There must have been, of course, another side to the drama.
If you’re looking to start over somewhere off .ml, and who could blame you?, why not just create a new community on an instance that is definitely still maintained?
I think I was being dumb in asking the question actually.
It’s really just about the circle of users to whom the community is visible.
Local-only … visible only to users of the instance. I’d presumed that it could be writable only to users of the instance such that only users of the instance could post/comment there. But double checking, no, it’s only visible if you’re logged on with an account on that instance … so pretty private in the end actually.
private communities … which are apparently coming … are visible only to approved users, whether on the local instance or not.
And presumably, these will be stackable, so that a local-only + private community will be visible only to approved users from the local instance. So getting pretty closed.
Hopefully these don’t start getting used too frequently, as it kind of… defeats the purpose of federation. Would not want to have to make accounts on multiple instances just to participate in niche communities.
I think it’s a good option to have. Most who start communities want reach and engagement. But for those situations where you want a more in-group vibe, something like this is essential.
It’s sorely missing in the fediverse and a rather good form of social media TBH that the fediverse, until now, has ignored (while it has kinda taken off on discord etc).
Private communities though are intended to federate, just with gated membership. And they could be useful for particularly niche communities that don’t want to be disturbed by those who mainly use the All feed.
It will be interesting to see how it interacts with federation/defederation dynamics though. Lemmy-world for instance, could easily start going local only because they kinda already think they’re the whole of the threadiverse and are certainly big enough to sustain themselves.
I mean it’s fine on paper. But like… imagine that a popular instance - lemmy.world, let’s say - has a community that’s very popular and, for whatever motivation, decides they want to push people to move to their instance (or at least create accounts there), so they change one or more of those popular communities to be local-only.
Best case, they fracture the community. Worse case, a very large number of users start making accounts there to use those communities, and abandon other instances. Worst case, they use the large influx of signups they get from such a move to promote themselves, grow even further, and eventually do something malicious.
We can already create private instances that don’t federate for those niche communities; I don’t really see what this feature is adding other than specifically having communities dedicated to that specific instance (With instance-specific information like donations, financials, outage notices, that sort of thing.)
We can already create private instances that don’t federate for those niche communities;
That being said, creating a private instance is a relatively difficult hurdle. By providing private communities, an admin can take care of the hosting, along with all of the other communities, while those who want something more controlled and closed can have an easily accessible option. Plenty of people want their social media to have options for being relatively closed or relatively open, and I think it’s healthy to provide those options.
I hear you though on the lemmy-world community closing possibility (and similar) … that would easily be an abuse IMO and it’s not entirely clear what would or could happen.
To be fair though, the whole lemmy-world instance (or any other for that matter) could simply turn federation off at any point to the same effect you fear, so it’s arguably just part of the federation flexibility. In this case, any community mod has their hand on the switch for their community, which means we’ll probably see it get used in controversial circumstances at least once. But for any given community, going either private or local-only is sure to drop user engagement or be a PITA regarding managing the “approved users” list, so I can’t see it being a popular action TBH.
Portugal: Pioneering Vegan Options in Public Institutions
In 2017, Portugal made a groundbreaking move by becoming the first country to mandate the provision of vegan meal options in all public institutions, including schools, universities, hospitals, and prisons. This landmark legislation was the result of a successful petition initiated by the Portuguese Vegetarian Society (Associação Vegetariana Portuguesa), which garnered over 15,000 signatures, reflecting a significant public demand for plant-based meal options.
The Legislative Journey
The journey towards this legislative milestone began in 2015 when the Portuguese Vegetarian Society launched a petition advocating for the inclusion of vegan options in public canteens. The petition quickly gained traction, amassing more than 15,000 signatures and capturing the attention of the Portuguese Parliament. By early 2016, the petition was under parliamentary discussion, and on March 3, 2017, the law was officially approved by a large majority, thanks to the joint efforts of three left-wing political parties.
Key Provisions of the Law
The new law compels all public canteens to provide a “strict vegetarian” option, which in Portuguese terminology means vegan. This requirement extends to a wide range of public institutions, ensuring that individuals in schools, universities, hospitals, and prisons have access to meals free from animal products. The law was implemented within six months of its approval, marking a swift transition towards more inclusive and diverse dietary options in public facilities. Impact and Significance
Nuno Alvim, a spokesperson for the Portuguese Vegetarian Society, hailed the law as a major breakthrough. He emphasized that it was the first time any law in Portugal specifically mentioned vegetarianism, and he highlighted the anticipated benefits of the legislation. According to Alvim, the law is expected to promote a diversity of eating habits, encourage more people to choose plant-based options, and have a significant positive impact on public health, animal welfare, and the environment in the long run
The law’s approval was widely celebrated by the vegan community in Portugal and beyond. It was seen as an important step in promoting the rights of vegans and raising awareness about the benefits of a plant-based diet. The Portuguese Vegetarian Society and other advocacy groups continue to work with health professionals and caterers to ensure the successful implementation of the law and to educate staff in public institutions about vegan nutrition.
Global Influence
Portugal’s pioneering legislation has inspired similar initiatives in other countries. For instance, New York City has introduced Meatless Monday options in all its schools, and France has mandated that meat-free meals be served at least once a week in schools as part of a government trial. These efforts reflect a growing global recognition of the importance of providing vegan and vegetarian options in public institutions to promote health, sustainability, and dietary inclusivity.
Portugal’s decision to require vegan options in public institutions represents a significant advancement in the recognition and accommodation of diverse dietary needs. It sets a precedent for other countries to follow, highlighting the potential for legislative action to drive positive change in public health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability. As more nations take note of Portugal’s example, the movement towards more inclusive and plant-based public catering continues to gain momentum.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think 86MB is an obscenely large size for an image thumbnail. Would rather not have these automatically download as I’m on a limited data plan. Wish I had the option to substitute a static image for the thumbnail....
Because someone, eventually, is going to make this post anyway, we might as well get it over with. I know someone posted something a week ago, but I feel something a little more neutral would be useful....
It’s good to know that ml users aren’t disproportionately causing problems. That was the impression that I got - they have their overzealous trolls with their own ideological spin but they don’t have disproportionately more trolls than other instances - but I’m not a mod anywhere so I don’t pay attention as closely.
I think ml does have moderation issues, that post on the technology community is not the first time I’ve seen overly aggressive mod actions from them. I’ve left several news and politics communities on ml due to certain users and moderators creating an environment I prefer not to be in. Being a moderator is a hard job, but I genuinely appreciate the transparency and even-handedness from the mods in other large non-ml communities and they show that we can and should expect better from our community moderators.
I think the post over on Technology has the right idea - move the non-political communities off of ml to other instances, the politics communities already have active alternatives due to the mod issues. The Star Trek communities show this is totally possible, but the non-political communities are the least likely to have issues with overzealous moderators (unless you’re foolish enough to engage in politics elsewhere over there and get a blanket ban from all of ml for bullshit reasons…). But a community call to action is harder than a blanket defederation.
I think the moderation issues are more than a minor annoyance, but I agree that defederation, at this point, would be excessive. And I think we’re all happier not addressing the elephant in the room because, well, we wouldn’t be here without them.
It’s good to know that ml users aren’t disproportionately causing problems.
Yeah, precisely. It’s a very different situation compared to hexbear, who would flood threads on our server and deliberately try to rile up our users. The problems with lemmy.ml mainly come from users going into their communities and saying things that go against the grain.
If you get banned from lemmy.ml in that situation, I feel like it’s not a bad outcome. Just join the equivalent community somewhere else. Defederating them is almost the equivalent of banning yourself anyway, if you think about it.
I think the post over on Technology has the right idea - move the non-political communities off of ml to other instances […].But a community call to action is harder than a blanket defederation.
I think the moderation issues are more than a minor annoyance, but I agree that defederation, at this point, would be excessive. And I think we’re all happier not addressing the elephant in the room because, well, we wouldn’t be here without them.
Very well said. I completely agree that it behooves us to move a good chunk of communities off lemmy.ml. I think I missed touching on that point in my original comment, thank you for expressing it so well.
Hexbear is a instance run by tankies that spread their shit ideology and quash any dissent where they have the power to do so. Lemmy.ml is the exact same, except it’s much bigger and run by the Lemmy devs. I don’t think they should get a pass, and I think that Lemmy will become tankie Voat if this is allowed to continue indefinitely.
I came here because Reddit was being run by corporate scum that only cared about profits, and they crossed too many lines. I thought I could get a new start away from all the mod/admin abuse. I’m starting to realize that basically every instance’s and community’s admins abuse their powers to push their agenda, whether it’s political or trying to maximize membership, to the detriment of their larger userbase.
I don’t think this is a winning fight, even if LML is effectively quarantined, but I’d like to buy time by mass-defederating them.
IMHO, some of their communities are sketchy, but as long as it’s contained in their communities, that’s easily manageable with just the user-level instance block feature.
All of it, the “eat the rich” comments are a general leftist-trope that you find on all instances. It was really more like “Russia and China are doing everything right” comments that got a lot of negative feedback that the mods removed and stuff like this, and all across communities.
Often the discussions started rather harmlessly on something broadly political, then you’d have a bunch of people of the “fuck corporates” movement chiming in, and then it derailed real quick into an outright “blame the west for everything” bashing.
I am generally against defederation. The way I see it .ml has problems with how their instance and communities are run and moderated. Unless there is content that puts sh.itjust.works in legal jeopardy I don’t think defederation will solve a fundamental discourse problem.
Honestly I don’t want to see .ml users unable to interact with our communities where they are subject to local rules. It is a foundation of the fediverse and the discourse it enables to avoid defederation.
I don’t see instance issues with .ml: just user issues. Users and communities everywhere can exercise their own discretion with bans and blocks. This isn’t a defederation issue as I see it.
I’m against defederartion, but I also actively avoid their communities.
I don’t think the problem is with a majority of users, just a handful, but many in that handful are mods. As an anecdote, I got temp banned from a community there because somehow our discussion shifted to Russia, despite the topic having nothing to do with it, and the mod banned me for “anti-Russia” something or other (nothing I said seemed to violate community or instance rules), but I think the real reason was me challenging that user’s authority.
I’ve also noticed a lot of downvotes for well-cited but “against the left” comments, and the responses I get are often low-effort.
I’ve also had some decent discussion there as well. I’ve challenged people’s views and had good reubuttals, so it’s really not all bad. I’m guessing it’s a fraction of very active users that cause a lot of the issues.
So I’m against defederation, but I also recommend avoiding their communities. It seems to be a strong echo chamber, but those who aren’t interested in that do seem to branch out. So don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In general, I’ve found myself happier and discussions more interesting when I replace a lemmy.ml community wo with one from another instance. When there are two competing communities with similar active users, i’ve found the non-lemmy.ml one to be better by pretty much any metric.
So it does work. Make a better community and users will come.
I’m going to echo what seems to be the majority opinion here and say that defederation should not be taken lightly. The last big defed discussion here I was in favor of, but that was a very different case. That was a hatespeech instance with the barest veneer of “just asking questions bro”, run by a free speech absolutist who was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Their daily posts consisted mostly of transphobic, islamophobic or anti-semitic rage-bait (or some combination of those). EDIT: Oh! There were also a lot of covid conspiracy posts there too, now I think about it.
There are some communities there I avoid, but that doesn’t merit defederation. In my mind at least, that should be reserved for instances that allow illegal content, pure unadulterated hatespeech, instances that have been overrun by bots so badly the admin can’t handle it (temporarily for that one ofc), or instances that regularly brigade and the admin encourages this behavior.
And besides, I’ve also had some pleasant and interesting conversations with .ml users. There are some problematic users and communities, but that’s why we have block buttons.
Just thinking out loud here, but question: Do you know if the current version of Lemmy allows for user-level importation of bulk community block lists (kinda like what you see for ad blockers)? I can’t help but wonder if this is a middle-ground for folks who feel defederation is warranted on the basis of discourse, where the problem may actually lay primarily in specific communities based on the topic of interest.
A group of interested parties could get together, review communities worth blocking based on whatever criteria they come up with, make the list available and users who are interested/aligned with the group’s principles could apply it in one go. Saves the effort of having to engage and block on a case-by-case basis, or blocking whole instances if that feels like overkill.
Not certain I’d use something like this, and it brings its own concerns for consideration, but it seems like a happy medium others could be interested in.
Is lemmy.one still actively managed and moderated?
Hello everyone,...
[Meta] Would Mander.xyz be open to hosting a !dataisbeautiful community?
Hello everyone,...
Are the new local-only communities also private by default?
I’m sure this will get clarified in the release notes for 19.4, and I’m probably annoyingly jumping the gun … I’m just curious....
Operation Overload: how pro-Russian actors flood newsrooms -mostly in Ukraine, France and Germany- with fake content and seek to divert their efforts (checkfirst.network)
Archived link...
Laws in Portugal Mandate Vegan Options in All Public Institutions, Including Schools, Universities, Hospitals, and Prisons
bit.ly/3Vv1WUb
Operation Overload: how pro-Russian actors flood newsrooms -mostly in Ukraine, France and Germany- with fake content and seek to divert their efforts (checkfirst.network)
Archived link...
Animated GIFs in Lemmy Thumbnails/Icons – Disable/Block?
Call me old-fashioned, but I think 86MB is an obscenely large size for an image thumbnail. Would rather not have these automatically download as I’m on a limited data plan. Wish I had the option to substitute a static image for the thumbnail....
[Discussion] Let's talk about lemmy.ml
Because someone, eventually, is going to make this post anyway, we might as well get it over with. I know someone posted something a week ago, but I feel something a little more neutral would be useful....