Going by comments in the post, the required login is coming in waves, so not all people may notice immediately.
Still, as Reddit is strong-arming its way across, maybe worth signaling to people there that the fediverse may be used without an account, so long as there’s even one instance that implements logged-out view as the protocol allows it?
I don’t have access to my account any longer, possibly VPN ban, though I never tried to recover it so I can only guess why mine is lost, else I’d post myself.
This may be unpopular to say here, but the fediverse needs to be less toxic for the average user. I’m probably going to be downvoted to hell for this, but here goes: the whole tesseract situation was a clusterfuck and the dev is a jackass, but in one regard he is right - there is a toxicity problem. I mean, let’s look at it:
Lemmy’s main dev is what many would refer to as a tankie. He regularly spreads misinformation, supporting fascist governments, so long as they claim to be socialist or communist - and don’t belong to the west. Anything the West does is, by definition, evil.
Lemmy’s flagship instance is lemmy.ml. An instance where many communities have a “be nice” rule, but say anything against the (similarly aligned) group think and you’ll be ridiculed, insulted, and banned. Meanwhile, some pretty insane calls for violence stay up. And lemmy.ml isn’t even the worst in that corner of the fediverse.
There are many other instances that aren’t great, either. Wander into an instance and accidentally say something absolutely factual that someone doesn’t like - ban, because some thin skinned mod sees it as derogatory. Remember the whole dragonfucker saga? Yeah, that’s very off-putting to your average user.
Look, I’m no stranger to Reddit group think, I’ve had it turn on me, and trust me, it’s no fun. Hell, I’ve had it on Facebook back when that was still a thing (yeah, I’m dating myself here). But it was nothing on what I’ve seen on here. I’ve been able to avoid it here (or, sometimes I’ve purposefully wandered into it in an attempt to disrupt an echo chamber, but then I knew exactly what I was getting into and expected as much), but what I saw happening to others - holy shit. I mean, to be fair, the instance I’m on is an instance that very rarely defederates, which I like because I like seeing different viewpoints including ones with which I vehemently disagree with (although the viewpoints are very unbalanced, that does have to be said). But it’s a hell of a lot more fun to not have to keep your guard up all the time.
So, you might argue, be careful which instance you chose. OK, so I chose an instance like Lemmy.world, which as far as Lemmy goes, is definitely more on the normal side of things. But then, who are they federated with? The next rabbit hole. And how do you know which ones have less crazies? Experience. And as a saying goes, experience is what you needed just before you got it. Then many people suggest putting together blocklist and what not. Another rabbit hole. Put briefly: it involves work, a lot of it. People aren’t on Reddit to work (for the most part), they’re there to have fun. If you need to put in so much work, at some point it’s not fun anymore. And that’s what’s off-putting for the typical user.
What can be done to make it more palatable for normal users? I honestly don’t know. I see it as a chicken and egg problem. We need more “normal” people to drown out the crazies, but then the “normal” people won’t come because of the crazies. Maybe Piefed is better in that regard - although I’ve heard there were/are?tesseract-style problems there, as well - I just haven’t had the nerve to go down yet another rabbit hole to figure out what’s actually going on. Which brings us back to square one - that’s already gone way, way too far for the average user. And I can’t exactly blame them. I’m “only” here because I care about open source and decentralisation. And I insist on staying here on matter of principle. But I can’t in good faith recommend it to anyone I know IRL.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Maybe someone has some better ideas.
Hell yeah.
The issue with PieFed is that it is “opinionated”. First, most of that is disinformation that the original people refused to correct (last I checked) even after being demonstrably proven wrong, like the main dev Rimu literally showed screenshots of the code to prove that it wasn’t “hard-coded” as they had claimed, but nobody cared. In-group (Lemmy, as in those on the main disinformation spreading platform Lemmy.ml)=good, while out-group (choosing to see PieFed as their “opponent”, despite VEHEMENT claims previously that we all should just try to get along in the Threadiverse and that Lemmy should not be singled out to be criticized in any way, a classic case of one rule for me while a different rule for thee)=bad.
Beyond the disinformation though, the software truly is opinionated. Every such feature is at worst opt-out, and most are even opt-in, but the lack of transparency about the disclosure (vaguely similar to the Tesseract dev scenario as you mentioned, although that one was to an extreme degree) definitely turns people off. Admins of multiple instances were suddenly surprised by the vote quota, not realizing what was happening on their own machines, as this MAJOR structurally breaking and exceedingly poorly and incompletely implemented “feature” was dropped like a bomb onto them, yet with barely any mention, buried like literally 20 items deep into a very long listing along with minutiae - almost like the software didn’t just implement a shadow-censoring change that rejects contributions from both people on the same instance that the community is located on plus EVEN LEMMY (and Mbin, and nodeBB, etc.) but WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE. All because the main dev had an itch to scratch, and then rammed it through despite everyone pushing back majorly in the chats, and despite some VERY well-known and most highly-active contributors on the entire Threadiverse quitting the platform in protest. And then most telling of all is how he responded to people asking about it - note the title of that post is “Upvotes turn green but number doesn’t change”, i.e. this “anti-feature” is causing bugs left and right, breaks the entire model of the ActivityPub Protocol and existing modes of how the Threadiverse has worked until now, and Rimu’s response is that he felt (no evidence btw, see his linked post that fails to demonstrate the premise, as everyone in its comment section agrees) that people were voting too much, so he took that right away, citing how the end-users need to simply “Get creative” and live with the suddenly and only partially implemented and barely announced anti-feature, seemingly created on a whim with no advanced or even current notice as it was being rolled out, and against the advice of pretty much everyone, with the best case scenario being that people are mainly neutral (except like one prominent supporter, but notably I only counted one, vs. like a veritable MOUNTAIN of push-back!!).
So understandably, this kills people’s enthusiasm and worse yet, their hopes that PieFed could be the future of the Threadiverse. One reason for that is that the Lemmy devs are quite opinionated themselves, and have been known to do similarly in the past - e.g. when they implemented an English word slur word filter, which they ACTUALLY did hard-code right in (most of the detractors of PieFed seem to keep claiming that PieFed did this, which it did not, but in contrast Lemmy actually did do that at one point in time), and then moreover adamantly refused to change it, telling people to simply fork the code if they did not like it. Tbf, they did later relent on this and made the feature able to be disabled with an option.
And that is one thing notable about the kind-hearted Rimu: this extremely unpopular and not transparently disclosed at all anti-feature of having implementing a vote quota was made to be opt-out. It would have been better to have made it opt-in, better still to have told people about it properly, even better still to have listened to all the advice and simply not done it at all, especially until it could be done properly, but at least he took the effort to make it able to be easily disabled, by an environmental variable controllable outside of the docker container. That is not nothing. (Edit: I mean to say that it is rather the opposite of nothing: it demonstrates a consideration for the needs of others who may have different viewpoints than the dev - i.e. even while being opinionated, it is not to the same degree as how Lemmy’s slur word filter was handled. Both were imperfect, but managed differently.)
Back to the Lemmy devs now: the software seems equally opinionated to me, although more in the sense of features that it refuses to implement, than in features that it does. e.g. Reddit has no modlog but it does have a modmail, and notifications to the user that their content was moderated, and the ability for anyone with the link to continue to see and even converse in a deleted post. PieFed has roughly half of these features, but Lemmy has zero of them. Lemmy is quite authoritarian in its design philosophy - it offers supreme power to an instance admin (even the ability to hide events from the modlog), somewhat less so to community moderators, but very little to none at all to individual end-users. Like why did the devs decide not to even so much as notify users that they have been banned from an entire instance or community, instead leaving them to find out the hard way? May glorious leader live forever!! The power differential there is extreme - even people using Reddit are granted more rights (e.g. to be notified of removed content) than users of Lemmy?
I am tired of making excuses for Lemmy, as if it will ever get any better. It’s been over three years since the Rexodus and I’ve seen some features actively get worse - e.g. after you banned an entire instance, the people thus “banned” used to not be able to send you DMs and trigger notifications, but then the devs claimed that was confusing and added the ability for these BANNED users to send you DMs and thereby harass you as much as they please from newly-created troll accounts. Lemmy software truly sucks in so many ways.
And recently I am also now tired of defending PieFed as well, after the shadow-censorship of implementing a vote quota without telling anyone or listening to feedback.
But at least both are FOSS, both are free, both provide an alternative to corporate enshittification, while each adding their own forms of enshittification, and each helps people get away from the corporate Algorithm, while substituting that for our own versions of undisclosed Algorithmic control.
And yes, people on the Threadiverse are toxic as fuck. See e.g. my very own reply right now, daring to criticize the devs providing us all with free software, emo-venting my fee-fees all over the place, mixing it together with facts and hopefully not but potentially some anti-facts as well (please do correct me if you see that I am wrong!). Whatever software platform someone is on, I would hope that we would always try to remember the human.
People need to change their ideas about what the fedi/threadiverse is in relation to social media. It is an international forum of everything.
The lemmy.ml situation is heavily offset by instances that either limit them or block them enitrely, as well as Piefed acting as a direct foil.
The *iverse cannot be unified entirely. Lemmy/Piefed/Mastodon and Pixelfed should be seen as a platform unto themselves where one may find likeminded people. It is not tailored to anyone’s particular personal taste, and is open to anyone of literally any personal taste.
Lemmy does have a bit of a reputation for being the Fight Club of the fediverse… which is tbh, kinda fair but it kinda comes with the territory - literally. We’re all here and we aren’t all going to agree.
I would disagree with the everything part, but otherwise, that’s precisely the problem - you can’t expect the majority to drastically change their expectations of social media.
I don’t expect the majority to do anything, but I also don’t think Lemmy needs them to validate its existence. We validate it just fine already.
I would much rather more people enjoy it than us just keeping it to ourselves. I believe, if done properly, it has a decent amount to offer for the average user. The fediverse has the major advantage of being decentralized and open source, and I believe that should be accessible to everyone, not just the fanatics (like me, admittedly) who are ready to wade knee deep through technical details and differences in communities, some of them quite toxic.
But OK “we’ll just keep it as is”, we keep the fediverse for us. Yay?
Here’s the problem with that: it then remains a niche. What happens to niches in technology? Well, there are a number of examples that I specifically would like the Fediverse not to follow.
Carrying around a replacement battery was never something most people did. They didn’t generally replace their batteries, either. That was a niche thing. At some point, manufacturers started sealing their phones shut. After all, it was only a niche that needed replaceable batteries, so it didn’t affect many people. So we lost a part of our right to repair.
Rooting your phone was never something a majority of people did. Look what is happening to people who root their phones (read: want admin rights on devices they bought and fucking paid for): they lose their warranties, they lose their ability to use banking apps without complex workarounds that don’t always work, in some cases their hardware doesn’t work properly. Because rooting is seen as a niche thing, “it doesn’t affect that many people, so no need to worry”. So we lost those rights. And we’re about to lose the right to install whatever apps we fucking chose.
What’s on the horizon? Age restrictions. Something major platforms may whine about a bit, but can implement just fine - they already don’t really care about your privacy anyway, and if there are fines, generally they’re small enough to just be a line item. The smaller platforms? The operators of lemmy.world? The operator of kbin.earth, my home instance? I highly doubt that they have anywhere near what’s needed for that. But the fediverse is only a niche thing, so it doesn’t affect that many people. Oh, shit, that’s us now.
As someone who is not programming literate, using the fetiverse has been very frustrating. It’s very confusing, it’s very difficult to figure out the different categories or whatever they’re called. Reddit is very straightforward basically you want to find out about watercolor painting you type in watercolor painting and there’s a plethora of community as you can join. You need help figuring out how to get around a healthcare denial, and there’s a plethora of information that can help you. Honestly lemmy is not easy to use. Facebook YouTube Google Reddit etc are all very easy platforms for people who are not very computer literate to use. I don’t think it’s inherently lazy, more like inherently easy to use alternatives.
I believe Lemmy has the potential for a wider range of discussion and debate than Reddit, or any other social media platform I’ve been on, simply because of the defederated & community-based system. The issue, as you describe, seems to be saying the wrong thing in the wrong place, which, to be honest, is similar to the real world. There are a lot of topics people probably shouldn’t talk about in public, but it’s normally fine for them to talk about in their chosen groups/community. Lemmy just kind of brings these groups and communities closer together, igniting more discussion, but simultaneously causing issues you describe.
For example, you can’t walk up to a group of homosexuals and try to convince them they shouldn’t be gay. You can discuss topics related to LGBT+ rights of course, but there are definitely off-limit discussions in that group, same as any other group. I think it’s a matter of paying attention to where you are in the Fediverse and who may be reading your response before blurting out what’s on your mind.
On the comment about tessaract; I cannot agree on the idea that the dev of tessaract was “right” about toxicity. Even if he was, he was in no place to take it into his own hands to address (especially in a secretive way). Lemmy is a community-based platform and we need to figure that stuff out as a community. We don’t have a corporate-level moderation team ensuring the platform is safe for those under 18, and we don’t have anyone enforcing political views in any way other than in specific communities (who have every right to enforce their chosen views). Just as some say we wouldn’t need police if we had strong communities, the same goes here, strong communities are the key. If you see a lot of toxicity where you browse, maybe your chosen community just isn’t a healthy one.
In theory, I agree with you - and that was my very hope when I first got into the fediverse. Unfortunately, the reality has proven to be different…
Except it’s much, much worse than in the real world. I’ve been in circles with right wingers, and I am notoriously stubborn about not hiding my viewpoint (which very often clashes with that of right wingers), and even there the reaction is less crazy than on Lemmy.
That’s not the kind of thing I’m talking about. Of course something like that would go over like a lead balloon - in that case also because that’s borderline in factual in its assumptions. A better comparison would be a conversation naturally wondering to the risks of anal sex if not done carefully and being chastised and banned for that.
I neither said nor implied that, in fact I said quite the opposite…
And that’s exactly the problem. More work. More digging. More research. People come to these sites to have fun and often don’t have the patience nor the interest to filter through all the communities.
I think we may just not view Lemmy in the same way. I don’t see these sites as “fun”. Sure there are funny memes, but it’s also news and meta discussions about very recent topics. If I wanted to open something to have fun it’d probably be a video game or something.
Big tech makes it easy for people to use. They want the biggest and bestest userbases with the simplest interface… Lemmy does not care how big it is, it’s all about organic growth, and Lemmy by itself doesn’t have a very nice interface. I’d bet most people come here because they want to get away from the others, not because they want to add it to their list of feeds to browse. That being said, people making an effort to get away from the biggest and easiest platforms are probably more likely to put effort in to cater their feeds to their own interests and viewpoints.
Also I must’ve misunderstood your comment on Patrick originally so that’s my bad.
There’s no organic growth on Lemmy, the userbase was slowly shrinking since the APIcalypse. New users are largely those who were banned from Reddit.
Nah, you only think so because people who got here but weren’t ready to put so much effort into switching left Lemmy in disappointment.
I believe in reality, the kneejerk reddit mod multiban just transitioned seamlessly into fediverse multibans and defederations - I know, who could’ve foreseen such shit. Some defederation happened for good reasons, but I’ve been cluster banned from a bunch of communities I never even been in as a “lemmy.world zionist”, apparently, and that last bit is news to me at least. People bring their sad, incredibly petty bullshit with them.
People here are no fonder of “alternate viewpoints” than on reddit, you can tell the hivemind kicking in just from the person who pointed out a couple of blatantly realistic issues 8 seconds ago.
There’s a difference between advocating for a “set the world on fire” attitude, and a “we must take up arms to defend our continued existence” attitude. I think we are well past the point where we should be pulling our punches on fascist ideology. Putting flowers in the gun barrels of the oppressors just means there’ll be pollen on the bullets. I’d absolutely LOVE for there to be a peaceful solution*, but let’s be real: we’ve seen this horror movie before. We know what’s around that dark corner. I’d much rather go on the offensive and nip this shit in the bud.
(*and I hope there’s still time to have one, let me be clear)
I don’t remember the dragonfucker saga. What was that about?
There’s an account that insisted people address them as that, because that was their username.
Then they had a handful of accounts named some version of “dragon” who they would borderline roleplay fuck in random communities.
It was really weird.
Like, no judgement if you’re into that. The ick was they seemed to enjoy doing it in front of people to make them uncomfortable, and people that get off on violating consent like that, are going to be giant trolls about it. That account even created their own instance (pretty sure they ban anyone else that comments or creates an account) just so they could get onto the admin comms and cause drama.
Like, Ive hooked up with a woman who (at least at the time) claimed to honestly believe she was a dragon. So technically I’m a dragon fucker too, I just don’t throw it in everyone’s faces unless it comes up organically
I’m also very aware that she wasn’t actually a dragon, and was most likely just trying to psych out of the military.
It wasn’t only that - this person had come up with pronouns to match, almost like the attack helicopter meme that many found offensive, but unironically. People got banned for not using the dragon-whatever pronouns (and not just on this person’s instances). And people started scanning other people’s fediverse posts in order to pre-emptively ban people before they even posted in certain communities. It was wild.
I agree with you.
I sought out lemmy first during the reddit API closure saga. I started using it less when the quality started to decline to to corporatization and enshittification. Requiring logins to view content is the last straw that kicked me off reddit.
The most important lesson this move to lemmy has taught me: if we’re being served trash content, we can’t blame “the algorithm”. The basis of the fault lies with the users. Lemmy has been absolutely no short of ragebait, engagement bait, group think, and crazies.
I dont think the average lemmy user would want a bigger platform in general. They like the atmosphere as it is now and think of bullying people as their right.
More normies woudl chill the overall vibe but you’ll start to see the rose tinters and what ever. Who knows what lemmy would morph into. Im sure capitalism will take its toll, even if its not integrated into the platform.
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Speaking as a ln anarchist/council communist… There are some good instances and I simply don’t see the bad ones if I’m on an instance acc with good defaults.
I don’t view it as problematic if people are put off by Lemmy holding more normal, less capitalist and less reactionary views.
That said, in terms of preference, I’ll pick free communist groups over tankies and liberals (I decline to ever consider fascists an option at all).
In these dark times I’m not quite sure whether we can afford to lose what allies we have. But we do need to mold what can be sympathetic to our progressive and left-wing causes.
Piefed is problematic for me - although it has a lot of modern features, I oppose the karma system there. I prefer a system that cannot be abused by bots.