Freesoftwareenjoyer @ Freesoftwareenjoyer @lemmy.world

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1

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231

Joined

2 yr. ago

Thanks for making this! I usually don't post Piped or Invidious links, because most people don't know what they are. But now the bot will do it for me and explain what it is!

Piped is awesome too! Is integration with PeerTube planned? I don't know how it would work exactly, but it would be nice if people gradually started switching to a decentralized platform. Maybe Piped could help make that easier somehow?

Capitalism existed before AI became popular.

You will just be making newer, even more efficient AIs to replace the old ones.

You mean a dishwasher? :)

That is true, good point.

The thing I worry about is that people who misunderstand AI will try to block progress and slow down the adoption of useful technology. There is already plenty of misinformation about it in the media. Same with cryptocurrencies.

I see. I haven't thought of that before, but when I look at Windows 11 file explorer, the one in GNOME seems way easier for me to understand despite it having the flaws that you mentioned. Maybe I just got used to it.

In order to be able to choose an instance or change it in the future, a user needs to know what it is first. Maybe we could choose it for them randomly (would that be ethical?), but they still need to know where their account is hosted. If their instance gets defederaded by other instances, then they also need to know what defederation is and how it affects them. Those are just basics needed to fully use the Fediverse and the freedoms it gives you. I'm not saying that people should know exactly what ActivityPub protocol is and how it works. But they need to know the basics about how federation works. This is nothing complicated, so I don't think I'm asking for much.

In centralized platforms users don't have freedom, so they don't have to worry about any of this. If they aren't willing to learn a few basic things in order to have freedom, then there is nothing we can do for them. We can and should try to educate them, but many people don't see a problem with being abused by corporations. This is not a new problem in software. It has existed for at least 30 years since the Free Software movement was created.

Lemmy has many UI and UX problems and they certainly need to be fixed. But it's possible that decentralized platforms will always be more complicated to use than centralized ones. If people aren't willing to learn how to use it, that's a problem with them, not with this technology.

It's not based on the same 30 years old design that all popular operating systems are. So it might take some time to learn how to use it. Is that what you meant or do you think that it's badly designed?

Here is an interesting video about this topic: https://youtu.be/GkxAp2Gh7-E

You are probably right about that. There are other UI improvements that we could and should do too, but Lemmy will probably always be more difficult to use than the centralized alternatives.

True. I feel like usually anything I say about UI is interpreted as just my opinion, which in developer's minds is just as valid as anyone else's opinion. It maybe kinda makes sense, since those developers don't really know me, but there is nothing I can say to change their minds. So they remain stuck with a bad, inefficient design for no good reason.

GNOME desktop environment is a good example that having a good UI is possible.

In Lemmy's case users are forced to take matters into their own hands: !plugins@sh.itjust.works

That's kinda sad. I think our education is just not good enough when it comes to IT.

People need to know what an instance is. They need to know what defederating means too. They also need to know why the Fediverse is better than centralized alternatives, because otherwise they won't care.

Sometimes I try to help, but unfortunately not everyone is willing to listen. I've noticed there are multiple reasons why UI might be bad in a Free Software project:

• developers are not UI experts and they don't know better
• developers are not UI experts and they don't listen to experts or UI is not their priority
• the UI code is so bad that changing it would require rewriting most of the application and nobody has the time to do that, so there is nothing that can be done (this probably doesn't happen in web apps)

I believe in Lemmy's case it's mostly the 2nd point.

Saying that to them wouldn't help them, so there is no point. I'm just pointing out a fact. Federation is not the only technology that people have trouble to understand. AI and cryptocurrencies are some other examples. We need to educate people to change this.

They can try to influence your political opinions (manipulate you) by showing you certain type of content based on your current beliefs. They will show you content that is more likely to make you addicted to the platform. For some people that's gonna be dangerous conspiracy theories or scams like alternative medicine.

Maybe you are immune to all of that, but many people clearly aren't.

What if I told you that you can increase your privacy a lot without having to fake your own death? You don't even have to burn off your fingerprints! All you have to do is use alternatives to certain popular apps. Isn't that great?

Just use Signal or Matrix instead of WhatsApp. Use Firefox instead of Chrome. At some point you could even replace Windows with GNU/Linux (an operating system that doesn't spy on you! crazy right?). Some of those are tiny sacrifices, some are bigger, but none of them are impossible.

Cool, thanks! :)

Yes, Lemmy's UI is very bad. It would be pretty easy to improve it, if only developers understood this. But I think the part that new users complain about the most is federation. At least I've seen many posts and comments saying that it's too confusing.

I just expect programmers to know more about software. They should know those things at least on a basic level. They should be the ones to educate people about it, because otherwise who will do it?

If software developers don't understand what end-to-end encryption is, what hope can we have that an average person will understand it? I just don't know how we can make progress if even technical people don't know technology well enough.