Meta is facebook who engaged Cambridge Analytica to purchase our lives.
Not from us, but from them. Facebook literally sold out the world
Facebook nearly destroyed this country for a buck.
Fuck facebook. I don't want to avoid federating because I dont want them around; I want to avoid federating because anything I can do to starve them of every resource for growth that I possibly can is the best thing I can do about facebook.
Not only did Facebook allow incitement to genocide to be circulated on it for years while people begged it to stop, but after the genocide Facebook also actively impeded the international investigation into that genocide.
Hey, that's the plan. After the first release, the status update will probably be every two weeks. Currently, I'm struggling with the preparation of the release, it's taking up a lot of my time because I have many changes to integrate. On top of that, I've been going through a tough period in my personal life, but I've overcome it and starting from Monday, I'll be giving it my 100%. Contributors continue to be active, and their assistance is invaluable to me. To make matters worse, I have to deal with waves of spam that have recently surfaced on kbin.social, which you've probably noticed. Stay tuned ;)
Currently, all I need is a bit more time ;) I'm gradually granting additional permissions and sharing responsibility with contributors. We still need to establish a some policy. If it speeds up work on /kbin, I'm okay with that. They are great and experienced developers. However, it's important to remember that they all do this in their free time.
the thing is that the only people who are capable to do that are those who are involved with the development. and to write something about all the changes, someone would have to be involved or at least knowledgeable about a variety of aspects of the software.
The people who run this particular repo are pretty vigilant at tagging the issues. It's not necessarily comprehensive but you could try filtering by pr pending (also toggle the open/closed option at the top left; I can't find a way to display all of them together on codeberg)
"PR" = pull request. which is what it's called when someone makes a change to the code.
I am also not a developer but I like to nose around in these things. :) I'm sure you can understand the gist of a lot of them. Like we have "Strip whitespace of emails on login", "Add a "show password" option when logging in", "Email Address Confirmation Cannot be Re-triggered". Also things like "Actor is null in Page and Note" which means nothing to me.
You can also look directly at the pull requests. Not everything is discussed in the Issues first. It's not the case with every project but this one is reasonably clear for a non expert to look through. eg "Show full language names in smaller badges", "Add upvote color when an item is boosted" etc.
Those “antiwoke” people disgust me. I encourage disagreements. I don’t encourage thinly veiled hate disguised with code words. Tolerance isn’t “far left”.
Agreed, though that's not a common term, and the non-authoritarian left is approximately center-left. The center-left is opposed to wokeism, like Bill Maher. The center-left is pro-free-speech. All of the desire to ban speech that you see throughout this thread is extreme AuthLeft, to use that terminology.
How is one guy saying (to extremely paraphrase) "some people have used the label of freedom to exploit vulnerable people" relevant to this? Like, thats a given, that some people will use this as a guise. Now, is there a systematic problem of leftists arguing for the freedom to assault children? No, only in the imagination of projecting right-libertarians.
Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler aren't just "some people", they are three of the most influential thought leaders of the (post-)modern Left. Foucault of course being joined by heavyweights like Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Barthes etc. etc. and so on and so forth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws
The point of course being that this thread is full of idiots who have never even heard of the likes of Foucault or truly appreciate how badly they jumped the gun here (turns out there was still some "intolerance" left). Your cult of transgression and tolerance is not philosophically sound.
With all due respect poststructuralist academics (many of whom are dead) are not the sociocultural leaders of anyone.
That 1977 petition is heinous, but I don't think that being influenced by poststructuralism some 47 years later means anyone has to agree with those politics.
When I took a couple of critical theory oriented literary courses at uni these were the names that came up again and again, but there was no mention of their ultimate transgression. This is how the myth of an entirely dangerous right and an entirely harmless left is propagated. Just don't mention the bad parts of the left and create one continuous antagonist group out of everyone from Ted Cruz to Heinrich Himmler. Every rightist is implicated in the actions of their most radical thought leaders, but leftists are afforded the luxury of not associating with characters like Foucault, Lenin or Mao at their own leisure.
And I know that you know this but a "thought leader" doesn't need to be alive, so that's not really an argument. These people are tremendously influential and popular in our time (and Butler and Rubin aren't even dead), as demonstrated by the negative response to the Derrick Jensen lecture clip linked above.
Tangential but it's wild to me that you studied Gayle Rubin repeatedly and the pedophilia angle somehow didn't come up. It's literally right there in her writing. Her work was only referenced in one postgrad course I took and 99% of the class totally hated on her for it.
I have to say I don't think this "rightist"/"leftist" paradigm is really working in this discussion. It's way too simplistic and implies that there are two monolithic worldviews at different ends of a linear compendium. But that's just not the case. Many of the theorists don't even agree with each other, or with their own past selves, etc etc.
And in the grassroots a lot of it doesn't even filter down. Soup kitchen workers who never read any of Butler's word salads, junior investment partners who haven't even read Adam Smith...
Sapere aude. The world is too interesting and complex to narrow down to two "ideologies".
The main crit lit course was undergrad and at a European uni (with an American professor) so it was all pretty superficial, but the prof didn't exactly volunteer the ugly sides of these thinkers (as he most certainly would have done with a Carl Schmitt or a Heidegger). The other course (also undergrad) was even less rigorous, just a quick once-over of the basics of oppression and yada yada, namedropping Marcuse/Foucault/Derrida but never dissecting them.
The point of mentioning this wasn't to say that I'm some kind of particular expert on these thinkers (I am not) but rather that my experience with their presentation is that they are left as likeable as possible (there were years between me hearing of Foucault and realizing he was a nonce, whereas people usually learn that someone like Heidegger was a nazi before they even know how his name is pronounced).
I 100% agree on the uselessness of the left/right-dichotomy as it stands, particularly because the radical right gets lumped in with liberal individualists like Adam Smith/Ayn Rand/Ronald Reagan etc., which makes no sense at all.
Still, there are some essential axioms that can be used to distinguish the left and the right, those being equality+liberalism vs. disparity+illiberalism. There is a natural reason that the pedophiles aren't garnering support among the ranks of the far right and that white nationalists won't find much love among the far left.
Your experience sounds unfortunate. It was pretty darn weird of them to gloss over Foucault and not Heidegger! Irresponsible, even.
I'm not American, and find some of their conflations between politics, social policy, and economic policy a little hard to get behind. It's far from universal.
The far-right brings messages of hate, violence, intolerance, and attempts to pass legislation to justify their views. The far-left has brought us the weekend, the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, etc…
Oh, and I didn't know people like Henry Ford and the 2nd Baron Trent were "far-left". I guess the horseshoe really does exist after all.
Stop beating strawmen, your ideological muscles are only gonna atrophy further.
The apparent paradox is solved by viewing tolerance as a social contract. Only those who adhere to the contract and are tolerant of others can have a claim to receive that same tolerance. Similarly those who are intolerant should have no expectation to be tolerated since they do not adhere to the social contract which should provide that tolerance.
Nonsense, we most certainly can. In fact, most countries "worked out" without ever needing to be tolerant in the first place.
Popper doesn't even acknowledge that this notion can be universalized, and then you're just back to square one with Carl Schmitt and the Concept of the Political.
Take your LGBT example. For that to work, you must be intolerant of, say, Salafis. Then the Salafi can respond that his in-group (the faithful, true to God, whatever) are being threatened by those who must necessarily be intolerant of him by nature of their own allegiance.
Thus you still end up with a value judgment despite Popper's veneer of neutralization and depoliticization. That's where the real philosophizing begins. How do you justify allegiance to one side of the friend/enemy distinction over the other?
Except you don't have to be intolerant of Salafis. They can be Salafis or not for all I or anyone else cares, what matters is whether they hate people for who they are and spread or communicate that hate.
I'm personally not entirely sure about male to female trans athletes being allowed to compete in female-only leagues and am concerned about the wisdom of allowing sex change procedures for minors that weren't born intersex. I wouldn't marry a trans person and if a close family member suddenly came out as trans I might have long discussions with said family member for a while,
But that's it. I wouldn't even dream of hating someone for being trans or demonizing people who are. Even if I had religious beliefs against that kind of stuff it would at worst make me worry about such a person or make me pray for them.
If I were a moderator of a public space, I'd allow them to talk there without fear so long as they're not actively attacking others, same as any other group.
Likewise, you can believe that trans people are wrong and will go to whatever equivalent of hell your belief system has and I would tolerate you as long as you are civil about it, come from a position of compassion and empathy and don't try to force people to listen to you (like by using multiple accounts to circumvent blocks and/or bans) who have clearly communicated that they don't want to hear you anymore (same goes in the other direction, btw) and don't try to incite others to treat them as anything other than fellow human beings.
If someone from either side can't do that, that person lacks tolerance and in turn can expect the same level of tolerance being directed to them.
Salafism kind of requires you to be intolerant of people for who they are, but let's not pretend these people would lend the same "live and let live" thinking to a Catholic bishop who espoused the views of a Salafi mullah when it comes to homosexuals.
But I get where you're coming from and your position is entirely reasonable. The problem is just that your attitude is not that of this thread and the OP. If you actually look at this 10A guy's posts you'll find nothing that merits the response you see in this thread. I'd say there's a long way to overstepping the threshold of civility on that part, but in this thread people already want heads on spikes, so to speak.
Alright you caught me in a good mood, so I’ll throw some articles out here to explain my line of thinking. I hope you’ll see I’m not arguing with strawmen.
I hope this clears up my line of thinking. No invisible boogymen here - just some examples of,
In my opinion, things changing for the worst. And if you were not arguing in good faith… oh well.
The "Paradox of Tolerance" is garbage. An interesting thought experiment where Popper came to the wrong conclusions. You can't believe in "Freedom of Speech" AND "The Paradox of Tolerance". They're incompatible.
I'll take "freedom of speech" over "governmental censorship" any day.
Because nobody thinks about what happens if a fundie takes power and decides that abortion is "intolerable" and arrests people who make pro-choice arguments because they're being offensive. Or if anyone makes fun of religion, that's intolerance and you must go to jail.
Yeah I get where you're coming from but this all hinges on the concept of Popper's Open Society taken to its most extreme.
Have you ever considered why this whole "children must be able to see drag shows" notion didn't show up just 20 years ago?
Idk, this kind of devil-on-the-wall "this is trans GENOCIDE" rhetoric when it comes to shit like increasing penalties for indecent exposure and not allowing children to attend drag shows really just says the quiet part out loud.
@10A Hatred, bigotry, scapegoating of vulnerable minorities, lies, gaslighting, opposition to democracy and the rule of law is what defines the modern right. That is textbook evil, and you seem very committed to defending it. Look around, those left of you do not tolerate it. Almost every other comment is from people who want to block you or show you the door. Features are being added to this platform to specifically block your hate speech.
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
I agree, I think it's good to have a discussion, and polite disagreement is quite acceptable. But like you said, encouraging violence and hatred is not acceptable to me.
Hey, on Monday, the system for transferring magazines and submissions to moderators will be ready. I am currently working on it, which is why I need a moment of focus and isolation ;)
Great to hear, thank you. Are there any other server admins that we should contact about things like this in the future, or are you still the only one?
At the moment, I am the only admin on kbin.social - mainly because /kbin doesn't have a tested global administration by multiple admins/mods ;) It's something I'm currently working on. Sometimes, there are so many notifications and messages that responding would physically take up entire days. I can't reply to everything immediately, but I try to do it systematically. However, the best way to get in touch is through Matrix spaces. I feel that every problem will be properly addressed there, which is why I can allow myself to work calmly besides managing all of this ;) Another more reliable method is a contact form.
this is certainly very very worrying. this sort of behavior has to be handled some way or another. @ernest.
honestly, someone like that has already shown they would not make a good moderator, they mass banned over something so petty and small, i don't think it would be unreasonable to revoke their ability to make mags for some time (or indefinitely) and give his mags to someone else who is more mature. he already swiped up some big name mags, do we really want someone like that running popular magazines? no.
edit. honestly fuck it, this deserves to be called out. @Deliverator, this is unacceptable and very childish behavior. you should not be running magazines. reconsider your behavior and grow up, please.
edit. looks like we may not have the full story here. @Deliverator, we would very much like to hear your side and your reasoning for this.
edit. i noticed some people have gone and mass-downvoted Deliverators posts, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. do NOT stoop to that level, do NOT contribute to the problem of mass-downvoting, even if the other person has done it, or you are no better and have no right to criticize it.
There definitely needs to be a set protocol to remove mods like this. If the user did something to be removed from a specific mag, that's one thing, but removing them from every mag you're a mod for is an overreach.
Obviously I come from a different instance, but I feel there are things that should result in mass bans and even account deletion, such as the use of racial slurs. Contact the admins and make it happen in those cases.
I don't agree, people can make mistakes, they are punished according to that mistake, and should be given the chance to be better. If someone is banned all across the platform there is no redeeming opportunity.
Not sure how you would say the n word by mistake. Sounds similar to Roseanne blaming her racism on Ambien. They can make another account if they want another chance.
Why do you think it's okay to ban someone from communities where they did nothing wrong because of what they did elsewhere? Unless it's criminal behavior that can endanger the site itself, like posting child porn, I feel like that's a huge overreach.
I asked a general question about why you think punishments should bleed out into ither communities and you just gave me an example of a conduct to which you think this super-punishment should apply. You didn't say why. Do you also think that every country should jail people for doing things that are crimes in other countries?
I'm 100% against racism, I just want to understand why you believe that someone being inappropriate in a forum about cars means that they shouldn't be allowed to discuss baking in a separate community with different people where they didn't say anything wrong.
My entire comment was the explanation why. Zero tolerance. No racists. Full site ban. No questions.
And since you want to discuss countries even though it’s a totally different league, yes, I don’t think a drunk driver should be able to get to drive in another country for a period of time. Yes, ban entry from murderers. Yes, a terrorism charge should prevent entering an airplane in any airport.
Edit: And to clarify for those that put words in people’s mouths, giving examples of things that I think deserve worldwide punishment isn’t even remotely the same as saying put gay people in jail. Get the fuck out of here with that lmao. Shame on me for assuming good faith I guess.
The only "set protocol" is that the protocol is up to the instance admin to set.
That said, it would be nice to have a standard place for instance admins to post that protocol so that everyone can see it and decide if the instance meets their standards.
In theory the protocol is to first report it to the instance admin and otherwise avoid instances that allow such behavior. I'm aware it's easier said than done.
Looks like he may have just been removed from his mod position on a few magazines, as his profile only shows him modding 14 now. Hopefully the other magazines he's on realize what he's doing and do something about him.
EDIT: Maybe not, I just checked the modlog, and OP was only banned 13 times, not 18. Unless 5 of those were removed and no longer show up in the log for some reason? I feel like there might be more to this story than what we're seeing.
Other people have also been downvoting the mod in question, but OP is the only one who seems to have been mass-banned like this, as far as I can see in the modlog. I don't even see any threads where OP or the mod have interacted before, so I'm doubting that this was caused by just downvoting somebody's comment.
Maybe everyone should pump the brakes on this witch hunt for a sec.
I don't think there can possibly be a justifiable reason he was banned from every one of that mod's magazines, and then for the mod to systematically put a downvote on every single one of the user's posts. Clearly they both did it, but still, not moderator worthy behavior.
at this point, i have no idea what happened, but am open to hearing the full story. i'd like to assume there isn't a justifiable reason for it, but we honestly shouldn't assume anything till we see both sides. like someone else said, OP has also downvoted all their comments/posts, it could have been in response to it, or maybe not. we need the full story here
The 18 number is the number of unread messages I had at the time. They were all "you have been banned." I just went back and counted; I have 18 messages (across 2 pages of notifications now).
It's possible that they extended the length of the ban and doing so gave me another message; the bans were all different lengths. Or it could be some duplication happening server-side.
i noticed some people have gone and mass-downvoted Deliverators posts, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS
Not to be a i-told-you-so but this is why you don't name and shame on the internet. You can influence a person but masses become this uncontrollable horde that does stuff like this.
I think we're at the point that we need to stop thinking of things as "ex-redditors" and now as "kbinauts". While it's true that many people have come here from reddit, it's not "people from reddit", it's "people on kbin".
One thing I've noticed about the fediverse is that different instances have different 'feels' to them, and I think kbin is uniquely positioned to emphasize this a bit, since kbin differentiates itself almost ironically as "not a lemmy instance". It pops up in so many threads of lemmy users discussing things, and then the random "oh this is a kbin thing".
In sharing communities, it's common to have a "for kbin users" link.
I see quite a few lemmy users differentiating themselves "as lemmy" as well. It's an interesting phenomenon.
ultimately I think you're right though. the sooner a proper culture can take root, and a particular "way of doing things" is cemented, the more likely it is that kbin will stick around.
Yeah I think this is a good point. I'm still getting used to the interface, I wish there was a bit more salient of a way of discerning what is a kbin post on the all feed? I know I can look underneath the title of the post, but maybe having an icon (like whatever the logo ends up being) on the right side of the title might be a good idea to privilege kbin's posts for kbin users over lemmy's without exempting those posts from the feed?
The whole phenomenon of Lemmy v. KBin will wind down as the “threadiverse” matures. Over on Mastodon you’ll occasionally see people clamoring over Calckey and how it’s better because of blank, but people just get over it. That’s the amazing appeal of the fediverse, if some other site has more features or better moderation you can just move there! I know many people who hop between instances, apps, and services just because they want to try new things.
I’m so excited because I know KBin will eventually get better federation, administration, and moderation features. We will soon we’ll be able to communicate and share with everyone on the fediverse.
You make me optimistic for the future of the fediverse! I'm also struck by how much discussion there is of instances, and how there's still a vibrant marketplace of ideas. It's pretty wild how much google has calcified the rest of the internet, and search has solidified the power of a few companies.
I've been on mastodon for about 3-4 years now, and it's really nice, I just hope that kbin/lemmy will keep up, it's really nice to see that there are a lot more of people on here now than there used to be, the lack of people was what made me never use it before, but that for sure is gone now :) It's really nice to hang around here :)
You have to fill out form ID-10-T and then store some kinetic energy inside a box attached to a mechanical hand in an open palm position ... the box will then be shipped to the person you are "downboosting" and when they open the box, the stored kinetic energy will activate the hand and slap them in the face ... a small audio device will be installed with the package that will play the Windows logon sound bite and then announce 'YOU'VE BEEN DOWNBOOSTED'.
I thought that donations going to you were going to be pocketed and spent on hard liquor, not for our benefit. I'm disappointed in you ernest, be better.
As a two week user, this is my experience. There is also no way to collapse comments... Yet. Someone has wonderfully coded it and shared with the devs but it has yet to be pushed to the main branch yet.
With the huge influx of users this past month they are in triage mode. Just please be patient with the product, Reddit was new at one point too!
A lot of these issues are open on the codeberg dev tracker - In the meantime, check out /m/kbinStyles for a bunch of user created userscripts that fix a lot of the issues people have with the UI/UX.
There is also no way to collapse comments...
Especially check out: @Artillect's Improved collapsible comments
This is the best info. It'll take a bit until we have apps or further UI centric updates to Kbin, that styles magazine will contain quick fixes to cover browsing until then. I haven't tried it, but apparently if you use the Firefox mobile app it support tampermonkey which will allow these scripts to run on mobile.
Also there's really a UX problem with images (which appears to be fixed at testing instances) but, for now, you can enable "Auto media preview" on settings, so you don't need to click them.
You can!
You just need a browser that supports a userscript extension, I use Fennec, it has the tampermonkey extension and allows you to install kbin as a PWA.
I've seen this article circulating and I think it's a really good cautionary tale. If meta arrives here in full force it's completely going to take over the fediverse, they are already splitting the community as it is.
Note that this is different subject from being anti-corporate. I don't think there's an issue if companies start booting their instances and creating communities for their games or content, whether its EA, Bioware, CDPR or something like pcgamer, LTT, gamersnexus, etc. They want the PR and visibility on a social network but their goal probably wouldn't be take over the AP, and could add some validity and get other bigger names to be active here. That is assuming we want growth at all.
Damn, this article's interesting. I never knew about either Google or Microsoft's actions on that matter. I suppose it's not very surprising anyway. "Don't be evil", LMAO
They can't do a hostile take over of ActivityPub. The trap is that they would come in with open arms and an army of developers. ActivityPub maintainers would at first welcome the help and guidance from such an experienced team. Then, once they have the community hooked, they spring the trap and start making changes that are actively hostile to small sites. The community flocks to the big site because everything works better there, and the dream is dead.
Now maybe it'll never happen, but it's hard to tell. Even if Facebook joined with the best intentions, that doesn't mean the project isn't going to be taken over by a power hungry manager later who could still activate the trap card.
this is the closest someone has come to convincing me that this would be a big problem. i still happen to think that the smaller instances will be fine in the long run. big consolidated instances are inevitable because people like being where people are. look at twitter and facebook. i suspect the worst problem we'd have is people switching from "facebook" to "federated facebook".
now maybe meta will be able to fuck with the standards body that is responsible for the standard. that would be very bad. then i'd be on board. until they do that, i won't worry. i'm open to having my mind changed, but i've found most arguments to be unconvincing as they basically boil down to "but they're big!"
As expected, no Google user bated an eye. In fact, none of them realised. At worst, some of their contacts became offline. That was all. But for the XMPP federation, it was like the majority of users suddenly disappeared. Even XMPP die hard fanatics, like your servitor, had to create Google accounts to keep contact with friends. Remember: for them, we were simply offline. It was our fault.
This is why the big threat is Meta, because they are a tech company. I think any instances spun up by Silicon Valley should be blocked preemptively, but other corpora can have a probationary period.
Honestly, it Meta spun up a Mastodon site to host Meta employees and just have a corporate presence, the way they might have a Twitter account, that wouldn't be an issue at all.
The issue is that they're arriving as platform developers, not social participants. And that's their business.
We should be super suspicious of people showing up to sell the Fediverse, because you can't profit off of community. Community costs money, not generates it. To generate money, you need to exploit people, and exploitation is anti-social. Anti-community.
I say they can, this is kind of what we have seen with Chrome tbh.
Google came in, made an awesome browser got market majority and started just implementing things to the point where its hard to keep up and the various specification bodies kind of just have to ratify things that is already in the browser or become obsolete, afaik this happened with components such as the in browser DRM which by design makes it hard to implement.
I think this can come true as long as we let them insert themselves into the ecosystem. The difference here is that we have the option to keep our part of the fediverse pristine by not federating with these servers, even if we doom ourselves to obscurity by doing it.
I was originally in the let’s just sit back and see what happens camp, but this article completely changed my perspective. A very interesting read. I do, however, agree that companies creating their own instances to advertise their products can only be good for us in the longrun.
On a similar note, I was recently reading about Microsoft’s efforts to dominate the whole browser space in the 90s, and I think it’s a very good example of the worst kind of capitalism.
It's really helpful to see a previous example of something like this happening. I was aware of many instances blocking the potential Meta instance but didn't really get the reason why. Now it makes sense.
@Kaldo Thank you for the link, that's exactly what prompted this thread!
I think it's just too hard to draw the line of "not rich enough to be a concern." Amazon instance is obviously bad. Pepsi? If they put their minds to it they could do something lol. Hasbro?? They're greedy enough for sure.
Or what if a company starts as a relatively minor player, but suddenly get big. Steam acquires the entire video game industry or something lmao. Then we still have the same problem, they're going to be motivated differently.
So I say we defederate all profit driven instances. They can still make magazines on our instances, if they can follow our rules. If they have trouble following our rules... Well, then I definitely don't want them in a position to affect the whole Fediverse lol.
Greater attention to user anonymity. For example, right now, you can look at any thread/comment and see who upvoted it and who downvoted it. In addition to causing arguments and drama, it also can be used to build a profile of what a user likes or dislikes - which can have significant ramifications for many people. Users need to be able to trust in certain aspects of anonymity and have control over what information they allow to be public. That also includes public access to know who follows a particular user as well.
The ability to save threads and comments.
The ability to expand/collapse comment trees.
Better moderation tools, including the ability to be notified when new threads are created in a magazine you moderate.
The titles to threads need to directly link to the linked URL instead of opening the kbin comments page. You shouldn't need to go through twice the effort to get to the linked URL. It also adds twice the load for the kbin servers.
Regarding (1), would it be possible / useful to have more moderator control over this on a magazine-level basis? If a magazine wants to disable downvotes completely, let them. If they want upvotes/downvotes to be anonymous, sure! Linked to profiles? Yeah, if they want. And then maybe a user who wants to remain entirely private can activate a setting where they'll get a warning if they attempt to upvote/downvote on a community that would expose their profile.
Just as a general rule for the internet I support anonymity almost outright. But yeah the more tools people have to opt in or out of various things the better. Be it individuals or zines themselves.
I think that upvote/downvote capability comes down to a philosophy that should be set at the site-level. Otherwise, the accuracy of thread votes will not be consistant across the site.
And while there are a lot of settings a magazine moderator should have, the anonymity of their users should not be one of them. Anonymity should either be uniform, or at the control of each user. Right now, Kbin allows you to control whether the list of magazines you are subscribed to is publicly visible on your profile. I would support a similar control over your vote activity. Let each user decide for themselves what level of anonymity they are comfortable with.
Without that, you will not only cause potentially significant problems for people, but you will also lose a lot of potential community members who say "the hell with that!" and leave.
1 is doable with downvotes, as they don't propagate (there were cases of vote brigading on Lemmy). Yet I have to verify, if Lemmy upvotes propagate to Mastodon
Omg agree point 3, on a mobile/tablet not being able to minimise a thread is so annoying when you are forced to scroll all the way through something you aren’t interested in, all while having to search through it for the end of the thread.
I want to bring up that a positive aspect of not having 1 is that it’s a good way to figure out who to block. On discord for a technical subject that is unfortunately somewhat in the mainstream we have non-anonymous reacts and every time I see someone having a very strong yet uninformed opinion on a technical subject I block them. It makes me viewing experience a lot better.
Yes, people will be able to collect more information on you this way but I think here the trade off is not so bad. We make a similar trade off when we comment. There is also an element of choice, since you can also choose to lurk and not allow your stuff to be scraped.
What about queer person wanting to upvote something but not feeling safe if someone knows their username? What about a woman living in a place with abortion bounties wanting to upvote something about how to get help, but being afraid to?
Those are excellent points and exactly what I had in mind. And they are just the tip of the iceberg - some folks arguing for the opposite (@aroom , etc...) have not really thought this through about the real life ramifications that can exist with this system.
To me it seems that one would exercise the same level of caution for upvotes in this case as it would be for commenting. To prevent being doxxed is an issue of practicing proper internet hygiene and making an username that isn’t easily traced (or having burner accounts) or by refraining from commenting or upvoting, not necessarily a problem of making upvotes anonymous or not.
One compromise would be to make upvotes anonymous and downvotes non-anonymous, so perhaps you can get rid of part of the problem. Not perfect solution because there is an obvious loophole, but a potential option nonetheless.
A bit of an addition to this: I use Imagus to quick-view videos/images/gifs, but kbin seems to create a new file for the thumbnail that clips the original content. This kills Imagus functionality. Reddit was able to create thumbnails from the original content so hovering over the thumbnail revealed the entire image/video/gif.
I really like that we can see the activity. People are using downvote way too easily. Lets make everyone accountable.
edit: hey downvoters, come off your high horse and argue. right now all your saying is "shut up", so for me you are contributing to exclude people to express themself. this is not at all what I'm looking forward in this community.
I think this defeats the purpose of (down)voting. Voting's a quick and approachable way of interacting with a post by design. By tying it to the reputation of an account, it introduces a lot of additional complexities to the voting system. Alongside "this is a post that I think should (not) get more reach," we now also have to consider "is this a post that I want to be seen with?", which is a point that can affect some people more than others, including people of marginalized demographics. It adds reason to editorialize and a compulsion justify our votes to the public, which I think -- in combination with other nuances that potentially may surround the voter, the post, and/or the poster at hand -- can make votes a lot less honest. Even if not, potentially opening up a can of worms to the internet, and potentially real life, for clicking a button, makes voting and interacting with posts less desirable, in my opinion. And what's the point of social networking if not interaction?
I do like the idea of adding accountability for the feedback that we provide on posts, just not at the cost of anonymity. I would love to see something like the labeling system from Tildes. I think it makes voting more thoughtful without making it less approachable.
Advertiser makes a user account that is a bot for harvesting data. Now it isn't between human users anymore. And more than that I don't think I want people I don't know having access to information I don't want them to have access to.
The server admin always has access to that info. It's never between you and your God, unless you keep it to yourself.
Anonymity means your words or interactions don't come back to you off the site. You don't lose your job because you criticised your boss under a penname. But there's no reason you shouldn't be accountable to the community you're interacting with.
but if you interact with me I'd like to know. So where do you draw the line? or maybe I don't understand you correctly.
I don't want to be advocating to less privacy, so feel free to correct me, but just by interacting with each other right now, without using the upvote and downvote system, we are already giving information to potential scrappers no? The solution would be to remove upvote and downvote all together then?
I like how favorite works on mastodon. we could achieve the same on kbin?
Could it be possible to have two kinds of boosts, anon boost or tracked boost? The standard default could be anon with a hover option for tracked, with the default being a setting that can be flipped.
as for now boosts and upvotes on kbin works like boost and favorite on mastodon. I think that it's good to keep this compatibility.
in my option if we can't take responsibility of our action, be called by our name for them, we shouldn't act. we need to address some privacy aspect tho, regarding external party. but between to users I welcome this transparency.
I think that you are for accountability from non-anonymous voting because you are speaking from an experience of having been downvote brigaded somewhere maybe? (I have too, actually on my first Reddit post as a pretween who was definitely not supposed to be online haha.) I think many people generally haven’t had that experience (especially the ones who mostly vote and don’t comment) where you have an unpopular opinion (but not an off-topic or harmful one) and people spam downvotes on every single comment without thinking much of it, so they don’t get where you are coming from.
I agree that it’s highly annoying behavior, equally annoying as people who spam upvotes without thinking much of it, but I don’t think people being non-anonymous will solve this particular issue, because the behavior stems from ignorance and carelessness rather than maliciousness. I don’t think those people care if others can see that they downvote or upvote 20 times a day, spread over 2 people.
I think unfortunately there isn’t really a good way to change people’s behavior, and the best thing to do is to separate voting from any boosting behavior and make reputation a number (that we will just have to learned to ignore) I guess.
@aroom I don't like this because I know that people in public and especially on the internet, can have absolute psychopathic reactions to simple discussions. I don't need some lunatic looking through my history because I downvoted them for saying something that is clearly insane - I would rather stay relatively anonymous.
And that is without even considering doxxing.
if it become this toxic, you can block the user. I for one welcome the transparency and think that this downvote habit some have is building an unwelcoming environment, far different from what I'm experiencing on the fediverse since years.
so I'm not so ok with it. but to anyone their own opinion.
Downvoting has always been used as an easy disagree button in every platform that has ever had it. Why not stop pretending it means something else and just embrace how it will inevitably be used anyway?
because we are building something new here and we don't need to keep this "always been used as" policy. it's up to us to choose how it's gonna be used in here.
I don't know if you were on mastodon when the twitter migration happened. the people from twitter embraced the fediverse values, and most didn't fight to bring the twitter behaviour into it. it's refreshing for everyone and it can be a safe and welcoming place.
not everything is perfect, far from it, but we can try to make it better.
I agree with you in principle, but I think the OP might be making a different point, which is that you can't really convince everyone to use votes in any particular way. Most people will go with their gut intuition, and most people's gut compels them to vote based on agree/disagree, so that's the behavior you're gonna get.
You completely missed my point. Reddit pretends that downvotes aren't supposed to be used as an easy disagree button. That pretension is the behavior I want to leave behind. If we're going to have a downvote button at all, lets acknowledge how it will be used instead of pretending we can change human nature with an FAQ.
It would be possible to change how people interact with a feature by changing how it's presented to them. I'm not sure what better UI there would even be to make people engage with downvotes how you want, but if someone comes up with a good idea I'm all for that. Until then I'd just like to not have us fight against the inevitable.
I'm not sure the reputation system is currently implemented properly. Until a short while ago "upvotes" correlated to fedi-"boosts", but recently it was switched to fedi-"likes". I have a hunch that the reputation system hasn't been changed to account for that and still might count boosts and dislikes or something similar. (Boost my post to help me find out! 😛)
PS: Also, I just tried it and boosted my own comment. It counts those auto-boosts too!
Yeah, probably sometime in the future this needs to get fixed, lol.
If it stays at a;;, it might be better that it stays counting boosts. That would be a higher standard at least, being things people actually wanted to share.
I'm glad the project is getting traction, it really seems like a promising piece of tech and I'd love for more people to start using it! Fediverse-based communities really seem like the future that we should work towards.
If there's one piece of advice I could give as a fellow software dev... try not to take it all on yourself and burn out. Get the project as ready for contributors as possible, update readmes and docs and mark easy issues that other people can potentially solve. Otherwise it's gonna start to feel like exponential amount of work and pressure over time.
Solid advice! I'd also like to chime in and recommend that apart from keeping the official server alive so that new users can come in, please prioritize on making it easier for other developers to start contributing to the codebase and setting up new instances.
I love the way people are supporting you and the way this project has been shaping up. Best wishes!
Second this. I’d suspect the influx of Reddit expatriates contains a disproportionate rate of software engineers compared to the general population, many of whom would be happy to help support this project in their free time. Source: it’s me, I am one.
/kbin meta
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