This is an opportunity for any users, server admins, or interested third parties to ask anything they’d like to @nutomic@lemmy.ml and I about Lemmy. This includes its development and future, as well as wider issues relevant to the social media landscape today.
Note: This will be the thread tmrw, so you can use this thread to ask and vote on questions beforehand.
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I asked in the other thread about GDPR.
Nobody thinks it’s very interesting but if instances don’t follow gdpr, the entire network is at risk of legal consequences.
So please bring this up, even though it’s not very fun.
How do you see Lemmy working with duplicate communities on different instances? For example if Lemmy.World and Lemmy.ml have a PersonalFinance community, are people expected to cross-post? Or have you conceived of a system to allow people to find the right community efficiently?
Any plans for improving SEO? One of Reddit’s biggest strengths was being able to get very relevant results with a simple internet search. In time can you see something similar for Lemmy, even with its decentralized nature? I really you for doing this, thank you for your time!
Right now, instances with transphobic and racist content like exploding-heads are still listed on join-lemmy.org. Are you planning to implement a Server Convenant like on joinmastodon.org? To be listed on joinmastodon.org, an instance needs “Active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia”.
The instance list is fine as is. Think about it like this: do you want racists to join a single instance so they are all in one place? Or do you want them to spread across all different instances, causing moderation problems everywhere?
Yes, I think it would be best if they would all gather on one instance that can get defederated. Right now they attract users on join-lemmy with “Use humor and facts to hold the ruling class accountable”, no other info.
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I think you got downvoted because people were not looking for a way to make it ok for the racist instances to stay on join-lemmy.
I am not really familiar with shadowbannig, but users could just check their posts from another instance and find out about the ban.
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And if the racist is here to cause problems rather than commiserate with fellow racists, they now know exactly which community to avoid, thus restoring moderation problems everywhere. I don’t think anyone is asking you to moderate every instance to ensure they are sticking to your TOS or your viewpoints, but it’s a very minor ask to not showcase off the racists and transphobes and bigots on the ‘join this platform’ page.
There are plenty of other instance lists across the internet. So its not even a real solution for your theoretical problem.
I don’t think the people raising this as a concern are trying to solve the problem of bigots on the internet; they are just asking for you to change the advertising you provide to remove the bigots from a place of visibility.
And then we should block lemmygrad, lemmy.world, hexbear and hundreds of other instances? Thats not gonna happen. If you want to block instances, do that on the beehaw side.
I’m not here to proselytize about what we decide to block or not. I’m explaining what the person above is requesting - not a block, but a conscious decision about what shows up on the join-lemmy list.
I’m new to the fediverse, and even I can tell you’re missing the point.
This brings up an interesting point. On Mastodon, besides Block User, there is also a Block Instance option. Will we ever see that on Lemmy? Seems like an easy way to resolve what has been a big issue for me (and obviously other people too).
Aka, you don’t really want to start over on another instance (hey, not migration tools yet!) but you also don’t really want to see posts from a specific server any more. Rather than people having to lobby the server admins about whether or not to defederate, wouldn’t it just be easier to allow user-level instance blocking? (I know I say “just” while knowing zip about how hard that as in the back end, but yes, from a logistics perspective, seems like you could make a lot of spam-level requests leave the admin’s plates by implementing this.)
It’s possible that anti-racist, queer or any other serious organisations might not want to link to join-lemmy.org because of it.
Thats fine, they can provide their own list of instances where users can choose from.
They are on your list (which is seen as the official one by many and has most visits) to guide transphobes and fascists to their fitting community?? Exploding-heads is not labeled as transphobe and fascist on join-lemmy. So that does’t make sense.
i would rather want the racists to not be able to go anywhere at all
It doesnt really matter what you want. The software is open source so anyone can use the software freely. No way to prevent it.
yea sure there will always be racist instances but they shouldn’t be promoted on sites like join-lemmy.org
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What type(s) of transphobia?
Here are some examples on exploding-heads.com and rammy.site though I kinda doubt you don’t know about them. Their members frequently harass trans and queer communities as well.
Warning trans/queerphobic
https://exploding-heads.com/post/635111 https://exploding-heads.com/post/635113 https://exploding-heads.com/post/635122 https://exploding-heads.com/post/627109 https://exploding-heads.com/post/628678 https://exploding-heads.com/post/627044 https://exploding-heads.com/post/630190 https://exploding-heads.com/post/191408 https://exploding-heads.com/post/618400 https://rammy.site/c/saynotogroomers
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !saynotogroomers@rammy.site
*facepalms
lol…
Wasnt free speech all about being able to express your opinion without getting banned?
No. It’s about being able to voice your opinion without going to jail for it. No one is going to jail for making transphobic memes or comments. But that doesn’t protect them from me blocking them or banning them from my instance.
Ok fair enough. But (outside of the context) defederating/banning certain communities because they don’t have the same beliefs as you can lead to a fully opinionated/based fediverse and should be prevented imo. Everybody should be able to express their opinions no matter what. I don’t want lemmy to change into some kind off mass media like everything else rn. If a post isn’t showing a good/kind, people respecting vibe, it will be downvoted and thus not shown to anybody. And later if lemmy creates an algorithm of some kind, these posts can be ghosted for certain individuals. But i don’t think they should be completely removed and banned from the connected fediverse as this platform is one of the only ways to express ourselves online at this point. I hope i could get my point across
Defederation doesn’t prevent them from being able to access the fediverse nobody has a right to harassing people thats like saying you are being discriminated against because you aren’t allowed in the public park because you throw garbage everywhere and spray paint the children’s play equipment but it’s a public park my rights
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They are allowed to exist, but they don’t need to advertise for them.
Especially in the place where casual people go to sign up. Can you imagine someone picking a random server and then suddenly seeing that shit? They would stop using lemmy completely.
Found the bigot
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please give me your home address, I would like to deliver a monologue about the work of artist Giorgio DiChirico at 3am every night in your bedroom
as a free speech absolutist you must have no objection, right?
edit: looks like the guy I was replying to got deleted and it now looks like I’m replying to the top level comment. Commenter was suggesting there should be no limits on any speech, hence me giving an example of absolute free speech being an obvious thing no-one wants — so that we can agree there must be some limit on speech.
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Just substitute “free” with “hate” *wink wink.
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I’m gonna be asking hard questions, I think, sorry about that. I hope you consider it tough love considering our past interactions.
As an instance admin, I have some questions:
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How are you doing? I know there was a lot of pressure when things blew up and it seems to be calming down a bit now.
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How is Lemmy doing financially?
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Considering past releases and their associated breaking bugs (including 0.18.3), what measures are you taking to help prevent that?
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Can we consider the possibility of downgrades being supported?
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Why are bugs affecting moderation not release blockers? Does anything block releases?
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Are there plans to give instance administrators a voice in shaping the future of Lemmy’s development?
As someone who is trying to help with Lemmy’s development, I have some other questions:
- What do you think are the biggest problems with Lemmy as a software project and what are your priorities for Lemmy?
- Considering fairly low amounts of developers contributing to Lemmy, how are you working to help new people get into the project?
- Do you worry about the message it sends to potential contributors when the main developers are working on a different project which competes with the former? (Example: Lemmy-ui vs Lemmy-ui-Leptos)
- Considering most work is done voluntarily, how are you trying to organize and prioritize work?
- Do you believe you are stretching yourself too thin between Lemmy, Lemmy-ui, Lemmy-ui-leptos, Jerboa and Lemmy.ml? If so, what are you doing to help you focus?
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Hope multiples are ok …
- As platform developers, do you have any thoughts about ActivityPub? Positive/negative critiques, needed developments (in your opinions), usage gripes or tips for other platform devs, future predictions?
- As devs of (now) the second largest platform next to mastodon (by some metrics), which are probably as distinct platforms can be in terms of format, do you have any views on interoperability between platfroms over ActivityPub, where a common critique (AFAIK), from *diaspora devs for example, is that sharing posts/information of different formats just doesn’t work well over AtivityPub and so is one of its major flaws?
- Arguably the fediverse has so far sought to replicate the corporate big-social platforms … should new design evolution occur now and if so how?
- Much has been made by some of how the lack of user-friendliness of the fediverse really isn’t anything to celebrate and should be taken more seriously by users and devs alike (see, eg, Erin Kissane who focuses on mastodon). However much this applies to lemmy (where issues of user mobility probably do apply), do you think the fediverse needs a better story around catering to user needs?
- Do you have any thoughts on the server-based architecture of the fediverse (where all user accounts are bound to a particular user) and whether alternative architectures have a future or could be better (p2p, more single-user based for instance)?
- Should lemmy and the fediverse seek to grow with any and all users or seek to stay relatively small and limited to ensure a healthy cutlure?
- Journalism and journalists … should they be on the fediverse (like the BBC recently with their own mastodon instance) … and if so, how?
- What are the biggest or proudest moments you’ve had with Lemmy so far, and the worst or most embarrassing?
- How does it feel to have so many users using and developing against your software?!
Any plans to improve the sorting algorithm so that there’s a good balance of fresh posts at the top that’s also fairly active? And to help promote smaller communities that would have otherwise been dominated by the posts from bigger instances.
Any concerns about duplicate communities across multiple instances? People have made the argument that it’s like having different flavors of subreddits on Reddit, but it’s a flawed analogy. Individual instances have incentive to make their own communities flourish, whether or not there’s a duplicate already available.
As some instances grow, server costs are becoming significant. Right now, servers are only funded through donations. Do you see the development of anything else to help fund server costs?
I’m not asking anything because I’m a potato when it comes to software. I just wanted to drop by and say: thank you both for Lemmy. The platform is amazing, and it’s clear that you guys are pouring some heavy love (and labour hours) in it, as it’s improving at an amazing pace.
I asked this in the original thread but I’ll repeat it here:
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Are there any limitations with the ActivityPub protocol you find limiting? Do you have recommendations for future versions of the protocol?
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Do you have any thoughts on the AT Protocol (a potential competitor to AP)?
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First of all, I’d like to say thank you and that I appreciate your work. Lemmy is great and I’ve found a new home (at least for the foreseeable future). I first joined lemmy.ml once I learned about lemmy, and I have to say I had a good experience there. You guys even responded directly to my noob questions, and I honestly felt welcome which helped me decide to stay.
My questions are about account migration. As you may have already seen, I’m not with lemmy.ml anymore. The reason is I saw you guys stickied a post encouraging users to use different instances (since the server was having trouble with the influx of redditors at that time). I figured I’d help by first moving to a smaller instance. I have no regrets, although switching was a bit tricky since I had to start from scratch.
What are your thoughts on account migration? Is it in the works or is it something that’s a little far into the future? No pressure since I know you guys are busy with other stuff.
Hi! This isn’t really a question, but I was a former admin on Lemmy.ml and I just want to say that I really appreciated the opportunity to be on your team and it was a really valuable experience for me! I’m no longer an admin due to inactivity and personal life events causing me to no longer have the time to serve such a role, but I enjoyed the time I was and I really hope I was able to make a positive contribution to the instance!
Thank you for your continued work developing this project and running your instance comrades! This is still by far my favourite fediverse platform, actually, favourite social media in general. I intend to continue using both Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad and I hope I can continue to contribute by using Lemmy when I have the chance!
First, just want to say thanks for building and maintaining Lemmy. It’s an incredible project, and it provides an incredibly valuable public forum that’s completely open. This is the way internet was always meant to work before it got hijacked by corporations.
The questions I’d like to ask would be whether the platform is developing in the way you originally envisioned, what surprised you in terms of how the platform ended up being used in the wild, and what were the biggest technical and non technical problems that came from the rapid growth after the Reddit migration. And finally, how would you like the platform to evolve going forward, and what your long term vision is.
I mostly imagined the slow but steady growth we’d been having, and def didn’t anticipate that reddit would mess up so badly that a massive chunk of users would migrate from a multi-million dollar enterprise software, to a hobby project developed by a couple of marxist-leninists 🤣 . But so it goes, with all these late-capitalist social media companies alienating their users, monetizing them in any way possible in search of declining surplus.
The biggest non-tech problem, is just the overwhelming amount of notifications. Companies have multiple layers between devs and users, to separate, order, and create a more controlled explosion. That doesn’t exist here, so we get hundreds of notifications every day, with everyone treating us as their personal issue tracker… and I basically would get nothing done if all I did was respond to them. Luckily things are calming down a bit now.
The biggest tech-problem was the performance and security issues of so many users joining the network all at once, and luckily we had so many wonderful community contributions to help stabilize that.
And finally, how would you like the platform to evolve going forward, and what your long term vision is.
We should be ambitious, and wantthe fediverse as a whole, on the long term, to replace big-tech. Every user we draw away from them, is one less person exploited for their data and treated as a commodity.
Technically, I’d just like us to continue making the software better, maintaining the code, and adding features.
The point regarding notifications is really important. Managing a popular open source project can be really overwhelming in that regard, and it’s easy for individual users to forget that it’s only a couple of people dealing with all their issues on the other end.
People stepping up and contributing is a great development. Community involvement is key for the success of open source platforms in my opinion.
And love the long term vision, I completely agree that the fediverse replacing corporate platforms would be the ideal scenario in the future. From what I can see, fediverse has already reached the point of sustainability. It’s still niche compared to mainstream platforms, but I think it’s clear that it can exist in its current form indefinitely. And I think this provides an important advantage over corporate platforms. Commercial companies have to continuously demonstrate profit and growth to their shareholder or die. This means having to constantly chase new ways to attract new users and monetize the platform leading to the sort of behaviors we see happening with Reddit. On the other hand, open platforms can grow slowly and sustainably. This allows the fediverse to evolve on a completely different time scale. I’m optimistic that the fediverse will likely outlive every single corporate platform that’s around today.
Thanks again for all the hard work you’re doing, it’s very much appreciated!
The biggest non-tech problem, is just the overwhelming amount of notifications.
Is there anything users could do to help mitigate this? I think the recommendation for reporting bugs is to use the GitHub page. But for other issues?
Maybe a numbering system would help: so if a user tagged a dev, they start with a 1 for urgent, 2 for neutral(?), or 3 for ‘ignore if you’re busy’. There will be a problem of some users overemohasising their issue but it still might save time/attention overall as most users will likely respect such a system.
Or maybe a novel use of a dev community, which would allow the user base to help determine which issues are noteworthy?
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Feel like having a gpt summarize the bulk of issues might be the viable way to handle it
To be honest I never had any long-term vision, and still dont have. I just thought that decentralized software in general and Activitypub in particular is very exciting and lets us take power away from corporations like Reddit, Google, Facebook etc.
Biggest technical problem was implementing Activitypub, when I started there was no implementation in Rust yet, and it was very hard to find detailed information how everything is supposed to work. Over the years I had to rewrite the federation code at least 4-5 times, each time making it a bit cleaner.
Biggest nontechnical challenge is dealing with all the people who are suddenly joining and want to contribute, so that it doesnt turn into total chaos. Luckily there are many helpful community members who helped to organize things. Another challenge is with funding, now we dont have as much time to work on the paid NLnet milestones. And its not clear if NLnet will grant us another funding round once this is over. Hopefully the user donations will grow over time so that they can cover our full salaries.
Thanks again for all the work you’re doing on the project, and hopefully the funding situation will continue being sustainable after the NLnet grants run out. It would be great if community manages to step up and fully cover the salaries through donations. It’s been an exciting ride using Lemmy and seeing the community grow. I can’t wait to see what the next few years will bring!
Comrade Dessalines, you rock. Your audiobooks and essays are great. No questions.
o7 comrade. I’m glad I can help out in any way.
Chances that hexbear emojis become the Lemmy standard across all instances ?
Thank you for your service.
Each instance should be in control of their own emojis IMO, for example a star trek instance would have only star-trek related emojis.
Who wouldn’t want Star Trek themed emojis and
Is that a denguin lol, nice.
If they tried to have any non-Star Trek emojis Dessalines would press the secret instance destroying button and eradicate them
Resistance is futile, your emojis will become part of the collective.
thanks for your work. That kind of online posting is praxis and is quite helpful. Hope you get as much in your personal life as you give :)Which Ideology do you support? I support Maoism.
