As someone who is against use aggregate scores and pleased to see it removed I can understand the desire to make it available to admins/moderators to assist in their actions.
I think making the numbers available only for admins/mods would make sense, though I also feel it starts to get to be an arbitrary divide.
I also have to wonder if an admin/mod couldn’t simply use the view of the user’s posts/comments we all have access to along with the various sorts available. Want to know if a user posts generally well received stuff … look at their posts and sort by “Top all time”. Want to know if they’re regularly posting stuff that is poorly received, sort by “Controversial” (which is new) or just “New”. I’d suspect that in the end integrating this sort of lookup into the moderation tooling so that it’s easier/quicker to do would be more worthwhile than persisting with user aggregates.
Sure doesn’t seem like it. I went to a lot of effort to make the best of the mod API calls that are available and they go and remove a useful chunk of it. 😒
I’m a nobody, but I’m officially supporting this decision of the devs to remove karma (user score aggregates) from the API. Because karma brings on a plethora of problems¹:
It is gamification of the system. As hinted by their PR, this is not healthy.
It leads to less varied and less interesting content, due to the fluff principle.
It feeds echo chambers, by giving people yet another reason to not confront them, even when moral and sensible to do so.
It shifts the focus from the content to the people, detracting from the experience of what boils down to a bunch of forums.
It is yet another reason for people to congregate in oversized and unruly communities, instead of splitting into smaller ones.
Re-enable it at the API level and continue hiding it in Lemmy-UI if that is your personal stance on the matter.
A lot of those issues will affect negatively your user experience, regardless of you using the karma feature or not. Simply because other people use it.
And it’s also the sort of "lead acetate"² feature that makes clueless users annoy the shit out of interface developers, until they add it. “I dun unrurrstand, y u not enable karma? Y u’re app defective lol l mao” style. With app devs eventually caving in.
As such, “leave it optional” is probably a bad approach.
Considering how easy it is to spin up troll accounts or amass multiple troll accounts across multiple instances, removing a useful metric for identifying them at a glance is, IMO, irresponsible.
This is a poor argument. It has some merit in Reddit³, but not in Lemmy.
You aren’t identifying trolls by karma. You’re assuming that someone is a troll, based on a bad correlation. Plenty users get low karma for unrelated reasons (false positive - e.g. newbie user unknowingly violating some “unspoken rule” of the local echo chamber), and plenty trolls get past your arbitrary karma wall³ (false negative).
So relying on karma to decide who’s a troll is not as effective as it looks like, and it’s specially unfair to newcomers, thus discouraging the renovation of the community. IMO it’s a damn shitty moderator practice.
Since trolling is mostly an issue when you get the same obnoxious troll[s] coming back over and over and over, under new accounts, to post gaping anuses again, and mods have no way to detect if the troll came back, mods should be upstreaming this issue to the admins of the instance of their comm - because the admins likely have access to your IP⁴, and can prevent the user from creating a new trolling account every 15 days.
And, if for some reason the admins are uncaring or uncooperative, the mods should be migrating the comm to another instance.
What Lemmy needs is not to enable shitty moderation practices. It needs better mod tools to enable good moderation practices:
the context of the content being reported should be immediately obvious, no clicks needed
there should be a quick way to check all submissions/comments of a user to your community
there should be a way to keep notes about users, and share them with the rest of the mod team
some automod functionality. Such as automatically reporting (not removing!) content or replying to the user based on a few criteria defined by the mods.
e.g. #2: If someone posts a particularly toxic comment but their score is high, I’m more likely to read through their history and conclude they’re having a bad day or something. Without the score, I will not read through and likely just ban them and move on.
IMO this is also a shitty moderation practice. Should I go further on that? [Serious/non-rhetorical question.]
NOTES:1. Since this is already a huge wall of text I didn’t go deep on each of those claims, but I can do so if desired/requested. 2. It’s sweet but poisonous. 3. Because in Reddit you can’t “migrate your sub to another Reddit instance”, and the only instance there happens to be administered by arsehats who give no fucks about you or your sub. It’s a dirtier situation that warrants dirtier solutions. 4. Anecdote exemplifying this claim: from 2020~22 I had multiple trolling accounts in Reddit, to shitpost in cooking subs (for some puzzling reason they’re cesspools). Guess how many times this sort of “you need more karma to post here” barrier locked me out? Zero. It’s simply too easy to comment some shitty one-line in a big community (I used r/askreddit for that) and amass 500, sometimes 2k karma points in a single go. 5. If instance admins do not have access to the IPs of the users engaging with their instances, regardless of where they registered in, that should be fixed.
Then join an instance where scores are disabled if you don’t like them. :shurg: Choosing an instance where downvotes are disabled is already a preference, so making the score aggregates optional is completely in line with that.
You’re already on .ml, so they’d have them disabled given it’s run by the devs who have removed the data from the API, so nothing would change for you.
The whole shtick of Lemmy is run your instance the way you want to run it. The removal of the scores from the API seems heavy-handed and feels like the devs are forcing their preferences/values on others.
Then join an instance where scores are disabled if you don’t like them. :shurg:
Already addressed - a lot of those issues will still affect you, even if you don’t use the karma system.
Let’s say that instances A (karma disabled) and B (karma enabled) federate. A users won’t get the karma system itself, but they’ll still get: less varied and less interesting content, stronger echo chambers, and higher concentration of users in oversized and unruly comms. Because they use the same comms as the B users and thus the behaviour of B users affect A.
Choosing an instance where downvotes are disabled is already a preference, so making the score aggregates optional is completely in line with that.
Downvotes are a mixed feature, with pros and cons.
Karma looks good from a distance, but upon closer inspection it’s only cons. (Including enabling shitty=assumptive mod practices.)
You’re already on .ml, so…
I am clearly not talking about my individual usage here. I’m talking about users in general and the Lemmyverse as a whole.
The whole shtick of Lemmy is run your instance the way you want to run it.
I’m not sure on what’s supposed to be the [ipsis digitis] “whole shtick of Lemmy”, and I’m not assuming it.
The removal of the scores from the API seems [for me] heavy-handed and feels [for me] like the devs are forcing their preferences/values on others.
For me it looks like a sensible decision that takes into account its impact into users and the Lemmyverse.
EDIT: I’ll go further. Dunno if the devs agree with this or not, but I believe that “user aggregate score” = karma also attracts and retains users with the wrong mindset - who are not here to share, contribute or be part of something social and collective; but instead to farm virtual e-peen points for the sake of their individual egos. And I believe that this “it’s all about MEEE! ME! ME!” mindset is part of what makes Reddit such a dumpster fire.
If it’s spoofing them, its going to be more effort than it’s worth to actually detect that client. I strongly recommend you to delete this post or you’re gonna cause a massive Streissand Effect
Seems to be a good app if you pair it with Real Debrid. Good UI, good platform support, very popular. I just don’t want it wasting my seeding bandwidth.
This client is already extremely popular. Before the spoofing update, it’s mis-identified as TorrentStorm 0.0.0.8 in qBittorrent. It makes up half the peers on a lot of my torrents. Have you checked?
Ok… I like the interface of StremIO, which looks like a service aggregator (ie I can open the movie on a streaming service i have access to), but I don’t like the fact that I can’t pre-download and seed less popular files. It supports debrid services, but from the technical description, thesec seems to be leech-equivalent to seedboxes…
What would be a good drop -in replacement? Something that works on google TVs and is easy to maintain?
I’ve heard there are (more expensive) debris services that seed back, but I haven’t researched it. I’d already paid for Real Debrid when I read that and it hasn’t come up for renewal yet.
Here's what it's showing me:
$3.26 for 15 days.
$4.35 for 30 days.
$9.79 for 90 days.
$17.40 for 180 days.
I did the 90 days to try it out for $10.
3 days of "playing around with it".
Day 4 it was linked to StremIO on my Chromecast.
Day 5 it was linked to my NAS through rclone.
If you use a debrid service, you’re okay because the debrid service just downloads the file once and caches it for everyone, and you pay for the bandwidth to download from them. That isn’t excessive leeching, whether they seed or not.
From my early torrent days, we used to say that any torrent we dont seed back to at rast 1:1 is bad for the network (leeching). I can see why there is a desire to block StremIO clients, but if it was modified to see back to some ratio, it would be nicer.
As for debrid, it’s a bit too “centralised” for me still… I’ve read that it’s a major weak point in the system and that servers are often unavailable. That’s why i like the resilience of torrents. (Plus the sharing aspect. Sharing is caring!)
Torrents are people sharing files with each other, uploading and downloading. Stremio downloads, but never uploads. And now it doesn’t want you to know who’s using it, because people kept banning it.
I dont think stremio does either technically. Stremio it’s typically used as a front end application for debrid services. Mainly real debrid, all debrid and premiumize.
I believe the 2 debrids only download, but i think premiumize seeds, but not 100% sure.
That being said if a file gets added to these services it is not constantly leeching like op said. The real debid servers for example will download a torrent and distrubute the downloaded file throughout their cdn, leaving it in their cache for 30 days. I believe each time it is accessed by a user that 30 day clock is reset.
Stremio typically only shows cached torrents in there app so in order for a user to force a download they would need to go to their debrid provider directly and add the torrent causing it to get added to the cache.
Is it bad for the torrenting network, yes because they don’t seed, is stremio using up all of seeders bandwidth, probably not
Not 100% sure but since they are free links they wont come from torrents, at least not in the same way. They are being scraped from streaming websites.
Whetger or not the original uploaded got them from a torrent is unknown but they would have just downloaded it once and uploaded so very different in its effect on torrenting.
Those sites have always coexisted with torrents because they are often of low quality whereas torrents are higher quality
But to answer your question, if there is a plugin with a torrent client included then it is most likely set up to download the files sequentially to allow streaming but i would assume it is set to turn upload off (so it leeches) because your tv would probably buffer more if it used additional bandwith
If thats the case (not 100%) then that may be why they are trying to block stremio
My girlfriend got a legal claim for using stremio when her vpn failed which in Germany is only possible if you actively upload something so I’d say it does that
Ok, maybe stremio has a torrent client compiled in or maybe a plugin i dont use has one then.
However, if you turn off upload in your torrent client you can still get caught, uploading isnt want triggers it, connecting to peers with your exposed ip triggers
Yeah but afaik downloading in Germany isn’t against the law since it’s allowed to download a “backup copy” of things you actually own legally so it’s pretty much never enforced. The only way people in Germany get sued is for uploading but then a couple of bytes is already enough in many cases
I can’t speak for germany but where i live downloaders dont ever get sued, they just get complaints from isps and if they get too many they may be shut off or have their speed throttled.
Uploaders get sued because its too costly and time consuming to go after the downloaders
Torrenting is a technology where a network of ordinary people share a file in tiny pieces all together. There’s no central server, you connect to one, ten, or a hundred other computers who each give you part of the file.
Torrenting only works if people are uploading the file as well as downloading it. Giving a file to others is called seeding, and taking a file from others without giving back is called leeching. Most people are peers, who take the same amount they give. Ideally, everyone would be a peer, but since some people are leeches, we also need seeders.
I’m not familiar with this stremio app, but if it does what I think it does, then it takes from the network without giving back and it can now pretend to be a different client to sneak onto the network. If enough stremio users watch a show, it’ll become unavailable to other pirates.
Not 100%, stremio is a front end for a debrid service and the debrid service will download the torrent and add it to their cache and stremio users will access the downloaded file directly from the debrid services’ servers.
Only the initially download may cause a slow down of torrents. Idk exactly how they distribute the file to their cdn. If all the servers in their cdn download the same file at 1 time it may cause a temporary slow down of torrents but i would assume they don’t download directly on each server and instead download on some close to the requesting user and then use some kind of file synchronization technique to propogate the file through the network.
Their cache is pretty huge and for most shows they already have tons of links cached and wouldn’t need to keep downloading very often.
Stremio isn’t the first front end for these services and like all the rest of them it will eventually get shutdown too and this will continue long after stremio.
The real.issuein my opinion isnt bandwidth hogging by debrid services its that if everyone migrates to them that the majority of the network will be leechers. With less seeders the remaining seeders will need more powerful computers to support the torrents and if they cant afford the upgrade them the whole system could collapse
A lot of the shows I watch aren’t popular to torrent. Infinity Train got taken down by Cartoon Network, and now it only exists for pirates. So pirates need to seed it so it can continue to exist in any form. Same for Generator Rex. I wanted to watch The Flying Nun, but it ran out of seeds and can’t be watched anymore. If a single leech downloads a show on the brink like Generator Rex, it could end up like The Flying Nun. Gone forever. I’m not worried about these popular new releases like Invincible or Loki, I’m worried about media preservation.
I’m not so sure that this would hurt those tho. These services would require their to be at least 1 seeder to be able to stream it, so they arent really taking the seeder away. Most likely the seeder dropped.
If anything this would help the seeder by offloading downloading of the show else where and providing a second place for the file. Typically if you see a low seeded content that you like, it would be courteous to seed it after downloading it
Yes, i get that the best option would be for stremio to seed it but i don’t see how it would be feasible considering the low storage capacities of tvs.
The reality is i dont think this will kill torturing because leechers have always existed piracy is about providing things for free to others, can we really expect all the people who can’t afford to buy the media to suddenly be able to afford a vpn, seedbox, storage?
Piracy is like tor network, volunteers are the backbone but most users are leechers. The network has been going strong for years with leechers and it wont die now
Not 100% on the terminology. Peers are everyone connected. Seeders have 100% of the file, and leechers don’t. Leechers can be someone who stopped halfway and uploads the half they have, or someone who is still downloading, or someone who actually leeches.
Does this really bother folks that much? I’ve never cared much about this kind of leeching as long as it isn’t dominating my personal bandwidth. And it never has so far, though I have to admit my 4ish tb of movies isn’t exactly high demand stuff, so I don’t usually have more than one or two at a time being leeched.
Hell, I don’t really care much about leeches anyway, as long as the overall ability to find things is still there. I look at it as the price of the freedom of torrents. There’s always going to be higher demand for data than there are people with the resources/time/willingness to seed heavily. I’m okay with that because I don’t really want to have to keep and seed every fucking thing out there, it would take much more storage than I can afford to be able to keep a ratio on most private trackers since I tend not to keep shit I don’t intend to watch at least once a year unless it’s something pretty damn obscure.
It does dominate my personal bandwidth. You’ll notice if one of your torrents is on their app. You’ll be uploading all day and it’ll fill half your peers list.
As someone that uses stremio quite a lot thats sad but understandable to hear. I do try to make up for my leeching habbits by keeping every normal torrent seeding indefinitely.
after a day of messing with it I just wanted to thank you again. I love the 1 FPS mode, it’s more than enough for me and it isn’t wasting resources. I don’t need to refresh my battery percentage or disk space more than once per second.
The f-droid version should be ok for now, but if you installed this from the malware distribution channel aka the Playstore I would recommend to deinstall them before the next update hits.
github.com
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