by fintler on 11/15/22, 9:10 PM with 215 comments
by jsnell on 11/15/22, 9:49 PM
by brigandish on 11/15/22, 11:17 PM
> Rules
> No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct. > Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. > No porn. > No Ads / Spamming.
And a look at the moderation abilities:
> Can lock, remove, and restore posts and comments. Can ban and unban users from communities and the site.
A quick search leads us to this issue thread[1], which starts with a very reasonable request:
> It's generally not a good idea to hard code something like the slur filter because the needs of every instance is different. Instances in another language would need their versions, and cases where the slur filter over blocks need to be addressed by the admins.
> A good idea would be to store the slur filter in the database and initialize it with a default when spinning up an instance, but make it editable by admins without changing source files.
…which encounters, shall we say some resistance:
> If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.
That's just one of the quite hostile responses of this <checks notes> group against hateful conduct.
It seems that not only has "community of leftist[s]" given up on free speech (as is the vogue), they've given up on real federation too. We have other comments here asking for a centralised authority - we have it, it's the developers!
by phailhaus on 11/15/22, 10:42 PM
by seanalltogether on 11/15/22, 10:17 PM
https://beehaw.org/c/technology
https://lemmy.ml/c/technology
by Nutomic on 11/16/22, 2:35 PM
I will try to answer any questions you have.
by kmeisthax on 11/15/22, 10:02 PM
by twobitshifter on 11/15/22, 10:31 PM
by djbusby on 11/15/22, 9:30 PM
And here's the repos https://github.com/LemmyNet
It looks like ActivityPub
by throwaway8689 on 11/15/22, 10:41 PM
Hard-coding slur filters sounds like the work of Sisyphus though.
by rootusrootus on 11/15/22, 10:20 PM
by scrumper on 11/15/22, 10:38 PM
by friend_and_foe on 11/16/22, 4:51 AM
by s1mon on 11/15/22, 9:40 PM
by yogthos on 11/16/22, 4:26 AM
by flas9sd on 11/15/22, 11:40 PM
I'm intrigued by lots of users using a federated system and curious how it works out and I look forward to read activitypub distributed posts tree rendered.
by kuramitropolis on 11/15/22, 10:37 PM
by sedatk on 11/15/22, 10:12 PM
by alexb_ on 11/15/22, 9:41 PM
This of course is not necessarily a reason to avoid the underlying technology, but it may be something to consider.
by ubertaco on 11/15/22, 10:03 PM
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?
by matai_kolila on 11/15/22, 10:01 PM
by dewfaced on 11/15/22, 9:30 PM
Looks like a no for me. But I appreciate the effort.
by mikae1 on 11/15/22, 10:01 PM
by yogthos on 11/15/22, 10:46 PM
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...
by joshlemer on 11/15/22, 10:14 PM
by f38zf5vdt on 11/15/22, 10:39 PM
> 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).
by fleddr on 11/15/22, 10:38 PM
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.