this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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[–] [email protected] 207 points 7 months ago (6 children)

As for funding, the servers are supported on a donation basis, with no big corporations behind them. This leads to a problem concerning user data and privacy, as there isn't a single accountable entity behind the network.

Bit of a weird take now, isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 93 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think both things are valid points, but it's worded in a weird way

A more explicit pro/con would have been better

No big corporation that controls everything

  • Pro:
  • Con:
[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago

This is a good point. Had it been presented like this, it would have hit different.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's kind of fair, to be honest, and the "no big corporation" seems more like a pro than a con

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Eh, it is a con when there are problems, service problems, bugs, etc...

My instance have had a few of them and for a while our 1 admin was unavailable.

It is difficult or impossible to get it resolve because there is no contact point, nobody hired to fix issues that need immediate triage, etc... which can result in longer outages or bugs on specific instances.

I'm not complaining. This is a fantastic service that is being offered completely free from actual altruistic incentives, unlike corporations. There are a few downsides though.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Definitely, that's why I always prefer instances with at least two admins, and a Matrix room for status updates

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (12 children)

Yeah, true. It seems like that is a pro that greatly overshadows the cons. Like someone else pointed out, it's just worded weirdly in the article.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It's actually not wrong if you look at it in another way.

  • Big tech will abuse your data, but it will do within legal constraints, and there is actuall (though weak) accountability of these companies due to the legal system.
  • On federated services like Lemmy, instances are hosted by anonymous individuals. Most social media laws don't apply to them, and their legal accountability is basically zero.
  • Lemmy, for example, does not comply with GDPR. There is no legal notice, no privacy contact person, no banner asking whether you are ok with the fact that your data is sent to unknown servers in random nations, no nothing. Private messages aren't even encrypted, so any admin can read them without issues.
  • There is no way to actually delete your data, as the GDPR requires. Deleted posts are only marked as deleted and you can see their plain text content by just pressing the "reply" button in any of the apps. There isn't any kind of guarantee, that your post will be deleted on other instances. If federation has problems, the post will remain on other instances and is now permanently undeletable by the user.
  • There are no moderation standards. Some instances will delete nazi content, some basically require nazi content. And some instance admin might even edit your posts to say something completely different. It's all possible and in the hands of random people on the internet.
  • Hobbyist-run services are much worse when it comes to availability and reliability. If something happens while the admin is on holiday, nothing will get fixed. If the admin runs out of money, doesn't care anymore or even dies, the instance with all it's content and users is just gone.

So there are very real risks attached to a hobbyist-run service with no legal accountability and no transparency at all.

We all know the downsides of Big Tech though, so it's everyone's personal choice to figure out which disadvantages hurt them personally more.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (6 children)

That's a bit misleading to say like that. Go to the website, scroll to the footer and click on "Legal". Your instance, feddit.de, has a legal notice, with a privacy contact person, mentioning you can request data erasure, and detailing where your data goes. Mine, lemmy.world, has a number of in depth legal documents attached there.

However, yes, other instances they are federated with might not take it as seriously though, and if all your data is going there too, then that's a hole in your data privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Very much this. Plus, how easy will instance admin Joe Schmoe fold under external pressure to give access to certain groups, government bodies etc? And how well have Joe Schmoe implemented good security practices on the server and related things? Etc.

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[–] the_post_of_tom_joad 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

there isn’t a single accountable entity behind the network

Yeah, Instead of a single entity i know will never be held accountable for selling my data and storing my information in an unencrypted txt file, there are unknown entities! Like the ~~Simpsons~~ (d'oh) quote says, "It could even be a boat!"

The illogic reminds me a bit of Google's new targeted ad privacy settings where your "privacy" is google's pinky swear that they alone are profiting from you.

When you see takes this weird do you wonder as i do whether it is intentionally worded to push some kind of narrative (though i don't really know what that would even be in this case), or is it written by someone so deeply in the tech bubble world that they are wildly out of touch? I don't know.

Edit: Family Guy

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[–] [email protected] 136 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Discord for large communities is dumb as shit. There's literally too many people that real communication becomes impossible unless you move to DMs or an empty room.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 7 months ago

so. much. this.

Discord is just an AOL chat room. Great for short-term conversations among 20 or fewer people. It's not a good place to store your FAQ. It's not a good place for large teams. It's not a good place for anything searchable. It's transactional. And I don't know why people treat it otherwise.

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I gotta look into this Lemmy thing. Sounds right up my alley.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Lemmy, the singer of Motörhead that died 2015?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

No, Lemmy Koopa.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I'm so glad I finally got into Lemmy. Reddit was destroyed on July 1st but I couldn't get into Lemmy until November because the instances were so fickle.

In the meantime I tried saidit but quickly discerned that most of the users there were just really bad Reddit rejects. like the worst of the worst Reddit rejects.

Glad Lemmy finally let me in.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 7 months ago (4 children)

This place seemed to attract the older tech crowd instead of the Nazis like Voat did.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I am old'ish so this checks out.

Lemmy has its quirks and it has its own distinct cliques, for sure. Posting specific viewpoints on some specific instances can be a bit awkward, especially for new users. Let's just say that if you haven't been called a capitalist pig baby killer at least once on Lemmy, you haven't had the full, well rounded experience.

All in all, Lemmy is fairly nice but people can still play follow the leader with comments. That is a curse with all social media, I'm afraid.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

capitalist pig baby killer

I'm guessing your instance hasn't blocked Hexbear and Lemmygrad yet.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I think that was just a matter of fortunate timing. The other Reddit migrations were due to toxic subs being banned, so the worst parts of Reddit migrated to whatever platforms were being discussed at the time, which happened to be mainly Voat.

The July 1st exodus was due to the Reddit API being paywalled at extortionate rates to crush third-party apps, which affected normal users - particularly long-time contributors and the tech-savvy. Lemmy discussion was picking up steam at the time, so that's where a lot of these users went.

If the timings were reversed and Lemmy got the worst users Reddit had to offer Lemmy probably would have handled it much better than Voat did (especially since the devs would loathe the new users), but I'd imagine a split forming between instances, with right-wing instances being defederated and creating their own bubbles of toxicity.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In that list, only Lemmy has voting or comments in a tree, both key features that make reddit into reddit. If I was going to put together a list of reddit alternatives, those last 3 wouldn't be on it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

Oh, except hacker news. But it's just one topic, people can't make their own communities/groups/subreddits another key reddit feature.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Fuck Reddit, but shouldn't be so excited for external validation. We're doing a good thing building this community, we know that without them signing off.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (3 children)

How did Discord make the list but not Imgur? At least Imgur is somewhat like reddit.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

People will turn everything into a Discord server nowadays, no matter how bad of a match it is. I've even seen a Github project disabling their Issue tracker in favor of Discord, which is completely insane to me.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Can someone please explain to me why discord is being used for everything? Isn't it basically IRC?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

It's a great tool to set up with a small group of friends to stay in contact. It's being pigeonholed for everything else

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Its fancy IRC with voice channel support, etc

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Imgur was originally designed as an image server for Reddit. They actually share front pages (or used to, I haven’t been in a while)

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago

I really like Lemmy's UI and general nicer community. I hope we see more people joining.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago

There are dozens of us, dozens!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Lemmy is great if you love Linux and Star Trek. If you're really into cybersecurity and privacy Lemmy has it all.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (14 children)

Key strengths of Lemmy

  1. Federation
  2. Tankies
  3. Star Trek memes
  4. Star Trek memes community civil war
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I had been on reddit since 2008, I was looking for an alternative to the message boards I belonged to after the popularity of Facebook killed them off. I really enjoyed it, not the same level of community that you find in a message board but still good for conversation.

Then trump happened and it turned to shit. It's so fucking toxic and I ended up getting banned for defending myself. Apparently fascism is good and standing up for yourself goes against community standards.

I'm a disabled 49 year old just looking for conversation. Facebook is also a toxic wasteland now. To say I miss myspace is an understatement but there's hardly anyone there anymore.

I'm happy whenever I find a place that's put the social back into social media because antisocial media is just trash.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (3 children)

What about kbin (well it is connected with Lemmy, but technically it's not Lemmy) and tildes.net?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Tildes is the only other reddit alternative I've been using. It has really high quality content, but posting there can be intimidating if you don't have 20 minutes to write something insanely detailed.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Mentioned the Apollo / Reddit saga but did not list Voyager as a client for Lemmy which at least for me has been the closest client in terms of Apollo experience. I know this is Android Police but it did talk about Android and IOS clients in the article.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

We did it Lemmies!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Mbin https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin

Pro for me: the ui is a bit more intuitive

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I guess I missed it. Why there was a need to fork kbin? Are there issues with it?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The Kbin developer wants to focus his work on deeper technical challenges, while the Mbin developers want development to be more fast-paced with greater community involvement. Both takes are valid, but difficult to combine in one development effort.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Squabblr seems like a nest of 13 year-olds trolling each other for fake internet points. Pass.

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