Some will cheer, some will be mildly disappointed. But I’m out, I think.
I don’t know who would cheer, you’re one of the pillars of this ecosystem as far as I’m concerned and even though I don’t say it enough I always appreciate your efforts in keeping so many niche subs fed with constant content.
I totally get how you’re feeling, and I can’t blame you for being burned out. You’ve put in an insane amount of work over the years. I hope you find some time to rest.
You will be missed, and will be remembered for a long time.
Tankies will cheer, he was a big contributor to the TankieJerk comms which memed on and exposed them. He’s also frequently posted on MeanwhileOnGrad.
Basically there are two kinds of Anarchists on the fediverse: PugJesus and fake ones.
I often defended anarchists as comrades, but I’m not one myself. Plenty of good anarchists on the Fediverse. I’m sad to leave them.
Basically there are two kinds of Anarchists on the fediverse: PugJesus and fake ones.
Someone mad they got banned for racism from one.
If Pug is an anarchist, he’s the most useless one.
Count yourself lucky lol. I know several and they aren’t good people to know. But yes this will definitely make the new feeds a lot lighter. And traffic overall go down. Neither of which are great.
Several…what?
I don’t know who would cheer
Oh, whoops…
I haven’t seen anyone prolific on Lemmy not get hatred. Most of it I haven’t felt was justified.
Incidentally, I like your username.
I don’t know who would cheer
Hi 👋
Tbh makes little difference since I had him blocked, but if he uses the opportunity to finally touch grass, it’s a win-win.
Did you know about the part where his illnesses make touching grass an ordeal he reduces to the minimum necessary (politics, keeping up with friends)? I get that you won’t see his comments, but he said as much somewhere in this section.
Point is, he is touching grass and has plenty more opportunity. I don’t see why people are hating on someone contributing so much content, most of it high quality, and bringing life to the platform. Why would less activity be a good thing?
Did you know about the part where his illnesses make touching grass an ordeal he reduces to the minimum necessary (politics, keeping up with friends)?
What does that mean, exactly? There are lots of ways to touch grass that don’t involve physical activity any more intense than typing. Playing a board games with your friends is touching grass, for example.
Even if it were true that he had no choice but to be terminally online, his personality is insufferable, he digs in hard to his positions and can’t be reasoned with. I believe he’s had drama with trans spaces (something about neopronouns, it was a long time ago) before because of that sort of thing.
I believe my last conversation with him involved him screaming at me and calling me a fascist because I said that I wouldn’t believe claims without evidence. And then following me around calling me a fascist while still refusing to provide a shred of evidence for his claims. I suppose if you already agree with him on everything, you wouldn’t see that side, but from my perspective he doesn’t care about being persuasive or backing up his claims so much as playing to the crowd and shouting down disagreement.
Imo, comms like NCD are pure internet brain poison, “semi-ironic” glorification of the military with a veneer of liberalism. Likewise for the political compass and associated memes, it shapes the way people think about politics, massively oversimplifying everything.
Even if it were true that he had no choice but to be terminally online, his personality is insufferable, he digs in hard to his positions and can’t be reasoned with.
Sorry that you don’t like it when I provide evidence and you refuse to read it, as in the comment sections you linked.
I believe he’s had drama with trans spaces (something about neopronouns, it was a long time ago) before because of that sort of thing.
“Something about neopronouns”
Ah, this old canard. Unsurprising that you’d spread more blatant misinformation.
I believe my last conversation with him involved him screaming at me and calling me a fascist because I said that I wouldn’t believe claims without evidence.
Amusing that you literally link to me providing evidence multiple times.
And then following me around calling me a fascist while still refusing to provide a shred of evidence for his claims.
Sorry that you don’t like it when it’s pointed out that you’re an Uyghur Genocide denier.
You can’t leave: Adrian Zenz and Radio Free Asia need your help to keep the faith.
Keep complaining to management, truth warrior 🤣
I’m sorry you think there’s something wrong with reporting genocide denial. But considering that you spend much of your time as an .ml admin removing anyone who doesn’t bootlick fascists, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
What does that mean, exactly? There are lots of ways to touch grass that don’t involve physical activity any more intense than typing. Playing a board games with your friends is touching grass, for example.
Per https://feddit.uk/comment/26233735
“As someone with a laundry list of physical and mental ailments, my ‘touching grass’ time is extremely limit, and general I reserve the monumental effort there for important issues - like keeping up with the social events of my actual friends, or participating in local politics in my increasingly-fucked-and-fascist country. “Touch grass, it’s more fun than shitposting about history!” doesn’t really apply for me.”
As for the rest of your comment, I’ll be explicit in saying that I won’t engage with it. I have read the linked comments, their context, other comments linked in that context and frankly, I don’t think that will be a fruitful conversation for either of us. I hope you can respect that choice not to have it.
touching grass
All I’m saying is that, regardless of the reasons, too much internet can create brainworms, bad politics, and toxicity. I’ve yet to hear of any physical or mental ailment that makes it impossible to log off.
As for the rest of your comment, I’ll be explicit in saying that I won’t engage with it. I have read the linked comments, their context, other comments linked in that context and frankly, I don’t think that will be a fruitful conversation for either of us. I hope you can respect that choice not to have it.
Sure. You asked, I answered. I mostly linked them because I don’t believe in saying anything negative about a person without providing evidence.
All I’m saying is that, regardless of the reasons, too much internet can create brainworms, bad politics, and toxicity.
Imagine saying this as an Uyghur genocide denier and PRC bootlicker.
Aren’t you supposed to be logging off? Now that you’ve noticed I’ve unblocked you, I doubt you’ll be able to stay away for a week.
Would be weird if an ml user liked him TBH
Like I said, he’s really just concerned with playing to a crowd that I’m not part of, so yeah.
He called you a fascist because it’s true. You are a genocide denier and simp for totalitarian regimes. It is even linked within the argument you linked.
I don’t just deny genocides, I deny literally everything that doesn’t have evidence to support it. Claiming that anyone who needs evidence to believe things is a “fascist” or a “simp for authoritarian regimes” is beyond absurd. Especially when the main proponent of the claim you’re demanding I accept blindly, without evidence, is itself an authoritarian regime!
How come do you come with the same talking points as neonazis/Holocaust deniers? (denying that evidence exists when you in fact deny the legitimacy of any evidence presented to you)
NO! Please! Say it ain’t so!
Please PugJesus, don’t leave us :(
but who will explain all the history memes
Sounds like you’re saying you’re quitting threadiverse entirely? Sad to hear. I enjoyed your history stuff particularly
I’m glad I didn’t jump over right away. I was going to, and then things started getting weird and uncomfortable with it.
That would be decidedly tragic. Your history posts are basically the most interesting things on here. I think a lot of people will be more mildly disappointed, including myself, to see you go.
If you do leave, thanks for the time you were here. You have been appreciated!
Piefed so weird
Spectacular how it went from everyone’s favorite to an absolute mess.
Guess that’s what happens when software becomes opinionated.
Lemmy is still a mess also:-P
Ironically for similar reasons.
Uhh why would any social media website not like engagement? Especially a smaller one too. Red flag right there. I think I’m going to stick to Lemmy and avoid PieFed for now.
Please don’t leave though. I hate Reddit, FB and all the rest. Where do you plan on going? This is the only platforn that I feel safe enough to use and get my content from. I don’t know what I’d do do without the fediverse or people like you who have the energy/motivation to keep making posts for us to enjoy! :(
Sometimes there’s only so many hours in a day. And so ultimately you have to make a choice whether that goes into moderation and maintenance, or development. Also remember that the fediverse isn’t generally paid to be run and addict more and more people. It’s a service for those who want to use it. Many of which don’t pay but give their participation.
Ah, we’ll miss you. Your content is consistently some of the best out here.
The piefed admins are making a huge mistake with this change, and they’re basing it on bad statistical methods. Every user already only gets one vote per post or comment, so it really doesn’t matter if some users exercise that ability more than others. So framing it the same way as wealth disparity (literally using the same kind of chart) was not very insightful.
And to think I was considering switching to piefed soon… guess not anymore…
I’m OotL, does anyone have a link to whatever is being referenced here?
Thanks for the context. I rarely comment on your posts but seen them a lot. You will be sorely missed.
I’ve batted for piefed.social over in reddit to bring people into the threadiverse as well as here to newcomers that might want all the other good features piefed have. I guess I’ll have to change instances, where I’m on as well as what I recommend.
What do you think you will end up recommending?
Discuss.Online used to be one of the top go-tos, prior to the rise in prominence of PieFed. Very high stability and quite welcoming to anyone who wants friendly discourse.
PieFed.zip is still one option too, as they seem resistant to all the anti-social media bias making its way into the PieFed software as of late. Lemmy.zip was also always one of the top options as well. I’m a bit personally biased against the .zip domains being run by Google but for a Redditor this likely won’t matter in the slightest, and the admin team seems at first glance to be very sensible.
I would not recommend PieFed.ca though, bc while it is a very fine instance, when the USA invades Canada or otherwise increases tensions that’s going to be more problematic in the future.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts as well.:-)
I recommended piefed.social just because it’s the flagship piefed instance. What I really love is the software. Namely the on boarding where piefed asks you of topics one might be interested in, subscribe to those topics and their comms, upfront saying one can block certain terms and the user capability to make multicomms. Because what I struggled with the last 2 times trying Lemmy is the content, of the lack of “helping hand” and tips to control a new user’s experience having All firehose of content. My third time I tried again starting with Lemmy, then mbin asi read around, then right around the birth of this account, piefed showed up. Instantly clicked, and I stayed.
So probably other piefed based instance, but I’ve yet to decide which one. I’m leaning towards piefed.zip just because they block the least instances I’ve seen. But that will be for my own next home, not necessarily for all strangers that I might recommend
Edit: also it must be some degree of irony someone is accusing others of vote manipulation, yet their own comms only allow upvotes. Hmm
Yes it’s fantastic how PieFed has absolutely solved the problem of onboarding. I even recommend it to people who are adamant about not switching from their existing Lemmy accounts - just taking a look at the PieFed onboarding can help inform things on their existing account, plus there’s always the chance that they may fall in love and stay… :-)
Although now that PieFed is outright censoring votes, that’s not going to play well with people trying to escape The Algorithm, which decides for them what they are allowed to see or not. An opt-in new sorting function would have been entirely different but as it stands the only way to opt-out is to avoid every instance that implements the vote quota, which is not easily or authoritatively even possible to find out before joining (and could get changed upon each subsequent update).
Maybe you can try to convey the controversy - like PieFed is great in some ways but others may not like it for “reasons”, but ofc that increases the complexity of the recommendation. And it’s not like Lemmy has zero controversy to its name as well. So perhaps just include one of each, without any explanation?
Also, use of a 3rd-party app negates most of PieFed’s onboarding utility also, which is a further complication.
PieFed.zip is a fine recommendation - maybe no need to go into any of the above and just recommend checking it out? If 3rd-party apps don’t support the onboarding, that’s kinda on them and isn’t PieFed’s fault.
Edit: oops I seem to have misunderstood what you meant in your edit paragraph. Well, I’ll leave this here in case it is interesting but it is not so precisely relevant (although it does kinda touch on the subject somewhat in general?), I see that and apologize.
I disagree about labeling downvotes being disabled as “manipulation” bc anything that is done TRANSPARENTLY is not nefarious. While if stated plainly and clearly in the rules (I haven’t checked that for this community, so take the following with a grain of salt), then it seems fine? Users can simply choose to use another community if they don’t like this one - or even make their own. When you are in someone else’s house, you follow their rules.In reality, this shit is complicated, yo. Like PugJesus did not “manipulate” so much as he “affected” the visibility of content, using traditional means of using votes for the exact purpose they were designed for. But then is Rimu the one now “manipulating” the votes…? In one sense yes but perhaps in the greater sense no, bc it isn’t a nefarious underhanded changing of them so much as an unclearly-stated alteration of the literal rules of how votes work. So manipulation of the rules rather than of votes themselves directly, and ostensibly for some kind of a purpose, albeit a very very bad one that rather than providing an opt-in new scoring scheme to not allow highly active voters as much influence as previously, instead altering the vote counts themselves directly.
In short, Rimu has just implemented an “Algorithm” that now controls what we see on the Threadiverse, deciding for everyone using it (even people on Lemmy! if they are federating with a community located on PieFed) what we are allowed to know or not. Which brings PieFed instances closer to acting more like Reddit, Threads, and X(hitter), at a time when people are desperately trying to get AWAY from such.
So while I disagree that disabilng downvotes is similar in degree (quantity of impact), yes I see the connection that it is similar in kind (quality).
Basically every PieFed community would now need a warning message attached about how it does not “fully” federate and has various caveats attached, which even that would be insufficient since iirc this change also affects votes sent to communities located on Lemmy instances as well.
Honestly this change is SO BAD that I expect it will be rolled back soon. Even then though… it will still have ripple effects for years to come.
I even recommend it to people who are adamant about not switching from their existing Lemmy accounts
indeed. that’s what I do as well.
Maybe you can try to convey the controversy
I most probably will not if I’m recommending it for people new to the threadiverse. If they ask, then I may explain. Although I might forget honestly. Same with the lemmy controversy. I only remembered because you and others reminded me of it in replies of this post.
3rd-party app negates most of PieFed’s onboarding utility also, which is a further complication.
It does indeed. I recently tried a few apps again. I am still using Summit but want to see how the others handle it, but for piefed. None of them, including Summit, does onboarding as well as piefed on a web browser.
I seem to have misunderstood what you meant in your edit paragraph
Yeah, it’s a tongue in cheek comment. I agree with you that if an instance stating they are disabling whatever votes upfront isn’t being manipulative. It’s transparent and honest, so people can make their own informed decision.
It’s just that I don’t remember downvoting being disabled on piefed.social because I can downvote just fine. Maybe those are all posts in comms that are not in piefed.social and I just never encountered piefed.social posts in my subscribed feed much. Can a comms mod set votes turned on or off on piefed instances?
I just am still gobsmacked that Rimu decided to put on brakes by default and opt-out function to the threadiverse growth. We are having trouble as it is getting just users, and retaining them, not to mention getting and retaining quality active posters and lurkers. The worst thing about it is that they didn’t discuss it in a more public manner before the decision. What a weird opinionated action.
I think I might be out of the loop. What’s happening…?
There is a new rule metering the number of votes that can be cast by a user. You can see yours on your profile.
That’s… really weird.
On the surface the reasoning behind it makes sense, but there is also something about it (that I can’t quite point out yet) that rubs me the wrong way.
It doesn’t make sense though. It was presented as this unequal distribution thing where a few users cast the most amount of votes, but that really doesn’t matter because each user still only gets one vote per post or comment. No one’s opinion is outsized or disproportionate just because they vote on a lot of things.
It was really bad statistics from the start. It was framed sorta like wealth disparity, using the same kind of chart, but it’s categorically not the same thing.
That sounds like the PieFed admins are just going to make it worse. Now there’s going to be first user advantage, with the first comments on a thread getting preferrential treatment
I don’t see how. Unless you mean people rationing their votes are less likely to scroll as far down?
But yeah this place is going to be desolate without pugjesus, and I wonder how many more people are gonna leave once users rationing votes results in content receiving less engagement.
Overall, just a terrible decision in my opinion
Based on the stats shown in Rimu’s post, the monthly average vote count of the top 5000 of prolific voters was 1142, and among the top 147 prolific voters, their average monthly was 6868.
With a 240 daily limit, that comes out to 7200 votes per month, which is already above the average of the most prolific voters.
Those 147 top voters may be effected if they only voted sporadically throughout the month (so they vote like, 500 one day and 700 another, but with some rest days of no voting in-between), and those posting above that average who definitely would be effected appear to only total about 60 people.
So for 99% of the userbase, they would not need to consider rationing votes at all.
Ok, so in the announcement post they talk about mostly technical reasons for this. But from the linked post it does in fact sound like the aim is to throttle most active members because they have too much influence?
This is what rubbed me the wrong way and I just couldn’t figure out why. We all have one upvote to give, some people just give it way more of them - so in comes the great equalizer in the form of the daily quota.
I hope you pardon my exagerated metaphor, but this is like limiting free speech for journalists, because they excercise the right of free speech way more than others.
It’s “just” votes so I’m hesitant to call this censorship but… this does feel like a first step. Will there be daily post quotas too because some people post more than others?
but that really doesn’t matter because each user still only gets one vote per post or comment.
where does the policy change actually impact the user then? I guess at maximum we can’t upvote more that 240 things a day (comment or post). I think that’s more than the vast majority of users do per day, right?
The point isn’t about how many users are likely to hit the daily limit, the point is how having a daily limit might cause people to start rationing their votes. Instead of doling them out however they see fit, they might start thinking “hmm, but is this worth spending a vote on?”
Overall, that can have a chilling effect on voting in general, lowering engagement and reducing the motivation to post (if you only get a handful of upvotes on each post, it might feel “dead” and seem to have no point. It’s encouraging to see several dozen users like your post). And that can expand to a chilling effect on posting.
Also, if someone has a disability or is recovering from illness or surgery then they’re more likely to spend more time on here, meaning they’re more likely to reach the vote quota. This disproportionally impacts them.
Sure, 240 a day is high, but it’s not unreasonable for a human to reach, and it’s nowhere near “obvious bot” territory.
Based on the charts rimu shared, there are so few users who actually reach “obvious bot” territory that it’s impossible for them to not highlight themselves, and they should be easy enough to handle on a case-by-case basis. We’re talking less than 10 accounts. Admins can look at each one to examine their activity, and if they’re a bot they can remove the account.
There’s no reason to limit people’s votes.
i guess it’s an anti-botting measure where they can’t distinguish a power user from an automated system?
There are so few accounts that have that much activity on them that admins could easily handle them on a case-by-case basis.
This doesn’t get rid of the bot accounts, it only limits their voting activity like everyone elses, which will make them harder to detect.
It will make it easier for a bot farm to outvote the humans.
I get that whilst also dancing on the idea that perhaps a power user shouldn’t post so much? This is decentralized social media, there really shouldn’t be an aim to maximise here: You post, you like, you don’t like.
If the aim is to farm engagement and thus a “power user” is born, then I suspect their motives or at least implore them to touch grass more often.
I’m making a lot of judgements here, and probably deserve any downvotes I get here - but if your posting habits are indistinguishable from a bot, then question your posting habits
Farming engagement has no incentive. It can’t be monetized here, there’s no karma. There would be no point.
Power users on the fediverse aren’t doing it for personal gain, they’re doing it to enrich the fediverse and make it a more attractive alternative to corporate social media.
We see so many complaints that it’s dead here, or there aren’t enough communities, or it’s hard to find the right community for something, or if the community exists it might be dead. That’s a lot of people’s rationale for not switching from reddit.
Power users here are trying to fix that. It’s an enormous task and more than a single user or a handful of users can do, but they’re doing their part and in many cases carrying more than their share of the burden. This change is kind of a slap in the face to them.
WHAT?!*
Mate, who the hell cares about minor shizzle like that. Are you serious…?The combination of the irritation (being unable to upvote replies to your own material being particularly grating) and what it suggests about the future of the instance.
I actually planned on continuing to post as-usual (upvoting with alts, annoying as that would be) after I discovered it, but when the reasoning came out I knew it was the canary in the coal mine.
But… it was about a cap for those who chronically abused such…?
Man, I literally hit the cap before it was even announced. I went to the Matrix channel, confused as hell, and got told it was intentional.
The cap is 240 votes. I almost hit the cap just upvoting most of the comments here yesterday. If I participated in any real discussions outside of my own comms, I would almost certainly hit the daily cap on that given day.
The issue was not abuse, and Rimu didn’t say it was abuse in that sense. The issue was always that Rimu doesn’t think that a small minority should be more active in participating on here than the majority.
Sorry about my original reply on this one, mate. It sucked.
The cap is 240 votes. I almost hit the cap just upvoting most of the comments here yesterday. If I participated in any real discussions outside of my own comms, I would almost certainly hit the daily cap on that given day.
Damn, I certainly can’t imagine voting 240x in a single day. There might remotely be that number of opportunities in my subscribed stream, but that would be like me forming an opinion upon every-goldurn thing that I possibly saw in that day. And beyond, really?
I mean, sure I suspect I’m like you and others, giving a friendly updoot upon loads of stuff that I was only neutral upon, but it was for the ‘good’ of the FV, but… 240x per day, y’all?
Damn, I certainly can’t imagine voting 240x in a single day. There might remotely be that number of opportunities in my subscribed stream, but that would be like me forming an opinion upon every-goldurn thing that I possibly saw in that day. And beyond, really?
There are 303 comments in this post alone. If I have an opinion on 2/3s of them, I’m almost at the cap.
~300 comment posts are not the norm on the Fediverse, but I see a fair number of ~80 comment posts. If I run across two or three of them, suddenly I would have very few other opportunities to upvote.
Considering, on top of that, I post quite a bit and get a fair number of comments on each (I had ~90 comment replies to my posts on a pretty normal day’s output on HistoryMemes alone), it doesn’t take much browsing to hit 240 votes.
Rimu doesn’t think that a small minority should be more active in participating on here than the majority.
So it was a massive outrage, not worthy of the dev’s time to at least offer an explanation, and yet one more example of the right-wing dev / runner-path. Really?
All this on their own time, with hundreds of their free hours known and logged…?
So it was a massive outrage, not worthy of the dev’s time to at least offer an explanation, and yet one more example of the right-wing dev / runner-path. Really?
What?
At no point did I say that Rimu was right-wing in any sense or say that he shouldn’t have offered an explanation?
This is a shitty administration decision, it will have shitty effects on the instance long-term, and, especially, it affects me, personally, in a shitty way that I’m not willing to put up with. That’s it.
I don’t get why the feature is necessary. Rimu should make it optional and not on by default.
It is optional in that each piefed instance can choose to turn it off, but its not per user.
Glad to have PyLova to counter Rimu’s desire to limit what users can do on PieFed.
How hard is it to just let people use software how they want. Anti-user design is so anathematic to the spirit of the Fediverse.
rimu: provides a choice
smoothbrains: how dare rimu take away my freedom of choice
A choice to hard limit all users on .social to a number of votes he has determined to be sufficient.
Also let’s not use ablest language please.
Also affects incoming federated votes, right? So it’s affecting everybody else as well.
What’s another good instance that isn’t Lemmy and backed by tankies?
ShitJustWorks seems fine.
My issue with some, but not all, of them is I tend to run into tankies posing as libertarians. Which is just as bad if not a little worse because many are just confused individuals.
But of a generalization, but it unsettlingly common.
What’s another good instance that isn’t Lemmy and backed by tankies?
Ironically that sentiment is precisely what has driven these developments. The fact that it’s now even causing the user who runs MWOG this kind of grief is just laying it on thick.
Ironically that sentiment is precisely what has driven these developments.
Not wanting to bootlick for North fucking Korea, like you and the Lemmy devs do, is what drove the vote limit?
I won’t miss the fascists on here, that’s for sure.
Look, this level of hate’s one-sided here so I won’t engage this any further in your farewell thread.
I hope there’s a silver lining to this and you’ll find it restorative. The reply guy life beckons you.
Twitter?
Hi I’m new here. I have no idea what’s going on!
PugJesus is on an instance (server) called piefed, which is run by complete idiots, who have now decided that each user can only make x upvotes per day. PugJesus is a very active user, and will almost certainly go over that limit. So they’re quitting in protest.
You will not be affected since you are on a different server.
I know Lemmy has its issues, but I swear the more I hear about Piefed the crazier it sounds.
I will never understand why people want to trade the corporate nannies for some self-elected nanny.
We don’t need any of this weird social engineering junk
I mean… I disagree with the vote quotas specifically, but anyone running an instance is gonna have to have some kind of controls, and Rimu’s being open about what’s going on and why and it’s not a big deal for me. The point of the fediverse is that you can pick the particular instance whose policies you’re OK with. With corporate sites you only get one “choice” and they hide their algorithms from you.
Lemmy’s issues are pretty gigantic as well - to the point where many people outright refuse to fund its further development, thus impacting the future of the Threadiverse (one example is the inordinate amount of time spent performing moderation activities rather than actually working on adding features to the codebase).
Anyway, it’s good to have multiple alternative options - having more software implementations of the ActivityPub Protocol is unquestionably a good thing imho.
The social engineering though is NOT a good thing imho - fortunately it’s an option that can be disabled, though unfortunately it is opt-out rather than opt-in, and not transparently handled at all.
Absolutely. My stance is not that Lemmy is not without serious flaw, just that Piefed does not seem to be the solution, to me at least.
PieFed.social is outright censoring votes now, deciding what people are allowed to see or not - and this affects not only people choosing to use PieFed, but also Lemmings (& users of Mbin, Mastodon, Friendica, nodeBB, etc.) as well. The Algorithm has returned to social media, taking away your personal control and instead putting it into the hands of Big Daddy who knows best what’s good for you.
Then again, Lemmy.ml is famous for doing this consistently for literally YEARS. Every single community on there is an echo chamber where certain “undesirable” types of people are not allowed to interact. You could prove me wrong btw by going into any active community and speaking plainly in a negative manner about Russia, China, or North Korea. I’ll wait…? 🤪
Remember that at one time Lemmy devs also implemented a slur word filter, DIRECTLY into the codebase, in a HARD-CODED manner no less, and when the community cried out against that, Nutomic said in response:
If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.
We hoped for better from PieFed. Instead we merely got “different”. Though the pull towards authoritarianism is hard to resist - so often it is the quickest and by far least painful path towards a desirable solution (see e.g. Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars), and I can’t fully judge anyone for considering it. Worse, it might be the height of naïveté to even so much as think that anything else could exist outside of pure theory (aka fantasy)? After all, who is offering a “better” platform - YOU? (me? anyone else stepping up to offer?)
So then what is “the solution”, in your mind? Based on your instance, I am guessing you will say Lemmy? In that case, what about PieFed.zip, running its own version of PieFed with the voting quota anti-feature stripped out? Maybe at the end of the day, the software becomes just a starting point, and it’s the instance admins that are the ones who decide which parts of the software will run or not.
(I still cannot see myself donating to the further development of Lemmy software though - if only for the reason that the enormous amount of time spent moderating the Lemmy.ml instance seems to leave little time leftover to actually work on new code changes, though ngl the genocidal attitude towards actively wishing the deaths of everyone living in a Western civilization does put me off a tad bit as well!)
I feel like we’re having two separate conversations.
What the Lemmy devs do with their instance is separate from what they do with their software, imo.
I’ve said this many times before but as I see it we have two bad choices:
Lemmy, whose devs are arguably questionable with worrysome personal politics and philosophy but who do not bake said philosophy into their software.
Or Piefes, whose devs are arguably much more acceptable and well-meaning, but who bakes their social philosophy into their software.
To me, these are both bad options, but I’ll pick the side that develops agnostically without nannying tendencies. That they chose to enact stricter political bounds within their home territory is irrelevant to me because I don’t spend time there and that feels well within their rights without encroaching on the autonomy of others, to me.
Or, in short: I don’t care even a little bit about Lemmy.ml, I only care about Lemmy.
Lemmy, whose devs are arguably questionable with worrysome personal politics and philosophy but who do not bake said philosophy into their software.
But as OpenStars pointed out, the Lemmy devs did just such a thing in a much more egregious (hard-coded) way previously. The slur filter is now optional after considerable time and outcry.
Piefed’s vote restriction is an option that admins of any instance can fiddle with, or, effectively, disable entirely. Like the slur filter currently in Lemmy, and thus less forced than the slur filter as it was initially rolled out on Lemmy. The issue, for me, is that I made a home on Piefed.social, specifically, and now it’s… not home for me.
If you don’t care about what admins do on their own instance, this shouldn’t bother you. I care - both in the abstract and insofar as it affects me, and so am… winding down my participation.
If it sounded like what I was trying to say was “PugJesus should have just picked and stuck with Lemmy!”, then I apologize, because that is enormously not what I’m trying to say.
If anything I’m saying I understand your frustration and was just lamenting a lack of a good solution, and attempting to point to the insufficiency of all available options.
I only targeted towards Piefed because of the kind of “kumbuya” idealists that claim it’s superior while being blind to its flaws.
I don’t disagree with you, your frustrations, or your decision to step away rather than re-invest somewhere with another shaky foundation
I didn’t take you as saying that.
I’m just saying that there isn’t a difference here between the slur filter as is and the vote limiter as is in terms of implementing philosophy into the software. Both are options for admins in the software, not mandatory.
The Lemmy devs, however, initially attempted to make the slur filter mandatory, meaning that their attempt to implement their philosophy into the software was much more heavy-handed, and only walked-back after considerable outcry.
Basically, Rimu’s choice here is immensely shitty, but is fundamentally more a choice of Rimu as an admin than as a dev. As a dev choice, the voting limit is of questionable utility, but not forced on instances - it’s a number that admins can easily (effectively) abolish.
It’s much more a Piefed.social problem than a Piefed (all instances) problem.
I agreed with you up until the slur filter:
If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me, unless you’re one of those weirdos who just NEEDS to say slurs
The main problem with the slur filter is that it does neither consider context, nor considers delimiters. For example, when someone were to say the word for the purple fruit used to make wine, they’re not intending to use a word for the non-consensual sexual violation, yet the algorithm can’t see the difference when it detects the UTF-8 sequence 0x72 0x61 0x70 0x65, doing a hard-replace with the substring “removed” regardless of the context. Tom Scott once made a video about this phenomenon: it’s called
String("The Sc" + "unthorpe problem").Also, as you can see through this reply of mine, filters are pointless when there’s a plethora of ways to say the same thing without saying the actual word. Naive filters (e.g. RegExp-based match and replace) will just curb those who aren’t creative and/or knowledgeable enough, while affecting the experience for everyone who aren’t intending to do slurs, leading them to start using coded language and, thus, making it even harder to detect slurs as the slurers will eventually learn, through the non-slurers, that they can express the same thing without triggering the filter, until we get to a point in which the entire platform pivots to AI moderation, and even then there’s so many ways to express the thing without the LLM detecting, it’s called “steganography” and curbing this requires technical approaches known to be a Hard NP problem in computer science.
