jon avatar

jon

@jon@kbin.social

Suggestion: Thread Entanglement, or automatic merging of duplicate threads

See the quick inspect-element mockup I put together for an example. I'm bad at design, but I think it gets the point across. Current implementation on left, suggested on right. Also, I'm using Kbin Enhancement Suite for the modifications to instance names, but I think they are even more useful for this demonstration....

jon,
jon avatar

I think something like this is necessary at some point, since duplicate posts across duplicate communities is an inconvenience when compared to more centralized communities in Reddit. Some thoughts:

When you go to the comments, which instance's comments are we seeing? If we make a comment, which instance is our comment posted to? My idea would be to throw everyone's comments into a singular bucket as you said, but then you'll have to select which instance you're posting to when commenting. This does introduce an issue with moderation though, as different communities may have different rules. So there may need to be a moderation option on whether you'll allow post collation across other communities.

Aside from grouping duplicate posts like this, we could also group different communities. If we have a kbin.social/m/technology and lemmy.world/c/technology, we could just combine the posts from both communities into one group. This could be done automatically for communities with the same name, but a better option may be for moderators to add "sister communities" whose posts will appear in the magazine. That way, from the user's perspective, there is just one technology magazine that assembles content from multiple instances.

jon,
jon avatar

Oooor....

Start a new cover band led entirely by children called the antlets and put the magazine to good use.

jon,
jon avatar

Here's an oldy. J. Bruce Ismay.

J. Bruce Ismay was chairman of the White Star Line and passenger aboard the Titanic on the night it sank. He's been given a lot of shit throughout history for cheaping out on safety features of the ship, such as not carrying enough lifeboats, using cheap parts and manufacturing that contributed to the sinking, and insisting the ship move at full speed through ice fields to break records. He also took a seat on a lifeboat, saving himself at the cost of another passenger.

Except it's all bullshit.

Titanic did not cheap out on parts. It was a top of the line ship with industry leading safety features. There is no evidence that Ismay was pushing the ship to break any records. It wasn't even a ship built for speed, focusing more on oppulance and luxury. While Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats, it did carry more than it was legally required to. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, as they didn't have enough time to launch the lifeboats they had. And Ismay didn't "steal" a lifeboat spot. Most early lifeboats were being launched way below capacity, as people didn't want to get on them (believing that the ship wouldn't sink, or wouldn't sink before a rescue ship would arrive to save them). Ismay took a lifeboat seat because one was available. He didn't steal it. The only thing Ismay really did wrong is not die that night as the public felt he ought to have.

jon, (edited )
jon avatar

This would be a dangerous precedent. If you disagree with scientific findings, you just conduct your own research to disprove the original study. If companies can sue researchers for publishing claims that damage them, it'll just result in researchers withholding studies in fear a multibillion dollar corporation coming after them. Scientists need to be able to publish their research without fear of retribution.

The only exception I would accept is if someone published knowingly false research, a la Andrew Wakefield.

jon,
jon avatar

There needs to be a distinction between "I did my science badly" and "I knowingly published false information". Wakefield's paper linking vaccines and autism faked its data to imply a causal relationship between the two for the purposes of financial gain. You should absolutely be able to sue that guy if his paper damaged you in any way. Fuck 'em.

On the other hand, if you publish a study in earnest, but that study is full of mistakes and comes to an incorrect conclusion, you should not be able to be sued. If the study is bad, it would be easy enough to publish a response pointing out flaws with the original study. This is especially true since so many papers are published with the caveat of "this requires future study to confirm".

In order to sue, you should be required to show some sort of malicious action behind the bad science, such as faked data.

jon,
jon avatar

Exactly. If you're gonna cite religious exemptions, you should at the very least be required to point to the exact god damned verse.

jon,
jon avatar

Oh look, it's the fugitive slave act again.

Do you upvote your own posts and comments?

Since on most fediverse instances you don't automatically upvote your own comment, do you do it manually? What's considered "proper etiquette"? Because on Reddit your stuff is self-upvoted automatically, while in YT comment sections comments with 1 like sometimes get called out for liking their own comment. Do we have an...

jon,
jon avatar

No, I have people to do that for me.

jon,
jon avatar

Kuh-bin, with the first syllable short and emphasis on the second.

jon,
jon avatar

You can be as selfish as you want when it comes to dating. You don't have to do anyone any favors. You can reject people over the most petty of reasons. That's all fine. The person who has to live with it is you, after all.

There are only two people in a relationship, and neither of them should be required to settle for the other. Even if your reasons are bigoted and stupid, no one can make you date someone.

/kbin project management costs, financing, future plans

I wrote the first line of code for /kbin on January 14, 2021. Around this time, I started working remotely and decided that the time I used to spend commuting to the office would be devoted to /kbin. Throughout this entire period, /kbin has been a hobby project that I developed in my free time. It was also when Lemmy started...

kbin.social lifecycle: from 181 unique visitors to 2.9M in three months.
jon,
jon avatar

@ernest, if Kbin starts making okay money, don't be afraid to give yourself a salary. It's important that you get to eat too.

jon,
jon avatar

I heard an explanation awhile ago about why you always find these homophobic Republican congressmen in the closet with the pool boy.

If you're on the political left, homosexuality is more-or-less accepted. If you determine you're gay, you can accept that about yourself and have those around you accept you as well (or find a group of people that will). Coming out as gay may surprise people around you, but (assuming you have the proper support system in place) you'll be accepted for who you are.

But if you grew up as a deeply conservative fundamentalist christian? Homosexuality is an abomination. These are people who have given into a their hedonistic fantasies and live lives of sin. Sexual perverts and deviants.

So what if you're a deeply conservative man...who's also gay?

Well, obviously you're not gay. Because there aren't any intricacies or complexities to human sexuality and attraction that can make different people attracted to different things. Men are attracted to women, damn it, and that's all there is to it. Besides, homosexuality is a sin, and you're a deeply committed christian, so you can't be gay. But still, you keep having those thoughts....

But that's just the liberal gays tempting you with sin. We'll keep passing legislation against them before their lifestyles take over America. I mean, ignore the fact that like 93% of people aren't gay, so it can't be that tempting of a lifestyle. Also ignore the fact that as a cisgendered heterosexual male, I personally have never once fantasized about sucking dick, but that's beside the point. Obviously they're tempting people because for you, that's actually true. You constantly find yourself checking out attractive men when you go out, and you might even watch questionable videos online while your sexually frustrated wife sleeps in the next room over. The gays are obviously tempting people into their lifestyle, because you are constantly being tempted.

So you get more aggressive, give impassioned speeches on the evils of homosexuality, propose more and more discriminatory laws against them. Because it's not just the gays you're arguing against, you're denying the truth about yourself.

This goes on and on until on day the truth comes out. The intern comes out that you sexually propositioned him. They find gay porn on your laptop. The true nature of your relationship with your 'business associate' Chuck comes to light. Everyone realizes you're gay. Deep down, even you realize you're gay. But you can never admit that, because the fact that you're a conservative God-fearing christian has formed a structural cornerstone of your identity. To admit you're gay now would mean admitting you've been wrong, your religion has been wrong, and your entire worldview has been wrong. So you'll try to sweep it under the rug, say you were tempted by sin, that you've found God, blah blah. Your voters eat it up, because the alternative is voting for someone with a (D) next to their name.

And the sad part is just how much happier everyone would be if they could just accept this about themselves.

jon,
jon avatar

Yeah, 10 years ago it was "millennials are ruining X". Every older generation thinks the younger generation is lazy, self absorbed, and rude. Every younger generation thinks the older one is stuck up, stubborn, and resistant to change.

https://imgur.io/gallery/jVMtyuQ

jon,
jon avatar

Oh shit, don't let Lemmy know about that.

jon,
jon avatar

I think this has done damage to Reddit, but it'll be death by a thousand cuts rather than a big instantaneous failure.

To be honest, I really don't care what happens to Reddit at this point. I'd rather have Kbin be a smaller, more dedicated community than have it "kill Reddit".

jon,
jon avatar

Most social networks have this "growth at all costs" mentality that is usually the root cause of enshittification. When I say 'smaller', I mean it more in terms of fostering a healthy community of dedicated contributors rather than trying to make the fediverse grow as much as possible as fast as possible. This is why I mostly support the notion of preemptively defederating from Threads. While it would help the fediverse 'grow', that's not necessarily what I want out of it. I don't want us to win, I want us to be good.

jon,
jon avatar

Another thought is that they're not trying to kill Mastodon, they're trying to kill Twitter.

Mastodon has a bit of a community already, so by implementing ActivityPub, Meta can make its platform seem bigger than it is by pulling in Mastodon content. Gives it another edge over Twitter.

Best case scenario is Threads sees ActivityPub as just the cost of doing business. That way, even people who won't use your platform are still interacting with it. Downside, people on your platform can leave for a federated alternative and not miss out on any content. Not sure if that downside makes up for the potential gains.

I think the default approach needs to be defederate first unless Meta shows actual interest in developing the fediverse with good intentions. If Threads become the majority provider of content to the fediverse and then we defederate, we lose all that content. It could lead to Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kbin withering and dying as everyone goes where the content is.

jon,
jon avatar

I really like this. Even if it's not adopted by @ernest to be officially incorporated into Kbin, mods could create little variants to use as the thumbnail for magazines. Really hoping it catches on.

jon,
jon avatar

I think Truth Social is based on Mastodon, but I don't think it federated.

jon,
jon avatar

Hey, as an American I...well...yeah, pretty much.

jon,
jon avatar

Typical right wing response. We've identified a problem, now let's go shoot it! They always take an after-the-fact aggressive solution that never solves the underlying problem.

Drug cartels in Mexico? Go shoot them!
Widespread homelessness? Lock 'em up!
Gun violence? Somehow, more guns will fix it!

Never an attempt to look at the underlying cause of an issue and address those. I guess you can't make that into a bumper sticker for your F150 to rile your base up.

jon,
jon avatar

If the war on drugs had ended and the root causes of the cartels were gone, but they were refusing to give up power without a fight, then maaaaybe I could approve of a scenario where the military intervened to break that stronghold. But that's not what's being proposed here.

If we send in the military, we turn Mexico into a war zone, terrorize it's populace, and then leave as a new cartel forms to fulfill the void of business requirements left by the old one. It would accomplish less than actively choosing to do nothing.

jon,
jon avatar

Which is important to emphasize. Military involvement would only be acceptable if Mexico agreed to it.

jon,
jon avatar

If you get your public education in the deep south, you'll get a lot of lost-cause revisionist history. Everything from "the civil war really had nothing to do with slavery" to "slaves were actually treated very well".

jon,
jon avatar

The problem is that this should be the job of congress to pass a student debt relief bill. But congress can't come together to decide what color the sky is much less major economic reform.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • Leos
  • tsrsr
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • mdbf
  • Youngstown
  • osvaldo12
  • slotface
  • everett
  • rosin
  • hgfsjryuu7
  • kavyap
  • PowerRangers
  • normalnudes
  • ngwrru68w68
  • khanakhh
  • cisconetworking
  • modclub
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Durango
  • InstantRegret
  • vwfavf
  • tacticalgear
  • tester
  • cubers
  • ethstaker
  • anitta
  • All magazines