From when I was asking about it, I think it’s only the instance admins that can see the details. It would be nice to have this information clearly outlined somewhere, so people know and aren’t surprised.
I’m mostly a fan, because I don’t feel like I have to have faith.
If my instance explodes, I’ll make an account on another instance. If the Lemmy devs collectively evaporate (and neither me nor others want to pick up the slack), then I can go to Mastodon or Kbin or whatever.
Individual rogue instances can be defederated. If e.g. Reddit truely disappears over night and Lemmy were to gain mass market appeal, then I can likely find a more isolated instance with a smaller community sharing my interests.
Similarly, the high availability of source code may lead to malicious instances, actors, and/or back-end modifications that would favor specific instances resounding consequence throughout the Fediverse.
Historically availability of source code has prevented that sort of thing since forever. Plus you can’t favor a specific instance, that’s the beauty of the protocol. It’s like saying google can favourite a specific email provider, they can’t, if suddenly Gmail stops receiving or sending emails to random domains people would just switch boats because you can register on any of the other email providers that don’t do that. Gmail can collect your data and all, but all data on Lemmy is public, so there’s no need to mess with the source code to gather data.
So what are you worried about? Mods moderating content in ways you don’t like? That will happen on any platform that allows moderation, and you don’t want to use one that doesn’t (plus it has nothing to do with the open source nature of the server, and you can jump to another community with different mods). Maybe you’re worried that malicious software will run on your phone? That’s more likely to happen with a closed source software, if you’re truly paranoid about these things you would have a full open source phone with a custom OS without google components flashed into it, I can see that you’re not on that level since you still don’t understand that open source is needed for transparency. Or maybe you’re worried the server itself will host malicious content? Any server can do that, servers that host things people write will always be able to host malicious content, it’s not hard to link to an external website or provide malicious scripts or files, just don’t click on random links or download random things from strangers online and you should be mostly fine.
Similarly, the high availability of source code may lead to malicious instances, actors, and/or back-end modifications that would favor specific instances resounding consequence throughout the Fediverse.
That’s ultimately just the Internet being the Internet.
On the fediverse, any instance shouldn’t blindly trust any other instance for that exact reason. That’s part of the game. Instances share the data over ActivityPub, and it’s up to you to process and make use of that data. That includes spam filtering and whatnot. Some instances have CSAM detection for example.
Every instance that’s subscribed to a user or community gets the full set of data: every vote, from every user, from every instance involved. We have the data, we can analyze it. And that’s what really matters.
It doesn’t matter if there’s rogue instances trying to manipulate votes. Everyone have the data to detect and filter out the noise. Maybe one day it’ll be like E-Mail where the majority of the traffic is spam. But just like E-Mail, we’ll make filters and make it work. If all else fails, there’s always the allowlist method: only see content from sources you trust not be spammy. You can even run AI models on it to filter the data if you want. You have the data, you can do whatever you want with it to make it useful for you.
I have faith in the protocol and its openness, not the software that runs it.
Kind of but not really? You’d have to federate out every vote individually. There’s no upvotes totals anywhere, there’s a vote table that contains who voted up/down on what, and it’s counted as needed. So if you want to send out 1000 votes, you need 1000 valid users and also send 1000 different activities to at least one instance.
You can make it display 100000 votes on your own instance if you want, but it’s not going to alter the rating on other instances because they run their own tally.
If you really want this to work long term, you need a credible looking instance with credible looking users that are ideally actually subscribed to the target community, and credible activity patterns too. Otherwise, the community can detect what you’re doing and defederate you and purge all the activities from your instance, and also revert all those votes as a side effect.
Remember, all votes are individual activities, and all votes are replicated individually to every instance. On Kbin, you can even see all the votes right from the UI, they don’t even hide it! You can count them yourself if you want. So anyone with the dataset can analyze it and sound the alarm. And each instance can potentially have its own algorithm for that, so instead of having just one target to game, like Reddit and a subreddit, you have hundreds of instances to fool. There’s so many signals I could use to fight spam: instance age, instance user growth, the frequency and timing of the votes, are the users seemingly active 24/7, what other communities those users post into, what are they voting for, do they all vote in agreement with each other, and on and on.
So, you technically can manipulate votes but it takes a lot of effort and care to make it as hard as possible to detect in practice. We play the same cat and mouse game as Reddit, but distributed and with many more eyes on it.
Hello all, I’ve only used lemmy on mobile so far there has been a million and one posts about apps for lemmy for mobile. My plan was to lurk and read something about pc lemmy, and set it up, but I haven’t found any. What can I use on desktop to browse lemmy?...
Totally depends on the instance. There are definitely furry communities here in Lemmy and they definitely feel lonely. But I have heard of some furry mastodon instances that actually are lively and active. No idea if they actually are since I don’t have a clue why I can’t access my mastodon account, let alone what instance I signed up on.
But active non-Linux, non-Star Trek meme groups definitely are a thing, despite how small they are.
I haven’t tried to get community tech support on Lemmy, so I wouldn’t know what it’s like firsthand. If people are really that difficult, sure, that sucks. But it sounds like the person asking needs to work on more fundamental linux skills than something specific to running a Lemmy instance, and the internet is full of information about that.
I see some Linux but I’m subscribed to a lot of techy communities. Self host, programming etc. So it’s kinda normal.
Could be the default view on each instance… On my first account I subbed to a lot of different communities on different instances so I saw all the crap. Eventually due to all the politics bullshit I just migrated to my current instance which has hexbear and lemmygrad blocked so it’s been a lot better.
But even so, I always see a bunch of politics crap on the memes community.
Well, for what it’s worth, we’re happy you’re here, not just as the topic of discourse, but as a contributing member too. I just hope we can hold onto the sense of community that gets lost in the wash when a user base hits that certain threshold. The last few months I spent on Reddit were kind of awful, even before the blackout, to the point that I started physically feeling way better after I nuked my old account.
Honestly I’m kind of hoping the ability to disassociate from instances is the secret sauce. I feel like the Beehaw admins have been doing a good job decoupling from federations that get a bit too ick - I certainly see way less negativity here than there.
There’s a difference between very little and nothing. In pretty much every libertarian model I know of, if a bunch of child porn producers band together to make the child porn production center, nothing would stop them. The socialist libertarian movement relies heavily on local community action, but that falls apart quickly when the community is, say, a cult.
Acknowledging that I don’t have a crystal ball and can’t say with 100% certainty that an anarchist society would be able to eliminate child porn is a weak point? There is a difference between very little and nothing, but compared to the current state of affairs, very little is extremely better.
Jeffrey Epstein, I really feel that I shouldnt have to say more than just that name but I will. Child porn producers, along with human traffickers and other associated enterprises band together RIGHT NOW to do that. There are plenty of examples out there of the people in power being the very ones that consume or participate in these practices. There is no incentive for those with the most authority in our current societies to put an end to child porn, human trafficking, or the material conditions that are known to exacerbate these things. Centralized governments are the status quo and they fail miserably at combatting this time and again. Every day that child porn gets produced and humans are trafficked is more proof that centralized governments are incapable of handling this.
If there are people who consciously decided to eliminate systems of heirarchy and domination on a national scale, then there are enough of them to act on human trafficking and child pornography. A society built on libertarian ideals would detest the institution of child pornography and act to see it’s elimination. Killing child pornographers that would fight to continue producing child pornography is not a controversial or complicated idea. Identify the group, get rid of it. If they won’t stop voluntarily, kill them. That’s direct action and community defense. Cornerstones of libertarian ideology. I’m not going to get into the cult bit, that’s an entirely different conversation.
I disagree. So long as there’s a need for labor, slavery is going to be a possibility. Some jobs suck and in a moneyless society figuring out a way to incentivize someone to take that job will be tough.
I disagree with that. I point you to David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs for most of my point. People want meaningful work. It’s treated as a privilege in and of itself in our current society. If you cut out all the bullshit and evenly distribute the labor necessary to keep society functioning among those who are willing and able to work, people will work a lot less than they are now and they’ll be happy to do it.
There’s more than a few examples of slavery in non-capitalist societies.
I’m not advocating for just any non-caoitalist society. I’m advocating for libertarian socialism, anarchism more specifically. It is an ideological school of thought that is opposed to heirarchy and systems of domination. Why would a society that abolished the state on those grounds seek to dominate others through slavery? We have real world examples here. The CNT-FAI, EZLN, and Rojava didn’t/don’t use slave labor.
Yes, there has. Just because there’s not sure fire solutions to it doesn’t mean it’s not widely researched. Would it surprise you to learn that one of the best treatments for pedophilia is talk therapy? It doesn’t eliminate the urges but it lowers the risk of injuring a child. The problem is, like other mental illnesses, we don’t have cures only long term care to reduce harm.
That was lazy writing on my part. Yes, there has been research done and some treatments have been developed. I was speaking more in a curative sense. Sure, pedophilia, like depression, schizophrenia, or ADHD may not be curable. But a radical change in environment and material conditions of those affected by pedophilia would go a long way to reducing the instances of people acting on those urges. Paired with further research and development of existing techniques would go even further and potentially eliminate pedophilia. I’m not a psychologist, therapist, etc. and I won’t indulge in too much speculation about this because I don’t have the answers. But treating pedophilia like a public health risk would be a more useful framework than the one we are currently working under. This isn’t pedophile apologia either, people can and have done horrible things because of pedophilia, but our current approach is obviously insufficient.
Putting that aside, covering a philosophical flaw with “Maybe someday research will solve this” is sort of like saying for capitalism “Maybe someday replicators will solve this”.
I agree, but I don’t think our current model is working and I don’t have specific propositions to aid this. But I believe a libertarian society would be better equipped to handle it than our current system.
A doesn’t follow B. There’s no evidence that libertarian socialism would eliminate poverty. And, in fact, I’d argue that while it may solve poverty in some regions it would exacerbate it in others. One of the benefits of a global economy is that we can take advantages of the growing season in one world region vs another. Libertarian socialism imagines a world of isolated islands which is entirely counter productive general efficiencies with the production of goods.
Mutual aid is another cornerstone of libertarian ideology. Utilizing planned economies, the internet and current logistical supply chains we could eliminate poverty and scarcity right now. Shifting the focus to making sure everyone is housed, fed and healthy over what’s the most profitable is all that’s needed. Libertarian socialism isn’t about isolation, it about building a self reliant community, sure. But there’s no reason to think people in a libertarian society wouldn’t help out or cooperate with their neighbors, be it down the road, or 1000 miles away. I point you to democratic confederalism and anarcho-syndicalism for ideas on large scale solutions to organization and logistics in libertarian society.
Think about it this way, You can grow oranges in California. You cannot grow oranges in Alaska. In a world where libertarian socialism has taken hold, how would an Alaskan community survive and thrive? On the charity of other communities? What happens when one community sees that “Hey, I could send my aid to alaska, but if I send it to Florida they have some delicious gator meat and maybe they’ll be willing to send me more”… opps, just reinvented capitalism.
You’re just rehashing the myth that bartering happens in lieu of currency. This has been debunked throughly from every angle and I won’t waste my time going through something that is easily googled.
There are certainly benefits to libertarian socialism, it allows for very fast actions at the local level. But there’s a major downside in that without an overarching government getting every community to play nice with one another is basically impossible. In a lib social world you couldn’t stop the an-cap dingbats from creating their feudalistic hellscape.
I’m not saying everyone has to play nice together, or pretending that that’s what will happen. Sometimes people fight. But in a large area founded on the principles of libertarian socialism, why wouldn’t people want to cooperate? Isn’t that why they went through the whole trouble of doing a revolution for? In a libertarian socialist world, who would want to live in an ancap society? Free association and self determination are other cornerstones of the ideology. And who, seeing people trying to create and ancap hellscape, would sit idly by and allow them to dominate and oppress others? Not only is it wrong for that system to exist, it’s a systemic threat to those around them.
This comes to another fundamental issue with libertariansim of all flavors. They all envision of world where everyone has the same ideology. That world doesn’t and will never exist.
I’m not envisioning a world where everyone has the same ideology. Libertarian socialists embrace the complexity and nuance of the human experience. They want a world where everyone is able to explore and exercise their personal freedoms to the greatest extent possible, so long as it doesn’t infringe on others abilities to do the same.
We very often see the same username created across many instances
Guilty as charged. I’ll say though, there are several legitimate reasons why one might want to do this. I personally use it as a substitute for Reddit’s multireddit feature, by grouping community subscriptions across different instances by theme. As long as users use the same username across instances I don’t think this practice should be automatically regarded as an attempt to sockpuppet. It that was the goal, the accounts would definitely not be using the same username across all the instances.
Personally I have accounts on multiple instances because I wanted to make communities in different languages and some instances focus a lot more on one language than others and also because the SFW instances defederated the NSFW ones. I do not really interact with the same posts though.
The news communities outside of lemmy.ml are probably a better bet than the ones on lemmy.ml, because the lemmy devs themselves seem to hold that kind of view, and they run that instance.
If you’re unhappy with the moderation on a given community, make your own competing community, with your own moderation policies. If more people feel strongly about it and agree with your views over the original, they can come to your community instead. There is no overarching ‘Lemmy’ to ban you; instances are all separate. That’s the beauty of Lemmy.
I kind of regret making my account so early on the mainline instance, rather than on mander, beehaws, or elsewhere, but I still manage to stay relatively far away from the madness by just keeping subscribed to the right communities.
Good point :) Here’s the blurb from the pinned post in !communityPromo
A great way to find lesser known communities is to look at the /communities page on an instance. For example: lemmy.ca/communities
🌐 Instances to look through
pangora.social (NEW): Great way to find instances related to a particular topic. This is also great for picking an instance when first making an account/moving accounts.
I don’t get it either. And it’s like they weren’t paying any attention to anything said or who was commenting at all. Oh well. I tried to be patient but they just kept going and earned a community ban. And then kept going and got a 7 day instance ban. And then kept going and now they are permabanned. A total shit fit is right!
I’m just starting with lemmy, so this may be a very basic question, but why do these numbers differ? I’ve searched for and subscribed to cats community for example. Why all the comments/reactions haven’t been synced?...
So I think what you’re saying is that you’ve created a Lemmy instance and joined a community from another Lemmy instance but you can’t see all the posts?
My understanding is that your instance will only start syncing content from that community AFTER someone on your instance joins it. If you’re the first person on your instance to join cats then you won’t see anything from before the moment you joined, but you will get all the content that is posted after you joined. If you aren’t the first person on your instance to join then you’ll be able to see older posts.
Oh I see, thanks. That’s good to know. Content eventually started syncing in, but I had to subscribe to every one of the communities I found first.
Do you think that a search function may be integrated one day directly in the standard UI? Element-desktop for matrix offers searching for communities on other nodes (although only on selected instances).
How do you block a lemmy account from your community, when they’re on an instance your mod account can’t see??? There’s someone spamming my community from k.bin, but the posts aren’t showing up on sh.itjust.works so I’m not sure how to delete the posts or even block the account. Can someone help please?
I’m the mod, my accounts instance is sh.itjust.works and the community (!oddlyspecificplaylists) is on sh.itjust.works. From sh.itjust.works I blocked the kbin spammers account, you can see it in my modlog. Their posts and block are the most recent listed. I’m not sure about defederation.
The spammer is on kbin, and the posts they are spamming aren’t showing up on sh.itjust.works, but they are showing up on kbin (and possibly other instances?) even after being blocked. They were blocked 5 days ago (from sh.itjust.works), and you can see on kbin somehow they made a post 2 days ago. Here’s the direct link, which for some reason keeps breaking the link so you have to cut n paste the address 🙄.
I’m just not sure how I can get them to stop if they are technically already blocked? And if this all wasn’t confusing enough, on kbin it says my community is moderated by the guy who does kbin (ernst) and not my mod account? I messaged him but I haven’t heard back yet.
I think a human needs to be in the loop to make the right choice between abandoned communities and communities preserved for posterity.
The best balance might be to empower the instance admins with an easy, push button solution to list inactive communities by last activity for bulk deletion.
Communist Filth/Capitalist Filth (lemmy.ml)
If you can create a Lemmy instance and federate, you can shovel data about every vote linked to an account
I’ve created this post: sh.itjust.works/post/8898162...
How are "We" to place trust in the fediverse?
I came here for the same reasons as most of you and chiefly among them was to escape the corporate embrace of common social media platforms....
Where can I find a desktop Lemmy app?
Hello all, I’ve only used lemmy on mobile so far there has been a million and one posts about apps for lemmy for mobile. My plan was to lurk and read something about pc lemmy, and set it up, but I haven’t found any. What can I use on desktop to browse lemmy?...
Oh no ... (jlai.lu)
Can you describe Lemmy in one picture? (aussie.zone)
Age Combat 🤡 (lemmy.ml)
Linux holds more than 8% market share in India, and it's on the upward trend (sh.itjust.works)
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Lift | Official Trailer | Netflix - Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D'Onofrio (youtu.be)
[Discussion] Git - How is it classified?
I could research this on my own, but was interested in hearing from the community....
Why do posts from other communities on my server don't send all the comments/reactions?
I’m just starting with lemmy, so this may be a very basic question, but why do these numbers differ? I’ve searched for and subscribed to cats community for example. Why all the comments/reactions haven’t been synced?...
communities: trouble with blocking users making posts you can't see?
How do you block a lemmy account from your community, when they’re on an instance your mod account can’t see??? There’s someone spamming my community from k.bin, but the posts aren’t showing up on sh.itjust.works so I’m not sure how to delete the posts or even block the account. Can someone help please?
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