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.
I’m not so sure as I recall a power user on Reddit who consistently hit the front page as he figured out how to engage users (best times to post, which topics, phrasing, secondary accounts for initial boost). I forget his name, but he effectively was researching how to grab attention and then I think even went to marketing firms with his research on his viral methods.
At the time I recall people saying to me “it’s just karma, it has no value” but attention was the value, and attention is something that companies can and will pay money for. Lemmy is not necesarily immune to this gamification of content
It has millions of daily users, the fediverse doesn’t.
It’s a publicly traded company with a profit motive, the fediverse isn’t.
It allows paid advertisements, the fediverse doesn’t.
There’s therefore a monetary incentive to farming karma on reddit, there isn’t on the fediverse.
Some people farm karma on reddit accounts just to sell them to advertisers or propagandists. This wouldn’t work on the fediverse for the above reasons, and because there’s no market for it for the same reasons.
Reddit feeds are governed by closed-source algorithms designed by a centralized company, fediverse feeds are not.
And lastly, you said yourself that the guy used secondary accounts to boost himself. This is voting abuse and should be dealt with whenever it can be positively identified.
Reddit wasn’t initially different though is my point – it wasn’t publicly traded, it had trickles of users initially, and didn’t have adverts. Hell, it popularized the canary reporting as part of its yearly ethics report.
Some feddit instances are more popular than others, and once they gain traction amongst the masses, might be rife for viral media targeting. Yes, the defederated architecture in theory prevents against that, but if one server swallows up all the users by offering something the others can’t, then that somewhat easy balance between instances might get upset
Who knows what the future holds, but we’ve seen what happened to other sites and it would be epitome of hubris to believe it couldn’t happen here
But would restricting the votes of a single user really be, in any way, a remedy to that theoretical problem? Much less restricting them now, when the issue on the Fediverse is largely not enough activity, not excessive artificial activity? And specifically targeting users that are not creating artificial activity, but simply those who are creating ‘too much’ activity?
Rimu himself said that he didn’t think that the top voters he was concerned with were bots or coordinated in any way. He just thought they were voting too much.
I’d argue that activity from a single user to overcome the sleepy shortcomings of other users just sways the fediverse overall towards that single user’s preferences and beliefs. This might give a false idea of what the fediverse is actually about, as the silent majority are somewhat out-shouted by a vocal minority.
Yes it’s stimulating and interesting, but I wouldn’t describe it as balanced. I don’t know what Rimu’s motives are, but they do seem fairer w.r.t to the more silent users, even if those users may never post
Is your point seriously that the people who aren’t active don’t influence the the fediverse as much as people who are?
That’s really weird, and if you just think about that for a minute you should see why that’s weird.
Like, imagine there’s an election and the board of elections was suddenly like “welp, according to this chart, a lot of registered voters don’t regularly vote, so it’s unfair to let some voters who vote in every election have a disproportionate impact on the election results. Therefore, we’re canceling voting.”
if a minority of 40% can dictate an election outcome over the remaining 60%, some of whom didn’t vote - that’s not democracy, that’s First-Past-The-Post, and I don’t need to bring up british politics to explain why that doesn’t work.
Man, you comment far more than the average user, much less the ‘silent majority’. The average user doesn’t upvote much; they comment even less. Would it be ‘fairer’ for your comments to be limited? After all, you’re a ‘vocal minority’ whose activity is swaying the Fediverse. Wouldn’t it be ‘fairer’ if you participated less, regardless of the fact that your participation does not actually consume (meaningfully) limited resources or space?
Personally, I comment far more than I vote and I tend to agree with Rimu that a comment is far more engaging than a vote is. Still, I like receiving as many votes as I can when I do comment or post.
There are levels to it, I agree – and your infamy outbounds my near non-existence, as does mine to those who merely lurk – but if the level of discourse had an upper cap which easily contains the habits of a semi-active user, then I generally welcome it. I have a feeling that this impacts largely a minority of one.
Edit: Just to say - I greatly value the historical topics you post and the detail you go to in your posts. I feel like the quality of your posts can still happily thrive, even if the quantity is less than what you’d prefer
All social media pretty much operates on a 90/9/1 division. Only 1% of users actively post. Only a fraction of that 1% are power users like PugJesus. Killing power users won’t accomplish a different division of labour where more people post, it will only accomplish killing the ecosystem as a whole.
You thought the Fediverse was dead now? Wait until the power users disappear.
This is what I’m saying. Posting/voting isn’t a limited resource that can be distributed unfairly. People do it or don’t do it as much or as little as they want. Why restrict that on an ecosystem that you want to grow?
If the issue is compute, or resources to run the compute, or admins to maintain the compute environments, then focusing on those issues would be better. Ask for donations to add a new server, encourage people who can to set up their own servers to distribute the load, request that more people play an active role as admins. But restricting engagement/activity of your users sounds like the beginning of the end of your ecosystem…
That’s the thing - Rimu openly admits that he doesn’t think that the power voters are bots. The issue isn’t distinguishing us. It’s just that Rimu doesn’t like so many votes being cast by so few users. Shit man, if I encounter two active discussions in a day (admittedly not a daily occurrence on the sometimes-sleepy Fediverse), I’ll be close to hitting the 240 limit simply by having an opinion on the majority of comments.
Shit, my vote quota is half-used-up today just from this comment section. I haven’t even posted or browsed anything else.
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.
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.
I’m not so sure as I recall a power user on Reddit who consistently hit the front page as he figured out how to engage users (best times to post, which topics, phrasing, secondary accounts for initial boost). I forget his name, but he effectively was researching how to grab attention and then I think even went to marketing firms with his research on his viral methods.
At the time I recall people saying to me “it’s just karma, it has no value” but attention was the value, and attention is something that companies can and will pay money for. Lemmy is not necesarily immune to this gamification of content
Reddit is different for multiple reasons.
It has karma, the fediverse doesn’t.
It has millions of daily users, the fediverse doesn’t.
It’s a publicly traded company with a profit motive, the fediverse isn’t.
It allows paid advertisements, the fediverse doesn’t.
There’s therefore a monetary incentive to farming karma on reddit, there isn’t on the fediverse.
Some people farm karma on reddit accounts just to sell them to advertisers or propagandists. This wouldn’t work on the fediverse for the above reasons, and because there’s no market for it for the same reasons.
Reddit feeds are governed by closed-source algorithms designed by a centralized company, fediverse feeds are not.
And lastly, you said yourself that the guy used secondary accounts to boost himself. This is voting abuse and should be dealt with whenever it can be positively identified.
Reddit wasn’t initially different though is my point – it wasn’t publicly traded, it had trickles of users initially, and didn’t have adverts. Hell, it popularized the canary reporting as part of its yearly ethics report.
Some feddit instances are more popular than others, and once they gain traction amongst the masses, might be rife for viral media targeting. Yes, the defederated architecture in theory prevents against that, but if one server swallows up all the users by offering something the others can’t, then that somewhat easy balance between instances might get upset
Who knows what the future holds, but we’ve seen what happened to other sites and it would be epitome of hubris to believe it couldn’t happen here
But would restricting the votes of a single user really be, in any way, a remedy to that theoretical problem? Much less restricting them now, when the issue on the Fediverse is largely not enough activity, not excessive artificial activity? And specifically targeting users that are not creating artificial activity, but simply those who are creating ‘too much’ activity?
Rimu himself said that he didn’t think that the top voters he was concerned with were bots or coordinated in any way. He just thought they were voting too much.
I’d argue that activity from a single user to overcome the sleepy shortcomings of other users just sways the fediverse overall towards that single user’s preferences and beliefs. This might give a false idea of what the fediverse is actually about, as the silent majority are somewhat out-shouted by a vocal minority.
Yes it’s stimulating and interesting, but I wouldn’t describe it as balanced. I don’t know what Rimu’s motives are, but they do seem fairer w.r.t to the more silent users, even if those users may never post
Is your point seriously that the people who aren’t active don’t influence the the fediverse as much as people who are?
That’s really weird, and if you just think about that for a minute you should see why that’s weird.
Like, imagine there’s an election and the board of elections was suddenly like “welp, according to this chart, a lot of registered voters don’t regularly vote, so it’s unfair to let some voters who vote in every election have a disproportionate impact on the election results. Therefore, we’re canceling voting.”
if a minority of 40% can dictate an election outcome over the remaining 60%, some of whom didn’t vote - that’s not democracy, that’s First-Past-The-Post, and I don’t need to bring up british politics to explain why that doesn’t work.
Man, you comment far more than the average user, much less the ‘silent majority’. The average user doesn’t upvote much; they comment even less. Would it be ‘fairer’ for your comments to be limited? After all, you’re a ‘vocal minority’ whose activity is swaying the Fediverse. Wouldn’t it be ‘fairer’ if you participated less, regardless of the fact that your participation does not actually consume (meaningfully) limited resources or space?
Personally, I comment far more than I vote and I tend to agree with Rimu that a comment is far more engaging than a vote is. Still, I like receiving as many votes as I can when I do comment or post.
There are levels to it, I agree – and your infamy outbounds my near non-existence, as does mine to those who merely lurk – but if the level of discourse had an upper cap which easily contains the habits of a semi-active user, then I generally welcome it. I have a feeling that this impacts largely a minority of one.
Edit: Just to say - I greatly value the historical topics you post and the detail you go to in your posts. I feel like the quality of your posts can still happily thrive, even if the quantity is less than what you’d prefer
All social media pretty much operates on a 90/9/1 division. Only 1% of users actively post. Only a fraction of that 1% are power users like PugJesus. Killing power users won’t accomplish a different division of labour where more people post, it will only accomplish killing the ecosystem as a whole.
You thought the Fediverse was dead now? Wait until the power users disappear.
This is what I’m saying. Posting/voting isn’t a limited resource that can be distributed unfairly. People do it or don’t do it as much or as little as they want. Why restrict that on an ecosystem that you want to grow?
If the issue is compute, or resources to run the compute, or admins to maintain the compute environments, then focusing on those issues would be better. Ask for donations to add a new server, encourage people who can to set up their own servers to distribute the load, request that more people play an active role as admins. But restricting engagement/activity of your users sounds like the beginning of the end of your ecosystem…
That’s the thing - Rimu openly admits that he doesn’t think that the power voters are bots. The issue isn’t distinguishing us. It’s just that Rimu doesn’t like so many votes being cast by so few users. Shit man, if I encounter two active discussions in a day (admittedly not a daily occurrence on the sometimes-sleepy Fediverse), I’ll be close to hitting the 240 limit simply by having an opinion on the majority of comments.
Shit, my vote quota is half-used-up today just from this comment section. I haven’t even posted or browsed anything else.
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.