OpenStars
@OpenStars@discuss.online
- Comment on Creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course 1 day ago:
I mean on the one hand kinda yeah, and it was always going to be thus. On the other hand, allow me to encourage you by reminding you that your job was not to teach them about freedom & open-source goodness so much as critical thinking skills. So even if they don’t get it NOW, so long as they have the tools to get it LATER that will be enough.
If you are in America, then realize that No Child Left Behind did a grave disservice - sorry if you said that earlier and I forgot, though also, I am hearing of similar occurrences all around the world as the wealthy do not see a need for the middle class to exist any longer, hence are pushing to cut back funding for edumacashun.
Add to that how the current generation is all about achievements involving “scores”, not really intellectually curiosity - plus, how could they truly know much of anything anyway when the body of knowledge is now so much vaster than what a human brain could hope to comprehend? Which was always true in our lifetimes anyway, but now it’s true even for one field or even sub-field underneath a field, plus Googling existed - or at least did, whereas its demise lately might feel like a blip while we merely await its return, being rebirthed from the ashes of a purifying fire, a Phoenix of internet searching if you will? :-P Anyway, in the absolute height of irony, they literally cannot afford to be too curious, or they will be kicked out of college for refusing to “learn”.
But give them a few years after leaving it and… maybe they’ll turn around, some of them anyway? Perhaps your REAL job is to inspire in them a lifetime love of learning? :-P
It does bug me that spez was correct though - he really did see clearly into the hearts of the lazy bums who endlessly mindlessly scroll through content regurgitated from decades past, plus those actual niche subs that are too frightened to move away. Then again, we can be pretty toxic here as well, just like there, so is it really all that different here, vs. there, except that here we lack the content that they have there? I strongly, vehemently maintain that the MAXIMUM experience here is better, and probably the average is too but e.g. I was reading a post this morning where someone said that they thought that lemmygrad.ml was named that way as a joke and almost joined it, before realizing that it was serious - if they had though, then its being defederated by almost other instance would have enhanced its echo chamber effect enormously, by bringing in next to no outside material, only what is local on that instance itself. And could you imagine joining hexbear, or even making a post there unawares? I still shudder from my own experience of merely making a singular reply to a comment there, all of ONCE (something middle-of-the-road such as “at least Biden brought gas prices down just prior to the midterm elections, which helped Dems win those crucial Congressional seats, which isn’t nothing” - and I got my ASS handed to me for several WEEKS and WEEKS where they would just all pile on, long past when I was so done with it, and ngl after I made the same mistake in lemmygrad.ml I very nearly left Lemmy myself rather than put up with such a barrage - all from different accounts, mind you, so that blocking is horribly inefficient).
We are still fairly new, and dynamic, and all of us still learning how to make things work - e.g. slrpnk.net/post/15217190. But that’s also what makes it “exciting” for some of us. And yet, the interface and interactions are legit less polished overall, so it really does seem to endear itself more to those of us with an “early adopter” mindset. And maybe that’s okay, especially for now, and all the more so if that is what keeps us kind and worth coming here to:-).
Don’t lose heart. In the assignment sure, but deeper than that, you’re doing a good work - which I can say with certainty b/c you care, and that right there is basically everything? The details you’ll work out later:-P.
- Comment on Creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course 4 days ago:
Yeah, advocating for literal murder, e.g. of someone who chooses to own stock, we have not only a toxicity problem but overall a quite shocking divergence from the experiences visible on other more moderated platforms, such as X (which also advocates for murder these days I hear, but only in such matters as are soon to be approved by The State, like giving cops free reign to murder anyone they choose - but only lasting for one hour, bc otherwise that would be just ridiculous, you know!?🤪🫠).
On the one hand, getting out from under the thumb of regulations is fantastic, compared to not being able to do thus at all. While on the other, people can be so unfriendly and waste so much of our time having to sift through such nonsense (as is sponsored by The Other, Opposing State).
So yeah, I guess it is a bit like 4chan? (Not that I’m speaking from personal experience, but from the stories told about it, it shares similarities?:-P) But then again, Internet 1.0 did not offer the ability to federate as we now can, so actually I think it’s a step forward, more than merely back - yes we are rolling back some features that were quite bad (corporate sponsorship), but we get to keep most of the good - e.g. the ability to view images and even videos directly inside the post without having to leave the site to view them elsewhere and then return. We have the best of both of those worlds!?:-)
- Comment on Creating a Lemmy assignment for college level comp course 6 days ago:
That’s so cool! Do be careful but yeah, it is such a wonderful experiment. On the one hand, if I didn’t have access to Lemmy, I would never have found out that e.g. after Biden forbade the railway workers from striking (two Christmases ago iirc?), he worked with them for MONTHS to get them all the things they needed e.g. time off with paid sick leave. The corporate media (for the most part) refused to cover it, probably bc it was boring and they couldn’t sell ads as effectively with such content as well as something that bleeds and thus leads.
On the other hand, Lemmy also allows disinformation campaigns to spread too, e.g.:
(For one it ignores how both Russia and China are doing genocide - relevant bc on Lemmy.ml where it was posted you are only allowed to criticize such things when the “other side”, meaning Western capitalism, does it, so like you can say how the USA aids Israel’s genocide but you can not say how Russia is doing similarly in the Ukraine, or China to the Uyghurs, etc. - and it ignores that Trump has said that he will write Israel a blank check to do even more, instead seemingly pointing blame at Biden’s administration for doing genocide, all without ever saying so explicitly but that seems the implication, given the timing of it being released just prior to the USA election? Oh well, surely anything that fosters apathy among the voting populace could never influence the outcome now could it…?)
You might point people to !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca, and post to that community yourself anything that you want a new user to know?
Also check out PieFed - it lacks significant polish, e.g. if you tag my username there like @openstars@piefed.social I will not receive a notification bc that feature hasn’t been implemented yet, but especially for a student has such great resources so it at least is something to be very aware of and kinda show off what the Fediverse has to offer now plus where it is heading in the future. Especially as so many people want to get away from the “tankies” - e.g. Lemmy.World announced wanting to support a different project, Sublinks, though that one might be stalled at this point:-(.
Do let us all know how your experiment turns out? I mean make a post somewhere (and please tag me to make sure I see it!:-) so we can all be enriched by your efforts and the fruit that they bring:-). If you need a suggestion for a community, maybe… !fediverse@lemmy.world or !fedigrow@lemm.ee.
- Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users 2 weeks ago:
Definitely Reddit’s buildup was smart. The transition to profitability not so much. Although we’ll see.
Man, remember all those who kept arguing against it? I would say “Reddit is dying”, and these new accounts that had never visited my sub before we decided it should go dark suddenly appeared and started talking crap about anyone who criticized Reddit. That should have been a smoking gun alone for people to realize what was going on. But instead, people just said “yup, that’s Reddit for you”. Which extremely unfortunately… they were right, bc that is what it had become by that time.
i.e., spez didn’t kill Reddit by denying the usage of third-party apps - that was merely the final nail in the coffin for many of us, topping off a process that had begun several years earlier.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Speak for yourself! I want it known that *I* for one, am *very* immature!:-P
Ah, that part “without rational grounds to do so” makes such a huge difference doesn’t it? :-D
Like e.g.:
Ignoring all the genocide done by Russia, and China, and North Korea, but hyper-focusing on the not even direct but mere indirect aid to the actual genocide-doing people, and even then painting with an extremely broad brush and saying that nobody who thinks otherwise exists within the group on that “other side”.
I disagree though that it is directed at “random” people. Hexbears yes (it’s kinda their whole thing!:-P), perhaps Lemmygrad.ml too (whose content definitely appears on your instance) - though importantly, Lemmy.World (which this community is based in) defederates from both of those, and has ~80% of the monthly active users btw (thus the userbase “here” only partially but mostly may not be thought of to include those 2 instances, depending on how you look at it?) - and yes also that mod of Lemmy.ml who told the person to kill themselves seemed fairly random as well (yet all the more troublesome since lemmy.ml is federated by nearly every instance, the only exceptions being tiny single-admin ones). But the above image, note from the URL that it is from lemmy.ml, seems not entirely “random” to me - it is instead very much “directed”, at a particular group. As that style of propaganda tends very much to be… not “random” at all!
Although conservative Alt-Right sources appeared on Reddit as well, so both sites have a hefty amount of “alternative fact” sources. Moderation efforts are a more limiting resource on Lemmy so it makes sense that there is more of it here, overall. So long as we allow the lure of communities such as !firefox@lemmy.ml to sway us as we retain federation with those instances that not only allow but propagate that content, from the very site instance admins themselves, the situation will remain - the only recourse being for people to either leave their instances and go somewhere that allows defederation (either instance-wide such as the tiny lemmy.cafe or quokk.au; or switch to Mbin or PieFed that allows full content blocking of any instance that any user specifies, without needing admin approval).
- Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users 2 weeks ago:
This sounds familiar, almost as if history could perhaps, maybe, just possibly… repeat itself? Nah! (says spez)
People will follow the content creators indeed. Right now I’m not sure where they went though. The last I looked, it was basically nowhere, though to the extent that it was anything I thought it was X (even if via a temporary Mastodon intermediate). Musk fed Huffman bad info, which the Musk himself was not doing (or rather, the circumstances were entirely opposite - a public company going private rather than one attempting to make the polar opposition transition), and Huffman was dumb enough to fall for it, then Musk rakes in the rewards for his dirty deed.
Nowadays - or perhaps soon - as you said it might be Bluesky. So trading one corporate landlord for another, but it makes sense - the content creators will go wherever their audience is, and then the latter will in turn mindlessly follow the hoarde, but with an enormous delay measured in high number of months to even years. Plus, content creators need revenue to survive, e.g. how many videos is Ian Danskin (of Innuendo Studios) putting out these days? Then again, how many people especially younger ones even watch 20-30 minute long “video essays”, rather than TikTok(-style) short-form clips?
All the rest: yup.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Here’s a whole playlist from that same author that is amazing: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrttDbiWQ1XO1iHAszAsPo…. The first one there will probably fuck you up though - it did me - as paradigm shattering is supposed to do, but hey, I did want to warn you in advance (to be absolutely clear: yes it is SOOO worth it!).
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
more mature and can actually discuss complex topics
I mean… well okay, more than Reddit yeah, for sure, in the sense that here at least it is possible at all.
Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.
How so? Genuinely I’m wondering lately if I’m causing issues. Generally that phrase presumes that the “witches” do not exist (I … thought?), but e.g. tankies (literally: those who deny that the Tiananmen Square massacre ever took place, like with actual fatalities rather than being staged or some such) actually do exist. Anyway, I wonder if it’s a natural reaction to the contentious atmosphere that has developed. Like all it takes is one person to walk into Chapotraphouse unawares, and bam, now you have radicalized someone against the bullies on the Fediverse.
Oh, or you might mean the overzealous modding of certain instances? Though I think that predates the Rexodus, so it’s not “becoming a problem” so much as it was here long before most of us that are now here came over. e.g. here’s a post from 3 years ago with a very familiar tone: lemmy.ml/post/206994. But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.
Anyway, the Fediverse has a lot more technical work to get done before it can be more palatable to most people, without HEAVY blocking - as that 3-year-old post shows, the issue isn’t going away anytime soon, hence the friction between mutually opposing ideological constructs (e.g. “people in the USA should just die”, vs… not that) is only going to spark more conflicts. We’d best settle in and get used to it.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Not on Lemmy proper but both Mbin and PieFed have that already. e.g. visit piefed.social, click 3 horizontal bars -> Topics.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
Both Mbin and PieFed have “categories”, so that you don’t need to search for and find communities at all - you can simply join like “memes”, underneath “Chillin”, and it’ll show all of them. You can fine-tune further, but hunting through All can be a thing of the past. So… it’s happening, not in Lemmy per se (yet) but in the wider Fediverse it’s already here. See it yourself in action at e.g. PieFed.social.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
For real, there are people who will volunteer to do that, to help a community get off the ground. See !fedigrow@lemm.ee.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
On PieFed, although I’m not sure what I think about it, posts with more than one user-defined threshold will get auto-collapsed, and then a second such threshold allows it to be hidden entirely.
So two people with opposing preferences could browse the same community but see it differently. The one wanting to see everything being allowed to do so - rather than that being the arbitrary decision of a mod (team), and the content hidden away in a mod log somewhere else, mostly inaccessible. Whereas the one who didn’t want to “waste” their time, and rather trusting the feedback of the community, could have those collapsed or hidden if they so choose.
This allows democratization of the modding process: every voter is equally a mod as the next. Or maybe some trusted members more so than others? (But if so, it can’t be TOO much higher than the others, or it could become overwhelming)
The major pitfall I see is if votes are allowed outside of the community, then it’s vulnerable to being brigaded easily by a larger outside force.
Still, it’s fascinating to see these experiments actually happen in that software that is available right now! e.g. on PieFed.social.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
Genuinely… why though? Why not post once a week rather than per day? Or per month? Who is counting? If people want to join then they will, if not then they won’t, but either way will one post per day for the last six months make any difference to their decision vs. one post per week?
I am no good at what I do. I try to enjoy it anyway.:-) Do with that what you will.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
It is a niche topic, here, where we all use Linux btw (or at least we keep our mouths shut if we don’t, for fear of being mobbed:-D).
We talk about what we want to talk about here. Linux, memes, TV, uh… Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, beans, jeans, not pooping - and I think that’s pretty much it, except for politics, am I missing anything? 😁
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
I see this, and am upvoting:-).
- Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users 2 weeks ago:
Over time yes, but then again those most likely to leave have already done so. At this point I don’t expect anymore large exoduses from it, but even if there were I’m not so sure that they would come here.
Conservatives would not feel welcomed in the slightest (nor should they, hey-oh!:-), normies would not feel comfortable due to the heavy need to block every damn thing here just to survive it, and especially the people who think they are leftists (as I once naively thought, with zero evidence I should add!:-P who wants to bother actually looking up definitions of terms? especially if everyone around you is a conservative and thus it makes no functional difference) will find themselves most likely to become dogpiled onto by the people most ah… “eager” to look down upon their fellow human (and some as we so recently and unfortunately discussed go so far as to tell others to kill themselves - highly inappropriate language, especially coming from an instance admin).
So even if some were to leave, where would they go? Twitter is dead, having been eaten from the inside by X and cancelled, then necro-birthed into its current undead existence. And Facebook… just… no. Threads then? Maybe in a few years but either way it’s not comfortable and familiar like Reddit is. So even if people left Reddit, I would expect them to go crawling right back into it, maybe just change their subs or some such. Especially when they roll out subscription model to avoid (some of) the ads, though it’s too soon still as they get people used to them slowly but surely… just like a frog in a pot being cooked slowly (except that’s a false story, bc irl the frog actually does have enough sense to jump out!).
Or maybe they’ll simply touch grass, until they can’t stand that anymore?:-) Playing games rather than talking with people can be a real distraction from the grittiness of life - and then there’s Discord servers that so long as you only want a singular specific game, actually do offer a convenient method to discuss such a focused topic.
So “less profitable”, I guess we’ll see. Probably somewhat less, but substantially so? That I dunno.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Oh okay, that makes sense! 🙃
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Here’s a hard that when I noticed it, improved my experience on the Fediverse enormously. Enough to convince me not to leave it outright as I nearly did. Pay attention to what instance someone is from. It’s no 100% guarantee… but it’s not useless either. This is like 1000% more relevant for someone on an instance other than Lemmy.world, but it still helps for you too.
The aggressiveness also varies by community, so likewise, some of those are just straight up worth blocking (so that you don’t keep forgetting and end up replying in it yet again and again) and finding alternatives for.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
MBin reportedly combines them. Seeing as how the content is identical, Lemmy could too if someone would code it up to make it happen. (Though Rust is a difficult language, unlike Python.)
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Are you not able to block it? I’ve blocked the entire community so I don’t see it much. You should be able to just like any other user… I would think?
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Btw, both Mbin and PieFed have “categories” of multiple communities, so that you don’t have to sign up to or explore each community entirely on its own.
Also, you may find it interesting: lemmynsfw, lemm.ee, and sh.itjust.works each have significantly more active monthly users than lemmy.ml. Though lemmy.world does have something like 80% of them on just that one. lemmyverse.net/?order=active_month
Until 0.19.6 comes out of beta and Lemmy.world upgrades to it, it’s actually hard for any other instance besides it to remain up to date with content.
- Comment on What do you like/dislike about lemmy? 2 weeks ago:
Defaulting on the American aspect of things as well.
As always ofc, but I feel like less so here. Though the Western aspects are still predominant for sure - UK & EU as well as USA.
- Comment on Reddit is profitable for the first time ever, with nearly 100 million daily users 2 weeks ago:
this comment in one of the cross-postings seems relevant: lemmy.world/comment/13157556
- Comment on Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit? 2 weeks ago:
Oh… then yes, ofc.
But if we can’t stop it, then so be it. Nothing is perfect, but you try anyway.
Wikipedia has some nice ideas about trusting people incrementally to increasing degrees depending on the outcome of previous manually curated efforts. And PieFed is bringing some of those thoughts into the Fediverse: join.piefed.social/…/piefed-features-for-growing-….
But part of it is not merely bots vs. humans, and rather different styles of what human psychology tends to gravitate toward: medium.com/…/the-cargo-cult-of-the-ennui-engine-8…. e.g. people saying things like “^This”, “I also choose this guy’s wife”, “And my bow”, etc.
Lonely people just wanting to be heard… but unless emoji reactions are provided, how else other than to write a comment? And/or upvote an existing one that says what you wanted. Therefore… “^This” it is then indeed, none of us are immune to such, and any system that relies on people never falling into that trap is going to be vulnerable. The same way that news organization in the West were vulnerable to being bought out by the wealthy - it was always going to happen.
Anyway, wishing for something doesn’t make it happen - that requires effort, like the PieFed approach, imperfect as it may be.
- Comment on Can I not be an adorable junkie 3 weeks ago:
I refuse to live without it - gimme gimme, I NEEDZ it!:-)
- Comment on Can I not be an adorable junkie 3 weeks ago:
!speedoflobsters@lemmy.world - it’s only got 2 posts in it, but they are really funny:-).
- Comment on Tiny Tineola bisselliella 3 weeks ago:
Oooh, I actually do need to do this, thanks for the reminder!:-)
- Comment on IT'S A- well... you know. 3 weeks ago:
At this point it’s not political at all I would guess. He’s not running for president, I haven’t even heard of him campaigning (maybe so but I just didn’t hear of it?), so he’s simply an almost-former elected official, like Obama or Bush or Clinton or Reagan or such.
Anyway Joe is known for his gaffes, and used to be also for his shoulder rubs (he was from a different time…:-).
With the pained look on his face… I dunno you might be onto something there, perhaps this was constructed by a conservative source?
You are thinking about it way more than me though - I simply recalled the phrase and found a gif that said it.
There are virtually no conservatives on Lemmy btw - or if there are they seem to keep rather quiet. And they will remain so if they know what’s good for them!:-P
- Comment on Tiny Tineola bisselliella 3 weeks ago:
Be a part of the change!:-)
Which reminds me: have you eaten lately? Maybe you should…? :-D
- Comment on IT'S A- well... you know. 3 weeks ago:
