This succinctly covers my view on it as well. I think it’ll be more of a problem a few years down the road as statist admin culture begins to influence the mods of more instances, but for now I treat it on an instance-by-instance, user-by-user basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if majority of community leaders and users in general went to lemmy.ml simply because it was one of the larger instances last year and didn’t think much more of it than that.

If I have a choice, though, I’ll still try to grow a community on one of the smaller instances simply because it’s still one of the largest ones, and that’s better for the health of the network.

Something to keep in mind is that the top priority for the product that’s put in front of you isn’t what you want, it’s what the seller wants you to buy. It’s a high margin item, a vendor paid a premium for visibility, it needs to move so warehouse space can be cleared, etc. This goes back to the brick-and-mortar retailer days. If a product recommendation algorithm is a valuable service for you but ultimately isn’t more profitable for the retailer than putting their finger on the scale, it doesn’t make sense for them to play it straight. What they can do is determine you’re more interested in doodads than widgets, and show you more of the doodads. Which doodads get shown at the top isn’t 100% based on your preference.

Recommendations or reviews from writers/critics that have similar tastes and unpaid actors are how I find most products. This was one of the most valuable functions of Reddit, and it’s one of my primary motivations for helping to grow Lemmy.

The chopsticks one was a game changer for me. Helps with mindful eating/portion control, too (until you get good enough with the chopsticks, anyway).

Images in particular have been very slow for me lately.

It still happens a lot here. And it’s no surprise considering how much time people are spending at work. A lot people just don’t have time for dating.

Not just talking about work colleagues, also client or customer relationships.

Don’t know how old your father is, but at least among Gen X women, creepy men absolutely have been part of the discussion. It just wasn’t a public discussion until much more recently. Hell, the fake phone number thing goes back to landlines.

We’re still at a point of significant cultural change in gender relations, and until an equilibrium point is reached, there’s going to be apprehension about approaching others. To that end, it’s important that we keep small gaffes made in good faith as social misdemeanors (to allow for opportunities to correct behavior) and not career-ending incidents. It only takes a quick browse of social media discussing one of these incidents to see why said apprehension exists.

That said, I still don’t think we’re having enough conversations about consent around positions of authority and social hierarchy in general. Too many people don’t understand that being nice to someone when you’re on the clock isn’t implied consent for continued interaction with that person off the clock. That’s the light stuff; it can go all the way to gross stories about cops and women. It all stems back to authority and power imbalance. This might be more of an issue in the US than elsewhere; I think ideals of “equality” and “social mobility” are so ingrained in our culture that some Americans don’t have the social intelligence around the very real stratification that exists at the workplace and elsewhere.

Fear of rejection is a whole other problem that likely stems from everyone having more anxiety now. I was around a bunch of people in their late teens/early 20’s a lot more than usual the past couple years and holy crap. I thought my social anxiety was bad. I don’t know how these kids are going to function.

Got out, jogged, and did some outdoor work even though it’s the worst time of year for it. I’ll happily do my jogs/walks in winter unless it’s dangerously cold out but I have very little tolerance for hot weather.

I got sucked into Honkai: Star Rail pretty good. I’m in love with the gameplay. Right now it kinda feels similar to my past MMO experience, digging into every corner for loot.

Then I dump 12 hours into researching on youtube, trying to filter the company fanboys and the real talk people just to find out they are all “bought” and only 5% of the reviews aren’t bought.

To me, getting this kind of info in good faith without corporate sponsorship has been one of the most important functions of Reddit and something I hope Lemmy can take up as it grows. Even now, astroturfed content is much more common on Reddit than it was, and forget about any article with SEO good enough for one to even find on a search engine. At least Fakespot helps a little with the AI-generated reviews out there, but it’s not going to catch anything written by a human in bad faith.

For what it’s worth–and for posterity–the screen on the Samsung TV my father bought a few years ago is still going strong, but holy crap has the smart TV side of it been bad. One of the apps I used regularly (Steam Link) was outright discontinued and a couple others just stopped working. For whatever reason, it wipes out the app list on its own every few months or so, too. I ended up buying him a Fire Stick. At this point, all the smart TV functionality he’s getting out of it is getting served ads on the menu. 🙄

On the r/privacy discussion, I was on Reddit almost ten years and I never once had an interaction like that over karma. I barely even remember seeing it in discussions. People can get prickly when being asked for evidence, so how you ask is also important (and for good reason, sealioning is a thing).

I think the takeaway here is what’s asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and not to worry about conversations with people obsessed with imaginary numbers. It’s not worth giving it this kind of headspace.

Neil Gaiman is still trying to make Bluesky work, so maybe he’d be game for helping prop up an underdog.

lemm.ee has been great, very level-headed administration.

While I agree that seems the case, there likely has been a corresponding shift in niche communities, even if the effect is less measurable. I don’t check in on my niche subreddits often anymore (I’ve fully moved over to here and Discord), but with some of them, their quality has dipped slightly. Possibly could be chalked up to continuing trends independent of the migration, though.

Smaller communities also require builders, so I’m sure the necessity alone has driven content quality on Lemmy.