This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It’s about how the admins informed their users.
A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn’t very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.
Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.
I don’t agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn’t really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).
Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.
Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.
Discord is pretty much against everything the open web is about. Closed source and proprietary protocols… Probably tons of data mining of users as well.
Not even probably, there is.
Probably? Nah, they legit advertise what their users do. Seemingly increasingly so.
Discord has “drops” (in beta for over a year now to be fair as it wasn’t super popular), aka the status snippet that shows when and what app you’re using gets shared with developers. Basically, what you do on your system gets logged. You can opt out of that, of course, but still they do collect it. Pretty sure they also stored calls and screen recordings at some point (for convenience reasons of course), but there are now too many users for that. At least, I think they no longer do that. But every single thing you type into discord is logged and can be traced back to you with perfect accuracy.
Awaiting the fall of discord once it goes full anti consumer
I can’t believe some subreddits migrated to discord in protest over third party apps when discord will ban you if you try to use 3rd party apps.
Wait what? Why does it ban you if you use third party applications to use it?
Including the parts you type out and don’t post.
Yeah I mean, LW using discord instead of a FOSS option is not a good look…
Got banned recently from their Discord server by [I’m assuming] me calling out their announcement/decision a clownery (which it actually is, because why make a announcement community when you’re not informing your userbase), ngl it’s mildly infuritating…
What even is not a good look is I didn’t really receive a notice that I got banned there…
Edit: phrasing
I’m assuming the reason would’ve been trolling. Considering the bottom of this is all you did and didn’t put a statement like “I don’t agree with this channel, I think it’s uncalled for” etc etc. although even that I would put into !support@lemmy.world
Just tagged a channel and said clownery with no activity in the discord really. Just wanted to add the additional context here and figured a SS would help too.
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What makes you think it’s “just to read announcement”. The initial post didn’t even mention announcements, nor was it the purpose of the discord. Yet that’s all you can seem to hold on to. It’s already been stated there was miscommunication on one announcement and that was that.
Do you see the issue now or do you need help?
This doesn’t even make sense because it appears you didn’t even read the original discord post or even have an understanding about it.
A) It’s not a requirement to join discord, and never was made to be.
B) Discord is of itself a community communication platform for IM.
C) Millions of people actively use discord, it’s a popular platform and easier then others like Matrix. If it was something I didn’t already use, I would’ve never joined.
Your message is filled with incorrect assumptions and it appears your unwilling to go find the answers that are even on the same page as these comments. It’s very surprising with the internet nowadays and people can’t even seem to find information that is right in front of them, yet they act like they already have the facts.
trolling
no activity in the discord really
Why would I be active in the DC when its supposedly purpose was announcements about the site and whenever this site is down? Why would you assume/expect people join in a DC server to interact?
Why would I be active in the DC when its supposedly purpose was announcements about the site and whenever this site is down?
Could you please clarify your source, the discord post as OP mentioned doesn’t read that. Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. And if you looked around the main purpose isn’t focused around announcements. It seems there was miscommunication and it wasn’t posted to lemmy, mistakes happen.
“Why would you assume/expect people join in a DC server to interact?”
That is sort of the point of Discord as a instant message community platform.
I joined the discord because:
- The internal lemmy direct messages sucks.
- I already use discord anyways.
- It’s a great way to not spam unrelated comments. etc
Why did you join?
Making announcements to somewhere you have to log in to see is the problem. You can’t see Discord chats unless You’re logged in.
There is a lot of FOSS stuff communicating over twitter… Even The Linux Foundation has a twitter account.
But lemmy.world should primarily communicate via lemmy imo…
That’s where I’m at. Discord isn’t the issue for me, it’s them not using their own platform to communicate major announcements. At that point it’s like you’ve given up on your own platform.
But lemmy.world should primarily communicate via lemmy imo…
I find the same attitude holds for developers who like to hang out in real-time Matrix chat and don’t seem to use Lemmy itself very much and things like code blocks ruining greater-than and less-than slip right into release without much concern.
Even The Linux Foundation has a twitter
Because Linus Torvalds doesn’t care about the Free Software movement and user freedom. It’s why his kernel is still on GPL2.
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lemmy.world it’s not “lemmy”
The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone make that false equivalence demonstrates pretty well the problem that comes when a small number of instances have the majority of Lemmy’s total users. I chose a small instance myself, partially to do my part in avoiding this issue, but the consolidation will likely continue to be a big problem until a good solution can be thought up and implemented.
(accidentally clicked delete whoops!)
The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone make that false equivalence demonstrates pretty well the problem that comes when a small number of instances have the majority of Lemmy’s total users. I chose a small instance myself, partially to do my part in avoiding this issue, but the consolidation will likely continue to be a big problem until a good solution can be thought up and implemented.
Yeah, lemmy.world looks like it’s shit.
Where you need to have an account just to see the announcement, none the less.
I mean, I do get it to some extent.
As an admin myself, every time I make a post on lemmy aimed at members of my instance, it gets drowned out by folk from other instances that want to offer their thoughts and opinions.
That being said, Discord is not the answer to that problem…
If the intention is to have an internal, instance-only post, I believe such a thing could be enforced with an automoderator bot. I had a lot of success throwing the Lemmy API into an AI and generating my own moderator bot from that. Could work for you.
That’s quite a good idea. Not the perfect solution, but better than anything I’m currently using
I had an idea about this today but I don’t know enough about Lemmy to confirm it. Thought I’d run it by you just in case.
Could you create a post and lock it normally, then directly edit the postgres row to unlock the post? I’m wondering if this would federate the lock but not federate your unlock causing all outside users to see a lock and all internal users see an unlocked post.
Possible edge case: users who subscribe to the community after the unlock will receive the initial data dump of posts and this will include the post in its current unlocked state.
However, this would be an easy way to block the majority commenting on a post while maintaining a seemless experience for your internal users.
Now that is an interesting idea! Will have to give that a try
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What is the problem with getting down votes ? Visibility? I thought Lemmy supported pinned posts.
I’m not sure I follow. Where do downvotes come in to it?
I misread drowned as downvoted. 🤣
They do. Personally, I think it makes the most sense, in regards to instance news like this, to put a pinned and locked post on the actual platform you’re talking about, and then put a discord or matrix or whatever off-site link in the body of the post for those who wish to discuss. That’s what a lemmy.zip admin did recently, and I think it worked well.
You mean just like a specific recent post on our main about defederating another instance being drowned out by members of said instance :)
“I said beetlejuice three times and now he’s here ruining my life!”
Sh.itjust.works uses matrix like any normal lemmy instance would.
Sh.itjust.works uses matrix like any normal lemmy instance would.
Why should announcements happen in a real time chat anyway? Lemmy is actually best suited for announcements.
Indeed. But if there must be a chat, it should be matrix. But I’ve read it sucks for moderation.
Well, I doubt there must be a public chat in the first place, especially when it kind of serves as a competition to the *.World products. Some form of private chat between admins: sure. Public: IMO no.
Matrix is a piece of hot garbage on the UX front. Maybe when Matrix stops sucking so hard it can take matter out of galactic core black holes it can be taken seriously as a platform.
Very reddit of them?
Coins incoming! :)
Just kidding. So much drama, needs some comic relief and this is all I had.
This gives out the impression they don’t care about lemmy being open source and decentralized but rather they are at it for a piece of the cake
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I couldn’t agree more. We shouldn’t need to be somewhere else to receive announcements (especially such important ones).
Not to mention Discord’s horrible record of privacy and security. I don’t have an account and will never make one, and I’m sure many others in the fediverse will agree.
I actually just tested out the account making process, and I got asked for my phone number. No. Way.
We’re here because we care about a decentralized, open network. Aside from its confusing and busy UX, it’s not even indexable. Discord is literally a black hole for information and terrible for everyone except for Discord itself, who is doing who knows what with all of our data.
Discord is everything the fediverse stands against.
This whole situation is rubbing me the wrong way. I can understand the motives behind defederating even if I don’t agree but it’s been a day and the only announcement is still on Discord. Not ideal.
Discord is cancer, and FOSS communities should avoid it like the plague. It’s everything that is against foss philosophy.
It would definitely make more sense to post the announcements on Lemmy rather than another discord server.
IMHO, Rather than dividing the stream of new information it would be better to focus on one platform.
Personally I dislike discord as the conversations there are too fast for me.
Personally I dislike discord as the conversations there are too fast for me.
Same. I never really liked how it’s used for discussion purposes because the conversation format doesn’t work there, especially if tons of people are chatting at the same time.
They could have gotten feedback if the comments were not turned off. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt there’s a good reason to not have comments on for that post but that and using Discord is two orange flags.
The moment I learned about defederation, I made an account on an instance that didn’t do that.
Here’s a website you can use to check what your instance is blocking.
Alternatively if you scroll to the bottom page of any individual lemmy instance there should be a link called Instances which will take you to a page of all the instances yours is federated and defederated with.
Oh neat I didn’t know that.
can you recommend a good instance with a no defederation policy?
An instance with no defederation policy is going to end up exactly like an instance with no moderation policy. It’s going to become Voat or whatever the latest far-right website is these days.
You might be better served to seek out an instance with a transparent defederation policy, and admins that use it as a tool of last resort, instead of first resort. I was, perhaps mistakenly, under the impression that lemmy.world fit that bill, but maybe not so much.
This isn’t true, I think. You can have an instance that federates with nearly everyone but which still has a higher standard for behavior for its own users. This way, users on such an instance can see all the problematic instances but are not permitted to be problematic themselves. It’s an option.
(Even still, I think you’d find yourself de-federating from someone eventually for spam or other technical reasons if not due to objections over content.)
It’s a problem of scale. If you don’t defederate from a racist-focused instance (for example; hypothetically speaking), then you need to devote resources to moderating those users who make racist comments, as allowed by their instance, but directed at your users. Sure, you could do this, but it’s probably smarter to just defederate and save the resources for other uses. And no moderation team is going to be flawless, so racism will still creep in and be missed by the mod team.
It might be a different story if users are given the tools to block entire instances (like kbin has) but even then I think the ROI would be low.
It’s also likely to get into legal issue. I like sdf but the fact they aren’t defederating from the pedophile instance is really really bad.
Which instance is that?
Lemmy.sdf.org they are a very very very old internet tech focused community that’s been since the late 80s. They’ve been pretty much everywhere on the internet as it’s grown
I think they meant which instance is the pedophile one haha
I know what sdf is, what is the pedophile instance you’re referring to?
Ah my bad. I don’t really feel comfortable saying their name completely openly because they are very aggressive to any and all people who point that out, but they allow loli/shotacon and attract a lot of open pedophiles. Wont say the name outright, but if you go to https://lemmy.world/instances and scroll down to “blocked” and look at the first one, that’s it. Do not go to that instance. I’m serious, the content they host is illegal in many jurisdictions.
It’s going to become Voat or whatever the latest far-right website is these days.
Not at all. I mean maybe if you only look at the local feed. But this is the Fediverse, I can still see every other instance.
I don’t need anyone choosing for me what I should and should not see. I can (and do) do that myself, thank you.
I don’t need anyone choosing for me what I should and should not see. I can (and do) do that myself, thank you.
I see this a lot, and first off, it’s not true at the instance level, for lemmy-- unless there’s a new option I didn’t see. Second, having to block someone that suggests you should die for your skin color, after reading the comment, is not without harm. There is value in preventing the speech from being seen at all, versus blocking people after the fact.
It’s obviously a generalization, but generally the people who say “just block them” are also people that haven’t lived with systemic bigotry directed at them for their entire lives.
And for the record, I don’t think piracy falls into this category of speech.
it’s not true at the instance level, for lemmy-- unless there’s a new option I didn’t see
I promise it is true. I’ve been doing it for months.
Second, having to block someone that suggests you should die for your skin color, after reading the comment, is not without harm.
Speak for yourself. Doesn’t harm me.
I promise it is true. I’ve been doing it for months.
You haven’t been blocking instances with Lemmy because that option doesn’t yet exist.
Speak for yourself. Doesn’t harm me.
What do you mean? Are you saying that because you aren’t affected that no one can be?
You haven’t been blocking instances with Lemmy because that option doesn’t yet exist.
Again, yes, I have.
What do you mean? Are you saying that because you aren’t affected that no one can be?
…no. I said the opposite of that.
I promise it is true. I’ve been doing it for months.
How do you block a whole instance in Lemmy?
Depends on your client
That’s incorrect. Mods need to moderate the content hosted on their OWN instance. Not stop the people on their instance from having access to outside information.
I think one of us doesn’t understand federation-- and to be clear, it might be me.
This is my understanding:
Every instance is like an email server and every account is like an email address. I’m NAME@lemmy.sdf.org and you’re NAME@lemmy.world. I think where people (and I used to) get confused is with how Communities play into this. Both of our instances have a “cats” community. And we both can see and post to each others “cats” communities. Our community could have a rule that also allows dogs, and your community could prohibit dogs. So, when you post you have to follow the rules of the community that you’re on, and those rules could be influenced by the instance admins themselves. So, kind of like how subreddits operate. So, the instance and the community moderators can control the content that is hosted on their own instance. So, you can have an instance that moderates only what’s happening on their own server, and that’s it.
Now, if lemmy.world decides to de-federate from lemmy.sdf.org, then as far as you can see, the other “cats” community doesn’t exist, I don’t exist, I can’t communicate with you, and you can’t with me. And the only reason you would do this is to make the moderating job easier. If you want, you can disconnect from from every other lemmy instance and then you don’t have to worry about outside people coming in and having to also moderate what they say on your forum, but then it changes from being an open forum to just being a “friend group”.
Also, I think the problem of “reddit supermods” is repeating. Lemmy.ml and lemmy.world are the two largest instances and at this point if they choose to de-federate from a smaller instance, it can basically kill that instance. And it can also be used to control the narrative. There are a few people making choices for many.
You can block users and communities yourself. Go sort by “All” and start blocking everything you don’t want to see again. After a short time your feed will be cleared up.
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I apologize; I don’t know what you mean in relation to what I said. Do you mind elaborating?
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Copyright (not “copywrite”, btw) law is batshit insane, but somehow people believe it to be even worse than it is.
Your browser makes copies of every image you see, but this doesn’t violate copyright law because it’s automatic and necessary for the browser to function. Does that sound familiar?
Also, for like 2 decades the standard action is just a takedown request that threatens legal action if ignored.
And to be clear, the admins had no actionable reason to block the piracy communities. They did it preemptively.
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I know reading comprehension isn’t much valued in some political circles, but I didn’t say what you think I said, so I’m not sure you really mean “agreed”.
Some moderation is required because an honest dialog cannot happen if all parties don’t feel safe. This is not the same as “no moderation”, but it’s also not the same as what you pretended I said, which is “heavy moderation”. I don’t understand why you think this discussion in any way translates to a government, but generally speaking, the US government has less ability to “censor” than a non-government entity.
And, as I already alluded to, the result of lax moderation is bigotry and hate, every time. If I had to pick between heavy moderation or voat, and to be clear, I don’t have to make that choice because there is nuance allowed, then I’d pick heavy moderation over a site infested with redhats and the like.
I don’t know if it’s their policy, but it’s against the spirit of the organization. This is where I’m at: lemmy.sdf.org
I actually saw it on this list: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances You can look at their list and find instances that show 0,0 for BI,BB (blocked instances, blocked by).
They needed to post it on a site that can stay up for more than 24 hours at a time.
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And then be forced to shut it back down within a week once hosting costs bleed you dry lol
I’ve found there is a culture within Lemmy developers and long-time operators to discuss in Discord or Matrix chat instead of “eating their own dogfood” and using Lemmy itself to openly discuss Lemmy technical and project issues. These chat services are legendary for keeping things away from search engines and newcomers getting up to speed. Lemmy itself isn’t nearly as search-engine friendly as Reddit was traditionally, it seems like feedback needs to be given as to how important it is to keep things about Lemmy in the eyes of those who actually use Lemmy…
