SterlingVapor

@SterlingVapor@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

SterlingVapor,

Mac is genuinely a better experience. I say that as a user, as a dev, as someone who likes to throw their laptop in a backpack and not have to worry about the charger. I like the Linux-lite os, I like the screens, I like the universally premium feel to their chassis.

But damn, have Macs gotten ridiculously overpriced. Paying 150% for something you can count on to be more polished? Fine. It's premium

But paying triple? I'd rather learn to tunnel into a desktop through vscode and get something thin, nice looking, and inexpensive enough to replace (even if the thermal properties are horrendous)

SterlingVapor,

I'm more worried about the plastic, pesticides, degraded pharmaceuticals and heavy metals myself

SterlingVapor,

The other thing you can do is reduce consumption. However you can, to whatever extent you can

Prediction: Reddit will someday remove the downvote from all posts.

I am predicting that before the company goes bankrupt, Reddit will remove downvotes in an effort to prevent users from expressing negative sentiment. This happened a few years ago on YouTube after YouTube Rewind became the world's most disliked video, several years in a row. This was embarrassing for the company because it...

SterlingVapor,

This topic always reminds me of that shirt, "don't ratio me I'll cum"

SterlingVapor,

Access to pornography lowers incidence of sexual assault

So it very much looks to be the other way around

SterlingVapor,

So I just learned this recently, but apparently after the whole Victorian "smash and grab" thing where Britain stole all the art that was or wasn't nailed down (there's a lot of feet and footless statues lol), archeologists went to sites and realized how much knowledge was destroyed by their predecessors who only cared about impressive finds they could show off

Technology and techniques are always improving, so now when they find an archeological site, they excavate only a fraction, leaving the rest for future generations who will have better tools.

Obviously, non-destructive methods are still on the table, but I found that pretty interesting

How do I stop certain communities from showing up in my feed?

Am I correct in assuming that blocking a community stops it from showing in your feed? I see a lot of posts from communities in languages I don't speak and would like them to not show up on my feed. So I blocked a few, but I'm not 100% sure if what I did has the intended effect....

SterlingVapor,

I'm making an app, I'm very close to an Android beta (iPhone will be a bit later), and I'll put in a "block all communities on this server" button. I can also auto block them the first time a community is seen based on a list of blocked servers

The nice thing is the blocks would be through your account, so if you use the app it would affect the web as well (although the block would only go into place after the app sees it, so it wouldn't work perfectly in the browser)

I imagine any issue you see one person talk about will be a pain point for many, so would that fix most of what makes you hesitant to stay?

SterlingVapor,

I'm making an app with a focus on streamlining pain points for user signups, and discouraging looking for centralized lists of the biggest groups by "crawling" the network for servers and communities based on what you see and who you interact with. I hope by making this easy, I can push smaller, more diverse communities in the fediverse

It's getting close. I'm almost at the point where I can switch over to my app from jerboa for daily use, and then I'll try to put out a beta

I had grits, I really need to go grocery shopping

The internet is great again, thanks to all of you 🙂

I'm 32, I remember using the internet before google was a thing, discovering flashy websites, hanging out on all kinds of internet forums and chatrooms, ebaums world, MySpace, new grounds... I rember when YouTube was just starting off and it was exploding with all kinds of content....

SterlingVapor,

Plus, the bones are good - it doesn't do everything, but what it does it does surprisingly efficiently and robustly. And there's the rest of the fediverse for most of it - Lemmy doesn't need to handle messages, there's matrix for that (there's even a matrix ID on the user definitions)

There's definitely more to be done, like user migration and modtools, but a lot of the shortcomings are in the client. And now that it caught so much attention, you're going to see a lot of apps and different web interfaces very soon

It's kind of incredible what you can do on the client side too since there's no company trying to keep you reliant on them. I'm building an app, and while I'm prioritizing getting it out ASAP, I'm looking through the data and imagining what I can build on top of it. Especially when the rest of the fediverse is taken into account.

It's like a new Internet built on top of the one stolen from us

SterlingVapor,

The fourth pillar of American democracy, media.

By buying out news media they control the narrative. Now they're coming for the platforms to control the narrative of public discourse

There's protection for these things from government ownership, because these are how democracy works. If you control the flow of information (or worse, convince them of false facts), you can warp the consensus in a certain directions

One side is advocating all sorts of crazy shit (much of which they don't actually want) and spreading easily consumed nonsense to justify it, and the other side is pointing at them and going "this is who will be in charge if you don't go with us"

This whole thing is a performance - sure, they're actually competing and have slightly different goals, but all this fighting over social issues is just a way for them to act freely on the issues that actually matter. They don't actually care about abortion or trans people, they care about the money.

They just use hot button issues so they can give us a choice between people who are going to lie to our faces and screw us over, and we'll fight each other over them instead of attempting to actually change anything. The effects may matter for us, but no matter who we choose-they'll win and we'll lose.

When someone gives you a false choice, the only right choice is to attack the contrivance that took away your choice - we need to take back our media and organize

SterlingVapor,

Monied interests. It’s a symptom of the system, give me a specific example and I can give you a specific group, but in general it’s the trending direction of the system

IDK, I think in systems. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard

SterlingVapor,

Here's the thing - we've been raised from birth to think "people don't make things, companies do".

Most people have never used software that isn't company branded, they've never sat in a chair made by someone they know, they've never pulled food out of the ground. Almost all jobs set someone up doing a service with a supply chain behind them or doing one small step of something bigger.

It's learned helplessness. They don't have the concept of how they could do things outside of the hierarchy - solid chance they've tried, and since their skills are hyper-specialized and rely on big, expensive tools, they found they had a lot of gaps.

Anything you do outside of a company is a hobby to most people. And even then, people organize into sports leagues and buy fancy toys instead of just meeting up in the park with a ball... Do you really need to play by professional rulesets when you're just trying to exercise?

This time around, I didn't bother to explain why the decentralization is so important to my friends and family - even the technical ones are almost afraid of the idea of it.

Instead, I told them about the ways Reddit has picked up the harmful strategy that Facebook used, and that makes mobile gaming so addicting yet so unfulfilling: show them less of the content they want to change the reward schedule, training you to use the app longer for a smaller dopamine hit. Show you content that will make you feel angry, driving up engagement. And most importantly, always wave the promise of another dopamine hit.

The app is eggregious - it sprinkles in stuff from top communities I left a long time ago because they suck, it gives you suggestions for new communities and presents them like interaction from other users, and it sends you notifications to tempt you back in all the time.

And this is just the beginning, it's going to get a lot worse With all the other social networks eyeing their own strategies to squeeze their users, it's going to suck across the board, and good luck trying to build relationships outside these platforms

I think it's important to remember we're animals, and we're not just trainable, we're the most trainable by a large margin. The best of us have just a handful of moments where we see beyond our instincts and conditioning, and decide to train ourselves

This project is important, because it can give us back communities small enough to get to know each other, while providing a larger forum for ideas, and with a design that can shrug off attempts to control it.

It's going to fragment. Sections of it will break off into echo chambers, admins will sell out their users, and parts will offer a curated walked garden hosted. But it can survive all that because of one simple truth - unless one person captures the majority of the network, they're going to have to cut off the best part of the network. Social media can be profitable without sucking, but to rake in profits it has to suck - and even then, we can start up servers for friends and family, and rebuild the network organically

I'm working for an app streamlined enough I can send it to my mom and have her sign up without getting scared off, and I think I've got a solid idea of how to improve discovery of communities without becoming distributed rather than decentralized. Other people are building their own visions of what this can become, and a lot of people are writing impressive code (Lemmy has no business scaling as well as it has), and the beauty of it is that it all competes while adding to the whole.

I've been at it for 30 hours now, but I can't shake the feeling that me getting this out this out in the next few days is going to matter if this is going to become what I hope instead of another shard of Reddit.

But every time I step away to take a breather, I end up back on here and see a glimpse of what this could be

The only way to change the world is to release something self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing and intrinsically positive, and hope it grows

SterlingVapor,

There's also something to be said about using the system to fight the system. We're taught civil rights were won through peaceful protest and getting attention, but we don't live in that fairy tale world

Those people who had sit ins didn't do it for attention, they did it because once they were in the system for breaking a law, they could challenge the law. They didn't do it once or twice, they tied up the court systems

The black Panthers also played a significant role, but the only analog here is anonymous, and the panthers were more of a deterrent to using police to do punitive raids

The US government didn't want to end segregation and it wasn't like the public at large liked the idea, they used the third path - you use just position yourself so either they're forced to stop brushing you off and in doing so give you legitimacy through escalation or negotiation, or they just give in and you achieve your goal

SterlingVapor,

I'll add that I think another aspect to this is: if the site declines quietly, you'll end up with users shrugging and either continuing to use it or not. Most people don't understand why this matters at all, and if the post quality declines it probably will be a lot like Facebooks decline. People knew it got worse, but the prevailing narrative is "that's just how social networks work, the kids are always jumping on the next thing".

By doing this, it makes it very clear that the mods and power users are pissed by actions taken by Reddit. People are starting to hear about it, but it's not common knowledge.

If people hear "Reddit users protested then left because of Reddit corporate", investors are going to be pissed, advertisers are going to find it less attractive, and (most importantly) when discord or YouTube consider their own anti-poweruser moves (which they're currently talking about) they'll remember "we need to be careful with changes or we'll have a reddit moment"

I think this all started with Musk and his instance that despite pissing off users left and right, he's made Twitter more profitable than ever and only kicked off bots and scammers. It's absurdly unlikely (not like he's releasing numbers and they are deciding to not pay bills).

But by creating that very attractive narrative, other social media companies are looking for their own ways blatantly grab cash

SterlingVapor,

No, I think it kind of goes against what we're trying to do here - if a list like that became popular, it would supercharge the growth of certain communities

There's a lot of people pushing for that because it would make the site a straight Reddit replacement, but the promise here is a lot like the original promise of Reddit - give users a single place they can go to access a bunch of small forums

If someone makes a community for that purpose or a community wants to draw in all the Reddit refugees, I have no problem with that, but I think the growth would be healthier if people find them organically rather than putting a centralized list somewhere

Sites will start to pull in a community if any of the members on that instance sub to it and there's talk of adding the ability for communities to band together in multis

SterlingVapor,

You underestimate the power of addiction.

The official app isn't a bad thing because it's buggy and has ads, that sucks but I've used much worse apps that offer less. The amount of ads and how easy they are to click accidentally is ridiculous though

It's bad because it's built to do what Facebook did - it always gives you something to see and a reason to keep going. Have a nice, curated mix of science and shit posts? Let's throw some crap from the front page in there along with the ads! No one responded to your comments? We'll make suggestions look like someone is interacting with you! Haven't used the app in a few hours? Here's some posts delivered in a notification to get you back in there

I left Facebook for Reddit because I realized I didn't really enjoy it and often ended up feeling worse after using, and when the experiments they were doing came out I payed close attention. It was a real slap in the face when I saw Reddit doing similar stuff, and I checked out alternatives like tildes but nothing else was scratching the itch so I put it on the back burner.

For those of us who aren't going back, this wakeup call was a blessing. It's a strong reminder that corporations not only don't care about us, they can't - they might act friendly sometimes, but they wouldn't hesitate to poison the water supply if they thought it would bring greater profits

SterlingVapor,

It's like when you let kids vote on what to do for the school faire.

Not only will the teacher and school change the result if they don't like the winning suggestion, you also can't vote to do nothing or protest the event

It's just a way to give you the illusion of autonomy to boost engagement. It's only a choice between the decisions they find (more or less) equally acceptable

SterlingVapor,

Here's the thing - everything rots. Code and data included.

Not participating is more than enough - better that the data is preserved anyways. Restoring it is ice chips to a starving man, it'll help, but not for long

Why does it feel like we're at a point where every social media + other digital media are making shitty decisions and falling apart?

I mean there's Reddit ofc, as well as Twitter in its entirety, Discord is implementing some dumb updates, there are issues with Tumblr as well as everything to do with Meta, and I'm sure there are plenty more (and I haven't even touched other digital media, for example the Sims). Why is it all happening in the span of about a...

SterlingVapor,

My theory? It's Musk.

He's going around saying he only lost bots and scammers, that he's made Twitter profitable, and that advertisers are back and happier than ever

He isn't showing his numbers and there's no way his claims are true, but he's saying what they all want to hear. "Don't worry guys, you can squeeze your users for cash hard as you want, and they might grumble about it but they'll soon come crawling back"

There's also increased pressure to become profitable ASAP, much of it is likely due to the economy, but Musk lying through his teeth is probably getting to the other billionaires. It's worth mentioning, if you're a billionaire the only reason to still care about money is for bragging rights

Beehaw defederating update - sh.itjust.works

Like many of you, I woke up this morning to discover that our instance, along with lemmy.world, had been unexpectedly added to the beehaw block list. Although this development initially caught me off guard, the administrators at beehaw made an announcement shedding light on their decision....

SterlingVapor,

This. We don't all need to be one big happy family... Federated does not mean a single site decentralized. It also doesn't mean isolated.

There's a million flavors of in between they the fediverse let's us explore, and hopefully instances will rise and fall as we find what builds the best communities. Some will over-moderate, some will be totally unrestricted, some will be safe spaces and echo chambers who carefully manage what users are exposed to, some will vet their users carefully, and most will probably be open to whatever their users ask for

The goal is that instances become all sorts of different places, and users can freely move if they like somewhere else better

SterlingVapor,

I like the game grumps and Lex Fridman. The documentaries are cool, but I have to watch them in a different container or YouTube will start feeding me 30 minute ads or rants that sound reasonable but are super bigoted and flawed when you actually think about it

Reddit meant more to me than anything else I do online, and I committed to leaving it behind even before I found Lemmy... YouTube is barely worth it even without the ads. And I've got a whole fediverse of video content to investigate

SterlingVapor,

That's the advice CorgySkog gave them lol

SterlingVapor,

I'm making a Lemmy app, and I'm pretty good at convincing media to work even when it's reluctant (and as I'm making the app I want to use, everything should eventually be able to auto play)

Could you break down the specifics for me? Preferably with links and any other details/thoughts you have on hand

SterlingVapor,

They also could have taken loans to reinvest in growth. From buying alien blue, to their api, to backend changes to add new ad offerings and whatever else they sell to companies... They're all major efforts, and probably include marketing campaigns

If they took loans to grow... Well if you grow explosively it's a huge win, but if you don't you're weighted down moving forward. And investors are going to love it, since they don't care about breaking even, they care about that one investment that's going to go 100x or more

SterlingVapor,

I'm working on a Lemmy app now, and I will say the documentation is pretty rough - I've had to do a lot of reading through source code. The data types are well defined, but there's no explanation - you kind of just get the name of the route, and if you're lucky a short sentence about it.

I've worked with much worse, but it's an entirely different experience than working with the Reddit API

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