OpenStars

Yeah Ada is pretty amazing, ngl that is likely why for you - not many spaces have such a fantastic person looking out for them. There is occasional drama like the 196 situation in the last year but even that she handled with grace and class and a deft hand.

About Reddit, there’s a lot there: mainly it’s a network effect, and so people are just looking for any excuse to justify not having to move, and go somewhere with less content that is “different”.

Also a big part is that while the main subs are toxic AF, the niche ones there are mainly free of toxicity (people say? I haven’t been back to see personally since the Rexodus!), so it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison - but on the other hand, the niche subs here have barely any content, like after you spend 5-10 minutes reading every single comment even across every cross-post for the 1-5 daily posts (or worse, weekly, or worse still, monthly) posts, then there’s nothing left. So remaining in the niche subs here might leave you with zero to a couple upvotes mainly per comment, and almost no to possibly 0-3 mainly critical replies to a post.

So here, people - especially new users - really are going to be drawn mostly to the largest communities, which ofc are going to be those with the most toxicity. Especially since Lemmy does not federate moderator reports so there is such a small pool of mods who are on that exact instance where the community is and willing to absorb that burden - and even then we keep chasing them off, saying how “we” (in terms of the Threadiverse as a whole) are better off without such, but then a new user takes a look at a mostly unmoderated 4chan-style discussion and nopes right back to what they are most comfortable and familiar with: smaller, niche subs on Reddit that have good mods, even despite how Reddit admins control things from above.

I wish we had more like Ada here. But we don’t, so please just enjoy having her where you are at and don’t take her for granted:-).

No? Life is rarely binary.

For instance PieFed.zip both does not defederate with hexbear while at the same time not exposing new users to them unawares by placing a user-level block (which unlike Lemmy’s actually stops showing all content from those users) upon new account creation but then explains to the user how to remove that at any time. This makes interactions with them opt-in rather than have to discover it and be opt-out, so I consider it ideal. (Although I haven’t tested how that would show up to users browsing without an account - that might be a loophole.)

Or, a true opt-out solution could place a message underneath every post from that instance explaining how users are known to be combative, arguing in bad faith for “the dunk” and extremely likely to break your own instance’s rules and not conform to generally accepted standards of behavior. Something similar is done for Beehaw on PieFed.social, using that community’s own exact wording and linking to their ToS that differs greatly from the norm. However, I would wager that virtually all 3rd party apps would ignore this.

Defederation is not a first resort, it is rather the last one and for Lemmy, literally the only one provided when instance admins refuse to enforce both the rules of others and even their own stated ones (to keep trolling inside the community yet do not spread it to others WITHOUT CONSENT). Defederation from hexbear is not punitive - even members of hexbear have expressed a desire to defederate themselves from the outside world, to avoid all this drama - but rather protective of the wider Threadiverse overall, for new members to feel more comfortable joining us here.

It would be funny if it did, and then that period of normality lasted for precisely four years.

They are free to have whatever kind of vibe they want, but yeah their rights should end where mine begin and all of that. Except they don’t, as even outside of their local communities they constantly violate the rules of other spaces, then their admins refuse to police them, even going so far as to be caught lying to the admins of other instances.

At that point, defederation remains the only available option, except even that is not the end of the matter when so many instances choose not to do that. Leaving the vast majority of the moderation burden to be placed upon the end user causes people to flee the Threadiverse like the 4chan-style place that we legitimately are.

Agreed.

It does not help that moderation reports do not federate among Lemmy instances. They do in PieFed, I don’t know about Mbin, but between Lemmy instances they do not, making the level of effort placed upon moderators really high by limiting the available pool to those on the same instance as the community.

It also does not help when instance admins protect those doing the bullying, such as hexbear admins that have even been caught lying to the admins of other instances, and refuse to police (i.e. ban) their own account holders as they constantly violate the rules on other instances. At that point, defederation becomes the only option left, except that many instances including yours are so high averse to defederations that instead the behaviors in question are essentially given carte blanche to continue without any means at all to stop it.

A fact that new visitors very much see - even if we old hands do not anymore, after having set up personal blocks aka blacklisting or otherwise view only Subscribed content aka exclude such via our whitelisting procedure. And new users that see what we have chosen to forget exists here go back and tell others about how unfriendly this place was to them.

So long as we leave the vast majority of the moderation burden on the individual user themselves, the Threadiverse is not going to grow and instead will continue to shrink. i.e. all the weeds are choking the garden.

Tbf, most don’t seem to realize what they want, and some are literally and actually children. It hurts the Threadiverse that upon having a bad experience here, they go and talk about us there in that highly negative light. And it helps us here to know what is being said over there - i.e. it’s not solely the onboarding experience being difficult (having to choose an instance, getting through the sign-up process, then community discovery, which never ends, nor does the need to continually block new toxic users), but even for people that remained here for months to a year did not stay, and it’s good to know why (mainly lack of niche content plus toxicity).

Blocking hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml improved my experience on the Threadiverse by 90%. Blocking lemmy.ml improved it a further 90%, so yeah, blocking hexbear does so very much. I get that someone who intentionally chooses that should have the right to, which nobody is stopping anyone there, but definitely hexbear, like 4chan, is not for the uninitiated.

Every single person that I’ve told about Lemmy has outright scolded me for having mentioned it to them. I may have lost a couple of acquaintance connections even as a result.

When people Google search for “Lemmy” or otherwise get taken to lemmy.ml (didn’t someone say that the so-called “random” instance picker chose either it or hexbear like 90% of the time?), see the content calling for murder of Westerners and the demise of Western civilization, is it any wonder that they choose not to come here, or if they create an account, to not remain?

Their preferences matter - to themselves at the very least, even if not to our instance admins that do not want to block it out so that potential new joiners won’t have to see it presented with zero warning or any distinction at all that it may differ from any of the other content in this place.

Regarding the Threadiverse in general, it seems that (1) many people find having to choose an instance first to be very confusing (not applicable to your situation I guess), (2) upon arrival these primarily Western people immediately see content proposing the murder of Westerners and demolition of the entire Western culture, whereupon they nope right back out (can you blame them?) and then complain bitterly about their toxic experiences here on other platforms, including Reddit and Bluesky and X.

Most of us forget how extensive our blocklists here have grown to be over time, and how much effort we put into Linux levels of tinkering to discover communities we like while blocking content we do not.

If I am wrong then please ignore me, but it’s a thought to consider.

Of course mostly it’s a network effect, so I am speaking about issues that we might actually be able to do something about.

Only if it portrays Lemmy in a positive light. You can criticize our toxicity and left-leaning political biases as much as you like in r/RedditAlternatives though:-P.

Worse, I find that Lemmy typically (vastly) under-delivers what was promised even. Like for many years people were promised the capability to do personal “instance blocking”, and for a long time after the Rexodus there were calls to avoid defederating places like lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml or even hexbear.net, because that feature was “coming soon^™”.

Then when that change did finally come, it only muted communities on that instance yet still left users to be able to reply in other communities, plus they could still vote on and thereby influence your content (hexbear is KNOWN for its brigading tactics). And then a subsequent bugfix opened it up still further to allow such “blocked” users the capability to send you a private DM, even pinging you with notifications - which on Lemmy (highly unlike PieFed) there is no way to stop that, even for WEEKs and WEEKs after you stop engaging… your consent to selectively stop such incoming pings does not matter, realistically (technically you could block every single person from an instance, one-by-one… but even there, you would have to bot that or do it the extremely tedious manual way, as the software provides no tools to aid with that). PieFed has offered the ability to block all users from an instance for over a year now.

The only counter-argument to the above is that software - especially FOSS (although Lemmy devs even get paid?!?) - takes time to develop. Which makes things like the bugs and inefficiencies that remain in Lemmy for years and years all the more disheartening. And then here comes PieFed, running around Lemmy in circles, it is almost no comparison at all.

And then I’m sure that I do not need to list out the rather LONG list of features that PieFed offers that aids community discovery - it’s quite amazing to see actually:-). PieFed is a game-changer for the Threadiverse, and might just keep it alive whereas it would otherwise have either died off or at least remained in obscurity forever known as a mere linux (& politics) forum. As things keep moving forward though, I think one day it could rival BlueSky, at least in terms of features offered, though whether a non-profit FOSS could ever overcome the strong network effect will remain to be seen… For that I think we would need a modmail, definitely notification upon content removal, perhaps better searching capability, maybe better modlog access, but not much else? (& 3rd party apps catching up to offer its features but that is not PieFed’s work anymore, now that so much has been exposed in the APIs)

Then it sounds more like they want to be the European next Bluesky.

we’re not attracting the best and brightest here but rather the ones who have nowhere else to go. And they bring that behavior here and it just seems like it takes us further away from becoming a real alternative people actually want to go to.

This right here. There’s a famous adage that goes “why would I want to be a member of a club that would accept me as a member?”, which encourages us to look within, but it’s undeniably true as well (however much we may want to deny it) that we are influenced by the actions of those who we choose to spend our time with. Echo chambers that act to funnel misinformation (or worse, active disinformation) are so incredibly dangerous. Yet it seems nearly impossible to escape from such - though we do get to choose our favorite flavoring of it.

I will note that making an account on PieFed does not represent any kind of “commitment” at all, and in fact has ancillary benefits such as reserving your username in advance in case you ever do decide to switch. Simply make an account on PieFed.social and you’ll get to see first-hand what all it offers! Do beware though bc most likely one glance at that sign-up wizard will make you fall in love 💕, and then more and more often you’ll find yourself using your PieFed rather than STW alt account. But is that a bad thing, to have options to choose from?! 😋

For a new member coming to Lemmy, my advice would be to:

1. Block instances
2. Block communities
3. Subscribe to communities (traditionally by scrolling through All)
4. Block users
5. Comment and Post

We need to move past these bare-bones basics. Which I don’t see much activity happening there on the Lemmy side to improve any of that, though I do see much happening in PieFed, hence I am placing my hopes for the future into it.

I presume that people already know about the older communities like !wholesome@reddthat.com and all the communities listed in its side-bar, but also check out the newer !nonpolitical_comics@piefed.social.

(unless there’s just a massive bot problem which I don’t have reason to suspect)

Actually those are known to exist - see e.g. https://lemmy.ca/post/58955248 - though as evidenced by that same post, the admins tend to be pretty on top of shutting them down.

Below that though, at the level of communities, Lemmy has a moderation problem. Reports from one instance to anther do not federate (well, on PieFed they do, but on Lemmy they don’t) - although like everything else this is promised to be fixed “soon” (same as last year iirc, and to a lesser degree the year before that too, though probably more in the sense of just having put it onto the roadmap), which allows toxicity to thrive. Ironically it also encourages having toxic mods as well, seeing as they are the only ones willing to put up with the majority of the negative flood pushed at them.

And don’t even get me started on the lack of notification to someone that their content was removed by a mod - people tend to find out days/weeks/years later/if at all, meaning that they continue unabated, not even aware at all (or at least, at first) that they have been so censured.

Lemmy also is lacking is so many other ways, e.g. content discovery is often primarily achieved by browsing All, rather than lets say by browsing Topic areas (I am not discouraging the existence of the All Feed, just bemoaning the lack of many alternatives to it). So communities get “stumbled upon” much more readily by people not actively searching for something anywhere close to that content type, who might tend to emotionally vomit upon people rather than be genuinely interested in constructive dialog.

Reddit is a multimillion dollar company and even though the vast majority of the features rolled out over the last decade either ignored or actively went against what the userbase wanted, it nonetheless was a fully feature-complete product. e.g. it triggered notifications upon removal of your content, it had a modmail allowing you to communicate with the team to ask why, and posts removed from a community remained active to anyone possessing the URL, allowing people to continue discussions already begun, which personally as a mod of a small gaming community I used to explain to the OP why I felt their post had to be removed, and we could talk about it back and forth. None of that can be done here (although PieFed now retains deleted posts, rendering them inactive/locked but preserving their content to be read, so that e.g. a Q&A would preserve the A part even if the OP deleted their Q).

The Threadiverse is great for FOSS, not so much great as in overall terms. We make sacrifices to be here, and the benefits tend to be more abstract and harder to explain in few words (at least without needing all kinds of MAJOR caveats about what does not work). Even Linux took decades to arrive at where it is at today, and until then it was primarily a CLI tool for all that time (gfx options often did not work as well or even properly at all, earlier in its development).

The amount of Karening aka entitlement that I’ve seen here (tbf it’s probably far worse in the likes of Reddit and Facebook by now) has shocked me. Mainly I mean: why would people downvote things simply for appearing in All… that’s literally what you asked to see, by choosing to browse “All”, and then you act like it has assaulted your delicate sensibilities? If you do not like it then block it and you’ll never have to see it again… or it’s even easier simply to scroll down.

Clickbait strikes again?

That’s a fairly perfect answer imho, ticking all the boxes: (1) choosing to see that content becomes opt-in, rather than have to opt-out, crucially the reason why being that they have failed to abide by the rules of the wider community, and even been caught outright lying to instance admins; and (2) explaining the reasoning behind it, and how to un-do that decision (which can always be reversed later).

Yes PieFed has a ton of features but I agree that it needs some work still on its level of polish, which Lemmy does ever-so-slightly better with, being older. Fwiw rimu@piefed.social has asked the community whether it desires more of the former vs. latter and typically the past answers have leaned towards more features (although I suspect the tide is beginning to turn on that based on posts submitted to !piefed_meta@piefed.social). I do think that PieFed will end up being the future and leave Lemmy behind (e.g. Jeena’s story), though it would be even more ideal if they could both compete in offering fantastic utility as FOSS to everyone world-wide, in efforts to combat against enshittification of the internet!

I have recommended piefed.zip (and also lemmy.zip) in the past to people, but after you explained that I have zero reservations about it being labelled as “Newbie-friendly” and will recommend it all the more as the default go-to instance - with nothing against piefed.social obviously (I am on it myself!:-P) but as a bulwark against centralization I agree with @Blaze@piefed.zip that it would be most ideal to spread people around, which right now means more off of piefed.social.

Thank you for being a MAJOR part of the solution to advance the Threadiverse forward. I don’t care that it’s a week behind, I am so very glad that you responded here:-).

Minor note: the ToS in the instance chooser on piefed.social for Piefed.zip points to https://piefed.social/tos which says “not found”. That is the instance chooser pointed to by https://join.piefed.social/ so even though piefed.zip has its own could be helpful to change for people thinking of joining.

I meant that choosing to implement the algorithm to refer to a singular instance is a step towards rather than away from “centralization”. Other algorithms could be envisioned such as pulling from all instances that are federated with the newly created instance - although I don’t know the ordering of steps so that specific solution may not be viable, so I only meant it as a (possibly very bad) illustration of such a concept that would implement a more decentralized ideal.

Nutomic is not in my blocklists - I may not agree with the devs philosophies but I do highly respect them nonetheless (I realize that may not always come across well), for offering their software as FOSS rather than keeping it private. I did block all users from lemmy.ml though, as the VAST majority of the time those comments just waste my time so while that throws out good replies sometimes, I find the balance highly worthwhile, personally. If it were possible to make an exemption to that, I would have done so specifically for Nutomic.

Anyway this is excellent news!! Sorta. It now being configurable, I will stop spreading this as misinformation, particularly against the lemmy.ml instance being authoritarian, and I thank you both for your correction in this matter.

That said, at a quick glance it does still look like the way to replace it is to use a different instance’s community listing? (lemmy.world, lemmy.zip, whatever) Which is still a trend towards “centralization” - even if configurable now as to which source of bias the instance admins chooses?

I agree that it is entirely fair that Lemmy sourcecode development is slow (possibly the constraints of language choice, and/or funding concerns, etc.), and so Lemmy instance admins must make do with things that can be changed more readily while awaiting more difficult solutions to be implemented, with lower prioritization.

So overall still not an ideal situation, but I thank Nutomic and you for pointing out that it is a LOT better now than the earlier choice to hard-code lemmy.ml specifically into the codebase.