , they create/do/make something nice and find a way to ruin it showing (again) what is their end goal is : lock the cow in their garden to keep on milking it to death
The problem is you don’t want the kind of people Meta will bring here to be here. Also the fact that they’ll take all your info and sell it to every company and government on Earth.
It really needs to be considered that included in that group of "people Meta will bring here" is the vast majority of people's real-world friends and family. And for better or for worse, a lot of people are going to want that, actually.
If meta pushes this it will be to brand themselves with decentralized social media. The average person will associate the concept with meta and assume it was a meta invention. This may be a long play by meta to get in front of things like mastodon/lemmy/kbin/etc and become an established player in the space to the laymen before the actual established players can do so
It’s a gross misuse of their obscene power bordering on monopoly and hardly a good thing. Even if the above isn’t true they will 100% use it to harvest as much data as humanly possible without consent and tons more if you’re stupid enough to give them consent. They will tune algorithms to feed people rage bait and stupid bullshit to drive engagement at all costs. And they’ll load it with intrusive targeted advertising
Absolutely no surprise there. When you keep the barrier to entry low and throw in an algorithm to increase “engagement” via outrage, the soup turns to poison quickly.
This is why every time someone says the Fediverse is “too confusing,” I just smile and nod. That attitude of petulant, lazy, self-imposed gatekeeping is what’s keeping the Fediverse a much nicer place to be.
If the “hot” and “active” filters continue to work as expected and bots get reasonably moderated or blocked, I don’t even think Lemmy needs a high barrier to entry or petulance. The most important thing is to not optimize any recommendation or sorting algorithm on session duration, ads seen before closing session, and revenue per user.
This is so true and people seem to have a really hard time seeing this. The cultures on other social sites are far more manufactured than we’d like to believe. I think the human driven systems of Lemmy and Mastodon are brilliant but the true killer feature of the fediverse is going to be an open content recommendation algorithm. A collectively developed non-profit driven algorithm would undoubtedly be better at surfacing positive impact content than either system.
Completely agree that this is where the really exciting potential is, but equally a potential for misuse as algo development will be a black box to most.
Actually yes and I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Sentiment analysis is not a hard task nowadays. If overused the site would become a bunch of artificial positivity, but I think there could be a place for this. Could be part of a mod toolkit too.
I’d imagine if it uses the sentiment as a weight but not a gate when selecting what content to boost that would probably provide a good balance. Especially if you get some controls to adjust the weights in the settings panel
I definitely don’t think something like that should be used to only show one emotion though. If AI were used to control content based on how it makes people feel it should try to balance, not control how we feel. Give us an equal amount of everything.
It’s not good to cloak ourselves in only feelgood stories and lies that sound nice and ignore all the bad stuff just because an algorithm wants us to feel nice and cozy. If no one cares about the bad stuff, the bad stuff gets worse.
It’s been noted on the GitHub. It seems the bug is amplified on small instances. I’ll regularly get posts from two weeks ago with no comments on the top of All/Hot when using this account.
The default “Local/Active” sort algo needs to be tweaked. It makes it look like there are no new posts for days. If you use All with Top Day, Hot or New there’s way more going on.
I don't really think it's fair to pretend that, before two weeks ago, anyone under god had any idea what an instance was unless they were already heavily tech-oriented.
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand what the hell I was looking at and what kind of consequences that unexplained choice would have, and it really seems like a good number of users that initially struggled forget the learning curve extremely quickly the moment they're over it.
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand
I started off going down that road of trying to understand it, but my laziness and impatience got in the way and said "just start using it and you'll work it out." And that's exactly what happened for me. In a way, the explanations made it all sound much more confusing than it really is. Sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and dive in.
Honestly, you're right, and I think the analysis paralysis that the fediverse immediately presents isn't really helped by the fact I'm just generally a neurotic person. Wanting/NEEDING to understand how every aspect of something works and why lends itself really well to things like linguistics and biology, but I feel bothered when I skip the tutorial in a game I already know. What if I missed something and I'll never be able to figure out how buttons work.
Don't worry, I hear ya! I'm currently 4.9 hours in on my first run of the story game, Detroit. People in the reviews say it is a short game and they have less than 3 hours playtime ... but I don't wanna miss any narrative or clues! haha!
I joined Mastadon in December and that's when I first tried to understand it all. I researched a server to join and it was right confusing ... what if I picked the wrong one? Then I pretty much abandoned the account because I didn't understand how to stay on my own server while browsing around (also didn't help that I'd never used Twitter either, so I didn't actually know what I sposed to be doing lol).
Then the whole reddit debacle happened and I signed up for a Lemmy & Kbin. And there was all the jargon again. But I think because I was actually jumping ship from reddit, this time I wanted my move to have staying power. So it was unusual for me to "skip the tutorial" but I was getting so frustrated with the jargon, while I could see others were already having conversations. And it was through the participation that the jargon finally defined itself. I even use my mastodon now, as well!
Oh, I never realized the storylines in Detroit were that short. I'm exactly like you, and I've also found that the more games I play at once, the less I enjoy any of them. So my hands are a bit tied in terms of backlog and that one's been on the backburner for...years, now that I think of it. But That bumps it up my list considerably if I can 100% it in like 3 days.
I was very close to giving the fuck up initially, though. You know what the biggest encouragement was when I was signing up? When I was looking through the comments on kbin, someone said all the hoops would keep the idiots out, and I will put in a _lot _ more energy if it means both showing off and being where the idiots aren't. I'd say having a barrier there really has done some good for the overall quality (for now), but the people claiming it's good to make sign-ups as hard as possible are sometimes the same people claiming there isn't a barrier at all, and it comes off as very strange elitism.
Reading the explanations and advice people were giving to each other made a whole lot more sense than anything the internet was handing me, but even some of that could be head-scratching, and hands-on is probably the best way to go. Not without its dangers. I still think I got incredibly lucky to end up on an instance I like this much. Imagine having admiration for the dev for once.
I never realized the storylines in Detroit were that short.
quick Google search tells me average play-thru time is 12hrs and completionist is 32hrs, so I dunno what I was looking at. I'm 5hours in, so it remains to be seen whether it's gonna take me 32hours or 64hours minimum. 🤣 You'll have to forgive me, it's the steam sale so I've been looking at lots of games. Not that I need any more because I've probably only ever touched a quarter of my library, if that!
someone said all the hoops would keep the idiots out,
Yeah I liked that take as well. That layer of jargon really is a fantastic filter.
It was a case of: Lemmy.ml isn’t accepting new users atm BeeHaw requires me to tell them why I’m a good user So does this other instance… Why do I have to justify myself!? Hey, Lemmy.world let’s me just sign up! Perfect!
And that was how I chose an instance. Thank you for joining story got with Valek
Decision paralysis is real even for stupid things. Like, “what are the implications if I pick the wrong instance?” Was something that made me put off finishing signing up for mastodon and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Acting like it’s trivial isn’t helpful to anyone even if it was trivial or you
Yeah decision paralysis definitely delayed my joining any ActivityPub based sites, but really most of what it affects is stuff that wont matter until you’ve spent enough time on the platform to understand the difference to begin with
I’ve been explaining it like email. There’s no email webpage you go to to create an account. It’s just a protocall a bunch of people have agreed to use, so you go to one of them and you create an address. I also think your username in the fediverse should be called an address too, but I don’t think that’ll catch on. It makes it a lot easier to explain, because everyone can use email, even the most tech illiterate people.
Maybe I’m setting the bar too low but a lot of people have no clue if their emailing, texting or messaging. They just know that their phone pings and they can either reply or not. I learned this when I worked support for a smartphone manufacturer
I know I’m an old school techie, but was there really a high entry bar for lemmy compared to say twitter or Instagram? I honestly don’t know, other than r3dd!t the last social media I signed up for was what? Facebook well over a decade ago?
If the few steps it took to make a user name, pick an instance, and then get my head around the fact that I had to also join any instance I wanted to respond to, is enough to keep the unwashed internet masses out, well, they are just even dumber than I already thought.
People genuinely give up at the “pick an instance” stage.
Part of it is a slight failing for not blasting “if you join any of these communities you can respond to messages on any of these communities” but also the level of tech literacy has fallen off of a cliff post-smartphone world.
Bolstering technology literacy (I’m talking simple things like: what is a file browser, where do things you download go by default, what are some common file types for music/videos/applications) need to be added to public education because there’s clearly a decline happening here that will have downstream ramifications.
I’d say it’s less so a decline and moreso a lack of literacy to begin with. The number of relatives I have that are fucking stupid with the internet is insane. And surprise the kids are just as stupid with tech, since the parents are dumb and companies made tools for them and the kids.
Yeah, I think the late 20th century and then some of the 00s were a sweet spot where there was finally cool stuff to do with tech, but you still needed to learn some skills to do them. Though even those skills were pretty basic.
I remember a kid in high school coming to me to see if I’d burn him a custom CD and he’d pay me and I was surprised because I thought it was all pretty basic shit that all it took was trying to figure it out. Though on the other hand, that was during the era where many discs were lost to buffer underflow and you had to be patient enough to not really use your computer for anything else while a CD was burning at like 2x speed (the hardware would go faster but then the underflow was more likely).
Though in hindsight, that might have just been my family’s shitty computer at the time. My dad was semi tech savvy but generally bought shitty computers, compaqs with Celeron CPUs and no graphics card. Though we did at least have a dedicated 56k line (which would only get speeds of like 48k, though later when the line was switched I do remember seeing the occasional 64k which confused me because I thought 56k was the fastest a connection could be).
I used to think the next generation was going to out code, design, and trouble shoot me in five years, and that the one after that would make me feel like a dinosaur in my 30s.
Now I’m almost 50, and the army of tech savvy teens coming for my job simple hasn’t materialized. With the ease of use of so many devices, a world where “plug and play” actually exists, the effort and skill requirement for most things has gone way down. On top of that, the battle for attention is so great that there is always something easier to go play with, and if it requires a bit of noodling to make it work, screw it.
For a bit I thought “Great, job security!”, but now I’m at the point where I need to think about finding interns and replacements, and unless they come from one of the historic tech pipelines like PC gaming or the makers community, not a lot of kids have that kind of background.
There are great programs now in the schools for making app, 3D printing, graphics, music, etc, that draw kids into technology. However, like everything else it’s all slick and user friendly. You don’t have to spend hour after hour figuring out how to make the thing work.
I watched my two year old nephew trying to swipe on the pictures in a magazine and was confused why they didn’t move. He was basically born with an ipad in his hands.
I agree completely that a basic computer class covering those things and more should be standard in schools. Now we have niche tech courses akin to the woodshop and autos class of my high school, but they are electives, and don’t cover the fundamentals.
Non-techy guy here. I read an infograohic and made an account. 0 issues whatsoever. And the infographic was just to help me understand how it works. You don’t really need to understand lemmy to interact with it
Because stating a wrong fact is the fastest way to get the right answer?
So, if I have an account on one instance, and I want to login / reply to another, how do i do that. I’m using the liftoff app.
I take it I shouldn’t have more than one instance login? Don’t worry, at this point I’ve only got two, it really didn’t seem right when I was making the second one.
Yeah I dove into Lemmy and Mastadon with very little research and even Mastodon with its “pick an instance you like first” step was extremely easy. I ended up on smaller instances for both and honestly I like it. Best part is, if you feel some FOMO either make another account on another instance or in the case of Mastadon export your account and migrate it to the new instance
Man I’d love that. I feel like we will soon honestly. I just hope the lemmy/Kbin apps bring these other federated projects inside, so we can do it all on one app too.
Wasn’t IRC itself pretty much federated, just maybe not calling it that yet? Networked I think they called it. You’d have a bunch of servers in a network and users could join channels and chat with users on other networks. Every now and then you’d get a server split where some subset of servers would lose connection with the rest and a bunch of people would all leave the channel at once. Then, it would resolve, and they’d come flooding back in.
Yes. For example, you’d have a collection of servers that federated to create EFnet. DaLnet, etc. Joining any of those servers would get you onto that federated network. You could be banned from one server but you could always choose another to still get into the same network. And yes, netsplits happened. A lot.
The Matrix but they use the Matrix protocol on a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel talking about talking about The Matrix in the Matrix protocol in a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel (woops sorry that is the Matrix 2 I think my bad)
There’s also a way to add matrix usernames to Lemmy accounts, so it’s possible to make an app that ties the two together. Is that a feature people would care about?
My first instinct would be to say, "This is the 21st century, learn to use a damn computer already!" But then I think of the long term and WANT people to think it's too hard to join Mastodon or Kbin, just to keep the average IQ of these sites above room temperature.
IMO if technical difficulty is the filter, it would actually only select for people good at computers. There are otherwise dumb, shallow people who are good at tech.
(I’m not saying its difficult using lemmy, just replying to the idea in general)
This this this. The fediverse being “confusing” keeps the idiots, boomers, trolls, and overall horrible people away. Having to learn something new is too much for those people. Lemmy/Mastodon and so on are “nerd” platforms, and I really like it that way.
Easy on the boomer stuff. You just lumped “horrible people” into the same group as regular people that happen to have lived more years than you. If you are looking for a “nerd” platform, you’ll do well to remember that there are a ton of extremely nerdy boomers out there and you just helped turn the soup to poison for them
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