I was watching a documentary where they were talking about a void within the great pyramid and how we don’t know what’s inside it! How come we haven’t we been in and had a nose around?
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
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....
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?
I see many communities that got started in the last ten days. Sadly, some that I'm most interested in are not that active. Some are not active at all....
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'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....
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
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
I don't know if you've noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it's "dogshit" and "not going anywhere" get systematically upvoted....
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
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
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
I'm not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium...
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
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
Another update and possibly a solution for some case where posts were not properly deleted. Seems I jumped the gun on this and the restores haven't been intentional - at least not in this particular case....
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
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...
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
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....
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
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
If the performance weakness continues for a week or two, the agency would start recommending decreasing spend with Reddit or directing it to other platforms....
I've been looking for the next thing for more than a year, because the things that made Reddit a (relatively) healthier form of social media were being eroded. I tried out tildes, and the community was much more friendly, but almost too friendly. It was like they were overcompensating out of fear of the community becoming toxic... It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't comfortable - it felt like meeting strangers who you really want to impress. They're also somewhat anti-growth, which isn't a bad idea, but they were well below the sweet spot
Plus, I never loved the old school Reddit visuals, and it's design principle is html only and had no app or dark mode... All in all it's a great place for a specific group of redditors that didn't include me
Then I made up my resolution to leave Reddit when my apps go down and started looking at making a custom app to collate RSS feeds, and I started hearing about Lemmy.
I liked it enough that I've dropped everything and started building a better app. There's a lot missing, but there's so much good energy.
And the design principles of the fediverse address many of the fundimental problems with social media and the Internet as a whole. This might really be something important
Over the past few days, I've witnessed a remarkable surge in the number of communities on browse.feddit.de. What started with 2k communities quickly grew to 4k, and now it has reached an astonishing 8k. While this exponential growth signifies a thriving platform, it also brings forth challenges such as increased fragmentation...
Because humans are barely sapient animals with limited understanding of ourselves and little to no awareness of the long-term consequences of our actions.
We don't operate in our own best interest or the best interest of the group, we're built on the assumption that the environment and our local community will moderate our actions. There's natural limits to physical actions, natural repercussions to social ones when everyone knows each other
Technology doesn't have these limits. Things made of code can scale past human comprehension in seconds. And it changes it's users
Part of the ethics of software development is to carefully consider the ramifications of what you bring into the world.
The public can't make an informed choice, because they lack both the nuanced understanding of the tech, and every choice has a cognitive load. It's up to you to make it safe and healthy or to inform them of the consequences, and you can't just put up a 26 research papers on the psychological and solciological considerations for hitting a button... No one is going to read that.
You also can't have booby traps - anything a user can do inadvertently or accidentally shouldn't have serious consequences.
There's some room for debate, but it all comes down to this: you're responsible for how an average user is going to use your technology. You should do all you can to make it easy to use the tech safely, you should add covers over the buttons that do something with consequences, and things with deeper ramifications should only be available to power users who presumably have the technical knowledge to make an informed choice themselves.
So onto this situation. Say you make this button "sub to /c/_____ and all sister communities". That's not really a choice - it's like you go to McDonald's and order a burger, and they say "for the same price, I'll give you 3 additional burgers with different options". Some people would say no, but they wanted a thing and you offer them more of the thing. If they haven't tried them before, there's fomo - what if one of the other burgers is better? And it's not like they couldn't just stop eating.
The majority will accept 4 burgers, because they don't see the hidden consequences. There's no world where the average person sits down with 4 burgers and eats less than they would if they had 1 - it's human nature, studied and documented... Giving someone more food leads to them eating more, because we judge the amount we're eating in large part visually. Put it on a larger plate or pile it higher, and we underestimate how much we've eaten. Put it on a small plate, and we eat less.
Sure, there's people who understand this - those of us who've struggled with weight or food scarcity are either not going to accept the burgers, or we'll set 3 aside for later. There's people who might benefit from eating 4 burgers - someone who burns 10k calories a day needs that kind of intake (even though they'd be better off with more variety).
Good or bad, you've increased consumption based on how you've presented this choice. The outcome was a statistical certainty, but technically it was a choice. It's just a choice that every human would naturally answer the same way if they went in blind - do you want only the thing you asked for, or that plus more free stuff.
So if you make this a button, it'll overwhelm the single sub option. And there's a game theory aspect to this - I'd likely hit the button too, because individual choices here don't matter, it's a matter of speed and volume of users subbing and unsubbing
I like multis and I think discoveribility is a bottleneck, but I'm very wary of this idea. If you merge communities together like this, you essentially multiply the users in that community. Moderation isn't 4 small instances anymore - it's one large one with 4 separate mod teams each handling a quarter of the posts
I think this is more likely to lead to polarization and eventually echo chambers than if you kept them separate - outrage drives engagement more than anything else, and explosive growth is a great way for a fraction of the group to dominate the first few pages of comments, which turns off moderate voices, which works like confirmation bias to make the outraged believe they're the prevailing voice of the community, which again drives them to post more incendiary comments, and the whole thing spirals
If you want to avoid echo chambers, the best way is to throw a small group together and make them get along through mods that are involved in the community
But then you'd probably end up with most members of one community slowly joining the rest, which is a healthier growth model, but still not great
My intuition is that the ideal solution involves encouraging users to join a single smaller group, but being exposed to top posts from sister groups to avoid fomo. Possibly through something like the way Reddit handled crossposts, where you get the post but not the comments, and a small link to the discussion in other communities. It could be automated if the post crossed a certain threshold of votes, keyed to a certain deviation above the daily average of the original group and optionally with a minimum up/down vote ratio.
This would help keep moderation ahead of participation, and hopefully build a tighter knit community - people are less willing to be jerks to people they recognize than strangers you get in a larger population. By encouraging users into one small random group instead of shopping around for the one that best fits their view, I think we could resist natural grouping by beliefs.
To go further, if this works we could consider a mechanism for "mitosis", a splitting of a group when the mod team feels the culture of the group is getting past their ability to manage in a nuanced way
The goal is decentralization after all, not distributed centralized groups
I think you're 100% right, but frankly this issue is more important than just a nice home for us
Social networks are being pressured to start extracting value with interest rates no longer being nil, and their efforts aren't just inconvenient, they're bad for mental health.
And how long until they start selling control over debate to the highest bidder? Musk has pretty explicitly gone over plans to do exactly that - he wants to charge per-user to send out tweets to your subscribers. He says there would be a large limit before you have to start paying, but this is a great way to control voices that rise out of the crowd
Social media has been a disaster, but there's no putting it back in the box - it's the primary way we communicate. It's terrible for mental health and can be leveraged as a tool of control, so a decentralized system is very important right now
That being said, I think it'd be great if the fediverse encorages fragmented groups instead of a main subject monolith and refugees in fringe groups - smaller communities are just healthier and more fulfilling
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
Beehaw is a community of individuals and therefore does not have any specific political affiliation. At this point in time, we do not know what the political leanings of most of our users are. I would suspect that many of them would identify as progressive because we are explicitly a safe space for minorities. What we stand for...
I think it's a mindset - with a company at the head, if you don't like the product, you should complain.
They need to understand this isn't a product - it's a project. It's not mature yet, and it's trying to solve a very difficult problem - how do you make social media healthier and more resistant to exploitation. The design they've settled on is complex and ambitious, and I'm pretty impressed it's been able to scale up this well
All that being said, the main complaint I've noticed (and I think is valid and it often gets dismissed) - to sign up users are given a choice (which server to join), and to make an informed choice there's a minimum of a few pages of required reading
It definitely matters, and the way you're presented this choice is pretty overwhelming
I'm working on a Lemmy client, and my thought is this - break up the options. Give users a choice of 3-5 options with a "next" button and a search option.
Another is the difficulty of finding and subscribing to communities - I've noticed a huge improvement with some recent changes, but there's always more that can be done
Anything else you've noticed? Particularly if it's something to keep in mind as I write the app
It's seriously disturbing from a mental health perspective. They're doing exactly the same things Facebook did that made it most damaging
The app always gives you something, it will add filler (in the form of front-page content) to your feed, changing the reward schedule and (very literally) training you to doom scroll longer with fewer posts you actually care about. It also gives the opportunity to shove something controversial in your face, which drives outrage based engagement
It also always gives you messages - if you didn't get actual replies, it gives you sub suggestions or puts random posts in your notifications to try to get you back in the app
They also been doing A/B testing to try to maximize in-app time
cool (lemmy.world)
Does anybody else feel dirty when they visit reddit?
I don't know man, but I feel like I'm supporting a maniac CEO with every second I spend on reddit.
Thousands of realistic but fake AI child sex images found online, report says (arstechnica.com)
cross-posted from: https://vlemmy.net/post/153082...
ELI5: Why haven’t we fully explored the pyramids yet?
I was watching a documentary where they were talking about a void within the great pyramid and how we don’t know what’s inside it! How come we haven’t we been in and had a nose around?
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....
Are you doing your part?
I see many communities that got started in the last ten days. Sadly, some that I'm most interested in are not that active. Some are not active at all....
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....
Voters think Trump is a criminal, Biden is too old and DeSantis is a fascist: poll (www.independent.co.uk)
Voters want change, but still remain unsatisfied with their options
Redditors brigading against Lemmy
I don't know if you've noticed this, but threads or comments about Lemmy or the Fediverse get downvoted a lot on Reddit and trolls who claim that it's "dogshit" and "not going anywhere" get systematically upvoted....
The Steam subreddit has been forced back open.
Looks like Reddit is forcing another sub open, but there are users advocating changing the sub to be about actual steam.
let's cut the "Reddit" circle jerk and start actually making content
Not that it is not interesting but I would like just a tad more variety on the front page....
Reddit: Don't like us anymore? Pay us $50/year! (lemmy.world)
I'm not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium...
Reddit CEO slams protesters, says he'll change site rules (www.nbcnews.com)
OC Updated: Reddit is quietly restoring deleted AND overwritten posts and comments (mstdn.games)
Another update and possibly a solution for some case where posts were not properly deleted. Seems I jumped the gun on this and the restores haven't been intentional - at least not in this particular case....
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...
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....
Excuse you, YouTube 😡 (sh.itjust.works)
The blackout is starting to have a financial impact on Reddit, but we must stay dark! (www.adweek.com)
If the performance weakness continues for a week or two, the agency would start recommending decreasing spend with Reddit or directing it to other platforms....
Anyone here wanting to join a sub similar to a Reddit one, but it's not here and you don't want to make it because you don't wanna be in charge?
Yeah, sorry about the run-on sentence title, but I hope you get what I'm saying
Addressing the Exponential Growth of Communities
Over the past few days, I've witnessed a remarkable surge in the number of communities on browse.feddit.de. What started with 2k communities quickly grew to 4k, and now it has reached an astonishing 8k. While this exponential growth signifies a thriving platform, it also brings forth challenges such as increased fragmentation...
Forget growth, lets enjoy what we have
There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit....
How credible is this? (sh.itjust.works)
On Politics and Forking
Beehaw is a community of individuals and therefore does not have any specific political affiliation. At this point in time, we do not know what the political leanings of most of our users are. I would suspect that many of them would identify as progressive because we are explicitly a safe space for minorities. What we stand for...
Reddit experimenting with blocking mobile browsers (old.reddit.com)
As quoted from the linked post....