Some will cheer, some will be mildly disappointed. But I’m out, I think.
I am sorry, I just found this thread (i have been less active online since i got employment, sorry). I have heard some bad stuff bout you bud, but in all my interactions with you have been great. we may have some political differences on some things (not going into that intellectual masturbation here), but I do mean this sincerely - thank you.
I’ll be sad to see you go, PugJesus. Despite what a small number of (very) vocal detractors claim, I’ve had nothing but positive interactions with you. Your content was engaging and you were one of the few power users who actually participated in discussions in the comments under your posts.
You are by far the user I have most upvoted, currently sitting at 1846 upvotes and one downvote (no idea when that happened). It’s frequent contributors like you that have kept me sticking around the Fediverse these past few years - it’s a shame you’re now being punished for that very behavior.
I was only subscribed to HistoryMemes and its offshoots to read your detailed explanations in the comments, and you were always willing to follow up with more detail when prompted. I’ll probably drop those subscriptions with you leaving.
Here’s hoping you find your way back here someday. This place won’t be the same without you around.
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.
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 agree with this guy, you are a pillar
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.
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)
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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.
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.
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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.
but who will explain all the history memes
Please PugJesus, don’t leave us :(
Sounds like you’re saying you’re quitting threadiverse entirely? Sad to hear. I enjoyed your history stuff particularly
NO! Please! Say it ain’t so!
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I can’t seem to see what it accomplishes except to make the few users that reach it kinda mad. It seems like an experiment at best to see what kind of effect it will have on hot/all.
Wait, like total votes ever? Like you hit it and you can never vote again?? 😭
No, just over a set period of time.
Ohhh, that’s way more tolerable! Thanks for letting me know, got worried there lol.
I think it was YouTube back in the day that used to have a max number of total likes per account? After which, it would appear as if liking worked from your end, but it didn’t actually do anything on the backend. I was afraid we had one of those situations.
youtube still has a limit on upvotes, i am pretty sure it’s 5000. once you have 5k they remove your oldest ones.
This is correct at the moment. One can check by going to your their Liked Videos playlist.
Oof, I hate 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.
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.
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.
I wonder if that will become a problem eventually - the few larger, better funded instances sponging up users from smaller ones that need to limit themselves, somewhat centralizing the fediverse.
Thankfully the way it’s designed there isn’t exactly a lot of reason to do that. As long as the contents are accessible from the instance I’m on and they don’t have me blocked etc. Then what does it matter if I’m on said instance? As long as the instance itself does what I need?
In Pug’s case they are a mass moderator and poster. Which for them presents different difficulties. Difficulties in both growing and feeding the community etc. Very different from the average user.
I mean, it’s a problem now. That’s what this post is saying.
Though with a difference that multiple centers exist, rather than exclusively one.
Also for those of us in the USA there are so many other life-threatening additional considerations to add: e.g. if we join Piefed.ca then what happens when the USA decides to invade Canada, so either communication gets cut off or people who use this social media get rounded up onto a convention camp?
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.
this seems to be the original post: https://piefed.social/c/fediverse@piefed.social/p/2190040/who-decides-what-you-see-on-the-fediverse-a-look-at-voting-patterns
i really don’t see the issue. are they worried about vote manipulation? if so, that is the most naive approach to it: you hurt the most active users, which hurts overall content, which the threadyverse does not have too much of anyway. all the while the problem does not get solved.
i am not sure whether it would work on piefed the exact same as on lemmy, but they rely on the same technology. so i guess yes. if i wanted to manipulate votes, i would spinn up a couple of instances, generate users and let them automatically vote. wanted to write a POC to raise any comment/post into the sky or condemm them to oblivion using this approach. that was a long time ago and never got around to do so - probably won’t ever happen. but i don’t think it would be too hard for anyone to use this type of manipulation, while it is relatively hard to defend against…
I am in the latter category: mildly disappointed. 😞
Maybe a little more than mildly, tbh 😭.
Fwiw Piefed.zip won’t have a voting limit added right away (source).
Great, thank for the info :)
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.
One doesn’t limit what you upvote, or delete accounts the dev hates. That’s not Lemmy.
Lemmy.ml famously limits your ability to upvote, comment, or post, and bans accounts that they hate, all while lying about the reasons why (the rules make no mention about saying anything critical about Russia, China, or North Korea, though it’s exceedingly obvious what is going on there).
Meanwhile, PieFed.zip does not limit your ability to vote - you would have to vote more often than once a second for every second within a 24 hour period to reach its cap of 86,400 daily upvotes allowed. Same for quokk.au.
At the end of the day, software is run by people. And there’s even a PieFed fork, which will benefit from all of the continued changes while maintaining the ability to remain independent - as every instance admin already has the capability to do.
I for one applaud Dessalines, Nutomic, Rimu, and all of the software devs for providing all of this software entirely free of any charge, and the instance admins for doing likewise.
But yeah, the way this has been handled has been fairly shitty. Instance admins can run their machines however they like, especially if they pay for it without accepting donations, though a little friendly warning would have gone a LONG way here.
Lemmy.ml famously limits your ability to upvote, comment, or post, and bans accounts that they hate, all while lying about the reasons why (the rules make no mention about saying anything critical about Russia, China, or North Korea, though it’s exceedingly obvious what is going on there).
Dumb mod actions != Baked into the code of software, that you have to remove.
I know shouldn’t expect much from someone who has continuously been proven wrong and kept spreading misinformation because learning facts is hard.
But Jesus Christ, the actions of moderatiors being stupid for Russia/China because they think it’s revolutionary as they jerk off all day, is not the same as the software being opiniated because he dev doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Talking about baking ideology into the code, the Lemmy devs previously HARD-CODED an English slur word filter. Nutomic said in response:
If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.
This sounds fairly opinionated to me. Fortunately after a HUGE outcry, they did later relent.
Rimu did not have to go to all the trouble of making the vote quota into an environmental variable, easily changed without needing to modify the code (even when running PieFed from a docker container), but he did. Note I am not even defending him here, simply stating facts.
My opinion - shared by most programmers I presume - is that the ideal in both situations would have been to use an opt-in feature, rather than make it opt-out or far worse, HARD-CODE it directly in. Also, it would be nice to announce such things rather than leave people to stumble upon them.
Fwiw, people have previously reported that PieFed hard-codes other matters as well, but this was shown to be misinformation caused by merely looking at lines of code in isolation without bothering to figure out how the code actually works - in particular how those lines are never actually run without particular settings having been turned on.
IF (setting)THEN (feature)Is NOT the same as hard-coding a feature!!
Also, Lemmy refuses to so much as notify people when their content is removed - overall its set of features is heaviest on giving power to admins, less so to mods, and least of all to the end-users. In contrast, PieFed offers tons of power to users, for instance at least bothering to tell them when their content gets removed by a mod (but ironically not when the voting quota is exceeded, reputedly).
BOTH softwares are fairly opinionated. Lemmy has historically been far more so. Lately it has calmed down and it is PieFed making the waves instead - some of it unfairly, and some of it well-deserved.
You really wanna say slurs? That’s your biggest issue? You weren’t allowed to call people slurs?
That tracks for people who hate lemmy’s software. “They didn’t let me be racist! And then they removed it!”
Spectacular how it went from everyone’s favorite to an absolute mess.
Idk, unsurprising when they only positive people had was it was different devs. Even the speed of features is no longer holding water considering how poorly it’s coded.
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!
Aw hell naw it’s that guy? Yeah the history posts are the best thing!
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.
Nice! First time hearing of PyLova. Is that what quokk.au uses? Are there already any other instances powered by it?
Really sad over the direction PieFed takes, and this one sounds interesting.
Yes it’s what Quokk.au uses. From what I know a few other instances are looking at switching.
Peeking at the codeberg, it doesn’t seem very active? Is there discussions going on behind the scenes or something?
How hard is it to just let people use software how they want
You can choose the instance and even the software you use, isn’t providing different choices exactly what you want?
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.
Removed by mod
Yeah, apparently the limit was 2 inches
This can’t be happening
