[HN Gopher] Lemmy: A Federated Reddit Alternative
___________________________________________________________________
Lemmy: A Federated Reddit Alternative
Author : fintler
Score : 116 points
Date : 2022-11-15 21:10 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lemmy.ml)
(TXT) w3m dump (lemmy.ml)
| seanalltogether wrote:
| So is each lemmy instance just a full standalone clone of the
| full reddit feature set? And multiple instances will all have the
| same duplicate communities? For example.
| https://beehaw.org/c/technology
| https://lemmy.ml/c/technology
|
| Am I gonna just see a bunch of duplicate content if I've joined
| multiple servers?
| BeetleB wrote:
| From the Lemmy docs:
|
| > On Lemmy you're able to subscribe to communities on any other
| server, and can have discussions with users registered
| elsewhere.
| least wrote:
| If you're comparing it to reddit, it'd just be like subscribing
| to two subreddits with similar topics. It's moderated by
| different people so the rules change but the links might be
| about the same thing.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| So, exactly how long before shills and bots are cross
| pollinating some paid for narrative on all the technology
| subs using the same script?
|
| "Hmm, almost all of r/technology is against nuclear, that
| informs my personal view point a little... "hmm, every one of
| these technology reddit-likes is against nuclear, I guess
| everyone agrees and I should too".
|
| I am aware that this is not a bug to Reddit, it is the reason
| they are looking at an IPO, is a very in-demand feature to be
| able to shape narratives.
|
| I look forward to seeing how a federated Reddit deals with
| narrative pushing.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| this is basically how matrix's federation works. every
| homeserver has its own copy of any room that any of its users
| are on, regardless of what server owns/created the room
| originally, they all keep in sync with each other to merge
| messages in from the other homeservers. you can also create
| local-only, homeserver-specific channels if desired.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| Anyone got a standalone ActivityPub _client_? Couldn 't find one.
| The protocol is intended to cover both server/server federation
| and client/server fetching of updates, correct?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Does it have the same mastodon problem of separate namespaces?
| I'm having a tough time getting enthusiastic about federated
| social media that has disjoint namespaces. Is there no way to
| have a federated-but-shared namespace so I don't have to lose my
| username when an instance shuts down?
| pphysch wrote:
| Isn't that the point of federation? That there is not a
| centralized (naming/identity) authority?
| riffic wrote:
| but I want everyone to perform the same landgrab for handles
| every time a new service comes along. Don't worry about where
| ambiguities exist, it'll be handled via first comes first
| serve, trademark law, or just by reselling names on the black
| market /s
| lifty wrote:
| Unfortunately the only way to achieve that in the fediverse is
| by hosting your own instance, or at the minimum using your own
| domain and having someone manage the instance for you.
| riffic wrote:
| that's a feature, not a bug!
|
| one shared namespace is problematic for _reasons_. You can
| figure email though, right?
|
| DNS is a _solved problem_ and we 're never going to see
| anything better come along because DNS has survived the test of
| time (see the Lindy Effect - DNS is old, crusty, and like the
| _Art of War_ or Shakespeare, it 's worth learning).
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| That argument works better if 1 user = 1 domain rather the
| mastodon model where users are under a random domain they
| have no control of.
|
| (In passing, using top level domains as user id may be a good
| idea in some cases. In tech communities the friction may be
| bearable.)
| riffic wrote:
| I prefer to place emphasis where _content is produced_
| rather than who _consumes_ content.
| swores wrote:
| Is this gpt-3, or have you just coincidentally written 3
| paragraphs that seem, at a glance, relevant and on-subject
| but that actually are saying nothing at all?
| riffic wrote:
| You can _ask_ specifically what isn 't clear and we could
| discuss that particular topic for clarification.
|
| I assume you aren't familiar with the Lindy effect though
| and I apologize for making an arcane reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
| swores wrote:
| Sorry, it genuinely looked machine generated to me. After
| posting I went to look at your profile and realised you
| are a real person, but you'd already replied by the time
| I tried to delete my comment.
|
| OK then:
|
| > "that's a feature, not a bug! one shared namespace is
| problematic for _reasons_. "
|
| Is just saying "I'm right you're wrong and I refuse to
| explain why".
|
| > "You can figure email though, right?"
|
| Are you saying that being able to understand email means
| one should find the benefit to separate namespaces in
| social media? Or that email is everyone's definition of
| perfect and so everything should be like it? Or something
| else, considering it took me a bit of guessing to even
| think of those first two explanations?
|
| > DNS is a _solved problem_
|
| First, are you suggesting DNS is 100% perfect at what it
| does and nobody could ever have any complaint about it?
| Second, it's not clear to me how it being a solved
| problem for what it currently does means it's necessarily
| the right approach for any new uses? I need to get a tire
| on my car replaced tomorrow, and I really hope they don't
| tell me "you don't need a new tire, you need DNS -
| haven't you heard, it's a _solved problem_ ".
|
| I'm genuinely not trying to be sarcastic I just don't
| understand any argument you're trying to make.
| [deleted]
| bredren wrote:
| I agree it is confusing for products intended to be global,
| networked and hyper social to have overlapping usernames.
|
| People expect and understand username exclusivity.
|
| I rarely think of a distributed ledger as the useful answer for
| something, but I wonder if there are other ways a social
| network like lemmy or toot toot could agree on something like
| this.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| That sounds like it would get rid of a significant portion of
| what makes federation worthwhile. I see this request a lot, so
| I'm sure it has merit to a decent amount of people, but I can't
| help but feel like the people requesting it are simply missing
| the entire point of the thing. It feels like people are so
| captured by the way centralized walled gardens work, they can't
| even conceive of a world without them.
| yogthos wrote:
| I keep seeing this repeated over and over every time the
| discussion of the Fediverse comes up, but I don't actually see
| this being a problem in practice.
|
| It's perfectly fine if the network consists of a bunch of
| loosely connected islands without the ability to propagate
| information across the entire network because there is a
| limited number of people you can interact with meaningfully.
| Federation favors smaller communities where the interactions
| are more personal while still facilitation interaction between
| different communities.
|
| Even a centralized site like reddit is ultimately broken down
| into subreddits because nobody wants to see all of reddit all
| at once.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| This is an issue because people want social media to be an
| identity that they control. Suggesting it is fine to lose
| your identity and all the work you spent building connections
| whenever an instance shuts down is nonsense. People are
| looking for reasons to move away from Twitter, not for more
| reasons to stay on Twitter. Federated identity is something
| that can be added but Mastodon doesn't have something like
| this to the best of my knowledge.
| riffic wrote:
| some identities are not directly yours to control, but are
| roles assigned to you by your membership in a group.
|
| Employment, for example.
|
| Luckily good orgs use directories to manage membership
| (LDAP, etc).
|
| What I'm thinking about here is something like my
| particular city (Los Angeles) delegating social media
| accounts to people involved in government, like city
| council members or spokespeople in certain departments
| (LAFD? you get the picture).
|
| https://riffic.rocks/city-hall-on-the-fedi/
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Federation implies that users identity should not be tied
| to a single instance but that they should be able to
| access their account from any federated instance.
| [deleted]
| erisian wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a huge issue if you set up user
| expectations adequately. Just like JoeAsshole@gmail.com isn't
| the same account as JoeAsshole@hotmail.com.
|
| A workable alternative would be using a pubkey fingerprint with
| an mutable display name, but who wants to help their family
| sort that out?
| [deleted]
| scrumper wrote:
| Grumpy old man mode: we had this! It's called Usenet.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I'd love for a revamped Usenet service for mailing lists but it
| really isn't a social media replacement.
| fleddr wrote:
| One thing is for sure, it really is fast.
|
| My most fascinating discovery is the public Modlog:
| https://lemmy.ml/modlog
|
| What a spectacularly bad idea to show it in the open, but
| educational nonetheless. It very much resembles Reddit
| moderation, on steroids.
|
| People are banned for typing 3 sentences (too long!), "repeated
| anti-communism", ....insert laundry list of other bullshit
| reasons...and get this: admins can simply wipe out an entire
| community at will. I'm not sure if that means it doesn't federate
| or simply stops working.
|
| In any case, massive power trip vibes.
| [deleted]
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| > _Be HN user_
|
| > _Want alternative to Reddit that doesn 't have the clout of
| centrist mainstream media influencing it_
|
| > _Find Lemmy, open source and free to use_
|
| > _Lemmy is developed by political extremists that operate
| outside of centrist mainstream media_
|
| > _Political extremists are on the wrong side_
|
| > _Exclaim_ "Looks like a no for me. But I appreciate the
| effort."
|
| FWIW There are a number of right wing extremist Lemmy instances
| (https://wolfballs.com/, https://ovarit.com/, previously
| https://thedonald.win).
| matai_kolila wrote:
| Not that I think these folks want mainstream appeal, but if you
| want mainstream appeal, stop federating stuff! Nobody cares about
| privacy and control over their own information nearly as much as
| privacy advocates think they do, and if even one thing is
| slightly harder as a result, people will simply never adopt your
| tool or technology.
| rnd0 wrote:
| What's so great about mainstream appeal? These services are
| designed for folks who do care about those issues, and the
| folks who are mainstream already have outlets catering to them.
| I don't see them flocking over if Lemmy is dumbed-down.
|
| As usual when chasing "mass adoption" I think that the target
| demographic would simply be chased off and the project with
| wither on the vine.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| If you're billing yourself as a "Reddit Alternative", you
| definitely care about mainstream appeal.
| ryanianian wrote:
| > stop federating stuff
|
| Another conclusion: Federation alone isn't enough of a selling
| point. Federation must also be a key unlocker of other
| features. Perhaps more branded/tailored sites for different
| audience segments but which can feed into each other in
| meaningful ways might be one way to pitch it. But dropping
| federation entirely is throwing out the baby with the
| bathwater.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| I agree that getting rid of federation is not the answer.
| However, it will be little more than a source of neato
| developer projects as long as new projects try to get users
| to think about it, let alone understand it, nevermind
| actually _needing_ to understand it to use a product to its
| full potential.
|
| People who don't care about federation, conceptually, will
| never care about federation, even if it yields tangible
| benefits they care about otherwise. They will prioritize user
| experience, interface, branding appeal, reliability and speed
| of operations like finding people in-app, and all of that
| other stuff that FOSS social media, and many other types of
| FOSS projects, de-prioritize. That is why FOSS alternatives
| are still alternatives despite being free, and largely
| technically superior.
|
| The disconnect is rooted in differing perspectives.
| Developers, naturally, use more sophisticated means of
| evaluating software than end users, much the way
| nutritionists evaluate food. We consider interfaces and user
| experiences to be means of interacting with software, and
| consider the software on a whole, yielding only so much
| weight to usability. Since software plays such a huge part of
| our lives, spending a little time wrangling it doesn't seem
| onerous.
|
| To _nearly all end users_ , the interface/experience _is_ the
| software. Even people who do care about federation
| conceptually may not even be willing to deal with admin > 0
| for their social media accounts. It's not ideal, but it's
| reality. Federation hardly matters more to them than HTTP/2
| does. Trying to use it as a selling point for general
| audience software is a failing strategy. So who cares? Social
| media is a hell of a lot more useful with a critical mass of
| users... other users are what make it "social," rather than
| merely "media."
|
| If developers are nutritionists, designers are chefs.
| Calculating proper nutrition to keep us alive and functioning
| is arguably more important to making food delicious and
| enriching our sensual lives. But if you take a large group of
| people and offer them their choice of food either constructed
| by nutritionists or constructed by chefs, the chefs will win
| every time. Many of the nutritionists will be mystified by
| people's lack of ability to prioritize critical body
| functioning over beautiful sensual experiences.
|
| (When I was in culinary school, a fellow student was a
| career-changing nutritionist saying she was becoming a chef
| because she was tired of "being the bad guy taking away all
| the things people loved.)
|
| The key is actively enfranchising people who specialize in
| knowing what users want. Spending an afternoon in Gimp making
| a punny logo is not branding. Customizable color themes are
| not UX.
| [deleted]
| mikae1 wrote:
| This post should be edited to link to https://join-lemmy.org
| [deleted]
| s1mon wrote:
| Is there some connection to Motorhead or is that just in my
| brain?
| sidpatil wrote:
| https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/about/about.html
|
| Bottom of page.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Aaand the first thing I see is a thread about Afghanistan full of
| tankies. God damn it.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I feel this sentiment, but I also hope that being federated
| means more instances will crop up that have different
| demographics.
| jevgeni wrote:
| Also, russia apologists and very dubious sources. Weirdly, an
| experience that is very unlike Mastodon for me.
| [deleted]
| alexb_ wrote:
| The admins are _literal_ marxists (I do mean literal, check the
| admin profiles), and have designed the technology wanting "to
| make it very difficult for racist trolls to use the most updated
| version of Lemmy." https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622
|
| This of course is not necessarily a reason to avoid the
| underlying technology, but it may be something to consider.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| The real Lemmy wouldn't have a rude word filter. He'd let you
| use the rude word, and if you got punched in the mouth for
| using it he'd use that as a teachable moment.
|
| Be more Lemmy.
| mikae1 wrote:
| So pick another instance[1] or start your own? That's how
| federation works.
|
| [1] https://join-lemmy.org/instances
| mistermann wrote:
| Having ideological censorship baked into the base system seems
| like not an optimal approach.
| notsrg wrote:
| Kind of a self report if your ideology depends on using
| slurs, don't you think?
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| serverholic wrote:
| [deleted]
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's a good opportunity to tear down one's filter bubble and
| venture outside their personal echo chamber.
| riffic wrote:
| more power to them.
| ttpphd wrote:
| Why
| striking wrote:
| https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816#issuecomment-6446...
|
| > Edit: This comment was written at a time when Lemmy the
| software was practically identical with the lemmy.ml instance.
| At that time we barely had any moderation tools, so it was an
| easy way to keep some groups of users off the instance. Now its
| different, there are good mod tools, and many different
| instances. So we removed the slur filter in Lemmy 0.14.0
| (instance admins can optionally configure one, which lemmy.ml
| does).
|
| The comment was edited Nov 2021 to include this new context.
| throwaway8689 wrote:
| 'Federated Reddit' seems like a revival of the old BBSs.
|
| Hard-coding slur filters sounds like the work of Sisyphus though.
| ubertaco wrote:
| Genuine question about both this and Mastodon, since both have
| the same "decentralized, join/start the instance that fits your
| interests" fundamental principle: isn't this just exacerbating
| the filter-bubble effect that cranks up polarization?
|
| Like, is it really a great thing for mending societal bridges
| that folks can choose between a server for leftists or a server
| for hard-right folks and that split ensures that one never
| interacts with the other? Is it really no longer possible to have
| conversations happen between folks that disagree, to the point
| that we want to ensure that there's no chance for such
| conversations ever to happen, even by accident?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > isn't this just exacerbating the filter-bubble effect that
| cranks up polarization?
|
| I don't think that the goals of these software products are to
| reduce political polarization. What does the telephone do to
| reduce political polarization?
| pluc wrote:
| fleddr wrote:
| The really painful thing is that probably 80% of people are
| quite reasonable but on social media the extremes on both sides
| dominate conversation. Extreme toxicity as well as extreme
| fragility are the norm.
|
| Extremity is highly engaging and richly rewarded, hence
| maximizing polarization has become an incentive on its own.
| "normal" users have been exposed to this discourse for several
| years now, and may have internalized it.
| gilded-lilly wrote:
| It is only possible as long as one side is able to have civil
| discourse, without labeling/demonizing/name calling and
| violently attacking their opponents. It's quite hard to have a
| debate when people's views are not only completely entrenched,
| they are simply not willing to give respect at all.
| rnd0 wrote:
| small correction; it's only possible if both sides are
| capable and willing to set aside heated rhetoric. At this
| point in time, I honestly question if any of the sides are
| capable of honest engagement.
| gilded-lilly wrote:
| I think civil discourse is possible if reasonable debate is
| allowed. Unfortunately, for one side, it appears that
| reason itself is problematic for them and they refuse it.
| fleddr wrote:
| This is called being part of the problem. My side is
| fine.
| rnd0 wrote:
| That can describe both the left and the right. I'd be
| very surprised if you weren't alluding to SJWs; but at
| the same time you're describing Qanon folks as well.
|
| ...and that's why we can't have discourse. No one can
| agree on what constitutes "reasonable debate".
| gilded-lilly wrote:
| Well, you're conflating a fringe movement of radical
| conspiracy theorists with the average person who doesn't
| go along with the woke agenda. That in itself is an
| example of what I'm talking about.
| capableweb wrote:
| Eh. Some people want bubbles, let them, you can't force people
| to do something they don't want to do.
|
| Personally I run my own Mastodon instance for myself and
| federate with everything, left or right, I don't care. I block
| stuff for myself that is illegal in my country, but I like
| reading about opinions I don't necessarily agree with.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| You are right, but subreddits have the same issue. It doesn't
| seem markedly worse than what it is attempting to replace.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > isn't this just exacerbating the filter-bubble effect that
| cranks up polarization
|
| It's the opposite. When people are aware of the bias of their
| sources the filter-bubble effect cease to exist.
|
| The whole problem with the filter bubble is that people are
| unaware of the existing biases.
|
| It's surprising how people don't understand this...
| joshlemer wrote:
| Well in practice I don't think that the typical outcome would
| be partitioning users by interest. In email, we don't have that
| for the most part, instead people choose the provider that
| provides the service they like the most, with some exception.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think we really need to interrogate this idea that filter
| bubbles are a bad thing. Some of the biggest negatives of
| twitter (and positive in terms of engagement) is that you have
| these groups that are opposed, and then a tweet from one bubble
| goes viral in another causing a war between bubbles. The exact
| same issue with brigading on reddit. Maybe we should trust
| people a little more, let people who agree have a space to
| agree and discuss their shared goals, interests and ideas, and
| then trust them enough to know that if they want to hear
| opposing views they know where to go.
| fleddr wrote:
| That is fine, but the existence of a bubble on Twitter is
| often defined by having a common external enemy. That's what
| the participants inside the bubble have in common, and very
| often not much else.
|
| They aren't necessarily deep friends, these bubble people.
| Move such a bubble to friendly territory where there is only
| peace, and many will fall apart.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > and then trust them enough to know that if they want to
| hear opposing views they know where to go.
|
| Sounds great. But remind me from where all this brigading,
| canceling, preventing speech, and censorship is coming from.
| [deleted]
| rnd0 wrote:
| It's a good thing to create an enviroment that is safe from
| 4chan-style brigading, yes.
|
| >Is it really no longer possible to have conversations happen
| between folks that disagree,
|
| At this point? No -because neither side can agree on common
| references; the left get their news from one set of news
| outlets and the far right get their news from qanon or whatever
| facebook fringe groups.
|
| It's impossible to have a conversation if you cannot even agree
| on basic language or common references.
|
| With their being fewer and fewer genuinely left-of-center
| outlets it becomes necessary for people to be able to build
| enclaves that won't be shitposted into oblivion (see also:
| reddit with the_donald and other brigading subs)
| barbazoo wrote:
| The way I think about it is that it allows for self-regulation
| the way it happens in real life too. In real life you can't go
| into someone's neighborhood meeting and harass people, you'd
| get kicked out and you wouldn't be welcome going forward. The
| same way servers can cut ties with other servers. Someone here
| explained it much better than me but the idea that everybody
| should have an opportunity to be heard by everyone just isn't
| realistic and isn't what we do in non-virtual communication.
| Federation allows to facilitate that.
| dangond wrote:
| This is exactly the problem I've had with Twitter as a social
| platform. The network is simply too big to the point that
| it's strange to me that the default means of posting is to
| literally everyone using the platform. Smaller discord
| communities I've been in rarely get into flame wars as often
| as people on Twitter since they tend to already be a self-
| selected group of like-minded people. Putting people with
| wildly different views in front of each other and
| incentivizing "hot takes" via like and retweet counters is
| very much the opposite of a healthy social environment.
| fleddr wrote:
| This analogy in part breaks down because in the digital
| space, such "bans" don't require any substance.
|
| If in the physical space you'd ban somebody from ever joining
| your meeting or neighborhood again, you need to have some
| type of probably cause. Something really bad must have
| happened.
|
| Meanwhile in the digital space: banned for life because your
| comment was too long. Don't believe me? Watch:
|
| https://lemmy.ml/modlog
| Vrondi wrote:
| It is my understanding that no matter which server you sign up
| on, you can follow people on every other federated server. So,
| it doesn't much matter what political stance each server
| officially takes, because the bubbles are connected.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Except with Mastodon, where your server can blacklist whole
| servers if those servers contain undesirables.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| It's not great, but on a centralised alternative administration
| will take a side and some groups will be pushed out completely.
| Unless, of course, such platform will commit to being a public
| square, but reddit isn't that.
|
| Federation offers at least some hope of cross-pollination.
| phailhaus wrote:
| It seems like a user's best move is to find the Lemmy instance
| with the most users and most active community, because nobody
| wants to deal with figuring out "which instance has the best
| subreddit for X". So this sounds like it just results in Reddit,
| again, with extra steps.
| yogthos wrote:
| Social media has come to play an important role in our society.
| It's a way for people to get news and to discuss it with their
| peers as well as a tool for education. For better or worse,
| social media has become an invaluable tool and an integral part
| of our society.
|
| It's important to remember who owns corporate platforms and whose
| interests they ultimately represent. These are not neutral and
| unbiased channels that allow for the free flow of information.
| The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and
| opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms
| are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned.
|
| Some examples include Facebook banning antifascist pages[1] and
| Twitter banning left-wing accounts during the midterm elections
| in US[2]. When the content that the user produce does not fit
| with the interests of the platform then it often gets removed and
| communities end up being destroyed.
|
| Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant
| source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. The
| information collected about the users, and it can reveal a lot
| more about the individual than most people realize. It's possible
| for the owners of the platforms to identify users based on the
| address of the device they're using, see their location, who they
| interact with, and so on. This creates a comprehensive profile of
| the person along with the network of individuals whom they
| interact with. This information is often shared with the
| affiliates of the platform as well as government entities.
|
| It's clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy,
| nor are the users in control of their content. Users are just a
| product that the owners of the platform sell to their actual
| customers who mine personal data.
|
| Platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon are developed in the open
| making it possible to tell how they work internally. These
| platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their
| data. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user
| privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience
| without annoying ads, analytics, and other garbage.
|
| Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes
| collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook,
| Twitter, and Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move
| data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum
| game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share
| content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots
| from one site being posted on another.
|
| On the other hand, a federated network that's developed in the
| open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game
| environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network
| help grow the entire network.
|
| Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the
| internet was intended to work in the first place, it's actually
| quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the
| internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.
| Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to
| post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them
| being censored or manipulated by corporate interests.
|
| No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or
| later it's going to either disappear or change in a way that
| doesn't suit you because companies must constantly chase profit
| in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user
| since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
|
| On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic.
| Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive
| because they're developed by people who themselves benefit from
| their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in
| different directions by different groups of users if there is a
| disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when
| projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new
| teams as long as there is an interested community of users around
| them.
|
| It's time for people to get serious about owning our tools and
| start using communication platforms built by the people and for
| the people. Let's get back to making the internet work the way it
| was intended to work.
|
| [1] https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-
| antifascis...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-political-account-
| ba...
| 2kwatts wrote:
| jsnell wrote:
| Previously on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28453165
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31712332
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33438493
| sedatk wrote:
| There's also a fully decentralized (P2P) Reddit alternative
| called Aether: https://getaether.net/
| [deleted]
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Individual low-membership subreddits are usually much better than
| the frontpage, but for these subs - what's the benefit of
| federation? An obscure topic will need a large baseline community
| to pull from to get a quorum for conversation.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think the benefit is a preemptive transition onto a more
| consensual platform where you are the owner-operator who can
| adjust the rules and mechanics instead of a tenant to an
| exploitative behemoth who can ruin your community without even
| noticing it.
| chrisan wrote:
| is there an example of a low membership sub the GP was
| referring to thats been ruined?
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Any good sub will grow with time.
|
| The bigger it is, the more difficult it is to move off your
| tenant platform.
|
| And as time passes, you are more likely to want something
| which your tenant platform does not offer.
|
| Maybe it is a different style of displaying images. Maybe
| it is a different way of defending against bots and spam.
| Maybe it is easier reporting of spam by users.
|
| Whatever it is, a platform with a user:operator ratio of
| over a million will probably not have the resources to
| accommodate you.
| djbusby wrote:
| > Note: Federation is still in active development
|
| And here's the repos https://github.com/LemmyNet
|
| It looks like ActivityPub
| [deleted]
| dewfaced wrote:
| "A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by
| Lemmy's developers"
|
| Looks like a no for me. But I appreciate the effort.
| r721 wrote:
| It's Mastodon-like, so there exist right-wing instances too:
| https://wolfballs.com/ (possibly NSFW)
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Can't we just have a place where we discuss things without
| bringing in the latest political talking point? Maybe I'm
| mis-remembering, maybe it's rose-tinted glasses, but I
| honestly can't remember it being like this on forums back in
| the day.
|
| I don't remember _any_ political discuss on the various warez
| forums I was on (nxsecure anyone?). Flame wars were a thing,
| no doubt, but it wasn't this already formed opinion where
| you've picked a side and now anyone on the other side is a
| bad guy. It is completely bizarre.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| online forums for piracy given the demographics they tend
| to attract rarely ever had much political debate. if you've
| ever attended a CCC thouch or any other anarchist/hacker
| space they were always political, mostly left leaning.
|
| pretending this is news reminds me of Paul Ryan being
| shocked that Rage Against the Machine didn't like him. I
| also will point out that your very own profile page here
| features a link to a political manifesto
| pndy wrote:
| > but I honestly can't remember it being like this on
| forums back in the day.
|
| It wasn't like this but then the Internet wasn't still that
| much widespread as today. Social media boom really opened
| it to the masses but also bring political polarization
| which really bloomed in last ~10 years.
|
| Twenty years ago I wouldn't imagine that in the nearest
| future we'll have communities on the Internet ruled and
| divided by political views. That we'll need to self-censor
| what and in what form we want to say to others under the
| risk of the instant ban. I didn't expect either that we'll
| need to agree to "codes of conduct" - netiquette and forums
| rules were enough for most of the time.
|
| Back then I hoped we'll have virtual assistants connected
| to vast databases, that we'll met in the virtual worlds
| with photo-realistic avatars, that technology would blend
| indistinguishably with our environment, and that would
| connect us into one global village. And instead we got
| bubbled social networks with yelling influencers and ads,
| tracking on every corner of the web. Bleh.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I think you can thank heavy-handed moderation for the lack
| of political discussions on forums back in the day.
| superfrank wrote:
| I don't think that's all of it. Politics has continually
| gotten more polarizing over the 20 or so years. I don't
| think this is the worst it's ever been in the US, but it
| definitely seems like the Trump era is the worst it's
| been since mass adoption of the internet. Because of
| things like 24 hour news networks and social media, we're
| also reminded of our differences much more frequently
| than we used to be.
|
| I think politics is just a bigger part of peoples' lives
| now and we're seeing that play out in real life as well
| as in internet communities.
| josteink wrote:
| I can assure you we had no moderators dealing with the
| kind of political nonsense we have today back in the days
| when I was a regular at the Something awful, Fark,
| Jpopmusic or XDA forums.
|
| People were just out to have a good time, have a laugh or
| get together over something they loved.
|
| People seemingly don't seem to be as good at that these
| days.
| TylerE wrote:
| Maybe because they finally realized that ignoring the
| unignorable is a losing strategy?
|
| It's like the people who bitch about their HOA all the
| time but never go to a meeting or even know who the board
| members are.
| josteink wrote:
| > Maybe because they finally realized that ignoring the
| unignorable is a losing strategy?
|
| Maybe I'm just dumb, but I don't fully understand this
| comment.
|
| What is unignorable? Politics? I can ignore it just fine
| when I consider it not an appropriate subject. And a
| losing strategy? For what?
|
| Why does every arena have to be about picking a fight,
| rather than finding common ground? Why try to increase
| the divide in our society?
|
| I just don't get this mentality.
| TylerE wrote:
| Not picking a fight isn't the same as pretending
| something doesn't exist.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > What is unignorable? Politics? I can ignore it just
| fine when I consider it not an appropriate subject.
|
| It's easier to ignore something that largely ignores you.
| It becomes impossible to ignore something when half the
| people in it consider your existence an affront to their
| sensibilities, and those people are inexplicably being
| listened to.
|
| > Why does every arena have to be about picking a fight,
| rather than finding common ground?
|
| There exists no common ground when people think other
| people shouldn't exist. If all those people stop having
| any influence on the world, perhaps the rest can
| successfully seek common ground and have reasonable
| policy discussions.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Back in the day was an unusually peaceful time for much of
| the world... people would instead get in heated battles
| about stupid bullshit like game consoles and operating
| systems.
|
| Things were different before, and it seems things are
| becoming different again.
| rnd0 wrote:
| >Can't we just have a place where we discuss things without
| bringing in the latest political talking point?
|
| Not since Arab Spring or rather shortly thereafter. I'm not
| sure if there was a ramp-up of "active measures" style
| agitation, "cointelpro" style group antagonism or what the
| exact mechanism was. But any way you slice it, it has
| become increasingly impossible for competing groups within
| the same sphere to communicate much less for their to be a
| dialog between the left and right.
|
| No one can dialog with anybody else because the people
| upstairs want it that way!
| [deleted]
| vehemenz wrote:
| "Back then" the Internet was disproportionately populated
| by educated people--college students, academics, engineers,
| and the professional class. Disenfranchised people were not
| using the Internet on their phones during their breaks.
| r721 wrote:
| I think some instances are politically neutral, but Lemmy
| is a much smaller network than Mastodon, and those
| instances have like a few posts/month.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Another problem is that nearly everyone's "political" views
| have been reduced to just talking points and strange
| dogmatic behavior.
|
| As a counter example consider someone who could no longer
| exist online even if he, sadly, had not passed: Erik Naggum
|
| Erik certainly expressed political views in many of his
| comments, but at the same time it's very hard to box his
| thinking into any mainstream political narrative. I think
| today he would be both unwelcome on Twitter and HN or any
| more conservative sites. Erik represents a lot of what I
| remember and miss about earlier forums: strongly held
| _personal_ beliefs that don 't fit into any one particular
| bucket.
|
| Individuals having diverse views within their own system of
| beliefs is what allowed us to have meaningful political
| discussions in the past because 3 people could talk about 3
| different topics and the group could reasonably be split 2
| vs 1 on all topics with completely different splits each
| time.
| olivermuty wrote:
| I think that is also largely colored by the fact that one
| <<side>> in modern US politics is objectively literally a
| collection of <<bad guys>>. It makes it a bit hard to have
| serious political discourse when one of the sides is
| seeemingly trying to burn the house down rather than lose.
|
| Also there was a ton of political stuff in the bush era as
| well. My theory is that you just dont remember it because
| there was still a solid foundation of political decorum and
| respect on both sides at that time.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not american.
| josteink wrote:
| > the _fact_ that one <<side>> in modern US politics is
| _objectively literally_ a collection of <<bad guys>>
|
| None of those emphasised words means what you think they
| mean.
|
| The fact that some people have been radicalized to
| believe stuff like this is more likely the root of the
| problems we're having today.
|
| In that regard your comment is what I would objectively
| consider a bad comment on HN (and against the site
| guidelines too), but it was still useful in the broader
| sense of the discussion.
| eclipxe wrote:
| olivermuty is right.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > It makes it a bit hard to have serious political
| discourse when one of the sides is seeemingly trying to
| burn the house down rather than lose.
|
| Your parent is asking for a place where there is little
| to no political discussion, not a place to have
| meaningful political discussion.
|
| With the good old phpBB forums, they'd often dedicate one
| subforum for political/flamebait content, and it was
| allowed only in there. As a user, you simply didn't read
| that subforum if you didn't care for it.
|
| Specifically, on those forums, you had to _actively seek_
| those venues to have these discussions. Today it seems
| you have to work to _avoid_ these discussions.
| [deleted]
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's a great chance to step out of one's filter bubble. Take it
| as an opportunity to widen perspectives and exchange ideas that
| normally wouldn't be exchanged.
| least wrote:
| The problem is that places that cater to a specific political
| demographic tend to not tolerate exchanges of ideas, even if
| they are civil. It's very difficult to intentionally create a
| community that allows for discourse from wildly varying
| viewpoints where people feel comfortable sharing their point
| of view.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| yep ... I immediately saw about 5 articles that looked like
| straight up russian propaganda about Ukraine on the front
| page and was quite challenged about whether I wanted to read
| them or not.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Agree! Where else am I going to engage with far left
| moderators and tech people? I mean; there is only everywhere,
| but I'm already existing there.
| drbeast wrote:
| So insufferable reddit moderators just moved to their own
| playground?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Sounds like hell
| Pr0ject217 wrote:
| Interesting choice by them... I'm tired of politics.
| mikae1 wrote:
| So pick another instance[1] or start your own? That's how
| federation works.
|
| [1] https://join-lemmy.org/instances
| joshlemer wrote:
| It's just too bad that the flagship instance of Lemmy (lemmy.ml)
| is full of literal hardline Marxists and Soviet Union
| nostalgics/apologists. Totally insufferable.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of federation that you can simply spin up
| your own instance?
| joshlemer wrote:
| Yes, but all the non-communist servers, combined, have an
| active user base of like 100.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Um, recruit some more users? This is a good opportunity to
| take personal responsibility and individual accountability
| for a problem as you see it.
|
| The first thing people need to learn about stoicism is that
| you can't change other people as much as you want to. Make
| peace with this and do things that are in your control.
| jevgeni wrote:
| You must see the contradiction in this comment, no?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Why do I have to do that? How is that something I'm
| responsible for? I don't own those instances and I don't
| like the existing users.
|
| I'm going to just keep using Facebook, and this will die
| off
| yarg wrote:
| It's still a problem if it impacts the development model -
| and if I remember rightly from last time Lemmy came up, it
| does.
| Markoff wrote:
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