You must log in or register to comment.
I have locked this post because of comments deviating from the main topic.
Absolutely no surprise there. When you keep the barrier to entry low and throw in an algorithm to increase “engagement” via outrage, the soup turns to poison quickly.
This is why every time someone says the Fediverse is “too confusing,” I just smile and nod. That attitude of petulant, lazy, self-imposed gatekeeping is what’s keeping the Fediverse a much nicer place to be.
My first instinct would be to say, “This is the 21st century, learn to use a damn computer already!” But then I think of the long term and WANT people to think it’s too hard to join Mastodon or Kbin, just to keep the average IQ of these sites above room temperature.
If the “hot” and “active” filters continue to work as expected and bots get reasonably moderated or blocked, I don’t even think Lemmy needs a high barrier to entry or petulance. The most important thing is to not optimize any recommendation or sorting algorithm on session duration, ads seen before closing session, and revenue per user.
This is so true and people seem to have a really hard time seeing this. The cultures on other social sites are far more manufactured than we’d like to believe. I think the human driven systems of Lemmy and Mastodon are brilliant but the true killer feature of the fediverse is going to be an open content recommendation algorithm. A collectively developed non-profit driven algorithm would undoubtedly be better at surfacing positive impact content than either system.
Can we use ai to judge emotional content of threads so I can get recommendations for threads where people are relaxed and happy?
Actually yes and I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Sentiment analysis is not a hard task nowadays. If overused the site would become a bunch of artificial positivity, but I think there could be a place for this. Could be part of a mod toolkit too.
Unironically, yes absolutely.
Well then, I unironically want that!
Too much arguing in discussion forums and not enough relaxed fun.
Completely agree that this is where the really exciting potential is, but equally a potential for misuse as algo development will be a black box to most.
Funny enough Hot filtering is currently bugged on small instances.
Yesterday it was bugged on world, too. I’d keep hitting next page and seeing half of the same things on every page. It’s working better today though.
It’s like IRC. Just zany enough to keep out the riff raff.
Oh the IRC days, what a time
/slap speaker_hat
*Veltoss slaps speaker_hat around with a large trout.
Veltoss (~user@fastinternet-1b-3c-115.com) has joined
This just awakened some repressed IRC memories I didn’t know I had.
IRC is hugely flawed but also, I miss it. Could we have a federated discord? It’d basically be irc but easier to find stuff right?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what Matrix is?
All matrix is to me is a classic late nineties action sci fi movie.
The Matrix but they use the Matrix protocol on a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel talking about talking about The Matrix in the Matrix protocol in a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel (woops sorry that is the Matrix 2 I think my bad)
There’s also a way to add matrix usernames to Lemmy accounts, so it’s possible to make an app that ties the two together. Is that a feature people would care about?
Man I’d love that. I feel like we will soon honestly. I just hope the lemmy/Kbin apps bring these other federated projects inside, so we can do it all on one app too.
matrix.org is basically IRC 2.0. It’s federated and has a lot of cool clients.
Wasn’t IRC itself pretty much federated, just maybe not calling it that yet? Networked I think they called it. You’d have a bunch of servers in a network and users could join channels and chat with users on other networks. Every now and then you’d get a server split where some subset of servers would lose connection with the rest and a bunch of people would all leave the channel at once. Then, it would resolve, and they’d come flooding back in.
Absolutely agree. I love the high barrier to entry and how it has kept the conversations (for the most part) more substantial.
I know I’m an old school techie, but was there really a high entry bar for lemmy compared to say twitter or Instagram? I honestly don’t know, other than r3dd!t the last social media I signed up for was what? Facebook well over a decade ago?
If the few steps it took to make a user name, pick an instance, and then get my head around the fact that I had to also join any instance I wanted to respond to, is enough to keep the unwashed internet masses out, well, they are just even dumber than I already thought.
deleted by creator
I’d say it’s less so a decline and moreso a lack of literacy to begin with. The number of relatives I have that are fucking stupid with the internet is insane. And surprise the kids are just as stupid with tech, since the parents are dumb and companies made tools for them and the kids.
Yeah, I think the late 20th century and then some of the 00s were a sweet spot where there was finally cool stuff to do with tech, but you still needed to learn some skills to do them. Though even those skills were pretty basic.
I remember a kid in high school coming to me to see if I’d burn him a custom CD and he’d pay me and I was surprised because I thought it was all pretty basic shit that all it took was trying to figure it out. Though on the other hand, that was during the era where many discs were lost to buffer underflow and you had to be patient enough to not really use your computer for anything else while a CD was burning at like 2x speed (the hardware would go faster but then the underflow was more likely).
Though in hindsight, that might have just been my family’s shitty computer at the time. My dad was semi tech savvy but generally bought shitty computers, compaqs with Celeron CPUs and no graphics card. Though we did at least have a dedicated 56k line (which would only get speeds of like 48k, though later when the line was switched I do remember seeing the occasional 64k which confused me because I thought 56k was the fastest a connection could be).
Non-techy guy here. I read an infograohic and made an account. 0 issues whatsoever. And the infographic was just to help me understand how it works. You don’t really need to understand lemmy to interact with it
get my head around the fact that I had to also join any instance I wanted to respond to
Wait. What? Why are you doing that?
It’s concerning just how many people can’t be bothered to spend 5 minutes to pick an instance… Keeps it nicer for us though
I don’t really think it’s fair to pretend that, before two weeks ago, anyone under god had any idea what an instance was unless they were already heavily tech-oriented.
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand what the hell I was looking at and what kind of consequences that unexplained choice would have, and it really seems like a good number of users that initially struggled forget the learning curve extremely quickly the moment they’re over it.
There was no learning curve for me. I randomly picked an instance LMFAO!
It was a case of: Lemmy.ml isn’t accepting new users atm BeeHaw requires me to tell them why I’m a good user So does this other instance… Why do I have to justify myself!? Hey, Lemmy.world let’s me just sign up! Perfect!
And that was how I chose an instance. Thank you for joining story got with Valek
Decision paralysis is real even for stupid things. Like, “what are the implications if I pick the wrong instance?” Was something that made me put off finishing signing up for mastodon and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Acting like it’s trivial isn’t helpful to anyone even if it was trivial or you
Oh you’re one of those just looking for a reason to be pissy. I wasn’t trying to be helpful to anyone, I was simply sharing my experience. Touch grass
Probably some truth there. It’s probably a bit of feeling defensive as well
Sorry if I was too froggy
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand
I started off going down that road of trying to understand it, but my laziness and impatience got in the way and said “just start using it and you’ll work it out.” And that’s exactly what happened for me. In a way, the explanations made it all sound much more confusing than it really is. Sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and dive in.
Same. I signed up for the first instance someone mentioned positively. Seems fine, only about 5 minutes of research invested
Honestly, you’re right, and I think the analysis paralysis that the fediverse immediately presents isn’t really helped by the fact I’m just generally a neurotic person. Wanting/NEEDING to understand how every aspect of something works and why lends itself really well to things like linguistics and biology, but I feel bothered when I skip the tutorial in a game I already know. What if I missed something and I’ll never be able to figure out how buttons work.
Don’t worry, I hear ya! I’m currently 4.9 hours in on my first run of the story game, Detroit. People in the reviews say it is a short game and they have less than 3 hours playtime … but I don’t wanna miss any narrative or clues! haha!
I joined Mastadon in December and that’s when I first tried to understand it all. I researched a server to join and it was right confusing … what if I picked the wrong one? Then I pretty much abandoned the account because I didn’t understand how to stay on my own server while browsing around (also didn’t help that I’d never used Twitter either, so I didn’t actually know what I sposed to be doing lol).
Then the whole reddit debacle happened and I signed up for a Lemmy & Kbin. And there was all the jargon again. But I think because I was actually jumping ship from reddit, this time I wanted my move to have staying power. So it was unusual for me to “skip the tutorial” but I was getting so frustrated with the jargon, while I could see others were already having conversations. And it was through the participation that the jargon finally defined itself. I even use my mastodon now, as well!
Oh, I never realized the storylines in Detroit were that short. I’m exactly like you, and I’ve also found that the more games I play at once, the less I enjoy any of them. So my hands are a bit tied in terms of backlog and that one’s been on the backburner for…years, now that I think of it. But That bumps it up my list considerably if I can 100% it in like 3 days.
I was very close to giving the fuck up initially, though. You know what the biggest encouragement was when I was signing up? When I was looking through the comments on kbin, someone said all the hoops would keep the idiots out, and I will put in a _lot _ more energy if it means both showing off and being where the idiots aren’t. I’d say having a barrier there really has done some good for the overall quality (for now), but the people claiming it’s good to make sign-ups as hard as possible are sometimes the same people claiming there isn’t a barrier at all, and it comes off as very strange elitism.
Reading the explanations and advice people were giving to each other made a whole lot more sense than anything the internet was handing me, but even some of that could be head-scratching, and hands-on is probably the best way to go. Not without its dangers. I still think I got incredibly lucky to end up on an instance I like this much. Imagine having admiration for the dev for once.
I’ve been on mastodon for years so I knew :p
I’ve been explaining it like email. There’s no email webpage you go to to create an account. It’s just a protocall a bunch of people have agreed to use, so you go to one of them and you create an address. I also think your username in the fediverse should be called an address too, but I don’t think that’ll catch on. It makes it a lot easier to explain, because everyone can use email, even the most tech illiterate people.
This this this. The fediverse being “confusing” keeps the idiots, boomers, trolls, and overall horrible people away. Having to learn something new is too much for those people. Lemmy/Mastodon and so on are “nerd” platforms, and I really like it that way.
Well said! A high barrier to entry, and a low barrier to exit working as intended. Let’s enjoy the good times while they last.
Its not even a high barrier. You just have to choose an instance from a list.
Well, it’s not easy. I fell it’s like choosing a Linux distro to use.
Yeah that’s why everyone gravitates to the most popular one, like Hannah Montana Linux.
Hannah Montana Linux
“Hannah Montana is considered fast, stable, and powerful by most users”.
Ok, Lemmy has officially gotten my first “ok now people are looking at me” laugh.
I mean, it’s basically a theme pack on top of Kubuntu, so it’s not wrong.
Just the objectively most beautiful piece of software ever made.
If extra layer of “difficulty” is introduced by giving the users the choice of an instance is enough to keep them away, then I’m all for it.
It just needs to be easier for the ones that managed to figure it all out (better apps, stability, UI/UX, and QOL updates)
IMO the only algorithm I’ll accept for lemmy/kbin is slightly faster “expiration” for posts, sometimes some posts stay too long on my frontpage.
Kbin generally seems to churn faster than Reddit for me, but posts on Lemmy do seem to stay around for a awhile.
deleted by creator
The default “Local/Active” sort algo needs to be tweaked. It makes it look like there are no new posts for days. If you use All with Top Day, Hot or New there’s way more going on.
Self imposed gatekeeping. Damn that’s real
Maybe we’ll finally be cool enough to get banned - Klanned Karenhood
Oh, you could have been that cool already. Just do as Ijeoma Oluo did.
-
Provoke the racists. They will come flooding into your inbox with death threats.
-
Report the messages to Meta so they can say, “doesn’t violate our community standards.”
-
Screenshot the messages and Meta’s enabling response, and post them publicly on your Facebook page to show how seriously Meta takes right-wing death threats and hate speech.
Done. Banned “for posting hate speech.” You could have been cool all along, Klanned Karenhood. You just have to go after the right people.
I’ve reported some fucked up shit yet somehow it never violates their standards.
Same on Twitter. Back pre-Elron I was suspended for the stupidest crap: I said I thought Trump would be too old to run for office next year, as he lived an unhealthy lifestyle. That was “wishing harm or violence”, like, what? I didn’t voice an opinion about whether I was all happy about that or something, just simply made that statement. Then someone was joking about the Will Smith thing and something about Kid Rock and I said Hillary Clinton should be the one to slap Kid Rock. That was also horribly violent of me. I appealed and they said NO, YOu are VERY BAD, SORRY. What a waste of time. It’s offensive, too. Meanwhile I’ve reported things like people saying vile racist insults and literally saying they want someone to die, and I get the reply that sorry, they reviewed it and the comment was fine. I’m sure the process is even worse now.
The thing is that liberals feel the need to obsess over “fairness.”
If you really ban hate speech from a place, then it will appear to mostly be inhabited by more left leaning people. The vast majority of hate speech comes from the right.
But at forms WANT those right WI gers to drive engagement, so they don’t enforce their TOS on open racism so long as it’s a conservative doing it. But if you’re on the left and repost it to criticize it you get dinged.
It’s bullshit that shows how many companies are run by fascists who don’t bother hiding it anymore. But the liberals eat it up because it wouldn’t be “fair” to ban conservatives “for their conservative views.”
See 2. And 3.
-
Ah I see it has already became a toxic shit hole. Need the toxic people for that sweet rage engagement.
Rage engagement…That’s a good way to describe it…Now what if we combine the words…Enragement!
We’re this close to conservatives referring to trans people like ((this)).
I thought they went beyond that when they started calling for the “eradication” of trans people and suggesting they should face firing squads.
Nazis have always been the most progressive, referring to Jewish people as the gender neutral (((them))).
I’ve never had to block one person in my entire time on the Fediverse.
I’ve had to block a dozen in the first hour on Threads.
As the internet becomes more available, mass adoption leads to communities that are very unbalanced. And, more often than not, leaning towards personas we tend to avoid in real life. Reason being, the barrier to entry is not as high. Curiosity is a byproduct of education/environment and lead people to apply resourcefulness to uncover sites/forums/messageboards with like minded people. Yes, echochambers in a way, but these echo chambers were not driven by political beliefs, but rather simple mannerisms and etiquette. Toxicity on sites like Youtube, Reddit, Threads, Twitter, have increased, because Curiosity didn’t drive discovery/account creation, ads or fomo did instead. Mastodon/Lemmy (Fediverse) communities, in my opinion, are still driven by curiosity. For how long, is the question I’d like to impose.
Looks like its just the Zucc’s edition of Musk’s Twitter.
Yep.
Is it possible for a lawsuit to somehow ruin both the plaintiff and defendant? Or whatever they are called in civil matters.
Or is it possible for it to go all the way to the supreme court and somehow result in the dissolution of the supreme court?
Honestly apps like Threads and Twitter should just be a containment site for these types of people. Let them be…
If threads scoops up all the people who turned twitter and reddit into celebrity gossip meme ghettos and keeps them in the shallow end of the pool then everybody wins
I am shocked by this turn of events. Shocked I say.
well not THAT shocked
well not that shocked
Shocked enough that I look like a puffball now. Zapped maybe. Electrocuted even.
Clusterfuck is happening!
In my country all the influencers are announcing the same things using the same template. I wonder if it’s a subsidized or monetized shill.
Momsforliberty. It does not matter where they go. Pure toxic.
Klanned Karenhood
Hoes for Hitler.
^ This is the best one.
Great, and they’re going to try to federate? Hope it doesn’t go well for them.
Seriously, day one and it’s basically Stormfront Lite
But why go to Stormfront Lite, if you have Stromfront Extra Deluxe* in form of Twitter already.
^*only slightly broken daily^
Well…as long as those types are happy with that shit, it means they won’t come to the fed.
To delete your account, you will have to delete your Instagram account as well.
Good. People should delete all of their Meta accounts.
Aside from political views, another social network will not help anything and is only another useless app to install.
