With the recent happenings in the United States, the dangers of the privately owned Internet is more apparent than ever, and frankly, it’s scary. And so I’d like to make a simple request to anyone who is reading this; Please use the Fediverse, just a little more.
I personally hate it when I’m stuck having to visit say, YouTube or Reddit to get information, or to entertain myself in quiet moments, and if you’re reading this, the likely chance is you’re the same.
All I want to ask of you is to just comment a few more times, press send on that post that you felt wasn’t of enough substance to be worth anyone’s time. We have such a small community compared to everywhere else, but what we do have in common is that, in the grand scheme of things, we are the early adopters. And if we take that to heart and make this space a little bigger, maybe it will be just big enough we won’t have to visit walled gardens so often.
Thank you :)
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I think 90% of my posts are deleted before sending because I just know that someone somewhere will find a way to be mad about it
But OK - here is a post that I would usually have deleted :)
As Someone Somewhere, I urge you to post more.
I cannot believe this account is two years old and not made just for this comment haha.
Oh, I’ve had the name for a lot longer than that.
I bow down to your sense of comedic timing
A genuine username checks out moment - excellent
OMG really? How COULD you…
Neglect to offer your valuable opinion. Hey, you’re a human and have valuable things to say. Haters gon hate. Fuck 'em.
I’ve also been posting less after managing to upset someone. We can have a club. The shy posters club.
You’re not shy, you’re just a normally adjusted human.
It’s normal to want to avoid being abused and insulted for, say, having an opinion which is marginally different to the in-group consensus. But unfortunately that’s what happens when we post on text-based social media. Apparently the medium does something to people’s minds, turning them into nasty vindictive unpleasant versions of themselves.
I’m a pretty self-confident person in real life and even I think twice about posting anything here that contradicts the prevailing groupthink. The inevitable insults and abuse and mockery are sometimes just not worth it.
Personally, I have hope that if a larger variety of people are posting and commenting (typical lurkers and such) then hopefully the echo chamber aggression will weaken a little, and hopefully foster a positive and friendly community. I’m trying to lead by example :)
Refreshing optimism!
if a larger variety of people are posting and commenting (typical lurkers and such) then hopefully the echo chamber aggression will weaken a little
Unfortunately I’m not sure the hope is warranted. Putting a lot of people with different views in front of each other, over text, does not, in general, by default, seem to go that well. At least not going by the experience of the first 30 years of the social internet. You tend to get the worst aspect of human group dynamics and speech-policing without the self-moderation that comes with in-person contact - i.e. the effect of audible voices, and visible faces and body language.
I’m not a complete pessimist or I wouldn’t be here. But I think these issues can only be solved by activist moderation that enforces rules with a light touch while remaining tolerant and always assuming good faith. And, of course, that kind of moderation is time-consuming and very, very hard. It’s a skill that hardly any communities have access to. But it is at least a reasonable goal.
I see where you’re coming from, historically the internet and large communities tend to foster that kind of aggression. I, for one, will be striving to build a positive environment though, and just maybe, we’ll see those fruits lead into a brighter future :). I myself am applying for some moderator positions to help take up that effort!
That’s great news. Good luck.
I’ve had abuse for posting a short story that validated the group think. Several times.
There’s a lot more aggressive unpleasant people. Or bots. That’s the scary things these days, we don’t know what’s real anymore. People we talk to online or see. If it’s fake trumped up hysteria.
Or even takes pictures of videos.
And I don’t see it getting any better.
If we can ensure that all bots are always identifiable as such, i.e. that none of them are successfully passing themselves off as people, then this problem is mitigated quite a lot. In theory that’s feasible. We’re hardly even trying right now.
How’d you tell if you’re chatting to a bot?
Ai a pretty convincing now
Regulation, of course. Unlabeled bot on your platform? $100,000 fine. We’re not completely helpless.
It’s this the law or something you’d hope would happen?
I’ve only just managed to overcome my membership in the shy posters club haha! Hey, keep a seat warm for me while I’m away, okay?
Thank you :), and I’ll just let you know, that this comment brought a smile to my face. I’m proud of you.
Over the years I’ve learned it’s ok to ignore if it seems like someone wants to pick a fight. Not everything has to be a debate, and no it doesn’t make you look weak. You just got better shit to do than argue with strangers on the internet. :)
I do that quite a lot too
Just remember that the people getting mad at you are not deleting any of their posts.
That’s a horrible take and you should feel bad.
But I’m a stranger on the Internet and probably a moron so it’s ok to not take me seriously or respond to me.
I get this. I used to use Threads and someone got very angry at me cause I said Labour, supposedly the left wing party in the UK, are “upsetting the right people”, I should have clarified that I don’t think that they are doing a good job, but never mind.
The trick, plumbercraic, is not minding that they will be mad.
thats reddit, ppl hate way less here, id prime myself to argue before I made a comment on reddit, made me a more argumentative person
Unexpected !dundermifflin@lemm.ee
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And who says they’ve never done anything good?
But yeah, let’s ride that momentum all the way into the year of the fediverse!
Small instance owner here. All are welcome. We have one really busy community here, and a few others that are just getting going that you might find interesting. You like World of Warships? The Last of Us? St. Louis Battlehawks? Abandoned Buildings?
You’ll notice some of these communities are a ghost town. Images are broken and there’s a rat eating pizza. So step up. Avoid the large, overwhelmed, weirdly-political instances and give us little guys a chance.
I’ll begin by introducing myself. Hi! I am oleorun, named after the recently deceased Bob Uecker’s Baseball Hall of Fame speech. My instance, https://real.lemmy.fan/, is known for the !weirdnews@real.lemmy.fan community, but we have more to offer. !aviation@real.lemmy.fan , a college radio station, !wsup@real.lemmy.fan , and more communities waiting to be joined, and built, and best of all there’s no ads, no donation requests, just pure love of a federated instance that thrives on niceness.
I’d be real happy for you to join us.
oleorun@real.lemmy.fan
Edit: Typos
I cannot express how much respect I hold for instance owners, you’re doing something great! Maybe one day I’ll follow in your footsteps (when I step up from small game servers :P). Say, would those dead communities qualify for a post in c/abandonedarchitecture?
rule
lurk no longer
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One. Of. US!!
Lurk No More
🙌
Y’know what, here I am! This is such a genuine request.
Thank you, friend! This post may very well be the tipping point for many Lemmings/Fediversers, myself included.
And I’m so glad to see you here! I sure hope you’re right, but the fact that I’m responding to you alone shows just how right you are!
I’m back after a year away. My two favourite niche interests (wrestling & fantasy books) still don’t have hugely active communities but I’ll start pitching in again with some lukewarm takes.
!squaredcircle@lemmy.zip seems quite active !
What fantasy book community is it? I’ve been looking for one and haven’t found one yet
Probably !fantasy@lemmy.ml
Not the most active, but didn’t find anything better
That’s the one
welcome back, and good luck!
I was recently banned from reddit.
On all my accounts.
Across four email addresses.
Simultaneously.
Many of which haven’t been used in months. Years in some cases.
So - banned on one account linked to one address. Accounts linked to four other email addresses were banned. None of those accounts have been logged into from any device the account I got banned from was being used on.
The emails are linked to my phone number though.
So. Two steps ahead of you. But. They are either using some kind of NLP to identify the way I write. Or google is sharing that the accounts are linked to my phone number.
Anyway. Reddit can fuck right off. And I’ll be buying a burner phone with cash to make some accounts soon.
Google is sharing the details. Reddit is lousy with Google trackers. You literally can’t log in without Google and gstatic trackers being active. Only old.reddit.com doesn’t send Google your views.
Fuck Reddit man. Fuck Reddit into the ground. Lemmy is getting there, feels like early Reddit. Comments are still removed from lemmy though
alone we are strong … together lemmy may grow stronger
How do you know your accounts weren’t part of a ban wave? It doesn’t necessarily mean they linked them through your phone.
Because some of them, and their associated email accountsz hadn’t been used in years.
And there is nothing linking any of the emails / accounts except my.phone number.
Five email accounts, 20 odd reddit accounts. I’ve only used one account / email for the past year. And that’s from a PC / phone that were new around that time
I put this into my hosts file a couple years back:
127.0.0.1 *reddit*
fuck reddit.
Couldn’t agree more.
I think one that can be done is to create a pinned FAQ post in Reddit on the fediverse sub Reddit. I have seen so many questions popping up lately with a lot of potential users that seem confused.
If I had a Reddit account, I would absolutely try doing that. Unfortunately, I think I’m gonna have to hope someone does it for me.
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<3
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thank you!
I’m a fediverse supporter (obviously, that’s why I’m here), however what you’re looking for requires a critical mass of users that the fediverse (at least the Lemmy side of it) will never achieve as long as two very critical problems persist:
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sign up is confusing. People are used to clicking “create an account,” inputting a user name, password, and maybe an email, and then BAM they’re a user. I realize the whole instance thing is the entire point, but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they’ve even started using it.
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the site (or at least lemmy.world) is sooo slooow. Basic functions like loading images take me back to the dial-up era of “click the image then do something else while it loads,” which is downright ridiculous in the 2020s. Again I’ve stuck with it because I want to support the fediverse, but 99% of users won’t.
And no, these aren’t “features not bugs” unless you want to keep the site small and homogenous.
possibly the biggest eye opener has been seeing how much the average person knows about computers, it’s seriously hard to comprehend that divide (obligatory xkcd; https://xkcd.com/2501/), I think the best we can do is build a community, and give the loved ones in our lives an onboarding experience where we can. learning anything new is intimidating, but through exposure, it can be done, we’ve just gotta make it worth it.
but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they’ve even started using it.
Then just directly recommend specific, general purpose instances to people.
I agree with you on 1. I hope it never fucking changes. The worst thing that could happen is we get the critical mass of dipshits that turns every online service into a fucking shit tornado.
Try another server. I use r.nf and it’s very fast. Decentralisation is pointless if everyone flocks to the same server.
If people want freedom and independence, they’re going to have to a little work for it, because those things never come for free. And yes, that is a feature, not a bug. That “I should not ever have to engage my grey matter” mentality is the whole cause of the corporate fascist mess in the first place.
sign up is confusing.
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/ if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
Further discussion on https://lemmy.world/post/24577309
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I am SO thankful that there are so many people out there working on projects such as this! I gained lots of momentum in the past weeks protecting my privacy and taking digital matters back in my own hands, i wouldn’t have come so far if it wheren’t for all the other people who have been doing this for years! Thanks everyone :)
You said it! I remember years back looking for reddit alternatives and the only things around were stuff like raddle.me. Seeing lemmy and the fediverse develop like this? It’s a dream come true!
Just joined and the community already seems pretty vibrant. It honestly doesn’t feel that different from Reddit in that regard which is perfect. Reddit and the rest of them can fuck off
Welcome! A few pointers for you
I kinda started using lemmy less lately. I shall fix that!
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com (blocked by lemmy.world instance)
Sail free in the high seas!
Also, I want to mention Briar it’s a peer-to-peer communications app that allows communications not only by internet (via tor), but also bluetooth, wifi. There are no servers, all the data on right on your device. Its available for Android, and there’s also desktop clients. You can form a mesh network of your fellow revolutionaries, the oppressors can shut down the internet, but not the flow of information. If everyone in a protest added each other as contacts on Briar on their phone, you can theretically have a Briar forum that can share information on any law enforcemement or military movements, even during an internet shutdown. (beware of possible phone backdoors tho, maybe run Graphene OS or something)
There are already Briar Public Forums, but they don’t have much activity (there’s like 1 post/comment every other month, and that’s it). But its like a secret corner of the internet. If we get more people to use it, we can potentially have a peer-to-peer network instead of only being decentralized, but still having servers.
briar comes with calyxos, and I’ve been considering it. The shame is I don’t message all that much, and mostly use messagers for resources or distribution (can’t believe so much support is moving to discord)
If you’re privacy & security centered do NOT go with Calyx. They still use several g**gle services underneath it all. Graphene is the way to go, and no they are not affiliated with Copperhead (The one who proudly states they work with Raytheon) TLDR copperhead tried to take over Graphene but failed.
Also regarding rumors of it being a FBI honeypot, the feds advertised the backdoored phone /OS as being Graphene itself - or at the very least based on it in some way. It is not.
Just remember to use a oem unlocked android device. Carrier locked phones are often times luck-based in terms of getting it OEM unlocked. Often times they are literally impossible to get unlocked. Support CAN do it and HAVE THE TOOLS to unlock it for you but more often then not… they won’t.
Don’t get me wrong, Calyx without micro g (F-Droid + Obtainium) is a fantastic option plus it’s compatible with a wide range of devices -just not as secure is all.
It’s ironic, using a g**gle phone for privacy. Different strokes for different folks.
to be fair, I set up calyx a while ago, back when i was only at the beginning of my privacy journey, and still thought i might need google services. Though I’ll absolutely be giving graphene a try when I can!
thank you for this post, did not know about the public forums list 😉
