The RSS not seems cool! Is that open source some where?
maegul
joined 2 years ago
The RSS feeds thing feels like a good one.
Additionally, some feature where you can start a community but define it simply as a combination of RSS feeds … essentially a feed aggregator. But one that others can share and subscribe to.
I think a bot could handle most of that.
Hackable front end is interesting. You can already run multiple alternative front ends. Lemmy world offer 5 I think. Then, they just need to be scriptable if that’s what you want.
Restyling the default one seems to be common though
They need to get moved off to proper instances
I mean … why? That’s a lot of work and carving up the network … for what?
How about moving communities off of lemmy world onto proper decentralised instances? Cuz it’s a real problem that world people are happy to defederate and cut plenty of users off from their communities. That maybe they don’t appreciate the value of decentralisation and slowly pushing a federated system into merely a monolithic Reddit alternative. That maybe they’re too happy to shape the network into a reflection of their mainstream politics however much it unconvinced others across the network (which is perhaps a very spec thing to do?)
Which, BTW, lemmy ml has never done … they federate widely, have never called for defederstion from lemmy world (interesting that world would defederate first!) and never wanted to be the biggest instance despite they easily could have been.
Seems like maybe some basic moderation at the community level is all you’d need. Maybe some better tools could help … in which case spell out what that’d look like.
Moving whole communities because you don’t like some people … is a lot … and quite rich for someone on world. Maybe those communities are happy where they are (as I’m sure those on world are) and building and organising a better more flexible network is the answer rather than all of us trying to push it into the shape we want.
Yea … I can’t shake the feeling that there many who have a kinda “echo chamber” instinct with their idea of what a platform like this is for. Which I get. They want it to be a nice doom scroll I guess.
But I wonder if there should be a real counter to that instinct and if it should be given a clearer form and identity. My rant about the value of federation as an ideology for better social media is maybe a possibility.
But the point is that there are many I think who aren’t on board with trigger happy defederstion (the voting on this post is an indication) but don’t get much of an opportunity to make themselves clear.
just want to add some nuance to this.
All good and cheers!
But we just have these blunt tools and lots of fine granular tools that would be able to actually tackle the issues are missing on Lemmy.
Tools could always be better for sure! This is still beta software after all! And the fediverse ecosystem is still finding its feet.
That being said … isn’t subscribing to communities a pretty good tool already? I ask because it strikes me that many here might be talking about the “all” feed. If so, that’d be a case of people just not using the tools given to them (and also an abuse of this system frankly).
And I think we should revamp some other aspects too to foster good behaviour. I don’t see things change substancially, the way it is.
Think I’m totally with you there. The fediverse for me has been a bit of a let down in terms of how much it has just recreated big social platforms without more experimentation. It’s early days and all so I don’t want to be harsh on all the devs. They’ve done great things. But it does feel like some basic revamping could be quite nice.
Tankies are fascists.
From what I’ve seen around here, this just isn’t true and seems more like anything “extreme” and not somewhere closer to the middle is bad.
Defederation might be part of that
As you say, it's a very blunt tool and likely only able to create more civil interactions by creating a fairly strong echo chamber.
My perspective on "defederation" conversations, hinted at in my comment above, is that it's a new "tool", a new phenomenon etc. Nothing like it existed on reddit for example. And so it's natural that there will be "unwise", premature and overzealous calls to use it as though it's the solution to many of our social media problems, when in reality it's a relatively subtle tool best used in concert with active and relatively sophisticated community building and organising.
Which all makes sense to me. But what's a little sad I think is that we have here a pretty good compromise between "absolute free speech is bad" and "censorship is bad" for social media, and instead of embracing it as an ideology we've gotten some loud voices eager to use it as a territorial weapon for drawing boundaries around spaces for everyone else without, AFAICT, much the same in the way of actually building spaces that suit people's needs (though that happens too of course).
If one wants or needs a space that is shut off completely from what one would call "extreme" politics, that's totally fine. Doesn't mean all of lemmy world and half or more of the communities on lemmy should be cut off in a big "us and them" statement. Instead ... you probably need an instance that caters to that world view. You may need to try to start organising it yourself if it doesn't exist. Except, that's harder than posting a "lets defederate" post.
I’ll add to hendrik’s sibling post … it seems you’re relatively new to the fediverse. You may want to get a feel for the place before advocating for such wide reaching actions.
I’m all for expressing your feelings on an issue, but I do wonder if your eagerness is a bit premature. I myself “called for” defederation early in my time on the fediverse … and it was dumb of me.
Since then I’ve come to view most arguments around the idea of defederation suspiciously. There’s usually a bit of personal drama or a shallow opinion or people who want to loudly voice opinions without wanting to put work into making this place better. Usually, if defederation is actually needed, the admins will know before you do and it will be obvious.
All that being said … I’d ask you … what do you think federation and decentralisation is for?
It’s called a federation. Its design is intended to give people options. To provide a diverse network of content that people can navigate as they see fit.
The internet can naturally do a bad job of facilitating good and robust conversations.
Federation is the only cure I’ve seen for social media … where separate but connected and navigable spaces can co-exist, enabling a discourse through contrasting biases and perspectives, for those willing to use the content that way.
Can’t stand a community or instance? Don’t subscribe. Or unsubscribe or block.
Instance defederation is an extreme action and requires extreme justification IMO. It reduces the size of the network and the value of the ecosystem. Especially for lemmy world’s size … it has a responsibility to support the network.
What some loud people find unacceptable is likely interesting to some quiet others.
Differing political “sides” or perspectives isn’t enough. Politics isn’t everything for everyone. Moreover, it’s exactly the domain in which a diverse array of content is most valuable and important … because no one has all the answers!
It's brilliant IMO (I haven't seen the latest season but the one before ... season 3 did feel like it was losing its way a bit).
The thing with mainstream super hero stuff is that it seems to very much about supporting the status quo without really examining it. Generally, the MCU has been pretty guilty of this AFAICT. It's also why Winter Soldier is probably the best MCU film IMO ... Captain America becomes "the enemy" by standing up for his principles and destroys shield.
The Boys is about examining the status quo and so stands out massively compared to all of the other mainstream superhero stuff.
Yea, I was surprised to learn this too. I don't know the numbers but I'd bet it isn't insignificant. I learned of the practice from a thread of people recommending to others that they use "All" and block all "the bad instances" to "clean it up" ... and I was just kinda shocked at how much of an indifference to the design of the system and all of the community management and moderation all of the mods do not to mention an abuse of the federation mechanics to just block whole instances on a whim.
If it's not too much to ask ... do you have any descriptions or links or clues to see more of this?
Generally, there are quite a few people who feel this way about the fediverse as a whole. The sorts of people who are open to seeing all of this as an opportunity to make some progress on what "big social" did (perhaps like you and I). I've connected with a few in my time here (mostly over on mastodon) and the general feeling I've picked on is that all of this (incl the protocol itself) so far is a good "first step" or "prototype", but that moving on to the next step and taking stock of what lessons have been learned could happen soon-ish.