OpenStars

I came late to Reddit myself but even I noticed that happening during the pandemic. The decline was rather speedy, sharp, and extensive (affecting all subs).

And we could even track some of those to specific implementations or lack thereof of features by Reddit. Like how their search feature sucked so bad, thereby encouraging people to write a (still yet another) post to ask rather than look up an existing highly crafted and well-researched answer that even if posted a mere week prior still would not show up in the algorithmic feed pushing all the latest noise to the absolute tippy-top. And mods were forbidden from pinning more than two posts. And even those only showed up when sorting by Hot. And maybe not even then in some apps. And you couldn’t consolidate ones bc the moderation tools sucked so damn hard, e.g. posts made by Auto Mod could not be edited later by the very same mod team who requested that the post be made. Every damnable one of these things increases apparent engagement metrics like “number of posts”, but at the expense of actually connecting people with the information that they wanted to receive. :-(

To which we can say “fuck spez”, but it’s deeper than that bc of the chasing after profits to the expense of all else that led to that, as in if it wasn’t him that did it then it would have merely been someone else instead.

Fwiw, this might be a special time around the launching of the Loops service, which I heard will be placed underneath PixelFed. I know nothing more than that but thought I’d offer that much:-).

Right but the problem is that there are no “good” solutions.

Blocking Lemmy.ml and thereby much of the Russian propaganda can be a significant boon for some.

That’s a great point about beta software though.

Though if someone wants to block such, and they don’t want to use single-admin instances such as Lemmy.cafe or quokk.au, or non-Lemmy solutions such as PieFed or Mbin, then their only hope is an app. Which also offers the benefit to not have to migrate to a different instance. Though I don’t know which ones offer that.

So only 2% “not likely to be AI-generated or deepfake”… that means that it’s almost definitely AI, got it!? :-P

At this point, the only way to implement blocking is to switch instances, it would seem. Or at least get an app, though that is the part that I know the least about. I switched instances myself specifically for this feature - and we’ve been saying how superb Discuss.Online is even, all the more notable for a smaller instance! - but I’m not sure how many others would think similarly. Still, they could be told that it’s an option. Or perhaps !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca is almost dead at this point, with so few posts? Then again it’s not the number that matters, if the content is relevant.

Oh, right, “from the top 20”. What about Lemmy.cafe - I’m curious about that, especially since they are rocking 0.19.6-beta, they might be doing okay actually, for a smaller instance?

Well I don’t know if “wise” would quite apply…

I started gathering some thoughts to make a post - I had intended !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca but it could be cross-posted, or whatever - about ways to block an instance. I got stuck with Mbin but finally have what I need there. The thing is: I lack the knowledge of which Lemmy apps will allow you to implement user blocks - and I mean the full defederation kind, not just the mere “community blocking” that does not block the comment replies of users from those instances. Do you know more about that? If you could give me a paragraph or table or link to point to or some such, then perhaps this weekend I could try to write that post.

Is there anything that they can do about it? It’s not that I am against telling them but… why complain about something over which they have little to no control?

Also, at some point it had seemed to me to be caught up, but indeed perhaps I missed something, or maybe another issue started after I wrote my reply above.

I see posts missing from there, from PieFed, and much more rarely but it happens, from Discuss.Online. It’s common, it’s expected, and at this point, I think that no instance other than Lemmy.World itself has any “expectation” to be fully up2date, specifically wrt content that is on Lemmy.World itself?

However you want to phrase that - the federated model is struggling, going through a rough patch specifically while we await 0.19.6 - it seems beyond the control of even admins?

Yeah that, but also the humans there too were a bit much. The entire culture is like “entertain me, while I shit on your efforts to do so”. People (don’t) wait to speak rather than actually listen.

Here we are allowed to have an older crowd of people - who use Linux btw - and do more to step up to be the change that they want to see in the world rather than merely vent like children.

I definitely would have left Reddit regardless of whether Lemmy existed to come to or not, so I get why so many content creators left Reddit - it just became not fun anymore. (And yeah, the chasing after profits is what originally made it that way, but also the sheeple consented too.)

Well now I don’t want you to feel left out so… this is for you:

Soon ™…

Very soon now…

Okay, but don’t say that I did nothin’ for ya m’kay!?

Here it is just for you:

Welcome! People are kinder here, overall. You’ll find yourself less defensive, more willing to engage, less snarky, easier to be around irl - man, Reddit was (is?) toxic AF, and whether or not I came here I was definitely leaving there.

Remember to block early and often here - back there that was almost pointless bc a never-ending stream of Reddi-trolls was ready to take their place, but here that actually works!:-)

Check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca for many more tips. You are going to like it here:-).

Also, since you mentioned PixelFed, check out PieFed as well as a Lemmy alternative - it has e.g. “categories” of communities rather than making you find and subscribe to each one individually, so it’s a whole different style compared to Lemmy where you have to browse by All to find new content. I’m speaking to you from it right now.:-)

But either way, I find that (most of) the people here are more worth talking to than Reddit:-).

Here’s such a conversation with an admin at sh.itjust.works if you are interested: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12051373, or with the mod of traditional_art@lemmy.ml https://discuss.online/post/12722075/11762479, and ofc there are many more. One conversation at a time, bringing up the logical points, condensing them, helping people know their options, etc.

blocking them is still one click away

Not… entirely, but yes an entire section dedicated to “hardcore tankies” helps!:-) I suppose that helps more for people brought in via Reddit, but not word-of-mouth recommendations, so if I am speaking of the latter then the burden is on me, and upon everyone else doing likewise, to “warn” their irl friends that they recommend to take a look at Lemmy. Which is why I am saying that it would be good to add automated labels. I think we are still waiting for a Lemmy upgrade though, that would allow for those? Or perhaps people are waiting specifically for 0.19.6 when Lemmy.World will upgrade, leading the way.

Lemmy.World naively might seem the most likely to attach a warning label to Lemmy.ml communities, seeing as e.g. they have defederated entirely from Hexbear.net, whereas so many other instances do not even do that much.

Though for myself, the longer this goes on the less faith I have that it will ever be fixed whilst remaining dependent upon the Lemmy.ml + lemmygrad.ml admins & devs to help accomplish the goals of bringing in more mainstream normies from the Western civilization that they so abhor and constantly ridicule. Why should they? They themselves do not want that. It is a harsh truth but we are on their platform, and that’s that. We will receive what they deign to offer. Which is why I am trying now to help PieFed thrive, despite how far behind it is, and it would be great to see Sublinks arrive as well.

I feel like we’ve had this conversation two or three times in the last few weeks

You keep asking questions though… so I kept answering them:-P. I feel like we got some addditional clarity on your only focusing on the top 20 instances.

Little by little, progress is made. This issue is not entirely solvable though, using current methods available to us - e.g. the issue you mentioned that the desires of users to avoid being bullied are at cross-purposes with being able to access particularly the FOSS content such as !firefox@lemmy.ml. I will say that “accessing open source communities” isn’t terribly hard - you don’t even need an account for that, though indeed lacking one would cut someone off from participating by asking questions, posting, replying, and voting. Which is why something like a “community label” holds such appeal to me, and even more approaches such as PieFed’s ability to enact user-initated user-blocking of custom user-specified instances without the need for the approval of an entire admin team and thereby the support of an entire community. It thereby democracizes blocking, making it available to anyone who wants it, which I for one think is awesome!?:-) Though the UI needs some polish, so I will focus on submitting bug reports to help with that.

Them:

BuT wE sHoUlD bE fReE tO sAy WhAtEvEr We WaNt!

After you talk to them:

No… not like that!?

Future updates to Lemmy already plan to include labels for communities iirc, although I am not sure about if instance labels would be included at first or not. And even if those are applied by instance admins, for maximum friendliness it seems like it would be good to reach out to the very communities that they apply to while making those labels. e.g. going from lemm.ee to Hexbear could perhaps say “come here if you aren’t afraid to get dunked on and we will argue deep points together, though be warned that people indoctrinated by Western socioeconomic capitalistic thought processes may be in for quite a difference of opinion!”. Lemmy.ml could be “we support older-style Marxist–Leninist thinking, but note that we strongly enjoy making fun of the West, so beware ye who enter here - we will educate you properly!”

Instead, visiting Lemmy.ml says “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”, followed by a link to “What is Lemmy.ml” which as you can see is broken, pointing to a post that appears to no longer exist.

Perhaps this is all hopelessly naive - but it could be tried before abandoning it? I have been known to throw a jab or three at the expense of my own home Western nation (USA) - though it definitely comes across differently when done externally, and also by people who very much seem to not be joking when they talk about literally murdering people. (I mean, I am aware that that never happens in Russia or China, where someone can fall out of a window, then shoot themselves in the back of the head, then fall down a flight of stairs, then shoot themselves in the back of the head again, then fall down another set of stairs, and finally out of a second window… but in any case, this vehemence seems directed at the peoples in the Western nations, and regardless of its degree of truthosity - a word I made up entirely just now but wish that I could use from now:-D - it scares away the normies for sure.)

Anyway there are only so many instances, and only so many communities, and most do not need such a warning, or possibly the instance ones could be automated as applying to all communities on that instance. So it’s very doable. As compared to now where it is full federation vs. full defederation, offering literally nothing in-between (unless you have an app that can implement a block of all comments from users on a specified instance).

Btw PieFed tries to avoid the need for all of that by an automated system of its own, applied to each user evenly across the board - e.g. if you have more downvotes than upvotes, then an icon appears next to your name (this system seems able to be gamed though, especially wrt such ideological differences where many would upvote while many others would downvote, each side having different ideals about what is to be considered worthy).

Ah that makes sense then, why one highly technical person would recall (presumably correctly) that it used to work on Kbin, while another person submitted a request to add that feature for Mbin. It’s nice to know that it is possible, even if not quite straightforward!:-)

I would strongly hope that the Mbin codebase is being worked on by more than just one person, who is also administering your instance. That was what caused the demise of both Kbin and Kbin.social with Ernst trying to “do it all” without letting others help. I would love to see that project succeed and provide a fully viable alternative to X and Reddit besides Mastodon and Lemmy:-).