To be honest, as interesting as the idea behind Lemmy is (federation is great!), I am a little tired of seeing yet another link aggregator pop up. From what I can tell, the discussions on there...
To be honest, as interesting as the idea behind Lemmy is (federation is great!), I am a little tired of seeing yet another link aggregator pop up. From what I can tell, the discussions on there are largely revolving around Lemmy and Lemmy's functionality rather than all the other things Lemmy users find interesting - in my opinion, it makes for fairly boring reading at the moment.
I feel that. I think back to Tildes' first year or so, and a lot of people had the same complaint, but we were able to break free from that and imo we've been able to achieve really rich...
I feel that. I think back to Tildes' first year or so, and a lot of people had the same complaint, but we were able to break free from that and imo we've been able to achieve really rich discussion. I think part of that is that we had a lot of people who believed in the project over time recognize that there was more to be done than just meta and worked to seed the site with interesting links and good discussion.
Now, Tildes did have a leg up over sites like Lemmy. Deimos had immediate connections and respect and we had a bunch of cool people from the start. But I don't think it's impossible to replicate...I think I'll be trying to post and actually interact there about other things.
Yeah, Tildes started out pretty dang meta focused too, but I think that's just an inevitable cycle that community based sites go through. When they're new and still under active, intense, early...
I think back to Tildes' first year or so, and a lot of people had the same complaint, but we were able to break free from that
Yeah, Tildes started out pretty dang meta focused too, but I think that's just an inevitable cycle that community based sites go through. When they're new and still under active, intense, early development, the people that join them are excited at all the boundless possibilities so want to discuss them, and they also want to have a say in where things go so tend to be more vocal and passionate about meta discussions. But as features slowly get implemented, the site's culture coalesces, and it all eventually starts to ossify, those discussions naturally peter out.
The same process even played out on reddit starting in the early days too (see: /r/ideasfortheadmins, /r/theoryofreddit, /r/modnews, etc.). The only difference there is that since reddit started redesigning the site a few years ago, a lot of meta discussion came back to the fore again after years of relative inactivity. That and the occasional controversy also caused spikes in interest at various points too.
I hate to be a naysayer, but personally I don't really have faith in lemmy's devs. They seem to view the project as a method for disseminating their political discourse rather than trying to...
I hate to be a naysayer, but personally I don't really have faith in lemmy's devs. They seem to view the project as a method for disseminating their political discourse rather than trying to achieve real ActivityPub interoperability. I mean, I'm happy they got this far, but I'm not confident that they'll take it all the way.
Tbf, Mastodon was developed with a very similar attitude and that's been much of the key to its success: it focuses on a political pitch that isn't just pandering to FLOSS nerds. There's so many...
Tbf, Mastodon was developed with a very similar attitude and that's been much of the key to its success: it focuses on a political pitch that isn't just pandering to FLOSS nerds. There's so many people on there who don't have more than a vague idea of how federation works, and they're there for political reasons.
I'm of the belief that the key of having your users not being harassed lies with proper controls to block/ignore/remove harassers, not with pushing your personal agenda unto them.
I'm of the belief that the key of having your users not being harassed lies with proper controls to block/ignore/remove harassers, not with pushing your personal agenda unto them.
Sorry to be engaging with you so much, I hope you don't feel it as adversarial, I feel like I'm definitely missing something, and I would like to be able to relate more. For example what is "user...
Sorry to be engaging with you so much, I hope you don't feel it as adversarial, I feel like I'm definitely missing something, and I would like to be able to relate more. For example what is "user empowerment" in your opinion? How does mainstream mastodon fail at this vs. its forks (and which forks are those)?
Thanx. I see all of these in the "better moderation" category, which as always is a combination of good people using good tools. So in the end I think we're of similar enough opinions. :P
Thanx.
I see all of these in the "better moderation" category, which as always is a combination of good people using good tools. So in the end I think we're of similar enough opinions. :P
Is the ActivityPub code split out as a separate library that other projects can use, or is it tied in pretty tightly with the Lemmy platform code itself?
Is the ActivityPub code split out as a separate library that other projects can use, or is it tied in pretty tightly with the Lemmy platform code itself?
In my biased opinion, they do not have a "good AP implementation". And there's at least Plume that had a working ActivityPub Rust implementation. Yet, everybody insists on making their half-baked...
In my biased opinion, they do not have a "good AP implementation". And there's at least Plume that had a working ActivityPub Rust implementation. Yet, everybody insists on making their half-baked attempt instead of supporting the community and creating a proper library.
I hope you're right, I'd like to see Lemmy become something important. I'm still not really sure what federation (as much as I love it!) adds to a link aggregator, but I appreciate the effort and...
I hope you're right, I'd like to see Lemmy become something important.
I'm still not really sure what federation (as much as I love it!) adds to a link aggregator, but I appreciate the effort and seeing posts from the few other servers is already pretty cool and makes things feel more diverse.
I'm biased because I'm working on exactly this issue(on yet another link aggregator project). However not all developers share my views. What follows is basically an elevator pitch why my project...
I'm still not really sure what federation (as much as I love it!) adds to a link aggregator
I'm biased because I'm working on exactly this issue(on yet another link aggregator project). However not all developers share my views. What follows is basically an elevator pitch why my project is better than theirs.
The main point is that in a federated environment a community (and I'm not speaking strictly about link aggregators) can focus only on what distinguishes it as a community, indifferent to how small its numbers are. An instance that focuses on cat pictures, can have strict moderation rules to allow posting of content only related to cats. But at the same time, its members that have different interests can interact with different instances that cater to different interests, without having to go there and dilute their online presence in one account per each instance.
The point where the other developers and operators of instances are of a different mind, is that you can always allow different groups to merge their interests on the same instance (through the existence of groups/communities/subreddits, etc). In my opinion this is not the way to go, as it forces people from one group being subjected to content from the others' even if they don't enjoy it. This makes that the rules for content and discussion be lowered to the lowest common denominator. This method (which is exacerbated in the case of non federated communities) is that it inflates artificially the number of users, which in turn increases operating costs (hardware, moderation, etc) which makes it less worth while for its operator to run it.
I'm not sure I'm making myself understood too well here, but the gist would be: communities can be small and well defined but still interact with the larger federated ecosystem.
To be honest, as interesting as the idea behind Lemmy is (federation is great!), I am a little tired of seeing yet another link aggregator pop up. From what I can tell, the discussions on there are largely revolving around Lemmy and Lemmy's functionality rather than all the other things Lemmy users find interesting - in my opinion, it makes for fairly boring reading at the moment.
I feel that. I think back to Tildes' first year or so, and a lot of people had the same complaint, but we were able to break free from that and imo we've been able to achieve really rich discussion. I think part of that is that we had a lot of people who believed in the project over time recognize that there was more to be done than just meta and worked to seed the site with interesting links and good discussion.
Now, Tildes did have a leg up over sites like Lemmy. Deimos had immediate connections and respect and we had a bunch of cool people from the start. But I don't think it's impossible to replicate...I think I'll be trying to post and actually interact there about other things.
Yeah, Tildes started out pretty dang meta focused too, but I think that's just an inevitable cycle that community based sites go through. When they're new and still under active, intense, early development, the people that join them are excited at all the boundless possibilities so want to discuss them, and they also want to have a say in where things go so tend to be more vocal and passionate about meta discussions. But as features slowly get implemented, the site's culture coalesces, and it all eventually starts to ossify, those discussions naturally peter out.
The same process even played out on reddit starting in the early days too (see: /r/ideasfortheadmins, /r/theoryofreddit, /r/modnews, etc.). The only difference there is that since reddit started redesigning the site a few years ago, a lot of meta discussion came back to the fore again after years of relative inactivity. That and the occasional controversy also caused spikes in interest at various points too.
CC: @mir
I think this will be a big moment looking back in x years.
I hate to be a naysayer, but personally I don't really have faith in lemmy's devs. They seem to view the project as a method for disseminating their political discourse rather than trying to achieve real ActivityPub interoperability. I mean, I'm happy they got this far, but I'm not confident that they'll take it all the way.
Tbf, Mastodon was developed with a very similar attitude and that's been much of the key to its success: it focuses on a political pitch that isn't just pandering to FLOSS nerds. There's so many people on there who don't have more than a vague idea of how federation works, and they're there for political reasons.
I'm of the belief that the key of having your users not being harassed lies with proper controls to block/ignore/remove harassers, not with pushing your personal agenda unto them.
Sorry to be engaging with you so much, I hope you don't feel it as adversarial, I feel like I'm definitely missing something, and I would like to be able to relate more. For example what is "user empowerment" in your opinion? How does mainstream mastodon fail at this vs. its forks (and which forks are those)?
Thanx.
I see all of these in the "better moderation" category, which as always is a combination of good people using good tools. So in the end I think we're of similar enough opinions. :P
I take mild offense at this. :P
Is the ActivityPub code split out as a separate library that other projects can use, or is it tied in pretty tightly with the Lemmy platform code itself?
From what I could see is pretty tightly coupled with other bits of the project, down to having hardcoded postgresql code in.
In my biased opinion, they do not have a "good AP implementation". And there's at least Plume that had a working ActivityPub Rust implementation. Yet, everybody insists on making their half-baked attempt instead of supporting the community and creating a proper library.
PS. Why do you consider it a good implementation?
I hope you're right, I'd like to see Lemmy become something important.
I'm still not really sure what federation (as much as I love it!) adds to a link aggregator, but I appreciate the effort and seeing posts from the few other servers is already pretty cool and makes things feel more diverse.
I'm biased because I'm working on exactly this issue(on yet another link aggregator project). However not all developers share my views. What follows is basically an elevator pitch why my project is better than theirs.
The main point is that in a federated environment a community (and I'm not speaking strictly about link aggregators) can focus only on what distinguishes it as a community, indifferent to how small its numbers are. An instance that focuses on cat pictures, can have strict moderation rules to allow posting of content only related to cats. But at the same time, its members that have different interests can interact with different instances that cater to different interests, without having to go there and dilute their online presence in one account per each instance.
The point where the other developers and operators of instances are of a different mind, is that you can always allow different groups to merge their interests on the same instance (through the existence of groups/communities/subreddits, etc). In my opinion this is not the way to go, as it forces people from one group being subjected to content from the others' even if they don't enjoy it. This makes that the rules for content and discussion be lowered to the lowest common denominator. This method (which is exacerbated in the case of non federated communities) is that it inflates artificially the number of users, which in turn increases operating costs (hardware, moderation, etc) which makes it less worth while for its operator to run it.
I'm not sure I'm making myself understood too well here, but the gist would be: communities can be small and well defined but still interact with the larger federated ecosystem.