h3ndrik

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

It is a bit more nuanced than that. There are normal people there, too. It's been one of the largest instances when the Reddit exodus happened. Some of the users chose the largest and the 'official' instance. And some of them are still there.

But lemmy.ml is operated by the same people who also run lemmygrad, some moderators seem to be the same. And unfortunately the whole Lemmy software platform is developed by "those" people.

I don't mind leaning a good amount to the left. I think a few socialist values would advance society and economy. Especially in places like the USA. And I've been called a communist for that. But being a tankie is beyond my comprehension. Why would anyone like Putin, defend the CCP and what they do to people. And I'm not overly bothered with the left vs right. It's the constant yelling, being super argumentative, doing brigading and spreading misinformation.

I think things are changing. I'm paying attention now to the usernames in the comments. And lemmy.ml isn't the dominating place anymore. Most of the usernames I see come from a broad range of instances. And that's a good thing. It's still a home to some big communities which needs to change, too. And I'm also waiting for a new software to come along, written by different people with a different motivation and agenda. In my opinion that's one of the next steps to emancipate ourselves. I mean if you don't like lemmy.ml you probably don't like the people making the decisions there. Which unfortunately are the same people who also write all of the Lemmy software. And their software development decisions reflect the same attitude. But also that's going to change. A few people are working on good alternatives which strive to listen to the community, invite people to participate and also finally implement proper moderation tools and a few other tweaks to foster good behaviour.

I like Lemmy. But this platform had a hard time from the start. And it's still struggling. Mixing technological difficulties and innate problems of growing a community with drama, bad decisions, waywardness and friction within the community on many different levels is just stupid and unnecessary. But I'm still waiting for progress and a bright future. I think Federation is one of the best approaches with some potential to make that happen.

I think the solid technological basis is what I'm a bit more concerned as of now. But apart from that I agree that it is us, the community who sets the tone and we decide who we want to listen to, nice people or people with behaviour disorders and an attitude. And it's a vicious circle. At some point a platform has an image and is bound to tip and attract more like-minded people and less normal ones. And the dynamics are there and we need to actively fight for a nice place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Do you mean https://civicspacelabs.org ? That seems to not be actively developed for a long time alreadt. And sadly I also couldn't find any successor. It's been a Drupal plugin, right? Drupal also lists "Open Social" but I'm not sure about that. Doesn't properly match my needs and their website smells like open-core software and they'd rather sell me something...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Thanks, nice find! I'll spin up a Docker container tomorrow and see if it's already close to a usable state.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (26 children)

Thx. I found the most important communities to me. I'm glad most of them have an alternative and those are going strong. I can live with losing a few minor ones.

Concerning "blocking them": I'm not sure. I was a strong opponent to the whole defederation and "safe-space" thing last year. Where especially beehaw.org decided to do their own thing and rigorously defederate, often preemptively and without talking to people. I think such behaviour splits the community and disconnects people. I really don't like all the drama, falling out with each other and particularism. And I think all the feud is a sure way to kill the platform before it even took off with the general public... Honestly, I'm slowly changing my mind. Give me some more time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Thank you. I've already worked through the awesome-selfhosted list and also did some googling with terms like "citizen", "initiative", "action group", "grassroots movement", "collaboration", "campaign", "petition"... And I found several projects for sharing food or organizing clubs or handling user-feedback, a few discontinued or very specialized solutions. But nothing that really suites this use-case. And if I put in "change.org" into alternativeto.net, it doesn't show any open source alternatives. ☹️

I'm pretty sure I can piece something together with a Wiki, and some software to handle form submissions and polls, customize that for signatures, maybe also a Nextcloud. And Fider.io looks nice. I could install all of that, link inbetween those and strap an SSO on top. But that's a proper amount of effort to get all of that customized and then also doing the SSO and coming up with an idea how to make the users like to sign up, choose a password etc...

At this point I'm still waiting for some easier / more integrated recommendations. But thanks for the idea with the marketing, I'll do some more research with that in mind.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Thanks for the clarification, I think you should have made that a bit more clear in the comment.

But I agree. We shouldn't only not listen to nazis and other bad people, but actively not invite them to our home in the first place. In my opinion that means giving them the boot and then defederating once they accumulate on instance dedicated to their cause.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (29 children)

At some time we have to deal with this.

Keep in mind that we like Lemmy for being a federated platform.

I don't think there is enough awareness at this point. And the way we do it here, it has to come from the community. The people and mods have to become aware and make a decision to move their participation and the communities to another instance. I don't see a way around that. This will take some time, patience and effort.

I've started to do my part and unsubscribed from [email protected] I'm now going through my list of subscriptions and find alternatives to other communities, so I don't contribute to the lemmy.ml communities being the larges ones any more.

[Edit: Wow. I've replaced 32 communities, some with substantially better alternatives, and I've found a few nice additional ones in the process. I still need recommendations for alternatives to: "Peertube", "Libre Culture", "Crawling the IndieWeb", "datahoarder", "Linux Phones", "postmarketOS", "osu!". I'm glad I did this. I think this is the way to make a change as a simple user. And now I'm not part of the problem anymore. It took me the better part of an hour, though.]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Can you give us the name? I think just spreading FUD isn't really helping and I also can't do anything about it without more information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's funny because it's true?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

https://www.inwx.de/

No particular reason. They seem pretty alright.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

That is correct. And I think the same dynamics are at play with some of the other currently discussed topics. For example things like recycling and the switch to renewable energies. You as an individual can do something about it. And it'll make a difference for you and your life. And that's also enough for me to do it. But it doesn't really change anything in the broader picture. The rules foster egoistical behaviour. You'll often suffer and have a competetive disadvantage against the people who think about themselves first. That's why companies won't participate in making the world a better place, because they have to stay competetive. And also 90% of people are somewhat uneducated and just think about themselves.

I think regulation is the only way to tackle these issue. Yes, you can pay attention to privacy and do recycling. But it won't really do anything of substance for the environment or what companies try to do with your data. And it won't change the situation.

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