Kalcifer @ Kalcifer @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used

According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP's brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.

That isn't an example of them having a say over how people use the software. That's them using their own property as they wish.

I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time.

If that's the case, then that may be a bug. I advise you to report that.

If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss).

Personally, I like to think of instances as countries, where federation and defederation is akin to trade policies across the borders, and communities are like regional/state governments.

it's run by "Marxists"

Lemmy isn't run by any one entity. Lemmy is essentially just the protocol that the Lemmyverse is built off of, which itself is an extension of ActivityPub.

Your apparent antagonism towards the lead Lemmy developer is sensationalist and non-constructive. If you dislike their moderation then the solution is simple: leave their instances and communities. If your user does not reside on their instances then its admins cannot silence you. If you do not participate in their communities, then their moderators cannot silence you. If you do not wish to see their users then block their instances (though, I would still advise against this). Your argument is founded upon the premise that you don't like their opinions, so just don't listen. Don't taint the Lemmyverse's image with your false alarmism. Be the change that you wish to see. Start an instance with administrative rules that you think are better. Start a community with moderation rules that you think are better. If one finds that they are needing to resort to ad-homenim to gather support, then I would advise one to critically analyze their position and arguments.

EDIT (2024-06-07T19:25Z): From your other comments in this thread I see that you are advocating for the creation of new communities and for people to individually distance themselves from lemmy.ml, rather than defederation. I agree with this. I still disagree, however, with the approach and tone that you used in your post. I think the same end can and should be achieved without ad-homenim attacks.

I'll preface this by saying that this isn't an argument in favor of the imperial system, nor is it an argument intending to detract from the usefulness of the metric system. But I have wondered if there is some merit to having a simple, colloquial, "human friendly" system of measurement — something that's shown to be the best system for people to grok, and is the most convenient to use in day-to-day life. If you need precision, and well defined standards, then certainly use the metric system, but is the metric system easy for people to grok? Say you ask someone to estimate a length. Would they be more likely to accurately estimate the length using the metric system, the imperial system, or some other system? Likewise for telling someone a length and asking them to physically reproduce it. Would they be more likely to do so with the metric system, the imperial system, or some other? It's an interesting problem, imo, and it doesn't seem to get much attention.

It could very well be that people can, indeed, grok measurements the best when using the metric system, but I currently am unaware of any research that has been done to show that. If anyone is aware of any research that has looked into this, then please let me know! I'd be very interested to read it.

I don't believe that defederation is necessary nor wise. The complaints about Lemmy.ml that I've seen have generally revolved around how they moderate their instance and how communities they host are moderated. If one doesn't like how they moderate their communities, then one should be the change that they wish to see — start a replacement community, nurture it, and try to make it better than what was seen on lemmy.ml. This is the beauty of the fediverse — you aren't forced to utilize anything on any other instance. And if one really dislikes seeing lemmy.ml users, then they can even block the instance themself. Lemmy.ml provides a steady, and considerable amount of traffic and content to the Lemmyverse. While that isn't an argument for continuing to use their communities, it is an argument for why it would be unwise to fragment the network by defederating from them.

The only time that an instance should consider defederating from another, imo, is if it finds that users from other instances are violating the local rules at a rate higher than what is possible, or economically viable to handle via administrative action. It shouldn't be a simple matter of passive difference in opinion.

While topically interesting, a lot of those graphs are either saying the same thing or are misinterpreting an exponential.

Lemmy needs proper polls.

Windows -> Ubuntu -> Arch Linux

Ahh, the good ol' sunk cost fallacy.

That only exports settings (general account config, saved posts and comments, blocked users, communities, and instances, etc.). That won't export all of the user's own posts and comments.

FreshRSS supports HTTP authentication, and there's an open issue for adding OAuth support.

Without it being open source and not providing reproducible builds, the privacy claims are borderline weightless.

It is rare for any signle point in an opinion to stand on its own as an atomic unit.

But if it does, wouldn't it be better for it to be its own comment?

A reader would need to jump through a thread to follow your line of reasoning in its entirety.

But isn't that what already happens? The only specific relevant difference is that, currently each comment in the thread could contain any number of individual arguments happening simultaneously.

it is the mutual reinforcement of several points in agreement with each other that will educate or convince someone.

This is a fair point — I hadn't considered this.

It just clutters things up

How so? Are you just referring to the sheer number of comments as being clutter? I would argue that it's cleaner as there is less of a need of large comments and extensive utilization of quotes. Ideally, one comment would receive one direct reply without any extra formatting.

It [...] makes referencing the points and counter-points later more difficult if they’re all spread out in multiple replies instead of just 1.

How so? Everything is still contained in a threaded hierarchy (assuming that one isn't using something like Mastodon, or Lemmy-UI's Chat feature in the comment section). If the comments are contained within scope/context, relevant information to the thread shouldn't be spread out. The relevant information should be contained within the path of the n-ary tree.

If the conversation is at the point where you are replying to replies, and you’ve sent me three rebuttals with each of them asking for clarification or verification from me, I’m now sending 3-6 replies back, which may require you to send 12 or more.

You are right that the amount of comments would grow rather quickly (exponentially, I think), but the threads, themselves, should be easier to follow — there wouldn't be multiple conversations happening within each comment.

I’d lose track of who said what and would end up referencing something from a conversation with someone else.

How come? The comments are all visually tied together in the thread hierarchy (well, assuming that one isn't reading Lemmy content from Mastodon, or with the Chat mode in the Lemmy UI)

I think we seem to have different understandings of what “libertarian” means.

From my experience, it certainly feels common that people tend to have different definitions and/or misunderstandings of libertarianism.

I think that libertarian is simply the opposite of authoritarian

I take issue with the usage of the word "simply" — I advise against such types of reductionism. That being said, the comparison gets kind of tricky when one considers the different variants/offshoots of libertarianism, or other freedom/liberty oriented political philosophies. It's tempting to try and reduce political philosophies to a point on a 2D plane, like the political compass, or, worse, a 1D line, like the left/right dichotomy, but it's often quite a bit more complex — thinking in terms of absolute "opposites" can lead one down the wrong path. That being said, without being overly pedantic, libertarianism can be thought of as in opposition to authoritarianism.

little to do with taxes or other economic stuff.

While it may be possible that a definition of libertarianism doesn't directly reference economic topics, they still arise as a dependency or result. Economics and politics are often tightly intertwined.

I don’t click on clickbait i’m absolutely sure it’s misleading or wrong.

Well, if you didn't click on it, then you can't be sure ­— it's just a presumption.

If someone has a valid point, tone it way down, i don’t expect anything serious out of it.

How do you mean?

Government roads don’t force users to do anything but rather empower citizens.

Another argument for why government roads are ethical is because they fight off monopolization — property ownership is at high risk for monopolization. I'm not sure if the Georgist idea of taxing the land value that a private road would be on is enough.