OpenStars

https://beehaw.org/modlog?page=1&userId=4130334

https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&userId=1782109

It gets difficult to find them sometimes, depending on who removed it and from where. If a moderator, from the community, removed it then the removal reason could have originated from where the community is located at, whereas if an administrator of an instance removed it then it would be elsewhere.

For all that the lemmy.ml admins enjoy going on sprees of mass-removals, it sure would be nice if they would add to the code a way to see the reasons for removal linked to directly from the comment itself.

I... don't think Kbin.social is going to make it. Even if it comes back, too much trust has been lost. Ernst should have stuck to just working on his coding project, not also administering his own instance, b/c that carries with it a certain level of "always-on" responsibility - e.g. I have unfortunately had to block Kbin.social lately, b/c nearly all (>>99%) of the spam that I currently see on the Fediverse was coming from the communities on it. Since I blocked it, I think I've seen like 1 single spam post for the past month.

So Kbin.social is turning people away too, for different reasons.

Mbin seems healthy though?:-)

No, my instance (discuss.online) has defederated from lemmygrad.ml but not hexbear.net or lemmy.ml and yet I see the former two but not the latter, so it definitely is something special wrt just it alone.

Also with the URL being to https://lemmyverse.net, I don't see how it would even know which instance is "mine"? e.g. I have an alt on startrek.website, which does not block any of those three instances, and another old one on Kbin, but how would it pick?

I suspect rather that there was a network hiccup or other problem obtaining the activity data. But in any case, it's not like "activity of lemmy.world > activity of lemmy.ml", and rather more that the latter is unknown to that website.

Btw I nominated your discussion to the BestOf community at https://lemmy.world/post/16213730 - since you cannot do that yourself, someone else needs to nominate it for you. I hope that helps spread the word some more bc this is a very valuable discussion that needs to happen imho. Thank you for your efforts to improve things for many people in the Fediverse:-).

Great list! One thing I notice is wrong though: lemmy.ml is not merely not appearing among the top, most active ones (communities or instances), but I also don't see it anywhere, even in the list of all instances when clicking Show All? So its true popularity is unknown to that list.

Edit: I see both hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, it is only lemmy.ml that does not show up there.

Stuff trickles down though, so that it's not solely the admins, even if a large number of the userbase are innocent.

"Oopsie, we didn't mean to leave the libraries in like that, and then for that update to switch ON the collection of all data after people stopped paying attention to it, and then after a lot of data has been collected for that still additional update to cause all that data to be sent back to our home servers..."

And perhaps it would not even be a lie - one malicious actor, working inside the company, might be able to sneak it in without the higher-ups knowing about it. Or arguably worst of all, not even realize themselves that they did it, until after-the-fact.

When working with something dangerous - e.g. explosives, or heavy like a car - it behooves us to treat it with special care. The fact that this data collection option now exists already warrants greater care in using Microsoft products in terms of security. Except, just how much do people care?

I could also see another alternative moving forward: the DoS simply freezes their Windows versions at the last version that did not include the data collection capability, and then never updates again. As the first years and then decades roll by, and they are using the equivalent of Windows 7, then XP, then 95, then 3.1, they simply lose out on having "computers". Possibly here I've gone too far into the doom-and-gloom, b/c while it's possible it's not terribly plausible, though it illustrates how Microsoft is not committed to the safety of a national government, but rather instead solely their own profits - and short-term ones at that.

Okay so it is theoretically possible but is it plausible that this could be a common use-case?

Anyway, you said "it’s still the same echo chamber that all social media is" - and that statement goes far beyond using the Fediverse as an echo chamber to say that it is that way for everyone (further implication: all the time). i.e. the most command-language interpretation of your words would be that they meant that that tiny little theoretical possibility is what this place is, therefore I wanted to point out that there is so much more to consider, e.g. there are other ways to use it.

All social media, and irl too, has biases. As we do ofc - e.g. we linux Linux, especially Arch btw:-P - but it seems to me that the Fediverse is fundamentally different, b/c of the nature of consent.

On Facebook, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Reddit now that it is acting more like the former, ThE aLgOrItHm makes choices for you, whereas here if you want to create an echo chamber, you have to put in a LOT of effort to ensure that you are never exposed to anything that you would disagree with.

For one thing, you would have to subscribe to communities first, and those would have to have enough content to hold your interest, which means a continual search for more of such communities. Scrolling through the All feed would absolutely be prohibited if you wanted to make an echo chamber for yourself.

Again, literally every social media platform has biases, but here those do not rise to the level of "echo chamber", imho? I do concede that it is not entirely unlike one of those, and yet on the spectrum, aren't we far less than most other common platforms?

But do we know that the tracking part will not be enabled by default - and possibly in a hidden, highly obscured manner, where the system claims it to not be but it in fact is? The access to Copliot+ may cost money, but why would Microsoft turn away that source of free data? At the very least it is a strong temptation, which even if they start out being responsible with, in every future update there is the potential to change course.

And even if it were not enabled by default, I do worry that a 2-prong attack could first turn it on, then later exploit it to gather the data. If it for truly certain is limited to those chips though... then yes that provides security, thank you for mentioning that.

One good thing is that government systems are always at least couple versions behind, specifically to allow time for exploits to be discovered & patched, prior to upgrades - i.e. prioritizing safety & security over ease-of-use and being on the bleeding edge of "new features".

That's the part I would consider leaving it. Unless they opened up the sourcecode. Apple has been extremely shitty lately, but they have managed to toe just short of the line wrt their desktop systems at least. The resulting outcry+backlash from IT professionals, scientists, engineerings, educators etc. if they forced this would be a severe blow to the company - which doesn't mean that their greed wouldn't make them try.

I would hope that Apple would aim their AI more at iOS and leave Mac OSX alone:-|. If not, I would consider finally leaving it, if the AI features could not be turned off (which likely they would... at first, for awhile).

Oh man, the thought strikes me: how will crucial systems like DoD Windows machines maintain integrity, if people can exploit those gigantic loopholes to basically have the OS be a keylogger? It's not enough for me to use secure systems at home, if those in charge of our nation's defense (especially nuclear!?) do not.

At some point it was a twinkle in Charles Babbage's eyes 👀:-D.