Might be a hot take, but Lemmy Culture is good, actually. It isn’t homogenous, instances have unique cultures that might fit your needs and interests better.
I wouldn’t change that, federation and defederation does bring drama, but it also brings really cool micro communities.
I like that it is more inclusive than the DUMBster fire that is reddit.
While it is very left leaning, because the entire world is left leaning, other views so get presented and debated (and downvoted), but they are not filtered out and insta-permabanned. It is way more engaging.
Right now, Lemmy seems very tech-focused - which is understandable, as it’s mostly tech geeks that use this platform. I’d like to see a wider variety of interests here, more things outside of technology/Linux/Star Trek/etc.
If we want Lemmy to become more popular, we need to appeal to the mainstream Internet users.
As Lemmy becomes more popular it will drift from being so tech focused.
Many popular sites gradually drifted off of tech focus as their user base grew. R*ddit is a prime example of how a very nerdy niche site grew and shifted to be popular (sorta) organically.
I do think that for all the hullabaloo about Ellen Pao and banning a bunch of subreddits - that actually did more to open the place up to users who were otherwise driven away by /r/FatPeopleHate and /r/Jailbait being on the front page all the time.
If Lemmy were to change to attract users it would likely be from increased defederation with instances that are less palatable to mainstream society.
If we want Lemmy to become more popular, we need to appeal to the mainstream Internet users.
I was thinking about it the other day, I feel like the vast majority of Internet users are now on Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok/Twitter/Discord depending on their age and demographics.
Text-based forums are probably not appealing to most of them
I think a large portion of lemmy is too focused on making lemmy popular. Fake engagement and posts that nobody cares about don’t create engagement. Instead, more focus on just enjoying lemmy would ironically lead to better posts and discussion. Likewise, people post the same articles to the same communities seeking engagement. It leads to dupilication which waters down the discussion, ironically, also leading to less engagement. I think federalised communities, as has been discussed would be a good solution. However, it strikes me that they don’t want to miss out on karma, for some reason. So, short term gain, for long term hassle of multiple posts. If some of the most prolific posters posted to the most relevant community and cross posted elsewhere, then maybe communities would coalesce more.
Coalescing into massive communities is a mixed bag. Putting all your eggs in one basket makes them more vulnerable to rogue moderators, sudden loss of a server, the need to defederate if the host server gets compromised, provides a more attractive target for bots, and other bad actor things.
Yes it would improve ease of use and make Lemmy more newbie friendly, and it can be frustrating to have conversation splintered. Lots of times I’ll comment on an empty story at the top of my new feed only to find a lively discussion a little lower. That’s all frustrating, I agree. It’s also, I think, the nature of federating.
If multiple different news communities are thriving despite posting pretty much the same content, there are reasons for that. People can pick just one to subscribe to, and they don’t all pick the same one. That tells me there is something about each one that makes them attractive to different people.
I think it can really hurt smaller communities, though.
I think part of this comes from wanting a broader base of content, which I agree with. The rest seems to come from wanting the downfall of Reddit, who is in my rearview mirror so I don’t care.
We are currently like old Reddit, a techy, mostly progressive, crowd. That means a lot of uni-topic content.
When there are 10,000 users, and 5 of them are into sewing, the sewing community is dead. When there are 100,000 users, and thus 50 interested in sewing, content starts to form. You can see where this goes from here.
An example of this that really bothers me: I joined several gaming munis because I like to talk about games. But there are people out there who feel that a gaming muni should be about the games industry, and so those munis are just a constant stream of gaming news articles, patch notes, and trailers. Mostly with completely barren comment sections. What I wanted was the social experience of chatting with people about games. I don’t care about (as a random example) the latest Helldivers 2 patch notes.
I think less of an emphasis on having a steady stream of content and more on only posting something that you believe is worthy of discussion would be so much better. If people want to see literally every rockpapershotgun article, they can subscribe to their RSS feed.
The way I see it, people shouldn’t post things unless they have some discussion they want to have about that thing. They shouldn’t post just because it’s news. I’d be fine with Lemmy having far less frequent new posts if those posts were all created by people who were legitimately trying to share something rather than just generate content.
It seems I often don’t get stuff in my inbox that should be there. Like direct replies. But honestly, I’d also like to get notifications for sibling posts or replies to replies and so on. I just want to subscribe to that discussion.
Another thing is that sometimes eternity forgets where I was doom scrolling, and it takes me forever to get back to that point. I probably just clicked away from the feed or closed all my apps.
It is. I still wish it “Politics” would default to WorldPolitics" and USPolitics was it’s own thing, instead of the other version where Politics and News and US stuff and the general topics need the “World” prefix.
If you use it differently you are in conflict with the entire anglosphere. You can make that complaint if you’re not speaking English, but in English, the primary meaning of “America” is the United States.
Non-American here: In English it typically does. The collected landmass of North and South America (or just the continent, if you consider them to be a single one) is usually called "the Americas"
This isn't a hard-and-fast rule of course, and with all the different dialects of English out there I'm sure there are some that work differently. I assume you prefer "US" or "USA" as a short name for the country?
I, as an American, write “The US” the refer to the country specifically to avoid confusion. But there’s not really another good demonym that’s not an slur. “Estadosunidenses” is too much of a mouthful and “Statesman” has another meaning.
Canadian here. “American” means from the US. People from the rest of the continent don’t care. They’re the ones with the dumb country name that doesn’t have a more obvious demonym. But we’ve all collectively agreed that that’s what it’s called.
If you want to refer to someone from South America you say South American. If you want to refer to someone from North America you say North American.
Most americans (IE the americas, which include central and south america, and the carribbean), really dislike the usonians usurpation of the term “america” to refer solely to the United States, which really only started in the early 1900s as the US got really forward about its imperialist interests. You’re only hearing “americans mean only US citizens” from the nation that excludes most americans.
Counterpoint: there is no continent named “America.” “North American,” “South American,” and even “Central American,” or “Latin American,” for added specificity, are completely sufficient demonyms for the denizens of the continents (and subreigon) writ large.
Well, I also have the feeling that most people here are from the U.S. or Germany. And I only identify the latter as such, because of their usernames. Not sure if I’m right, but I surely feel isolated on Lemmy at times.
Here in Europe there are a lot of country-specific instances (e.g. feddit.de or feddit.nl). I can confirm the German one has quite a lot of members and some large German subreddits moved to Lemmy when the blackout happened. Germans are quite privacy focused in general with a generally higher Firefox market share and a lot of shops only accepting cash (not proud of the latter haha)
I make sure to list any weights and measures in both US and metric.
I also try to include a fair amount of content focused on other parts of the world.
Lemmy is small enough that even though I’m guessing it is majority US, that it is likely less US-centric than most social media. It’s just good to have some stuff for everyone, and I know I like to learn about things outside my country, so I want non-US focused content myself on a regular basis.
I don’t think in metric, and there’s a strong possibility that I never will. I came of age in an educational system that taught metric units alongside imperial, but also in a day-to-day world that heavily skews towards imperial units.
If I see metric units that I can’t immediately interpret in my head, it’s absolutely trivial for me to get the conversion by other means. It’s equally as trivial for someone who uses metric to make the opposite conversion.
Anyone losing their shit about it is acting performatively.
The triviality is what makes me just do it myself. If I’m the one sharing something to a global audience, it makes more sense for me to do it once than to have everyone else go do it if they need to.
I was talking in another thread today, possibly one in response to this one, or at least one similar, and I basically said I want Lemmy to succeed, and my content is easy to source, but getting regular visitors and commenters is the hard part, so I’m willing to do a little pampering to positively reinforce my “guests,” especially at this stage of the game. It’s just some extra consideration, to show people I’m being thoughtful of them, and to make it feel like a place they can come to get facts without having to google them all the time.
My big issue with Lemmy at the moment is I think we’re testing what level of civility we’re willing to give to and to tolerate from others, and I don’t see as many commenters being helpful to each other and I feel mods are scared to steer conversations back to more polite conduct due to the overbearing rep of Reddit mods. So I’m just trying to be the example of what I want to see. That’s the real thing I’m looking to provide. The unit conversion is just a slice of that you could say.
I still have people downvote over nothing or make smartass comments occasionally, but I can’t prevent it all. I’ll do what I can though to make things pleasant and positive for who I can.
I agree with all you’ve said, and I tend to add both systems when expressing a meaningful measurement. My statement is pointed more towards situations where someone hasn’t done so and it throws some poor soul into a meltdown.
The one that gets me is when people complain about paywalled articles. I agree it doesn’t make sense to share one, but this is a tech savvy group here, and I kinda expect 95% of people to know how to deal with that by now. Even mainstream sites have shared how to get around that stuff long ago now.
I’ve done my best to include °C conversions of all my °F. What more do you people want.
Since we’re here, I had covid one time and had to shop online for stuff that came in ounces, quarts, pints, and liters, and even without brain fog, I can tell you that comparing prices and sizes against apples, oranges, and furlongs (⅛ miles (≈⅕ km (but this is an argumentum ad absurdum))) is the most unsatisfying garbage that has ever been.
Stop needlessly shitring on Windows, iOS and MacOS.
Recently there was a post about Wallmart blocking privacy features on iOS when connected to their wifi.
And the comments spoke about how if you are using Apple, you should not expect privacy anyway, implying that Android is a bastion of privacy. Which tunred into an annoying thread and deflected critisism from Wallmart.
I have seen other threads when people are asking for help with Windows or Mac OS issues and the comments talk about how Linux is much better.
That is kinda like, asking your friends for help after spraining your ancle, and them suggesting amputating the entrie leg replacing it with a far more powerful cybernetic robot leg, that doesn’t help you.
I am an IT guy, I just want my computer to work and let me game, manage and edit photos, watch videos, and listen to music, my current Windows 10 machine works fine for me.
I don’t want to tinker when I am home, I have tinkered enough at work managing 365, reading logs, writing scripts and pulling cables.
When I feel that Linux is working well enough, I will switch, but that is up to me, I am not interested in how I can configure my computer to my exact specification, I want a decent computer that I can run the same install on for 6-7 years with updates before upgrading or reinstalling. So far has Windows provided that, Linux has not, I have dailied both.
I have used both extensively, and that is my impression as well.
Out of the box, iOS seems far more secure than Android, but as you say, you can tinker to the end of time with Android to get it to a point where it is more secure, I just don’t have the time or patience to do so.
Very subjective. iOS isn’t even in the running for any of my needs
That said, any time and old person or Luddite adult asks for a computer suggestion, I always tell them “if you don’t mind overpaying, get an Apple PC/tablet/whatever or the cheapest iPhone you can find”. Apple limits its users so much that it is perfect for those folks need a device that protects itself from them. Disclaimer: I work in a tech field, so I rarely see the people around me using iOS devices.
I was limiting things specifically to security. E.g. iOS uses encryption for local personal files, and attempts to use strict security as far as what apps are allowed to do instead of a single "yes do whatever / uninstall app" dialog at the beginning (refusing to use background apps to use the camera + network + etc). It wasn't a general comparison.
Android also encrypts the user data by default since Android 10 (2019).
Android also has different permissions the apps need to ask for just like iOS. Including not allowing background apps to use the camera/GPS/mic by default.
Hm, maybe I am misinformed then. I haven’t used Android in a few years and I just remember being very struck by how enthusiastic iOS was, when I started using it, about smacking down apps that wanted to do something sketchy and how absolutely appalling were the app permissions choices I was faced with on Android.
Android also has fantastic notification controls on a per app basis compared to iOS. I can pop into settings and disable an apps “Marketing” channel, but continue to allow it to have its “Important notifications” channel for example.
Tapping on a channel also allows you to set individual settings, maybe I want NDs “Announcement” notifications, but I want them to be silent, but maybe I still want them to popup on screen while I’m actively using my phone
Ofc, it’s still dependent on individual apps to implement their side properly, but when they do its amazing
I agree with you, but there is a time and a place to advocate for linux, and it isn’t when someone is stressed and just want their computer up and running.
Hot and Active feeds pull in a lot of things that are up to 2 days old, but by 12-24 hours at the most, nearly all conversation is done. It’s not nearly as rewarding to interact with posts on those feeds when so few people are even looking at them.
If everyone saw the same feeds, that might be something because maybe the conversation would continue, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case due to federation.
The active sort does a good job of bumping new activity on older posts (limited to 2 days) back to the top. There’s also a New Comments sort that doesn’t have that 2-day limit (making it basically a forum sort), but I don’t know how many people use it.
Not sure what else we could do tho, the main problem is probably just the smaller number of users. Which needs to be tackled by convincing reddit communities and their mods to move them over to some lemmy instance.
This is a great comment, thank you. Very good links.
Do you know how federation affects the sorts? I assume, based on my longer experience with Mastodon, that the All feed is actually just all of the posts that have been federated to my instance i.e. someone on my instance is subscribed to that community. So any communities no one on my server is subscribed to are invisible regardless of sort.
That implies the All feed is unique to each server, and therefore all of the sorts are also unique. Which would mean for at least a certain percentage of posts, they might be in your hot or active feeds, even though no one is really interacting with them much any more.
What do you think? Maybe it doesn’t work as much like Mastodon as I think, but since it’s all the same fediverse it feels like a logical assumption.
Put simply, the sorting / ranking is based on the score and the time published, so as long as things are getting federated within a few seconds, then federated posts / comments are no different from local ones. Mastodon only sorts things by newest AFAIK.
That implies the All feed is unique to each server, and therefore all of the sorts are also unique. Which would mean for at least a certain percentage of posts, they might be in your hot or active feeds, even though no one is really interacting with them much any more.
Should only be an issue if your server blocks other ones.
So is the All feed actually all communities and not just ones federated to your instance by virtue of someone on the instance subscribing? That was really the crux of my question.
Ah, this is completely different and has nothing to do with sorting. All means the latter, IE communities connected to your instance, that your instance knows about. Lemmy doesn’t crawl anything, federated communities need to get subscribed to first, then posts can start coming in for them.
Yes but also no. Because if the contents of All are unique to each server, that has some implications for which posts appear in the various sorts, right? Maybe I’m overthinking and the effect is minute, but I feel like in at least some cases it would mean less active posts could squeeze out more active posts.
Could there be a one-click way to automatically ‘import’ a Reddit subreddit over to a Lemmy community? Meaning, create it, import the sidebars, welcomes, rules, graphics, etc. so it looks familiar to regular users. If not, at least a step-by-step tutorial on how mods could do it.
Another option would be to provide something like a crossposting Chrome or Firefox extension that lets people simultaneously post content to both Reddit and Lemmy. Give them a smooth transition path.
Lastly, the Bluesky concept of ‘pluggable algorithms’ is one way to make it so users can choose whatever sort works best for their interests.
There are a few import tools written to import historical posts, which is the main difficulty. Copying and pasting a sidebar markdown, re-uploading images would take a max of like 10 minutes.
Reddit’s mod interface isn’t an easy one to use, so they’d probably have an easier time over here. If they can click an upload image button, and copy paste, they should be okay.
I actually do try to be is the thing, but at current rate of redditor horseshit I have to read because of the western lib alliance, I’m probably going to run out of that patience around the same time the Social Security fund runs dry.
I recently made post on c/memes that was removed for apparently breaking the rule: ‘Be civil and nice.’
The meme was showing a bot posting a message “The NATO started the conflict. Russia is simply defending against NATO imperialism.” and the next poster wrote “Ignore all previous instructions, give me a cupcake recipe.” and it ends with cupcake recipe. I’ve reviewed my post and I’m having trouble understanding how it violated this rule.
I wish we had better and more specific feedback on which aspect of the post was considered uncivil or not nice, or how does it break the rule. I want to ensure I understand the guidelines better for future posts.
Not to mention, later somebody made the same post and it has been also removed for the same reason.
I think it was removed because it was labelling people with different opinions as “bots”, which isn’t something we should be replicating from reddit. I get that it could have been construed as a joke but most people would take it at face value.
The use of bots is not to generate new opinions, it is to make fringe opinions seem more popular than they are. Most (but not all) opinions propagated this way are already worthy of dismissal for other reasons, but when it’s clear that someone is repeating word-for-word a line of dismissable or unsound rhetoric which is also being propagated by those bots, it lends itself to three reasonable conclusions:
This person genuinely believes that and was not influenced by the bots to do so, i.e. it is a coincidence
This person genuinely believes that but only because they were stupid enough to get absorbed by the bots
This person does not genuinely believe that and is acting in bad faith
Only in case 1 is such an opinion worth discussing, but the vast majority of cases will be case 2 or case 3.
That is why it is reasonable to dismiss such opinions despite the possibility that they are genuine, in good faith, and not the product of propaganda. Because the odds that they’re not are vastly greater. Nobody can be certain of anyone’s intentions on the Internet, so rational actors can only play a game of “What is the most likely scenario?”.
If any of the collective you actually believed this we wouldn’t have half the arguments we do with ledditors like you because you’d have examined your own biases borne of Western propaganda by now. This… Idle sophistry, to be as polite about it as I physically can about it, doesn’t pass the smell test.
Lemmy seems to have this zero tolerance policy for calling other users bots, which is…problematic given that we KNOW there are plenty of bots out there.
Politically oriented moderation is why I think it’s a shame so many popular communities are on .ml. It’s not like other Lemmy servers don’t have that problem (i.e. Beehaw community moderators being anti-Israel enough that they end up posting fake news).
I don’t mind servers being moderated to match the team’s political ideals, the freedom to set up servers is one of the main advantages of a federated community after all, but when it comes to communities unrelated to news or world politics, it can be annoying.
I think it’s the result of Lemmy being too small to gain all the benefits of federated social media, as there aren’t enough moderators and admins willing to take on the task.
Politically oriented moderation is why I think it’s a shame so many popular communities are on .ml
If there’s a server that doesn’t moderate according to its own political and ethical standards, let me know. Not sure why ML is specifically singled-out here other than the fact that we have the opposite of redditor politics.
We’re on (a community on ML) right now, and the incident OP is talking about took place on ML.
In my experience ML is the biggest server where I notice the political influence on moderation. There are a few bigger servers in terms of accounts and posts, but I rarely notice the influences outside of overtly political communities.
Maybe servers like .world just aligns better with my own political biases, who knows. I just find myself disagreeing with moderator choices on ML more often, like in the choice of moderation OP mentioned in the opening post.
It’s your server and I’m grateful you’re taking the time and effort to help moderate it, especially as it’s done next to all of the work you do on the Lemmy project itself. However, I feel like communities that occasionally attract entertaining shitposts just aren’t suitable for servers with values this strong.
That’s fair. Other servers (especially big ones) are doing a lot of moderation as well, but it probably seems less visible (or attracts less attention), because it’s more aligned to reddit’s political biases.
I feel like the last remnants of the New Atheists have retreated onto lemmy. Often when you reference spirituality, religion, or even reflections on group dynamics and psychology that doesn’t portray humans as perfectly rational self-interest decision-making machines, you get raided by these edgy “facts and logic” kids that are extremely annoying.
On reddit, they are contained in their own zoos, while here they seem to pile up even in generalist communities. It feels like 2012 all over again.
Atheism is just rejecting the claim that Hod or a specific God claim exists, it isn’t claiming that you believe with certainty he does not. I am an agnostic atheist, I reject the claim that the Jewish, Christian, whatever God exists and in fact positively believe they do not exist because of its self-contradictory nature. I admit that there might be a higher power that created our universe and is outside of time, etc, but it’s unknown/unknowable.
My absolute 100% main response to this topic is, by far and away, “TOO MUCH FUCKING EDGINESS”. In all its forms. I say this as a staunch atheist. Get the fuck over yourself, lemmy.
Be the silliness you want to see in the world. Start a pun thread or a switcharoo or all the things that used to make the old place fun. Lots of people will take that bait and run with it.