BananaTrifleViolin

@BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social

This feels like a forced reddit detox.

I, much like basically everyone here, have been avoiding Reddit when possible, and the content here just doesn't hit the same. My fried dopamine receptors were certainly screaming for stimulation early on but now I feel an urge to touch grass and breathe fresh air. What is this? Am I dying? I still hate the angry lightbulb in...

BananaTrifleViolin,

There are Kbin styles and scripts being shared.

This one blurs NSFW domains which helps a bit (among many other features): https://kbin.social/m/kbinStyles/t/27201/kbin-enhancement-script-QOL-updates-for-the-kbin-UI

There may be others in that Mag: m/kbinStyles/ (I'm on kbin.social so the link goes direct to there; I'm still not sure how to share fediverse links in a less server specific way!)

Also obviously you need to tick "Hide adult content" under settings, but that currently relies on people flagging content appropriately when posting. Hopefully Kbin and Lemmy will move rapidly to autoflagging content in whole communities as NSFW to make that better.

BananaTrifleViolin,

How to find your subscribed magazines:

  • Hover on your name at the top right of Kbin
  • Click on "settings"
  • On the bar at the top, select "subscriptions"

How to see your subscribed content on the home page

  • Hover over the icon to the left of your name (the icon is 3 rows of 1 dot and 1 dash)
  • Select "subscribed" to see subscribed content only

OR

  • Visit /sub on the server you're on (e.g. kbin.social/sub)

OR

  • Click on the "gear" icon just below your name
  • Look for "Show top bar" and click on "yes"
  • This will show an old school reddit style/reddit enhancement suite style top bar, with "All", "Subscribed", "Moderated" and "Favourites" buttons on the top left corner.
BananaTrifleViolin,

It's available. Click on the gear icon below your name at the top right. A menu appears.

Look for "Show top bar" and click yes. Although it's not fully working yet; but it has the All/Subscribed/Moderate/Favourites buttons. The Mags listed seem to be random at the moment.

BananaTrifleViolin,

What is this book you speak off? What magic is this? Words on paper? It'll never catch on.

BananaTrifleViolin,

I'm not sure what @political_avacado is using, but:

Fedidb.org (https://fedidb.org/software/):

  • Lemmy - 452k
  • KBin - 43k

The different sites scrape roughly the same data but not all communities "opt in" to sharing data. The Kbin data is very similar between fediverse.observer and fedidb.org, but the Lemmy count is markedly different.

I think the trend is more important though; both are growing rapidly. I prefer the Kbin interface myself but as Lemmy & Kbin do essentially the same thing, we're looking at 500k overall in the "threadiverse"

EDIT: Also it's worth pointing out that is user accounts, not unique users. Many noobs like me created multiple accounts - one on each instance; I think I have 4 (but 1 is on a site that doesn't seem to be captured by the DB tools as it's so new). Also there will be some spam bots in the number. But the trend shows rapid growth which is great.

BananaTrifleViolin,

Virtual Reality. It still has a way to go, but the technology is incredible and immersive when done well.

The barriers at the moment are a mix of technical (high computing power, tethered systems, ongoing needs to improve camera and component sizes and weights to improve headset comfort) and conent (there is content but it is growing slowly; gaming and other entertainment seem the most likely uses for the tech, or 'spatial computing' if Apple can broaden the use scenarios).

I think the big shifts will come in the next few years:

  • Improved components and production lines - Apples extremely expensive headset makes more sense when you see it as the vanguard of a new production line - economies of scale, and ongoing technical improvements should bring even their current headset down in price in a few years. The iPhone did well initially but it really took off a few years in as Apple optimised it's production lines and costs, pumping up quality while maintaining price (although it was premium even then)
  • Streaming tech - both local wifi etc streaming from a PC to free up the user from tethering, and also longer term the potential for cloud based computing streaming to headsets. There will be technical issues but having used Stadia I'm convinced they can be overcome; although it failed commerically that (and other streaming techs) show low latency streaming for gaming can be done. Although with so much more to track and keep in sync VR will be harder; but streaming content will unleash VRs potential to mass market.
  • Procedural and "AI" generated VR content - I think content generation will benefit massively from the increased procedural and so-called AI generated technology. This will benefit gaming (and other entertainment) in general but that will feed into VR.
  • Market growth feedback loop - It's started already, VR is growing but we're still mostly in the early adopters phase, and particularly for the high end quality content end of the market. Meta's Quest based systems are really targetting a more casual low end of the market. But as the market grows and costs fall, it encourages more content which encourage mores users and VR will explode like many other technologies before it.

I'm convinced VR will be huge and transformative.

BananaTrifleViolin,

True but the downside is exposure and footfall. Subreddits work well as people can dip into them easily from elsewhere in Reddit, both new users and regular contributors can keep an eye from their feeds.

A forum is on it's own and only people out looking specifically for the forum or who know about Jellyfin will go looking for it, and it won't pop up in people's feeds. The Internet used to be littered with forums, but social media is the very reason they fell out of fashion.

But users have also created a Jellyfin community on Lemmy: jellyfin@lemmy.ml

BananaTrifleViolin,

The BBC article says the sub usually dives with a 4 day supply of oxygen.

BananaTrifleViolin,

It reads like there are no tourists on this trip, just crew. Or the firm is cruel in only caring about retrieving the crew.

BananaTrifleViolin,

Thanks for sharing this, it's very pleasing on the eyes and well thoughtout! Thanks for your hard work.

BananaTrifleViolin,

I tend to stick with one distro for a while but use it across multiple uses (my home PC as a separate boot partition to Windows, and within Virtualbox as a guest in windows and also in linux itself). I find it easier to stick to one Distro and get used to the distro's paradigm.

At the moment I'm using Mint and have done for a few years. I used Lubuntu before that. I'll be sticking with Mint until I next decide to refresh my PC and will revisit what's available at that time; maybe stick with Mint or move to something else if something is appealing.

I've never really used non-Linux distros apart from testing for fun.

BananaTrifleViolin,

I love this, thanks so much for your hard work in making this, it's a huge UX improvement.

BananaTrifleViolin,

So does the rest of the Fediverse need to defederate from Beehaw to clean up their sites?

EDIT: Nevermind I can see that if that happened, we wouldn't see Beehaw users posts in other fediverse servers that both sites are still federated to. It seems like defederating is a messy thing to do.

BananaTrifleViolin,

For RPGs for me it was Ultima VII - it was the first truly open world game I'd come across, with freedom and so much to do (for the time). I still think it's a great game to play even now.

BananaTrifleViolin,

Sim City - I loved that on my Amiga and played it to death.

Also Secret of Monkey Island, first game that was fun and funny - opened my eyes.

BananaTrifleViolin,

I think they're all part of the same issue - Reddit only cares about it's IPO and financial status, not it's users or communities. This will get worse when they IPO as Reddit will then care about the share price and nothing else.

We saw this with other Social media - look at Tumblr; it imploded as it started banning NSFW content because of bizarre moralising by Verizon when it took over Yahoo (and Yahoo already had been restricting content since it bought Tumblr). Twitter is imploding since it came under the whims of a billionaire egomaniac owner. Facebook has been in a long slow decline as it focuses on advertising above all else.

Reddit is going the same way. It has already started censorship - it closed lots of communities already in the past few years. This wasn't too controversial as it generally went for the obviously "extreme" communities or communities without any moderation which were therefore high risk. But it'll get more controversial as it moves towards its IPO - it'll do whatever maximises it's share price, and in the US in particular that also comes with a lot of reactivity to the general media. It'll just need one controversy for it to start banning other communities, and the NSFW communiteis are the obvious first targets. But also targetting communities based on being "hateful" or "trolling" - the problem is the how "bad" something is is largely in the eye of the beholder. Once you go down the road of banning anything you don't agree with you end up in censorship hell.

For most users issues around censorship, 3rd party access to APIs, and even privacy mean little as they don't feel the impact. But Reddit is on an inexorable path of decline and users will start moving as community quality falls (moderators working for free for their love of the community only is a huge asset; users will leave communities when they become filled with rubbish or trolling users), and faster when content they want gets banned.

Social media is littered with failed sites that either failed to move with the times or went off the rails ignoring users: MySpace, Tumblr, Digg, Twitter. Reddit is next up.

BananaTrifleViolin,

It depends on what you censor. Look at Tumblr if you want to see what happens when you go too far. Reddit is on the same trajectory. All that matters is monetizing and the share price; they'll be banning NSFW content (not just porn but anything deemed unsuitable) They've already done the same steps as Yahoo went through with Tumblr - first you had to be logged in, then you had to Opt in, next you have to use the offical Reddit app.

Next it will be ban it all - either due to moral panic with the shareholders, or user groups wanting to protect children from content, or because advertisers will want to stay away from the NSFW content but the ring fencing just doesn't work well enough. So the next step will be "ban it all, easier". Users will care then.

Spam and porn are flooding kbin already

There is a substantial amount of spam and NSFW posts on the All page coming through already. Most NSFW posts aren't being tagged as such and are coming right through. I am not sure how this can be weathered but we need something in place fairly soon, I feel like we are days away from rivers of bad stuff, especially via some of...

BananaTrifleViolin,

Bizarrely I think this is an example of the success of the services as they grow. Increase in use reveals problems that people didn't realise were there, which allows them to be fixed.

In this case, NSFW tags not being applied manually. As others have pointed out, NSFW tags might be better applied globally depending on either the hosting service &/or community.

It's a test of the fediverse which I have no doubt will be resolved.

BananaTrifleViolin,

I think defederating may be knee jerk at this stage? Beehaw seems to have defederated because they vet users and are worried about unvetted users flooding their service; that's a fundamental community position rather than a fediverse issue. In this case it's more about tags not being applied correctly and how to improve that process (e.g. automation based on server or community posted to).

Defederating or blocking specific instances/servers seems like it should be a last resort - e.g. if a service is lax about moderation or refuses to deal with issues then it makes sense.

BananaTrifleViolin,

I like the changes generally but they're not that big. It's an evolution rather than a revolution, and thats the right approach.

However I do find the Controller set up tool (for mapping buttons etc) to be trash now. The older version was far far better.

BananaTrifleViolin,

This is great, thanks for your hard work on this, really great improvements to the UX!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Youngstown
  • everett
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • osvaldo12
  • mdbf
  • ngwrru68w68
  • JUstTest
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • khanakhh
  • Durango
  • ethstaker
  • tacticalgear
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • cisconetworking
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •