OpenStars
@OpenStars@piefed.social
Compassion >~ Thought
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 2 hours ago:
My impression is they're decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform
But... isn't it impossible to donate solely to the software, when they also will use the funds to pay server costs for lemmy.ml? The referenced post did not exactly highlight that little tidbit of information... yet isn't it true nonetheless?
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 2 hours ago:
If the community were going to fork it, they would have forked it by now.
Why bother? Mbin, PieFed, nodebb, flarum, the list of alternatives goes on and on. Lemmy is fairly mature, that's true, but also the devs kept adding new features, so there wasn't a need to fork it. Plus, each individual instance already somewhat "forks" it each time they do an update - what I mean here is that some like Hexbear.net and Lemmy.world have extremely heavy modifications that they have made, affecting only their own instance (to clarify, the latter is more code checking iirc while the former was actual modifications).
If anyone needs to they could fork Lemmy at any time. But who wants to learn Rust, a language that is super difficult yet unfinished, compared to e.g. Python that PieFed uses, or Mbin is PHP (and Sublinks iirc is Java, etc.)?
Best to break away free from Lemmy entirely. Have you noticed how Lemmy is even more authoritian than Reddit? Yes modlog, but no modmail, no notification of a moderation event, no ability to contact a mod to ask why or discuss, no "right" to even know which mod it was - you simply submit your content, and if a mod decides that they don't like it, then it disappears, without leaving a trace (in contrast, Reddit leaves removed posts still accessible to anyone with the URL), or without warning. The closest thing I've ever heard of that is like this is when Reddit "shadow-banned" someone. While on Lemmy, every single post removal is that way. The admins have total control using Lemmy, and mods have a lot, but regular users? Naw, that's a different story... you all get much fewer freedoms than even Reddit offered (usually, unless they actually did shadowban you).
I much prefer PieFed tbh:-). It has a ton of ideas pushing for democratization of moderation features, putting control of such matters into the hands of the individual users rather than forcing mods to have to do all the work of moderation. e.g. if someone doesn't ero see posts containing certain keywords like "Musk" or "Trump", a user can elect to filter those out (the available options there are: All, None, and get this: Some, which is very nice!:-), rather than making a moderator have to decide for the entire community as a whole (they still can do that, but now they don't have to, bc the software provides another alternative for those users who want to, leaving the users who don't want that filtering to see that content, while still sharing the same space, rather than having to make a new community:-).
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 3 hours ago:
I am sorry for your bad experience on Lemmy. Most people fall into the same trap, and more often than not, leave altogether. I am currently at 100% of the people that I've told about Lemmy actively chiding me for having done so, due to them having come here, seen that, and immediately noped out.
It doesn't help that Google points people to Lemmy.ml (DuckDuckGo properly points to Lemmy.World, as the most active instance, but lemmy.ml has an older history), which to a guest account shows only Local (rather than globally All) posts, which ofc are full of people making fun of the Western world and society - even to the point of saying that people who do such innocuous activities as having bank accounts should be killed (sadly, I'm not joking, although the people making such claims likely were... and yet... were they, were they REALLY?!).
Nobody likes to be made fun of, so it's no surprise that the likes of Reddit's r/RedditAlternatives is filled with such stories of people encountering such and never coming back. But I am glad that despite Lemmy.ml's efforts to hide it, you managed to find the nicer portions of Lemmy where we can actually enjoy conversations.:-)
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 3 hours ago:
What?
PieFed, Mbin, nodebb, flarum - this is a partial listing of the software that does similar to Lemmy, and there's more besides them even (okay so development on Sublinks seems to be exceedingly slow these days, but the code is still there if anyone wants to contribute...).
And this doesn't even begin to touch on the likes of Mastodon, Friendica, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops (okay tbf this one isn't federating yet iirc, but it planned to?), all of which share people's thoughts and words in a social media atmosphere.
Lemmy isn't the sole competitor to Reddit by any stretch. Heck, a year ago Lemmy.World put out a post (I can find it if you really need me to?) all but outright announcing their intention to switch to Sublinks when it became ready. And at the time that had like 80% of all Lemmy MAUs (monthly active users).
Lemmy is not what makes this place special. The people here are what make this place special. If the people move, then what makes it special will go with them. I personally migrated to PieFed 7 months ago (before it was fully ready), and now that PieFed has surpassed Lemmy in terms of features (e.g. we just added polls and post flairs), I am certain that I am not the only one willing to do so.:-)
You are paying for their programming, not their opinions.
Also, I was going to respond to your original comment but suppose I'll combine it here: you do not seem to be aware that donations also go to support the server costs of Lemmy.ml. Thus, you are in fact paying for their opinions to be spread - they seem to not be offering the choice for others to receive only the code support but not Lemmy.ml?
Check out PieFed - whether you stay with it or not is immaterial, I'm saying that you'll be impressed as fuck with what you see. The sign-up wizard alone will probably make you fall absolutely in love with it. And if not, then the LONG list of features definitely will - e.g. categories of communities, which are user customizable and shareable. Then, even if you decide to keep using your Lemmy account, you'll at least know what is going on with PieFed, which is amazing:-). (The Interstellar app supports PieFed officially, with that coming for Thunder as well.)
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 3 hours ago:
Mbin, not Kbin. Kbin is dead.
There actually is one instance left, a tiny little hold-over in Poland, last I checked, but everyone else that was using Kbin has since switched to Mbin.
Except me personally, who switched to PieFed (which is fantastic btw!:-).
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 3 hours ago:
I moved to PieFed before it was fully ready, and I've been able to personally defederate from lemmy.ml by blocking all users since I did. No admin approval required. That feature alone was worth it to me to put up with the pain of the platform not being ready yet.
Since then, the platform has greatly improved, and now has many MANY features that Lemmy (and a few that even Reddit) lacks. For example the most recent additions are polls and post flairs. Which tbf Lemmy has plans to add, but features languish in its roadmap for multiple years at a time so I would not expect them anytime "soon". Tbf Rust is a difficult language to work with, but that's just all the more reason to love PieFed, written in Python that many more people can contribute to. Which is what has been allowing it to add new features literally weekly as of late.
PieFed is extremely nice - come check it out! Make an account, and by the time you get through the setup wizard you will already have fallen in love with it.:-)
- Comment on Please consider supporting Lemmy development 3 hours ago:
Mbin is one example, PieFed is another. Both are superb!:-)
- Comment on Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal 4 hours ago:
Absolutely.
Google used to be better as well. And Reddit. And... well, enshittification affects everything, not just tech, but printers and food containing micro plastics and everything else we can buy.:-(
- Comment on Do you know the answer? 1 day ago:
42
- Comment on Banananananananana 1 week ago:
Hrm, but not 1/10? Good to know... 😋
- Comment on ETERNAL TORMENT 1 week ago:
BUT, would he even realize that he was doing it⁉️
- Comment on NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE 1 week ago:
birbsaminals aren't real! - Comment on How to secure research funding 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Sleep Scream Die 3 weeks ago:
Did you see those abs?
It was implied:-D.
- Comment on Wizardry 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on The Rock smells bullshit 3 weeks ago:
I dunno, if everywhere you go you smell BS, it might be time to check your own pants?! 😜
- Comment on X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research 3 weeks ago:
Omg it's amazing! Treat yourself enough to make an account. Once you see the sign-up wizard, asking you what your interests are and pre-signing you up to communities based on your responses, and it asking you how much content you would like to see containing the keywords "Musk" or "Trump" (importantly, not just All vs. None, but an intermediate Some as well), you'll see what the Threadiverse has been missing!
After that, it does take quite some getting used to, coming from Lemmy and Reddit, but that's a good thing bc it has so many more CHOICES that you can make, like not just All vs. Subscribed (vs. Local), but categories of communities. Like e.g. you could choose not to subscribe to any political communities so that you won't be deluged with such every single time you log on, and yet all the News and Politics are available in the appropriately named News and Politics - which (it just keeps getting better and better) are also user customizable and shareable as well!
It's not perfected yet - notifications are sometimes buggy and the search function sucks compared to Lemmy - but it serves my needs 99.9% of the time and for the rest there's my Lemmy alt to fall back to anyway:-).
So yes indeed, try it and you'll fall in love instantly, finding yourself using it more often until it's your main. You'll see.:-)
Oh and the developer team adds features practically weekly, plus is super friendly and responsive, so there's that too.:-)
- Comment on thanks mom 3 weeks ago:
I think that means that we need to repeat the study then?
For science?
- Comment on X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research 3 weeks ago:
Me too. I found a post via browsing by All, and responded with something innocuous (I thought) to the effect that "Biden may not be perfect, but he did at least lower gasoline prices and that's not entirely nothing"... and the responses kept coming for WEEKS and WEEKS. And then I did it again - once was on Lemmygrad.ml and the other on hexbear.net.
Even taking it as a given that I'm a dumb stupid idiot (am I though?), it was obvious to me how "consent" matters not at all to them. I was being "dunked on", which tbf is literally written in the side-bar text of ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net!... EXCEPT that I found it by browsing All, so had never seen that!?
So to clarify, it's not that I think such places shouldn't exist entirely, just that they are not a match to everyone else across the Fediverse, particularly the more mainstream normie, mostly centrists in the USA that were coming over from Reddit (including myself).
Mind you, PieFed provides full solutions to all of these issues: the side-bar text is shown down below EVERY post from a community (okay so someone could still find something via All and respond via comment without ever seeing it but... it's something?), and more importantly it provides the ability to place messages attached to like URLs or more relevant here, Lemmy instances. Hexbear is fully defederated from PieFed.social but if it were not, then for one I wouldn't be here, but moreover I would push heavily for such a message to be added that warns people who do not know the lore already. Also you can do personal defederations without needing admin support, by truly blocking all users from a given instance (I do it for lemmy.ml), unlike Lemmy's horribly misnamed feature that would be better termed a community muting (that still allows those users to spam your inbox with notifications for WEEKS and WEEKS). Also, PieFed allows you to trigger notifications for anything at all - a user, a particular post, a singular comment (whether yours or by someone else), and thus CRUCIALLY allows you to STOP receiving notifications for something when you don't want that anymore.
And those aren't even the top features of PieFed:-). However, back then PieFed didn't exist, so I can well understand all the people complaining in places such as r/RedditAlternatives (as I mentioned but I'll bring it up again:-) why they tried out Lemmy and decided to abandon it. You and I almost did the same - and we are by no means alone in that, as, still yet again, many did do so.
Unfortunately Lemmy's feature set in this regard have actively gone backwards lately - e.g. instance blocking used to not allow notifications, but now it does. And Lemmy.ml seems integrated heavily into the Lemmy processes, so much so that most instances don't dare to defederate from it. This seems relevant since the OP was talking about "centralization", and while in theory the Lemmy sourcecode doesn't absolutely 100% mandate that a new instance be federated with lemmy.ml, in practice it is true that every single major instance has done so. i.e. we talk a lot about decentralization, even while we have this major centralization feature present in the Lemmyverse.
Thus forcing new users to be exposed to the anti-Western propaganda (e.g. "bOtH sIdEs SaMe"), before they learn how to block those communities and users (but are prevented from doing so for the entire instance) one by one...
- Comment on Am I entitled to compensation? 3 weeks ago:
Is there a website where I can type all that out and find out if I am affected? 🤪
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 3 weeks ago:
Do you work at Boeing? 😜
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 3 weeks ago:
Even so I'll add a warning that Hexbear.net is a troll instance. They don't so much truly believe in anything so much as spoil for a fight, which is fine except consent does not matter to them and they refuse to restrain themselves outside of their instance that was created for that purpose. Also they have been caught actually lying to instance admins. Even so they can be fun to talk with, so long as you aren't taken by surprise e.g. mistaking it for people being serious:-).
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 3 weeks ago:
Maybe in certain communities? Some power tripping mods do exist. Likely they could be reported to the instance admins and possibly removed for such a scenario. It's happened before in some extremely high profile cases.
Downvoting the admin of Midwest.social would get you banned though.
Fortunately there are communities such as !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com that help spread knowledge of such information across the Threadiverse.
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Are most people here left-wing? 3 weeks ago:
"Come to Lemmy, we have batshit insanity from more than just the two sides" 🤪
Although on Lemmy.world, you won't see two of the Big Three instances that spread the majority of authoritarian propaganda present on Lemmy, because lemmygrad.ml and Hexbear.net have been defederated.
The conservatives likewise were defederated from, and apparently fell apart internally, presumably moving over to Truth Social.
If you or anyone else truly wants to read every POV though, then you can check out Lemm.ee that aims to defederate from as few instances as possible.
- Comment on X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research 3 weeks ago:
Even so, if celebrities started using something, their users would follow them - as happened with Bluesky, and to a much smaller extent the Rexodus from Reddit to Lemmy over the 3rd party app debacle.
But there seem to be just too many problems to make it worth most people's efforts. Like lack of content. And speaking of Lemmy, r/RedditAlternatives is full of people that came over here, but then went back - citing lack of content and presence of toxicity as their top reasons.
- Comment on X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research 3 weeks ago:
Tech people tend to make horrible salespeople, especially to non-technical normies.
The thing is, some people value different things... and that's okay.
- Comment on X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research 4 weeks ago:
Thank you for explaining about the relationship=me links.
Email ofc is the same - e.g. BillGates@google.123 just maybe might perhaps not be the same person as BillGates@microsoft.com. Nevertheless, Bluesky makes this stuff trivially easy, as too does Reddit, by virtue of centralization.
So the task would come down to convincing people to prefer more effort on their part vs. less effort somewhere else - while also at the same time doing this on top of all the other criticisms as well (none of my friends are there, there's barely any content, trying to find stuff is so very hard, why do the developers fight amongst themselves leading to an abysmally slow rate of improvements, and basically why should I care about this anymore then, if others likewise can't be bothered to care either?). And the vast majority of people are going to choose the latter over the former.
It's not even necessarily a bad thing, so much as it simply is, and we must make peace with it, or expend effort to overcome it ourselves, bc that's just how the law of entropy works.
- Comment on X’s dominance ‘over’ as Bluesky becomes new hub for research 4 weeks ago:
What else is there though? Mastodon by design is counter-culture, so why then are people surprised when "culture" in turn does not like it?
As just one example, if a famous person makes an account, and then a spammer makes an identically-named account, just on another instance, then the famous person's followers could get confused. Throwing out right or wrong, famous people worry about stuff like this, which would require a level of coordination and communication across the Fediverse - i.e. a type of "centralization" (even if accomplished via possibly decentralized means?). I'm not sure if I am remembering correctly or not, but I thought there was even a fix submitted to the codebase, which has sat for YEARS without being reviewed or approved. If not this feature though, other features have definitely followed this pattern.
TLDR 1: you snooze, you lose.
TLDR 2: ideological purity
testsbeatings will continue, until moral improves.TLDR 3: FAAFO means, it turns out, that if you entirely ignore everything / most things that the users that you hope will use your platform ask for, they might just go elsewhere, where they feel welcomed.
Is Mastodon behaving similarly to an incel culture, demanding that people like what a "nice"
manplatform it is, rather than do the work required to make people actually happy with what it offers? And if not (due to other reasons, perhaps funding), then what is the functional difference really, between that vs. whatever it is doing?So yeah, Bluesky it is then. If we want something better, we had best get to actually building it.
- Comment on ain't your buddy, pal! 4 weeks ago:
