OpenStars

At this point, the only way to implement blocking is to switch instances, it would seem. Or at least get an app, though that is the part that I know the least about. I switched instances myself specifically for this feature - and we’ve been saying how superb Discuss.Online is even, all the more notable for a smaller instance! - but I’m not sure how many others would think similarly. Still, they could be told that it’s an option. Or perhaps !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca is almost dead at this point, with so few posts? Then again it’s not the number that matters, if the content is relevant.

Oh, right, “from the top 20”. What about Lemmy.cafe - I’m curious about that, especially since they are rocking 0.19.6-beta, they might be doing okay actually, for a smaller instance?

Well I don’t know if “wise” would quite apply…

I started gathering some thoughts to make a post - I had intended !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca but it could be cross-posted, or whatever - about ways to block an instance. I got stuck with Mbin but finally have what I need there. The thing is: I lack the knowledge of which Lemmy apps will allow you to implement user blocks - and I mean the full defederation kind, not just the mere “community blocking” that does not block the comment replies of users from those instances. Do you know more about that? If you could give me a paragraph or table or link to point to or some such, then perhaps this weekend I could try to write that post.

Is there anything that they can do about it? It’s not that I am against telling them but… why complain about something over which they have little to no control?

Also, at some point it had seemed to me to be caught up, but indeed perhaps I missed something, or maybe another issue started after I wrote my reply above.

I see posts missing from there, from PieFed, and much more rarely but it happens, from Discuss.Online. It’s common, it’s expected, and at this point, I think that no instance other than Lemmy.World itself has any “expectation” to be fully up2date, specifically wrt content that is on Lemmy.World itself?

However you want to phrase that - the federated model is struggling, going through a rough patch specifically while we await 0.19.6 - it seems beyond the control of even admins?

Yeah that, but also the humans there too were a bit much. The entire culture is like “entertain me, while I shit on your efforts to do so”. People (don’t) wait to speak rather than actually listen.

Here we are allowed to have an older crowd of people - who use Linux btw - and do more to step up to be the change that they want to see in the world rather than merely vent like children.

I definitely would have left Reddit regardless of whether Lemmy existed to come to or not, so I get why so many content creators left Reddit - it just became not fun anymore. (And yeah, the chasing after profits is what originally made it that way, but also the sheeple consented too.)

Well now I don’t want you to feel left out so… this is for you:

Soon ™…

Very soon now…

Okay, but don’t say that I did nothin’ for ya m’kay!?

Here it is just for you:

Welcome! People are kinder here, overall. You’ll find yourself less defensive, more willing to engage, less snarky, easier to be around irl - man, Reddit was (is?) toxic AF, and whether or not I came here I was definitely leaving there.

Remember to block early and often here - back there that was almost pointless bc a never-ending stream of Reddi-trolls was ready to take their place, but here that actually works!:-)

Check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca for many more tips. You are going to like it here:-).

Also, since you mentioned PixelFed, check out PieFed as well as a Lemmy alternative - it has e.g. “categories” of communities rather than making you find and subscribe to each one individually, so it’s a whole different style compared to Lemmy where you have to browse by All to find new content. I’m speaking to you from it right now.:-)

But either way, I find that (most of) the people here are more worth talking to than Reddit:-).

Here’s such a conversation with an admin at sh.itjust.works if you are interested: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12051373, or with the mod of traditional_art@lemmy.ml https://discuss.online/post/12722075/11762479, and ofc there are many more. One conversation at a time, bringing up the logical points, condensing them, helping people know their options, etc.

blocking them is still one click away

Not… entirely, but yes an entire section dedicated to “hardcore tankies” helps!:-) I suppose that helps more for people brought in via Reddit, but not word-of-mouth recommendations, so if I am speaking of the latter then the burden is on me, and upon everyone else doing likewise, to “warn” their irl friends that they recommend to take a look at Lemmy. Which is why I am saying that it would be good to add automated labels. I think we are still waiting for a Lemmy upgrade though, that would allow for those? Or perhaps people are waiting specifically for 0.19.6 when Lemmy.World will upgrade, leading the way.

Lemmy.World naively might seem the most likely to attach a warning label to Lemmy.ml communities, seeing as e.g. they have defederated entirely from Hexbear.net, whereas so many other instances do not even do that much.

Though for myself, the longer this goes on the less faith I have that it will ever be fixed whilst remaining dependent upon the Lemmy.ml + lemmygrad.ml admins & devs to help accomplish the goals of bringing in more mainstream normies from the Western civilization that they so abhor and constantly ridicule. Why should they? They themselves do not want that. It is a harsh truth but we are on their platform, and that’s that. We will receive what they deign to offer. Which is why I am trying now to help PieFed thrive, despite how far behind it is, and it would be great to see Sublinks arrive as well.

I feel like we’ve had this conversation two or three times in the last few weeks

You keep asking questions though… so I kept answering them:-P. I feel like we got some addditional clarity on your only focusing on the top 20 instances.

Little by little, progress is made. This issue is not entirely solvable though, using current methods available to us - e.g. the issue you mentioned that the desires of users to avoid being bullied are at cross-purposes with being able to access particularly the FOSS content such as !firefox@lemmy.ml. I will say that “accessing open source communities” isn’t terribly hard - you don’t even need an account for that, though indeed lacking one would cut someone off from participating by asking questions, posting, replying, and voting. Which is why something like a “community label” holds such appeal to me, and even more approaches such as PieFed’s ability to enact user-initated user-blocking of custom user-specified instances without the need for the approval of an entire admin team and thereby the support of an entire community. It thereby democracizes blocking, making it available to anyone who wants it, which I for one think is awesome!?:-) Though the UI needs some polish, so I will focus on submitting bug reports to help with that.

Them:

BuT wE sHoUlD bE fReE tO sAy WhAtEvEr We WaNt!

After you talk to them:

No… not like that!?

Future updates to Lemmy already plan to include labels for communities iirc, although I am not sure about if instance labels would be included at first or not. And even if those are applied by instance admins, for maximum friendliness it seems like it would be good to reach out to the very communities that they apply to while making those labels. e.g. going from lemm.ee to Hexbear could perhaps say “come here if you aren’t afraid to get dunked on and we will argue deep points together, though be warned that people indoctrinated by Western socioeconomic capitalistic thought processes may be in for quite a difference of opinion!”. Lemmy.ml could be “we support older-style Marxist–Leninist thinking, but note that we strongly enjoy making fun of the West, so beware ye who enter here - we will educate you properly!”

Instead, visiting Lemmy.ml says “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”, followed by a link to “What is Lemmy.ml” which as you can see is broken, pointing to a post that appears to no longer exist.

Perhaps this is all hopelessly naive - but it could be tried before abandoning it? I have been known to throw a jab or three at the expense of my own home Western nation (USA) - though it definitely comes across differently when done externally, and also by people who very much seem to not be joking when they talk about literally murdering people. (I mean, I am aware that that never happens in Russia or China, where someone can fall out of a window, then shoot themselves in the back of the head, then fall down a flight of stairs, then shoot themselves in the back of the head again, then fall down another set of stairs, and finally out of a second window… but in any case, this vehemence seems directed at the peoples in the Western nations, and regardless of its degree of truthosity - a word I made up entirely just now but wish that I could use from now:-D - it scares away the normies for sure.)

Anyway there are only so many instances, and only so many communities, and most do not need such a warning, or possibly the instance ones could be automated as applying to all communities on that instance. So it’s very doable. As compared to now where it is full federation vs. full defederation, offering literally nothing in-between (unless you have an app that can implement a block of all comments from users on a specified instance).

Btw PieFed tries to avoid the need for all of that by an automated system of its own, applied to each user evenly across the board - e.g. if you have more downvotes than upvotes, then an icon appears next to your name (this system seems able to be gamed though, especially wrt such ideological differences where many would upvote while many others would downvote, each side having different ideals about what is to be considered worthy).

Ah that makes sense then, why one highly technical person would recall (presumably correctly) that it used to work on Kbin, while another person submitted a request to add that feature for Mbin. It’s nice to know that it is possible, even if not quite straightforward!:-)

I would strongly hope that the Mbin codebase is being worked on by more than just one person, who is also administering your instance. That was what caused the demise of both Kbin and Kbin.social with Ernst trying to “do it all” without letting others help. I would love to see that project succeed and provide a fully viable alternative to X and Reddit besides Mastodon and Lemmy:-).

I have not reached out to ST.website, and anyway it seems besides the point b/c as of now they have caught up. And since all 3 of these instances were having the same issue at the same time, I would guess that it is just more of this same style of rate-limiting issues that we hear across many other instances. I did a bit digging and I see this pinned comment describing the issue occuring 5 months ago: https://startrek.website/post/10430719/9550923. The admins are aware, but until Lemmy.World updates to 0.19.6, what can they do about it really? But here at least you can see the answer directly from an admin about exactly this style of issue.

Yes Discuss.Online is very (hehe… may I say “blazingly”?:-P) fast - I first moved to it when ST.website was being pokey slow (~10 months ago) and I have enjoyed very much how smooth the experience is on it. Though it does federate with hexbear.net and lemmy.ml, so e.g. I get to see Cowbee responding to people discussing tankie behavior with the “just trust me bro, no I refuse to share my references instead why don’t you hit me up in my DMs, hey why don’t you share YOUR references hrm, no I’ve never asked anyone to hit me up in my DMs in my life bro whutyoutalkinabout?”. As funny as it may be to watch, it does disturb me that “normies” as we are talking about in this post will be exposed to such, and have to learn first-hand what types of behaviors to expect from which servers that the admins of most instances will not defederate from.

ST.website at least defederated from hexbear, though discuss.online has not. I briefly considered mander.xyz cause that source of content seems amazing, but it defederates from almost nothing at all - not even lemmygrad.ml (there are only 2 entries in its block list: threads.net and burggit.moe - even exploding heads isn’t listed there, wtf!?!?) Edit: though someone could eke out quite the existence there just browsing Local - that experience wouldn’t offer any “news” and especially “politics”, so that could be a strong plus for someone, but then you could switch between Global vs. Local at the press of a button, to expand or narrow one’s preferred scope of input. Then again, it seems hyperfocused on the STEM fields, with very little of e.g. liberal arts (though not none, e.g. !natural_process_art@mander.xyz and !gan_art@mander.xyz, and yet those are not highly active).

Programming.dev has more than merely federation issues too. I don’t know if they’ve modified their codebase or what, but e.g. community names containing spaces - or perhaps it was underscores - are having trouble as well.

And yes I know you made the meme, I was reminding you that I’m not making this up - there are definitely federation issues going on! Perhaps not right this very second (or maybe, from somewhere, I dunno?), but over the past year this intermittent issue has persisted, to varying degrees based in part on proximity and network latency between it vs. Lemmy.World, and perhaps on hardware and in particular network connection services of each instance.

Oh, and maybe this is where we were disconnecting: if you were talking “top 20”, and I was mentioning ST.website and Discuss.Online and PieFed.social and programming.dev and aussie.zone, then (1) it still shows how it isn’t PieFed.social’s “fault”, b/c this delay with Lemmy.World content happens to MANY (most?) small instances, but (2) for a recommendation to give to people, e.g. those still on Reddit, then yeah, I don’t know of something better than lemm.ee. I was suggesting to think about adding lemmy.cafe to the recommendation list in spite of it not being in the top 20, in case some people might bend more towards wanting to avoid trolling behavior - tbf, this could be more of a recommendation for people on Mastodon than Reddit, at which point perhaps Mbin is a better fit anyway? Though at least some of those, like sopuli.xyz and lemmy.ca, do defederate from hexbear.net even if not from lemmy.ml, which is something.

If that works for you, then go for it:-). Would we call this “anti-trolling”? :-P

But the OP was about how to bring in normies, and in that context, I would like to see some kind of warning label slapped onto certain places on the Fediverse - as in, “warning: this place often spouts bullshit, just so you know, caution is advised”. Again, we are talking about “normies” - they may not all want to anti-engage with trolls as you do.

i.e., doing so should be opt-in, rather than opt-out, imho.

I covered the federation issues in my other comment.

PieFed allows users to decide their own personal defederations without needing to depend upon an instance admin for that.

Hopefully as the UI gets more developed, people will gravitate more to PieFed, or Sublinks.

If the worst were to happen (another Ernst/Kbin.social situation) then any instance with only a single admin is indeed vulnerable, as is any instance that remains federated with it due to the inevitable spam attacks that will come from it.

Though the issues with federation with lemmy.ml are also important too. See e.g. that recent discussion at https://lemm.ee/post/45248880, where the admins expressed a desire for OP to physically commit suicide, all based on an easily preventable misunderstanding about a situation that happened in a game. Just to underscore how ridiculous what we are talking about is, here is a mini run-down of the facts: one non-existent irl character kissed another non-existent irl character, who had been dating in the game for awhile btw, having reached a “hearts” level of 8 of 10 points so quite an established relationship showing mutual interest, whereupon the 2nd character had just given a bouquet of flowers to the 1st one, who then kissed the 2nd one in a surprised and pleased movement, which the ML admins described as “sexual assault” (mistakenly thinking that that did not happen until reaching 10 of 10 points), banned the OP, oh and in the process also told the OP kill themselves. This sounds like insane ranting on my part I know, but it all actually happened!?!?!?! And it’s not even something that we need to hear second-hand stories of, it’s all right there in the modlogs preserved for anyone who wants to see directly.

It is because of events such as that - which KEEP HAPPENING - that I have stopped recommending Lemmy to anyone. Though I would love to start recommending PieFed as its UI improves a bit - and I will be helping that process along by submitting loads of bug reports to their team!:-) In the meantime, perhaps the downsides of instances such as lemmy.cafe being run by a single administrator do not seem so bad? After all, lemmy.ml has an entire team of administrators - but that did not stop SagXD from losing their account there, suddenly and without warning. Nor macniel or any of the others that we keep hearing about happening. That is why we are saying that having a single admin is bad right - b/c it is vulnerable to go down without warning? Afaik, I’ve never heard that lemmy.ml has offered a warning first before smashing the entire instance-wide ban hammer, even against a mod of a community there. Nor, again even for a mod there, do they even so much as tell them that it happened. Or explain what the cryptic modlog messages mean, which look at first glance as if they pertain only to individual communities, leaving people confused and having to figure out on their own what happened?

So anyway which is worse: a community with a single admin, or one with a whole team that is unhinged and somehow even more likely to boot someone, and with a demonstrated pattern of doing exactly that whenever it suits them?

And then ofc hexbear is a whole other thing too - who wants to be actively bullied, like why would that be fun for most of us, especially normies? If someone REALLY wants to be exposed to thus, then okay I won’t stop them, but it really does seem to me like it would be helpful to at least offer a WARNING to new users that it is likely to happen. Which afaik lemm.ee does not do. Maybe as you recommend lemm.ee you can attach such a warning?

Possibly something like: “if you want an instance that is connected all servers across the fediverse, such does not exist but the closest seems to be lemm.ee, although be warned that it federates with known multiple instances known to encourage trolling behaviors; otherwise lemmy.cafe seems quite welcoming although it is small and with only a single admin so is less stable than others.”

As you say, nothing is perfect. All we can do is try to help manage and perhaps mitigate this absolute shit-storm. Thanks for all your efforts there:-).

No, it’s really not - see e.g. https://youtu.be/BFSe5-i1LoU and actually I cannot recommend that entire channel highly enough, it is amazing! It is like a mini college course in the subject, and describes how the Alt-Right movement in America (following patterns used in Russia for years) resorts to many tactics that are low-effort and literally designed to waste the time of the responder.

Imagine you had a PhD, specifically in vaccines, and you were arguing with a 2-year-old who no matter what you said then responded with “nuh-uh”, and occasionally threw in zingers at the level of “I know you are but what am I?!”

It is not important to refute the bullshit of people refusing to engage in good faith, and in actual fact it is precisely the opposite: by giving them the opportunity to continue forward you are merely playing into their game.

Maybe you pick your battles I’m not suggesting otherwise, just that in general I find it best to not engage with trolls. I tried that on Reddit, as a mod of two small gaming subs, and I learned my lesson: it was me who was changed, not them. Until I decided to leave Reddit entirely, regardless of whether I came here or not.

And now that I’m here, forewarned is forearmed, and I’m not enjoying having to go through that fight yet again, but it must be done by the only way is forward… towards whatever goal I choose, and for the I choose happiness rather than continually hitting my head against a brick wall:-).