PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]

Honest question: Why does it matter if he’s a transphobe when choosing which Fediverse software to use?

1. Because some people have actually financially supported him. I’m not trans, but I would be devastated to know that my money went to feed someone who wants to destroy me.
2. I already have trouble convincing transgender people in my social circle that Lemmy as a software is safe for them to use even with the variety of trans-inclusive servers like yours, and will be safe and inclusive in the future.

A great example of (2) is the fate of PolyMC. Thankfully, the other developers forked it into Prism, but transphobia put that whole project in jeopardy for a bit.

The software is FOSS and anyone can make their own instance.

IMO that’s why I’m not immediately dropping my account and running for the hills, but it’s still not good. Most people don’t have the technical skills or the interest in learning them to run their own instance.

I really want to understand what I might be missing.

IMO it’s that even though he does not personally control how Lemmy instances are run, and even though we do have a good degree of robustness to transphobia because the software is FOSS, it is still both morally and technically ill-advised to have a transphobe at the helm of an open-source software project.

To understand memes

I’m funny

No

Broke: Saying ‘completely turned my life around’

Woke: Saying ‘completely turned my life around 360°’

Bespoke: Saying ‘completely turned my life around 2π radians’

Thanks for replying. It sounds like you basically get two (or some number well below one keys per character) keys and the set of possible characters gets somehow distributed between the two “real” keys, then the keyboard uses a predictive algorithm based on previous input to guess which keys were meant to be pressed.

IMO I’d be willing to try out an implementation of such an idea so long as I could run the predictive algorithm locally on my phone. I do think that current autocorrect + predicting which keys were pressed would require a lot more training data than just a generic autocorrect to get it working sensibly, and I think it would take a lot longer to converge to the user’s “style” if it ever does.

What is a QAZWSX keyboard (couldn’t figure it out by web search), and what does keyboard layout have to do with machine learning? I’m genuinely curious.

I mean I’m 100% not above chewing literal plastic if I’m bored enough.

Nice

I mean with a surname like Wilde he was destined to be a wild one.

I like this, but I think that upvotes correspond to things people enjoy, which may or may not be of high quality. I.e., shitposting subs would probably be rated “high quality” when, like… it’s literally the point to post shitty content.

Also, as stated, that means we have to sum over the entire time history of the community. We would probably want to limit the time history of what is summed over, subject to a maximum for subs with high post counts (like the shitposting subs.

IMO it’s a great suggestion, but I think it needs to be part of a weighted combination of factors.

I absolutely think we can approximate it, and MAU furnishes a flawed example of such an approximation.

Okay but how do we quantitatively and unambiguously devise a metric for quality? More importantly, how do we come up with a satisfactory approximation to that metric? I’m open to ideas.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Threads, like Mastodon and the social media website formerly known as Twitter, are microblogging sites. While Mastodon users do show up here once in a while, I don’t get their posts unless they actively post in a Lemmy community.

So if your instance decides not to defederate from Threads, and you choose not to block Threads using Lemmy’s upcoming individual instance blocks, you might see their users occasionally comment on stuff. If I recall correctly, it’s pretty difficult for Mastodon users to post on Lemmy for technical reasons that will also apply to Threads.

I do think that quality of life in the wider Fediverse could dip once Threads users are allowed to participate and Threads content is allowed to spread. However, I think that the impact on Lemmy will be small. If it isn’t, we have defederation and soon individual instance blocking to help us filter out the crap.

Because the code for Fediverse sites is free and open source, I think that the Fediverse will exist for the foreseeable future. However, Meta could make it worse. If their past behavior is any indication, i.e. basically all of it, then that’s probably what they’re going to do eventually. At the end of the day, if Threads is too irritating, someone will start an instance of something that is defederated from them.

Personally, I’m not exactly thrilled by the prospect of Meta (or any corporation) joining the Fediverse (or any other aspect of public life), but I think we’ll be okay. I am concerned for people in marginalized groups who will have to deal with the toxic community that Threads has allowed to fester. However, there was a big stink about this a couple months ago where some big instances pre-emptively defederated from Threads. Now might be a good time to make an account on one of those instances.

Regardless of what happens, you will not be literally forced to go to Facebook or Threads. In the absolute worst case scenario, i.e. Meta takes over the Fediverse, you join or host an instance that doesn’t federate with anyone.

I’m an anxious person myself so I know this is hard to internalize: you’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.

Boot out corporate shitware, boot out adverts, and stop collecting data unless it is absolutely necessary, or alternatively just cancel the fucking product and don’t do it.

Nah, you can’t. It’s still a great resource, but you always gotta read it critically.

Oh thank goodness, I could hardly think of a worse name than Calckey for a social media service.

In all seriousness, glad to see them growing. Hope to see them succeed!

Hey I’m sorry about the previous comments. I think they were a bit caustic.

So I guess if internet harassment from incompetent people that can’t read sarcasm actually affects your mental state, adding a /s is a decent band-aid replacement for the therapy you obviously require.

Tbh I don’t need the /s, although I definitely need mad therapy and I’m not trying to hide that. But at the same time, I do think that we need to look out for our more sensitive members. At some point in your life, you’ll be “the sensitive one” about something. It’s just a matter of time and rolling the dice.

If someone legitimately doesn’t get the joke, adding a /s won’t make it funny to them, at most all it will do is prevent them from replying with some kind of attack.

Exactly. That’s important. It reduces the chance of spreading negativity and ill-will in the community.

In most cases, the S is “necessary” because your joke wasn’t funny, and the S will not make it funny, it’ll just make people pity your lack of humor.

Whenever I use it, the point is to make it clear that I don’t literally mean what is said. I don’t care if it’s funny or not. I just don’t want to be hurtful. Usually when I say something sarcastic, it’s kinda caustic if taken literally.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but other than context, there’s no real way to determine sarcasm from text. A lot of people don’t really understand what context is or how to use it.

And feel free to keep shitflinging, I am neurodivergent and I don’t need morons like you self-ruining your jokes in the name of some random internet people with no social awareness.

I’m ND too. I suppose my comments have been a bit venomous, and I’m sorry about that. However, I do think that self-ruining jokes is a small price to pay for other people’s comfort (ND or otherwise). My point basically is “yes these people have no social awareness/humor/ability to read context/competence/etc., but they are still equal members of our community who deserve to feel comfortable here.” Now obviously I don’t believe that we should make infinite accomodations for everyone, but I don’t think that choosing to add an /s sometimes is too much of a restriction on your freedom.

Also, fuck the S, it’s the second most unproductive and inane reddit tradition

I knew you’d say that! Did you know that the /s isn’t for you? Turns out, there are other people on the internet, some of whom have trouble with sarcasm, who really appreciate having these redundancies built into the text. Wow!

You’re not special. Neither am I. The more exalted you act, the harder reality will fight you to put you in your place. Your comfort is not exalted above mine or anyone else’s. What I’m trying to say is that, rather than making Reddit/Lemmy an echo chamber of your own design, we need to think about what is good for the community. I see no reason why cake days are anything more than a minor annoyance, and I’ve pointed out how the /s can benefit some people. The common ground in your analysis is that it pisses you off. What about everyone else?

There’s all sorts of shit I’m not at all interested in seeing, but I’m not going to advocate we ban it. I’ll just block the community if it’s that much of a problem.

IMO the /s serves as a great litmus test to suss out jackasses who lack empathy. I’m sorry if I sound jaded, but that’s just because I am jaded from seeing the same solipsism time and time again on Reddit.

Cake days were by far reddit’s most unproductive and inane tradition

Ah yes, the most unproductive and inane of all of Reddit’s traditions. Oh the hate subs? Pfft, nothing on those dastardly cake days. /s

No but seriously, it’s not a big deal. It’s just an occasional comment about “happy cake day”. Kinda hope you’re being hyperbolic, but I’ve seen enough comments like this that I thought it worth replying to anyways.

Uuuuuuuugh. Rough.

I was just in the middle of trying out 3rd party clients, so I initially thought it was the clients. That being said, it only took a half-hour to rebuild my profile (mostly re-subscribing to stuff). I feel like lemmy.sdf.org is noticeably slower, although I’m still grateful for their work.

Personally it was quite annoying. It was made more annoying due to the fact that I literally wrote a long comment about this exact scenario where I advised the reader to get multiple accounts but that I basically couldn’t be arsed to do it myself.

However, at the very least, the communities I followed are all fine, and obviously the Fediverse itself won’t be impacted by vlemmy’s disappearance. (It so happened that none of the communities I followed were on Vlemmy, other than its support community.) I got wrecked for a few hours, but there’s an easy path for me to recover (make a new account on a different instance).

In my view, this event justifies why the Fediverse is more robust than a centralized system, even a hypothetical one without corporate control. It is no longer (for me) a hypothetical situation: my instance shit the bed, and I got through it. We thought Vlemmy was rock solid. It had some of the best uptime in the game. While I was briefly inconvenienced, the system went on and I was able to quickly rejoin the conversation.

Honestly, I hope Vlemmy comes back. I’m not going to bet on it (and this time I’m actually going to follow my own advice), but I miss the experience. If not, it will bring me great closure to find out why the site died.

Lastly, I think we need to be able to download our user data to a JSON like in Invidious. At a bare minimum, we need profile data and the list of subscriptions so that the new instance can regenerate the desired feed from the old instance. Furthermore, Vlemmy was one of the few instances who had no defederations or blocked instances [1]. To get a full picture of the Fediverse, it will probably be necessary to have two or more accounts under the assumption that the union of the instances’ federations will be enough to cover the desired subset of the Fediverse. It’s certainly possible, it just needs to be implemented. I guess I have an actual reason to learn Rust now!

[1] Vlemmy had just recently defederated from burggit for legal reasons. Otherwise, they were federated with everyone. I really value the existence of a small number of instances not defederating from anyone because I want to be aware of idiots and assholes on the platform that normal instances (rightly) filter out. The Meta situation has really challenged that perspective, and I reserve the right to change my mind about this. All I know is that it is really convenient to go on Vlemmy or sdf and be pretty certain that I’m seeing all the discussion. That, and that I love a good shitshow every once in a while.