Humans who run instances are real people who have jobs and mortgages and kids. I also like having piracy communities around to balance the greedy ass corporations trying to control media and copyright…I’m glad to know they are there if I need them or feel like screwing around with it. I just wonder if the people ranting all indignantly acting like instances are competing for their usership would feel the same if the most active instance was on a server physically sitting in their basement, or paid for by money tied to them in the real world. Yes it seems pretty unlikely that you’re ever going to run into issues with law enforcement, copyright claims, lawsuits…but how much would you risk for a fucking hobby you do for free? Would you risk your house? Your job? I would not. Grow up. No one cares what instance you use.
I get what you’re saying, but calling people spoiled teenagers won’t change anyone’s mind. Attacking people is never a path to changing their mind.
You’re probably right. I was venting. Didn’t mean to offend anyone but people were getting silly with their outrage and felt like lots was misplaced, immature, short sighted
The real issue is that LW has become the de facto front page of Lemmy. No instance should have as many users/communities as they do. It gives them too much power over Lemmy. They could probably kill many instances if they decided to defederate from them.
100% agree. The system wasn’t designed to have a few massive instances…many, including myself, didn’t understand at first and thought Lemmy.world was… Lemmy… Much better to have dozens to hundreds of smaller ones and have a few accounts here and there. It’s probably good for people to realize no one controls the fediverse and separate themselves from the idea of even having a “home” instance for all uses. Maybe.
LW is likely the first of a few super instances. The next big migration from Reddit should be pointed at another instance prepared to handle the load.
If the fediverse grows and scales then instances the size of LW will probably be more common. People like to be where the other people are
I’m having issues registering on others atm. Lemmy.ml said it was closed when I attempted. Lemmy.dbzer0.com appeared ro let me sign up, sent me a verification email, which was accepted, but then every login attempt just cyclew and reloads for me. No error message. Reset password to verify that it was an account, got email, reset password successfully, then same thing.
For something I want to be casually doing, it’s kinda annoying.
Edit: dbzer0 just needed time. I saw a mention of authorization, but I guess I just assumed that would happen before the verification email. My bad.
Yeah the registration flow in Lemmy (on all instances basically) is not that mature.
They probably could but if they do so without cause, then likely they will lose users and have others defederate from them, too.
I think when it’s easier to migrate accounts between instances, were more likely to see more movement. I had an account on Lemmy.workd and this one. I was hesitant to abandon the world one as I’d already curated blocks and subscribes. It felt like starting over, doing so again elsewhere.
There are now tools to automate but it’s not as simple as it should and likely will be and those tools aren’t baked in.
I imagine that if that instance is flooded with new users and continues to grow, niche communities may become even more attractive as irrelevant content overpowers what many users want to see. It’s also good that new users have a place like that to easily find content, even if it’s broader than what will make for a long term community with adult discussion. Both kinds are good.
The only reason I picked Lemmy world is it was one of the listed communities on the Lemmy instance list. It listed by user numbers, so it’s likely to stay there, if that website continues to be just a list of instances. The advice is to pick an instance that matches your interests, but few instances are purpose built for that. I’d want to trial Lemmy as a new user before doing that level of research.
I’m just grateful to see that just when folks were beginning to doubt if Lemmy could actually serve as a Reddit alternative, we’ve been able to prove that we’re equally if not more adept at insular slapfighting over petty bullshit and assuming the worst about others’ intentions.
Yes, the “everyone is nice, everyone is happy” days are over, at least for the coming days.
I guess that means we reached a large enough userbase
It means there is now a healthy spectrum of feelings. Nice and happy all the time isn’t healthy.
Let’s just say respectful
Where appropriate.
Let’s agree to disagree
Image a large ascii made emoji of shaking hands. Whatever you just imagined is probably way better than the one I’ve been trying to copy and paste in here. :)
I’m pretty sure someone was being a dickbag to me like, the day I joined, so it was basically a seamless transition from reddit. Though honestly, the last time I was on any kind of public site without anyone being a shit was when I moderated a forum a decade ago, at least up until we passed maybe 200 users. I’m pretty sure that’s about the limit before someone has to act up.
Right around Dunbar’s number
Lemmy ultimately can’t serve as a reddit replacement, but not because of the people. It’s the technology that won’t scale. If we took all the slapfighting that reddit had to offer, every instance would crumble trying to replicate a million snide and argumentative comments.
I’m still consistently surprised that so few people seem to have realized that you can just make an alt on another instance that federates with blahaj (or the instance itself) if you feel like it.
And as to the server owner: they’re doing this with donations and out of the goodness of their hearts. That kinda gives them the right to run their server as they see fit. If you don’t like it… either find another instance, make your own, or shut the fuck up.
Not super user friendly to have to be constantly switching instances if an admin does something you don’t like, but totally agree that these are just the trade-offs that are made when you choose to use a free and open source software
But like, it’s a fundamental characteristic of the fediverse.
This place isn’t for everyone. If someone can’t eventually wrap their head around the concept of separate instances with distinct and sometimes drastically different administrative standards, and that alts are a reasonable and correct solution to (de)federation/network fragmentation… well, this probably isn’t the right place for that person.
For sure, but still not user friendly in practice by nature. Admins can switch, you might be happy in an instance today and unhappy tomorrow and the only option is to blow up your account and make a new one somewhere else.
And that’s the attitude that makes sure this platform never grows.
The reality is that most people don’t want to manage multiple accounts or even know what instance they’re on. That kind of stuff only matters to tech people. The average user wants one account that does everything, not a bunch of seemingly identical accounts.
I’m still not sold on the fediverse anyways. Federation often seems to hold things back more than it helps tbh.
You’re assuming that lemmy users and instance owners want monotonic growth, and I do not at all think that that can be safely assumed in the fediverse. In fact, I’d bet good money that a lot of users and instance owners would love to keep their own instance sizes relatively small, and furthermore don’t want to grow their userbases too fast.
And I find that defeats the whole point of the platform. If there’s no growth there’s no point in continuing to stay here. The communities I care about are so small over here that they’re barely worth having, let alone participating in.
If they didn’t want to be seen as a Reddit replacement then it shouldn’t have been advertised as one. If growth isn’t wanted then there’s no point to the platform and it’ll never gain any more users.
This is also why it’s good to have large instances such as LW. Most users can go to the one big instance and then the ones who want to stay small can without harming the growth of the platform.
The fact that you say that makes me think you’re someone who wasn’t around for bulletin board forums in the 90s and early 2000s. They were perfectly sustainable, and generally extremely long-lived. There are more than a few of them out there from that era that are still kicking around and going strong, and they don’t have massive, unsustainable growth.
It’s 100% possible to have a relatively static, moderately sized userbase, and to still have a vibrant, nuanced, productive community. You just either haven’t interacted with any, or your expectations have been so deeply skewed by the Facebook/Twitter/Reddit meta of “constant OC all the time no matter what” that you don’t understand that in many contexts a firehose spraying greywater isn’t really “better” than a gently burbling mountain spring.
I dabbled in them, but never saw a point in a community that small.
When niche communities have less than 10 active users there’s no point in continuing it. When a community can only get a few hundred people active at any given time on Reddit it has 0 chance of survival here without growth.
I’d rather a stream of crappy content to a trickle of ok content any day without a single bit of hesitation.
Curious to see how this thread will go, as it seems this opinion is indeed unpopular.
I agree with you 100%
A few points I’ve noted in the previous threads
- people confuse defederation and community blocking (in this case, it’s the latter)
- people assume that Lemmy.world is hosted in the US while it’s EU based
- people just feel like they need to announce they are leaving while this is not Reddit, most of the users open an alt and move on with their lives.
Absolutely, literally just swap instances. Hopefully instance migration comes in a similar way that mastodon offers.
I guess with LASIM as a current fix, it can work.
Mod tools are higher priority as far as I am concerned
people confuse defederation and community blocking (in this case, it’s the latter)
This seems to be a big one. LW admins were actually fairly light-handed on this one. This isn’t a discussion of defederation but people are acting like it is one.
Piracy is the second thing every social network has to make an effort to remove. The first one is child porn.
As free speech as everyone’s intentions are for the most part, you can only be in that fight so far as your pockets allow. If you believe you are legally untouchable, then go for it. But you’re probably not.
Child porn has victims
Piracy hurts nobody. It really doesnt. The music, movie and games industry have never generated as much money as they do these days.
Of course its still illegal… in most places. (Not all…)
I don’t want to take away from your point, but I read parent’s post differently. They were just stating a fact. No moral judgement being passed, no stating this one thing tied to the other.
Your point still stands, but seems a bit misplaced in this particular discussion.
I agree with you, but nobody wants to lose their house to prove it.
I’m not sure anyone is arguing that piracy is bad…not that I’m seeing anyway. Maybe some think that blocking the piracy instances is a moral stance of some kind but personally I’m verrrrrry sure it was not about ethics but about risks posed. People can say oh well its not a problem just to be talking about piracy but lemmyworld is run by a middle class guy with a few thousand $ in donations and it would be nothing for any copyright holder to ruin his life on a whim.
So happy that people make the same narcissistic finger-wagging posts that were so beloved on Reddit.
Somethings never change.
How is this opinion narcissistic? I would say the community that’s main focus is ripping of content creators while freeloading off of paying consumers are the narcissists. I pirate too but I don’t pretend it’s some noble venture.
I mean… The piracy communities have very useful links to wikis all about how to sail the high seas…
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really have any skin in this game, I dabble in a bit of piracy now and again, and am broadly pro having a community for people to chat about it although I don’t myself.
But at the same time when a community description has a link to a page with comprehensive lists of the best sites to download/torrent from, including a cute little goat emoji next to the best ones, let’s not be disingenuous. (That wiki is terrific btw)
If theoretically someone did decide to investigate you for having links to lots of legally dubious information available on your instance I don’t know the law in other people’s countries but in mine it wouldn’t be worth the hassle or attention. I say theoretically because at the moment Lemmy is probably too small to get attention but still.
I can see why people might want to play it a bit on the safe side if they’re not sure if they’re going to get into trouble over something or not.
This needs to be upvoted to the top.
All those entitled kids need to read this classic also: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/
Wow, Elon’s nearly to 4 already!
That was a really good read. It explains why the internet since “Web 2.0” is getting so controlled by a handful of large corporations. It’s basically impossible for small organisations to moderate and comply with all laws in all countries. Especially when a significant subset of their users are intentionally making it difficult.
I get where your argument stems from, and I do agree with it when it comes to actual file hosting. But lemmy instances don’t host any files other than images. People are only talking about piracy. There isn’t anything illegal going on, risking liability by letting people discuss shit.
I find it far more compelling to focus on the argument against the whiny people that the community was in violation of the rules established by the instance the entire time it existed. The instance didn’t change the rules all of sudden, it just decided to enforce them.
It’s not the end of the world. Make a new instance. An instance specifically devoted to piracy. Then you can do whatever the hell you want because a pirate is free.
Not to mention it’s not like Reddit where they’re doomed to their fate. The fedi is literally designed to get around this. That’s the whole point! Swapping instances is absolutely free. Though it is a bit of a pain without official migration tools so hopefully that gets fixed soon.
Though it is a bit of a pain
Almost painless using https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim (showing the link for potential readers, I think I remember sharing it to you a while back)
Yeah but the point is that it should be like Mastodon where it’s built in. Or at least with Lemmy, it’d be more appropriate just to be able to import/export your subscribe list, blocks, and settings.
It’s a shame the bandwagoning didn’t stay on Reddit as people migrated here. I really wish upvotes and downvotes weren’t displayed for anyone, maybe then people would act more civil.
People are gonna people wherever you go to be it another sns or outside.
Imo, if you really care that much to to another instance or host your own.
I’m so tired of the “just change instances” argument that comes up every time mods make a bad decision. It’s as bad as “just watch something else” for movies. Like yeah, literally everyone recognizes that you can choose how to spend your time, but that fact isn’t a magic buffer against critisism.
It’s as bad as “just watch something else” for movies.
This is more like “I hate the way this movie looks on this TV!” when you have free alternative TVs you could use instead.
This logic doesn’t even work for tvs. Even if I return a bad tv to get a better one, I’m still gonna leave a bad review on the amazon page.
True, complaining that you think the instance sucks is valid - but I do think how inconveniencing it is should factor in. Since you can simply make a new account on a different instance and continue viewing the exact same content, getting too bent out of shape about it is a bit silly.
Everyone should switch instances, but not because of this stuff. LW is just too large right now. The fediverse wasn’t designed to have so many people in one place. Communities were supposed to spread out and build their own specialized instances. This attempt to recreate reddit on one instance never should have happened.
It’s not meant as a “magic buffer to criticism.”
It’s just a more polite alternative to “nobody gives a shit what you think, so fuck off.”
Gotta love how it’s somehow simultaneously “I’m so annoyed everyone’s talking about it” and “nobody gives a shit”. Make up your mind. You don’t get to have it both ways. Maybe you don’t give a shit, but a lot of people do, and they want to discuss it. Not everything is about you. Also, gotta love the irony of someone showing up on someone’s forum to loudly declare how much they don’t care about something.
Stop it! You’re making me miss reddit awards! Because your post needs awards!
I understand that but also I can change instances in two clicks on an app once I’m signed up. I was going to post this one with my world account but it was going slow so I switched. Same two clicks to view piracy or porn. Yeah it would be easier to not have to but I understand why someone would simply choose to not fuss with it. Running these things is basically a hobby.
Imagine if you were invited to a party at a friend’s house…well, this friend got mad when you started lighting off fireworks at midnight and waking his neighbors up…this friend makes you take your shoes off when you come in their house. This friend doesn’t want you to watch porn because the kids are playing video games in the other room. Well it’s a free country right, why can’t I light off fireworks? As your friend I want you to have fun at my party man, I really do…that’s why I invited you…but my neighbors will call the cops and I have to deal with then in the morning. And my wife will kill me if the floor gets all scuffed up. If you want to leave the party because of that I’m sorry.
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