Andreas

Andreas, 1 year ago

It's a fundamental problem with moderation that focuses on "being nice and always wholesome" because you wouldn't believe the things some people get upset by and they will try to argue that anything edgier than a padded cell is rule-breaking. I don't think your conversation was uncivil either. Besides, "Do not debate strangers" is an absolutely bizarre rule on a platform focused on anonymous debate and discussion.

On the topic of the discussion, I have the same problem as you where all of my friends use Facebook Messenger for chatting. Sure, you could go cold turkey and tell people to contact you through other platforms, but you'll probably lose a huge chunk of your friend circle that way. Things like group chats also make it worse because you will need the entire group to migrate, and even if they do, people don't want to juggle two groups with the same purpose. They'll abandon the one which is less convenient, which unfortunately is the one without Facebook Messenger.

Andreas, 1 year ago

I don't think Mullvad's port forwarding decision can be compared to Reddit's greed. They were getting in trouble with law enforcement for providing tunnels to illegal websites, so they had to either identify those customers or stop port forwarding if they didn't want to get the entire company shut down.

Andreas, 1 year ago

I try to remain optimistic about this but companies like Facebook and Microsoft actually being too big to fail is depressing. Feels like we're all being held hostage and we'll only be free if something causes these technologies to become obsolete.

Andreas, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

I have a feeling that if you really crunch Reddit's numbers, the content that provides the most engagement and revenue is NSFW content. Reddit is one of the only large social media websites that allows NSFW and the subreddit system makes it much easier to categorize and find content than Twitter, so there are a massive number of invisible users who do not use the site for anything except NSFW, which is also why it's specifically targeted in the new API policy. Long-term, technically knowledgeable users who produce high-quality content are not nearly as financially exploitable as the mass of users who use Reddit as a NSFW directory and who have no alternative to migrate to.

Plus, the majority of active Reddit users are non-technical "normies" who joined Reddit after hearing about it from trends like the GameStop stock. Those users use the official app and have no idea what an API is, so they don't care and will continue to use Reddit.

Andreas, 1 year ago

No need to test the filter like that, the full list of banned words can be found in the code. This filter actually did some damage to Lemmy's reputation in 2020 as Lemmy was originally a closed community with strict moderation and little understanding of federation. The admins wanted a quick way to make lemmy.ml look unappealing to chaotic right-wing users. The filter is only present on this instance now, it's no longer hard-coded into all instances.

Andreas, 1 year ago

Good riddance. The karma system on Reddit is worthless. It's supposed to let users flag spam and bot content, but it's used as an agree/disagree button in reality. Users still lose posting privileges from having low karma and have to farm it in "free upvotes" subreddits... which spammers and bots happily abuse.

Andreas, 1 year ago

The history is that Lemmy was originally created as an independent forum for communists. Later, the devs experimented with ActivityPub federation and created the first federated Reddit alternative. The software itself is neutral and can be used by anyone, but the original communist users of Lemmy before federation was implemented are still around. The politics of Lemmy's original community scared off a lot of potential users from exploring federated Reddit, but bringing more users and awareness to Lemmy will also attract politically neutral developers who can maintain a good alternative.

An alternative is not even necessary if the devs are able to leave their ideologies out of the software's design, which I believe they are doing well.

Andreas, 1 year ago

They changed the compulsory filter to be optional and configurable by community admins. They haven't implemented compulsory features after that either, so I see it as a mistake they made when they didn't fully understand the principles of federation and still treated Lemmy as a centralized communist forum. We shouldn't hold those mistakes over them if they learned from it and changed.

Andreas, 1 year ago

The barrier for entry for some subreddits is too high but to be fair, ChatGPT "funny responses" are low-quality content and should be removed.

Andreas, 1 year ago

I remember when Reddit's FAQ had the question "Is there a mobile app for Reddit?" and the answer was "No, we don't have a mobile app and have no intention to develop one, but you can choose from a list of third-party clients". And what do they mean by "not fairly paid", does Reddit not already have a working monetization system with paid awards and profile customizations? Not enough people paying $80 to put a sticker next to a comment?

Andreas, 1 year ago

The majority of those might be user profile and telemetry stuff that doesn't show up on a third-party app. Fetching comments doesn't consume that many requests as 200 comments are retrieved in a single request.

Andreas, 1 year ago

Gloating? Complaining? I thought the FOSS community has matured past "creator's views = views of everyone who uses their creation", honestly. And isn't Linus supporting the Democratic party already well known?

Andreas, 1 year ago

• Introduced a new rule that restricted streamers from streaming on Twitch and competitor platforms simultaneously, so they have to stream on Twitch exclusively
• Tried to ban external sponsorships for streamers but backpedaled (as seen in this tweet)

Andreas, 1 year ago

No one draws the line unfortunately, because no one controls the entire federated network. This is why it's important to have many medium-sized instances on the Fediverse and not one massive instance and a bunch of other tiny ones, so one instance won't get too much control and impose their rules on the entire network. But it's difficult to convince non-tech users of this concept since they are used to centralized social media and will just sign up on the biggest instance.

Andreas, 1 year ago

Some decently sized Mastodon instances introduced a policy like this. "Unless you use my blacklist, you are defederated by default". In practice, it means that those few instances are an isolated clique that only talk to each other. In my experience, those cliques are toxic, so it's no big loss if you're not able to contact them. But of course I hope this behavior doesn't come to Lemmy.

Andreas, 1 year ago

On the free speech and shitposting Fediverse instances, they get around this by screenshotting posts from blocked instances. I believe there are also some implementations that can bypass fetching authorization and fetch public content from instances that have blocked them. If something is posted publicly on the internet, it can be distributed further, so I don't see why they should use this halfway solution that fragments the network without actually increasing the instance's security (e.g. make the instance private and verify signups).

Andreas, 1 year ago

Tack! Hittade hit via en kommentar i den här tråden från /r/Denmark som nämnde Feddit.dk. Jag använder Reddit endast med tredjepartsappar och vill hellre överge Reddit än genomlida den officiella appen. Jag var (inaktiv) medlem på en nerstängd norsk Lemmy-instans och det är fint att se en skandinavisk instans här igen!

Andreas, 1 year ago

För att ge lite kontext är lemmygrad ett forum för tankies, det vill säga extrema kommunister som stödjer Stalin, Lenin, Mao och liknande. De blockeras av merparten av Lemmy-instanser eftersom det är inte ovanligt att deras användare uttrycker stöd för Ryssland i det ukrainska kriget och nekar folkmordet i Kina i nyhetstrådarna. Deras /c/shitposting är alltså inte det du ska förvänta dig av /r/shitposting på Reddit utan kommunistiskt vinklade memes.

Andreas, 1 year ago

Det är dock väldigt vanligt på Reddit att trådskaparen klistrar in artikeln i kommentarerna om den är paywalled, annars har folk i tråden inget att diskutera utöver rubriken. En sammanfattning av ChatGPT kan subtilt ändra detaljerna i artikeln. Har inte heller sett trådskaparen råka illa ut för upphovsrättsbrott men jag är också inte advokat.

Andreas, 1 year ago

Tänkte föreslå precis detta i början, att slå ihop allt under en community "danmark@feddit.dk" är bäst för nybörjare (det speglar ju /r/Denmarks befintliga struktur) men visste inte om @SorteKanin är villig att lägga ned Nyheder, Statistik och storstadsgemenskaperna.