Yeah I can't fully explain the total fascination with apps either, but I do see some definite advantages including the ability to separate viewing other web pages separately from the app, like in fast switching or even side by side in like a split screen context when that is possible. And Firefox is horrible at memory management, even on Android - it legit runs down my battery even when minimized unless I force-kill it.

According to the comment at https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/28484007, PieFed vs. PyLova are still at odds. If there was attribution this time, I did not dig deep enough to find it, plus I highly doubt it. Although otoh PyLova seems to be included in the PieFed instance picker pages? So different devs seem to have different opinions on the subject.

Yes agreed about Voyager although tbf the vast majority of apps lack the cross-post comment merge feature in particular - according to https://piefed.social/community/fediverse/wiki/piefed-app only Interstellar has it now (which has an odd UI that is geared more towards Mbin's microblogging style than Threadiverse forum-style content)

someone has to put in quite a bit of effort to even determine if they are in one.

Really? I've heard it said that all someone has to do is figure out who or what they are not allowed to criticize. But I suppose there are layers, and indeed disinformation is a helluva powerful effect.

There's always so much more to learn about the Threadiverse - I do find it fascinating:-). Though I also can see why others react as they do whenever it gets mentioned outside of here (Reddit, Bluesky, X, etc.).

I think PieFed.zip is just about as close to ideal as one could want, except for adding a block to Lemmy.ml by default for new users - or perhaps asking via the sign-up wizard, like "Do you want to see extremist content, including calls for murder?" Hey, some people do - sometimes me even for research purposes, and we can all appreciate having the option when that is desired, right? Nobody is wanting to be a "Karen" here and tell others what to do, only offer true choices to people who won't yet be knowledgeable enough to be able to implement an instance block on their own yet - and again particularly to even become aware that they want one, in order to achieve their goal of avoiding both extremist and also trolling content in one fell swoop.

If you feel like it, you could petition to add such a block, although I've actually tried already in the past for a different instance, and there is such enormous resistance to doing so for Lemmy.ml that I doubt it would happen. Somehow even Rimu who has such a contentious relationship with the tankies doesn't even do that? I do find it so odd that this is one of the most common refrains that I've ever heard across the Threadiverse - to be able to help newcomers block the entire tankie triad - yet not one single major instance seems willing to actually do it. We've made our choice, collectively: this is a tankie / troll bar. Regardless of the existence of an echo chamber inside of Lemmy.ml, outside of it we are 4chan when it comes to refusing to block the content coming in from it.

Which obviously mainstream non-technical normies nope right out, blocking that content the only way that they know how: by leaving the Threadiverse altogether (which already has exceedingly little OC to begin with, making the cost to benefit ratio simply too high).

Yeah I can't fully explain the total fascination with apps either, but I do see some definite advantages including the ability to separate viewing other web pages separately from the app, like in fast switching or even side by side in like a split screen context when that is possible. And Firefox is horrible at memory management, even on Android - it legit runs down my battery even when minimized unless I force-kill it.

According to the comment at https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/28484007, PieFed vs. PyLova are still at odds. If there was attribution this time, I did not dig deep enough to find it, plus I highly doubt it. Although otoh PyLova seems to be included in the PieFed instance picker pages? So different devs seem to have different opinions on the subject.

Yes agreed about Voyager although tbf the vast majority of apps lack the cross-post comment merge feature in particular - according to https://piefed.social/community/fediverse/wiki/piefed-app only Interstellar has it now (which has an odd UI that is geared more towards Mbin's microblogging style than Threadiverse forum-style content)

someone has to put in quite a bit of effort to even determine if they are in one.

Really? I've heard it said that all someone has to do is figure out who or what they are not allowed to criticize. But I suppose there are layers, and indeed disinformation is a helluva powerful effect.

There's always so much more to learn about the Threadiverse - I do find it fascinating:-). Though I also can see why others react as they do whenever it gets mentioned outside of here (Reddit, Bluesky, X, etc.).

I think PieFed.zip is just about as close to ideal as one could want, except for adding a block to Lemmy.ml by default for new users - or perhaps asking via the sign-up wizard, like "Do you want to see extremist content, including calls for murder?" Hey, some people do - sometimes me even for research purposes, and we can all appreciate having the option when that is desired, right? Nobody is wanting to be a "Karen" here and tell others what to do, only offer true choices to people who won't yet be knowledgeable enough to be able to implement an instance block on their own yet - and again particularly to even become aware that they want one, in order to achieve their goal of avoiding both extremist and also trolling content in one fell swoop.

If you feel like it, you could petition to add such a block, although I've actually tried already in the past for a different instance, and there is such enormous resistance to doing so for Lemmy.ml that I doubt it would happen. Somehow even Rimu who has such a contentious relationship with the tankies doesn't even do that? I do find it so odd that this is one of the most common refrains that I've ever heard across the Threadiverse - to be able to help newcomers block the entire tankie triad - yet not one single major instance seems willing to actually do it. We've made our choice, collectively: this is a tankie / troll bar. Regardless of the existence of an echo chamber inside of Lemmy.ml, outside of it we are 4chan when it comes to refusing to block the content coming in from it.

Which obviously mainstream non-technical normies nope right out, blocking that content the only way that they know how: by leaving the Threadiverse altogether (which already has exceedingly little OC to begin with, making the cost to benefit ratio simply too high).

though with less content advocating for the literal murder of every person currently living inside of a Western civilization).

“Do you want to see extremist content, including calls for murder?”

'death to america' is a hyperbolic idiom meaning an end to american imperial dominance, not a wish to harm american people. as an american myself i say it all the time. i want to see an end to the system, not the people living under it. 'marg bar amrika' has been a protest chant for 50 years and has been deliberately mistranslated by propagandists to demonize dissent.

what good is 'america' to the people it bombs, imprisons and impoverishes anyway?

‘death to america’ is a hyperbolic idiom meaning an end to american imperial dominance ...

To your point, I've heard this meaning before, although I don't think it is commonly known to the general populace (which is also to your other point about propogandization).

Potentially against your point, if a slogan/idiom is being intentionally misused for misinformation, it might be time to move to a different phrase, rather than sticking with the corrupted one. Additionally, if multiple phrases could be utilized, it may get the point across better (less likely to successfully propagandize multiple options, than a single option). Although, I suspect propagandists would weaponize the 'weakest' commonly utilized option against the cause.

... Firefox is horrible at memory management, even on Android - it legit runs down my battery even when minimized unless I force-kill it.

Haha. I've never made that connection, but I also force kill everything after I'm done immediately using it. Hopefully we have a Servo (!servo@programming.dev) option before too long.

... PieFed vs. PyLova are still at odds. If there was attribution this time, I did not dig deep enough to find it, plus I highly doubt it. Although otoh PyLova seems to be included in the PieFed instance picker pages?

Yeah, I had a feeling. While Pylova instances are listed in the Piefed instance picker, piefed.social has "Silencing" quokk.au and anarchist.nexus. So, I doubt Mia/quokka is going to be trusting Rimu in the immediate future.

... https://piefed.social/community/fediverse/wiki/piefed-app ...

That's a useful page I didn't know about before. Thanks for sharing

Really? I’ve heard it said that all someone has to do is figure out who or what they are not allowed to criticize. But I suppose there are layers, and indeed disinformation is a helluva powerful effect.

I agree, to an extent, but I think it takes a significant effort to decide to question things to begin with. If everything and everyone you encounter in your life says the Sun revolves around the Earth, in my view, it takes something extra to not just find or notice a discrepancy, but also take the time/effort to go against everything you know, see, and encounter to pull on that thread and see what it reveals. Pulling on that thread could turn your friends/family/neighbors against you, it could threaten your livelihood or safety. In a non-supportive environment, I expect it's quite scary and it's much easier for someone to stick their head in the ground and carry on as if they didn't notice the discrepancy.

... PieFed.zip is just about as close to ideal as one could want, except for adding a block to Lemmy.ml by default for new users ...

If you feel like it, you could petition to add such a block ...

For clarity, piefed.zip doesn't block any of the 'triad'. I believe the .zip instances marketed/known(?) as being open/non-restrictive. So, I don't think the admins are interested in blocking any instances, unless they are spam or similarly problematic.

Somehow even Rimu who has such a contentious relationship with the tankies doesn’t even do that?

I suspect this has to do with the .ml admins being the Lemmy Devs, and Rimu needing to have a cordial relationship with them to maintain interoperability in the threadiverse.

We’ve made our choice, collectively: this is a tankie / troll bar.

I understand the feeling. It may help you to know that the 'triad' has decreased in total % of the threadiverse in the last 3 months. Also, look at the Threadiverse 3 years ago before the Reddit 3rd-party App Exodus, there was really only a few Lemmy instances to choose from (lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, sopuli.xyz, and a couple others). So, while many instances started during the exodus, most of the established communities and instances were part of the 'triad' and many new users would have joined the established instances/communities. I suspect if users could easily switch their accounts between instances, you would see a huge change in the distribution of the Threadiverse.

Which obviously mainstream non-technical normies nope right out, blocking that content the only way that they know how: by leaving the Threadiverse altogether ...

Perhaps some better on-boarding, about curation, could help improve the 'stickiness' of instances. It wouldn't surprise me, if a change like that caused the slight decrease in users (between growth spikes) to even out, stabilize, and perhaps allow a slight increase in users to develop.

I suspect propagandists would weaponize the 'weakest' commonly utilized option against the cause.

one example that comes to mind is the 'from the river to the sea' slogan; it's a call for equal rights across historic palestine, but gets labelled as a call for genocide by detractors.

changing the slogans doesn't help because the target isn't the words, it's the underlying demand. propagandists will weaponize whatever language you use if the politics behind it threaten them.

the way i see it conceding the rhetorical terrain just means constantly retreating to increasingly watered down language while the actual demand gets no closer to being heard.

PyLova: agreed, sadly.

Disinformation: yes, exactly like MAGA. They aren't bad people, just disinformed - as in actively utilized as tools to achieve the objectives of the one(s) pulling the strings. Arguably we should all resist such, but as you say the barriers against such are high, and I think we can agree that some people are simply too preoccupied with the basics of living to have either the time or inclination to become properly informed. One implication then being that it is the very foundational principle of democracy itself that works against its own demise: when unedumacashiated people are allowed to vote, chaos is not nearly as likely to result (from such "random" inputs) as the system being taken over by a malicious actor who may then use it for their own nefarious purposes.

But even so, that explanation neither absolves people of their failures in the absolute necessity to remain curious, nor absolves us of our own failure when we allow the system to propagate, and in fact help it along.

According to this post PieFed.zip uses the same blocking system as Lemmy.zip for new joiners. See also this comment from the admin. Like programming.dev, the .zip instances (like all other instances) can also block particular communities - which unfortunately neither the Lemmy nor PieFed UI offers a mechanism to expose that list publicly to the users, making the transparency of this issue rather horrible, where I have to link to messages from the admins but there is no webpage that will simply show an updated status - like does exist for instance federation vs. defederation. The tools here, again both Lemmy and PieFed, are abysmal at such transparency topics.

This is the kind of stuff that I would love to see added - to Lemmy, to PieFed, or to PyLova - and I feel like the increased transparency would help entice new joiners.

... when unedumacashiated people are allowed to vote, chaos is not nearly as likely to result (from such “random” inputs) as the system being taken over by a malicious actor who may then use it for their own nefarious purposes.

I understand that viewpoint, but my understanding is that there is not a "good" solution. If "education" or "knowledge" requirements are implemented, they are, or at least to my knowledge have been, used to disenfranchise the most vulnerable. An example of this could be the Southern States after the American Civil War. They implemented "literacy tests" biased toward the wealthy and whites to restrict the poor, minorities, and immigrants from voting. The "best" solution I've heard to stopping an uninformed populace is to educate the masses to develop critical thinking skills. Unfortunately, that "solution" is generally on generational timescales.

... that explanation neither absolves people of their failures in the absolute necessity to remain curious, nor absolves us of our own failure when we allow the system to propagate, and in fact help it along.

How do they know to "remain curious"? How did you learn to? How did I learn to? From my experience in life and learning from others about their lives, I've found I've had a quite privileged upbringing with regards to education and emotional support. This leads me to be quite generous in my view of people's "failings".

Anytime I run across someone "failing" to understand something I consider basic or common, I try to think back to when did I learn that and from whom. In most cases, the person or situation I learned from didn't exist for the person "failing". From that point, I try to, with no judgment of them, explain my reasoning and thought process to them (just as someone did for me). If they want to take in and consider my words, great. If not, that's alright too. I could always be wrong about the topic, they could not be ready to change, or any other reasoning (you don't need to force every seed to sprout, just keep providing a nurturing environment and you may soon find yourself surrounded by greenery).

Mostly I just try to be open minded myself (like I am truly open to changing my viewpoint to theirs) and provide an open and safe environment for others to consider alternatives. I find it works quite well.

According to this post PieFed.zip uses the same blocking system as Lemmy.zip for new joiners. See also this comment from the admin.

"This means some of the spicier instances are blocked by default, which users can remove themselves in the user settings.", "... piefed.zip (and lemmy.zip) already blocks hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmynsfw by default, and sends a PM to the user when they sign up to let them know why we do this, and how to remove it." Huh, TIL. I was going based on the listed instance de-federations (where they aren't shown).

... which unfortunately neither the Lemmy nor PieFed UI offers a mechanism to expose that list publicly to the users, making the transparency of this issue rather horrible, where I have to link to messages from the admins but there is no webpage that will simply show an updated status - like does exist for instance federation vs. defederation.

Great point. This might be a time to "weaponize" Pylova. Since Piefed has been "back-porting" Pylova's work, if Mia implemented this transparency addition, it would probably make its way to Piefed. Maybe Lemmy would follow suit, but no idea. I'm thinking worst-case its implemented in Pylova and the Pylovians all benefit. Thoughts?

Edit: Switched a word for grammar.

I was thinking the same, just didn't want to promise anything in case I could not deliver. The devs are VERY eager for feedback though, so it's truly doing them a favor to ask, plus as you said most likely also a significantly wider userbase as well. Then again I think I've already asked for something vaguely similar in terms of general transparency features, although this is concrete hence much more likely to move forward (otoh there is a distinct possibility that I've already asked for precisely this, so I'd have to look it up). Edit: okay, done - https://discuss.online/post/46939614.

We seem mostly in agreement on other factors as well. Stoicism suggests that we cannot fix the entire world, we can only do what we can in our little corner of it. Personally I would hope that PieFed.zip would automatically apply a user-level block to new joiners for Lemmy.ml, the same way that it already does for hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Bc whatever we personally think about tankies or magats and how much we can stand to put up with their alternative factual argumentation practices, it remains that new people are extremely put off by such, and keep fleeing here when exposed to it, then subsequently complaining about us to anyone who will listen.

i.e., being kind to and/or having empathy with people who enjoy trolling behaviors is not the same thing as offering them a platform. Especially one where their messages are presented identically alongside with all other messages, such that new joiners cannot distinguish between them. A warning label, an icon, a different color highlighting etc. would go a long way. But that's a ton of effort, which anyone using a 3rd-party app won't be able to access anyway, hence blocking is all that is left, short of full defederation.

The alternative, which is the current method, is to simply get comfortable being a troll bar. We feature trolls here, we make them feel very comfortable, and offer only confusing methods to people and very little guidance to new joiners to avoid them.

Edit: okay, done - https://discuss.online/post/46939614.

Awesome! Upvoted

I would hope that PieFed.zip would automatically apply a user-level block to new joiners for Lemmy.ml, the same way that it already does for hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.

While I agree that would likely help new comers, I suspect the .zip admins have a similar thought process to Rimu (not antagonizing the Lemmy Devs, and keeping the lines of communication open in case there is an software issue).

i.e., being kind to and/or having empathy with people who enjoy trolling behaviors is not the same thing as offering them a platform.

I agree and block trolls immediately ("Don't Feed Trolls!" is my motto online).

Especially one where their messages are presented identically alongside with all other messages, such that new joiners cannot distinguish between them. A warning label, an icon, a different color highlighting etc. would go a long way. But that’s a ton of effort, which anyone using a 3rd-party app won’t be able to access anyway, hence blocking is all that is left, short of full defederation.

I thought previously a subscribe-able block list would be a great addition, at the user and/or the instance level. Users or instance admins could create a list of problematic users and/or communities and any updates automatically feed to the subscribing instances or users. Obviously issue is who gets authority to amend a list, but I think if the list was in a standard format and "forkable" it wouldn't be too big of an issue for different groups to easily create and maintain their own lists without much issue.

This could be away to block the worst offenders/trolls without risking antagonizing the Lemmy Devs. Thoughts?

The alternative, which is the current method, is to simply get comfortable being a troll bar. We feature trolls here, we make them feel very comfortable, and offer only confusing methods to people and very little guidance to new joiners to avoid them.

I don't think we are "comfortable being a troll bar", I think we are uncomfortable and taking steps, unfortunately slowly, to move past that phase of development. With ~80% of the Threadiverse on Lemmy and the Lemmy.ml admins being the Lemmy Devs, I think things have to move slowly (boil the frog slowly). There's no way (to my knowledge) to switch instances to an alternative software (Piefed, Pylova, Mbin), so all the Lemmy instances are a little bit held hostage. I don't currently see a way out from the hostage situation, but perhaps one will present itself in the future.

In the meantime, like you are saying, I don't think that means things can't improve with on-boarding or initial blocking for new users, to continue moving away from being a "troll bar".

I thought previously a subscribe-able block list would be a great addition, at the user and/or the instance level.

I love this idea. Topic Feeds are already user-customizable and shareable, so why not block lists? And while I haven't read through it yet, see also supersquirrel's recent post (last day or two) on the topic in the Fediverse community iirc, saying similarly for Mastodon. Admiral Patrick's toxicity filter went behind people's backs and did such opaquely, but when handled transparently and with full informed consent that would be an entirely different story. And then people could choose like no filter, minimal or maximal filtering, or perhaps some intermediary steps between those.

Some issues remain, like instance blocking does so without informing the recipient, who gets essentially shadow-blocked by the recipient. But that is not something fixable by PieFed alone, and would require cooperation with Lemmy to receive the signal and pass it on to the affected users in whatever way they chose.

I think we are uncomfortable and taking steps, unfortunately slowly, to move past that phase of development.

It's been like 3 years. I for one have lost hope, especially now that we are well past the era of Reddit enshittification. We cannot rely on future Redditors to come over anymore, and therefore where else are users likey to arrive - Instagram? Tiktok? Anyway, if anything happens, then I will believe it when I see it, but the likelihood of something happening to change things in a major way seems to me to be decreasing with each year that ticks on by. The time to do something, if we wanted to entice more Redditors, is now long past.

There's no way (to my knowledge) to switch instances to an alternative software (Piefed, Pylova, Mbin)

No actually there is - Rimu converted many Lemm.ee communities over to PieFed.social (I forget if they lost access to modify their older content, or perhaps if they messaged him before lemm.ee went fully down from their old account then he could take that as proof of ownership and grant such access), and Quokka has converted fully from Lemmy to PieFed and then from PieFed to PyLova, so aside from Rimu are the preeminent experts in such conversions. With Rimu's community migration tools and Quokka's experience, communities on Lemmy are not held hostage, anymore.

Otoh, Rimu himself is personally quite opinionated on certain matters, and rarely but decidedly goes against community push-back to enact his own agendas. In the second most recent event, prior to the PyLova code non-attribution one I mean, he decided fairly unilaterally to shadow-censor content even hosted on other instance platforms - restricting people's ability to vote more than a given allotment per day, even if they use Lemmy, Mbin, Mastodon, nodeBB, etc. Which is arguably fine, except vaguely like the Admiral Patrick situation, Rimu continues to do so without telling the recipients that they are being thus censored. Like someone presses an upvote button, the color changes, but then the vote count does not change. MANY people disagreed - about the change overall, about its lack of transparency, and also in how it was effectively not communicated to the instance admins, leaving them surprised at the behavior of the code running on their own machines. Rimu lost a lot of trust in his handling of that situation.

So people are - correctly - hesitant now to put their trust into PieFed, when at any moment some similar situation could arise. Of course there is the PyLova fork, but it is extremely new, so I would wager that people are taking stock of it and seeing how it will shake out. Lemmy has a tainted reputation among the general public (for good reason), PieFed people barely know about but since it shadow-censors people's contributions like Reddit does I can no longer see it becoming popular among the diminishing crowd that wants to flee Reddit's overzealous censorship practices, all the more so since most 3rd-party apps only nominally support PieFed much less PyLova. The situation is not entirely untenable but it's inordinately complex, and in those Reddit threads I shared earlier you can see people simply noping out of everything that we have going on here with all our in-fighting. The technology has to get better if we want to bring people here. Which I suppose it is, but at a pace that is exceedingly frustrating. Until it does, we remain a troll bar.

Topic Feeds are already user-customizable and shareable, so why not block lists?

I never made that connection, but yeah, this could be much easier to implement than I was thinking.

Admiral Patrick’s toxicity filter went behind people’s backs and did such opaquely, but when handled transparently and with full informed consent that would be an entirely different story. And then people could choose like no filter, minimal or maximal filtering, or perhaps some intermediary steps between those.

Yeah, I could see this being a few easy setting/feature addition.

It’s been like 3 years. I for one have lost hope ...

Understandable.

Some issues remain, like instance blocking does so without informing the recipient, who gets essentially shadow-blocked by the recipient. But that is not something fixable by PieFed alone, and would require cooperation with Lemmy to receive the signal and pass it on to the affected users in whatever way they chose.

My understanding is that this was set up that way to prevent harassment. I'm not knowledge on the subject so could be wrong.

No actually there is - Rimu converted many Lemm.ee communities over to PieFed.social (I forget if they lost access to modify their older content, or perhaps if they messaged him before lemm.ee went fully down from their old account then he could take that as proof of ownership and grant such access), and Quokka has converted fully from Lemmy to PieFed and then from PieFed to PyLova, so aside from Rimu are the preeminent experts in such conversions. With Rimu’s community migration tools and Quokka’s experience, communities on Lemmy are not held hostage, anymore.

My understanding was that it "worked". As in it was haphazard and a very manual effort to get what did happen to work.

Not the same thing, but die4ever@retrolemmy.com and I tried to save the past posts of ecospheres@mander.xyz to piefed.zip after mander.xyz went down. It didn't work, I (on piefed.zip) could see the old mander.xyz posts, but no one else on any other instances could. I also had a problem with adding mods to the new piefed.zip community (lemmy mods couldn't be added, non-piefed.zip mods couldn't be made owner).

So, while I expect it can be done, I don't think it's an easy, straightforward, or automated process to move software or even communities. I know my example was not a 1-to-1 typical move, so if you have any counter-examples please let me know (I can utilize them for the !fedigrow@lemmy.zip wiki).

Otoh, Rimu himself is personally quite opinionated on certain matters, and rarely but decidedly goes against community push-back to enact his own agendas.

I am quite aware of Rimu's nature (he and I had discussions in the past).

Rimu lost a lot of trust in his handling of that situation.

Agreed and I would say he's lost a lot of trust many times at this point (I used to be one of his biggest cheerleaders).

Of course there is the PyLova fork, but it is extremely new, so I would wager that people are taking stock of it and seeing how it will shake out.

I suspect so. I mentioned it to the piefed.zip admins, so they are at least aware of it. But I suspect there won't be any piefed -> pylova conversions anytime soon, unless Rimu screws up big (again).

... all the more so since most 3rd-party apps only nominally support PieFed much less PyLova.

I believe their is an official Piefed app coming (https://fedidb.com/software/compare?software=lemmy,mbin,piefed). Assuming it's open source, presumably the other partially Piefed compatible apps could utilize the "Piefed Official App" 's code to improve compatibility within their own apps. I'm certainly going to suggest it to the voyager Dev when the "official app" comes out.

The technology has to get better if we want to bring people here. Which I suppose it is, but at a pace that is exceedingly frustrating.

Agreed, but not sure we should expect more. FOSS is generally slow moving, due to it being small, part-time teams. I'm in a place where I can help support FOSS financially, but I know that is not an option for everyone, plus it's a new consideration/viewpoint for people coming from corporate/proprietary software (where they are the product).

That is sad to hear that mander hasn't come back yet - I guess it's still waiting to see if something can be resolved, since the backups weren't recent.

But it is even more sad to hear that Rimu's community migration tool isn't working, on other instances without his direct involvement. Some of what you said makes sense to me though, like a community "owner" must be located on the instance where it is housed - if that were not the case then the system would be vulnerable to all sorts of spam where any bot could spin up communities on any instance, so some level of accountability must be maintained.

I suspect the official PieFed app will be Blorp, just from the way that Rimu talked about it iirc. It's chief competition is Interstellar, although that was designed more for Mbin with PieFed just being thrown into the mix.

The need to support FOSS is partially one reason why we aren't growing, and I don't mean the actual funds, but the enormous complexity of figuring out who to send them to. Dessalines & Nutomic? Rimu? PyLova? Voyager? Blorp? Perhaps at the end of the day it does not matter as we had fun in contributing to the development of the Threadiverse overall, but to new joiners it's definitely very daunting - it's far easier to pay Reddit and then get Reddit coins back in exchange. Though arguably less profitable when it merely buys you the chance to argue with bots. Yet.. an enormous fraction of our own traffic here are reposting bots, often from Reddit, so is this truly "better", enough to convince some of them to make the switch? That's the rub - they would be buying into the future, just as Reddit kept telling them, and likely still tells them now (Reddit-trained & integrated AI will be so great...).

The domain https://fediverse.observer redirects to sedo now.

On October 11th these two commits where made to the repo:

this will be my final release, glad to have contributed since 2011 to some fediverse stats, https://fedidb.com/ is a great resource with more interest

this software is no longer developed

Sad to have lost such a great resource.

That is sad to hear that mander hasn’t come back yet - I guess it’s still waiting to see if something can be resolved, since the backups weren’t recent.

But it is even more sad to hear that Rimu’s community migration tool isn’t working, on other instances without his direct involvement.

Agreed.

Some of what you said makes sense to me though, like a community “owner” must be located on the instance where it is housed - if that were not the case then the system would be vulnerable to all sorts of spam where any bot could spin up communities on any instance, so some level of accountability must be maintained.

Hmm. I see what your saying. I was thinking more someone on the instance would be required to make the community, but could hand it off to a user on another instance. I think you are right though, a user on the instance should be forced to be "owner", as it doesn't take much work to create a new account and they can always add their other instance username as a mod and run the community via that (never really needing to log into username of the instance the community is on again). Only issue I see is, people DMing the "owner" username that is not monitored, but I suppose that could just be stated in the sidebar and/or user profile.

I suspect the official PieFed app will be Blorp, just from the way that Rimu talked about it iirc.

I can't recall any specific source tied to that thought, but that sounds right. Guess we'll see.

... it’s far easier to pay Reddit and then get Reddit coins back in exchange.

Haha, sadly very true.

... an enormous fraction of our own traffic here are reposting bots, often from Reddit, ...

I just saw a post that Reddit changed something to block reposting bots again and Lemmit is tired of trying to figure out a workaround and is going to shut down next year when the domain subscription ends. So, potentially fewer reposts in the future.

As a bit of an aside, JohnnyEnzyme @piefed.social just told me about a posting technique that worked well for him utilizing past Reddit posts with their best comments to create interaction in the threadiverse (his comment). So, we may lose repost bots (no great loss in my mind), but if people start taking more from Reddit and curating it personally, I think that could be a great exchange.

Edit: As an update I added a feature request to Pylova's Codeburg about the subscribable block lists. We'll see if they're interested.

As an update I added a feature request to Pylova's Codeburg about the subscribable block lists. We'll see if they're interested.

Wonderful!

if people start taking more from Reddit and curating it personally, I think that could be a great exchange.

This sounds horrific to me! The question in my mind is not how many ghosts to allow over here, but how to generate authentic interactions between real humans. We don't need every single niche covered, we just need people to enjoy their time spent here.

90% of that is easily attainable by defederation from hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. I was on multiple instances that did neither, prior to the ability for an admin to (shadow-)block certain communities, and I very nearly quit Lemmy entirely after switching here over from Kbin. In fact, I basically did as I switched over to PieFed for my main, before I began my current campaign to test the experiences on several 3rd-party apps.

A further 90% improvement can be attained by blocking Lemmy.ml (except that no major instance provides this by default, and also the Lemmy platform won't allow it at all, with the instance block being so horribly misnamed as to represent disinformation - in no way does it block users of the instance from harassing people in other communities, thus missing the entire fucking point). In this very conversation thread there was a particular onerous troll who kept following our conversation and downvoting everything I said, finally speaking up with the most inane bullshit. This was not fun for me so I banned them. New joiners, it seems obvious from the comments they leave (usually on other platforms after already leaving), don't bother to put in the work to curate their experiences and instead simply flee - to Reddit, or Bluesky, or perhaps nowhere and just touch grass from now on, combined with maybe Instagram or Tiktok or something.

I do not want to have to scroll down reading through tens to hundreds to thousands of comments, none of which represent real humans who would respond if I replied to them - that is the precise opposite of what I want. As I browse through New, often I can be the first responder anyway. And people reply to me, and so on it goes. And I don't want to be asked to do that for 12 hours a day - just one would be fine for me, if that. But GOOD content, not toxic crap like "c'mon comrades let's murder everyone in sight, eh?" - I want to see stuff that quite possibly I could even enjoy seeing, and maybe interacting with?

But even if I do see it, the endless array of trolls spoils it. I do not think that the overall lack of content is the problem here - it's the overall lack of content that is worthwhile to read, and the fact that we get constantly slapped in the face in an unconsensual manner. It's a cost (far too high) to benefit (with next to no OC, very little) trade-off that results in people fleeing here - even those that stuck with us for multiple years before finally giving up. Admiral Patrick had a horrible solution to it, but he was not wrong in the identification of the problem: people don't enjoy discourse with incels for whom no means simply to push forward all the harder.

This sounds horrific to me! The question in my mind is not how many ghosts to allow over here, but how to generate authentic interactions between real humans. We don’t need every single niche covered, we just need people to enjoy their time spent here.

I do not want to have to scroll down reading through tens to hundreds to thousands of comments, none of which represent real humans who would respond if I replied to them - that is the precise opposite of what I want.

I do not think that the overall lack of content is the problem here - it’s the overall lack of content that is worthwhile to read, ...

I didn't think I conveyed the idea well. It would not be an automated or bot process (Reddit comments wouldn't be added as Threadiverse comments). The good/useful comments from Reddit would be utilized by a poster to add to their own threadiverse post to help add more relevant content (Example that got 57 comments).

A further 90% improvement can be attained by blocking Lemmy.ml ...

While that may be the fastest solution, the triad haven't been doing great in at least the last few months, even without major intervention (Post with Data
Lemmy.ml:

• Difference from 3 Months ago: -103 MAU (-5.5%)
• Difference from 1 week ago: -23 MAU (-1.3%)
• Posts and Comments (per week): 727 (+106 vs historic)

hexbear.net:

• Difference from 3 Months ago: -78 MAU (-5.7%)
• Difference from 1 week ago: -18 MAU (-1.4%)
• Posts and Comments (per week): 1659 (-3545 vs historic)

Lemmygrad.ml:

• Difference from 3 Months ago: 22 MAU (+3.9%)
• Difference from 1 week ago: 0 MAU (0%)
• Posts and Comments (per week): 311 (-1 vs historic)

Average of the other 16 Instances (of Top 20, excludes lemmy.world who's similarly crashing):

• Difference from 3 Months ago: -16 MAU (-1.4%)
• Difference from 1 week ago: +3 MAU (+0.3%)
• Posts and Comments (per week): 387 (+22 vs historic)

It looks like hexbear.net is suffocating by itself. Maybe some users move from hexbear.net to lemmy.ml or the declining hexbear.net activity is forcing lemmy.ml users to be more active (I have no evidence of either, but for argument's sake say they do), even then lemmy.ml is shrinking too.

In this very conversation thread there was a particular onerous troll who kept following our conversation and downvoting everything I said ...

I did wonder what happened to that person.

New joiners, it seems obvious from the comments they leave (usually on other platforms after already leaving), don’t bother to put in the work to curate their experiences and instead simply flee ...

Seems like some efforts toward better on-boarding could return good results (could include default blocks, etc.). I have some other analytics I need to get working again first, but after, I think I'll take a stab at looking at decoupling and identifying key instance on-boarding differences that effect retention.

Edit: moved comma.

Edit 2: Looks like Pylova likes the subscribable block list idea: https://codeberg.org/quokkau/PyLova/issues/30

Encouraging people to contribute only goes so far when this place is simultaneously discouraging people's contributions. It is systemic, not limited to ML, and needs major efforts including enhanced technical capabilities to try to solve. Note that if ML ever were to be defederated, the absolute most toxic trolls would simply switch to using their alts on some other instance such as Lemmy.World, which they have announced they will do in advance, several years ago. They even indicated that they would make apps that automate the process of trying to send messages to someone, cycling through an array of alts until one is found that is not banned on that instance (or by that recipient?) - no truly does mean to simply push forward all the harder, for some.

But making a more firm stance would also send a signal about what is desired vs. not. Are calls for murder of all people in the Western World acceptable? Apparently, judging from their presence, yes.

Most places are defederated from HB - which was not always the case (I was on both StarTrek.Website and Discuss.Online prior to blocking them), but now that it is I don't worry about them so much as ML that is still sending out content that turns people away.

I don't know how to solve this problem, I only showed references in support of the fact that the problem lies there in front of us. Or at this point, behind us, since once a reputation is gained (for e.g. nostr, 4chan, etc.) it is exceedingly difficult to change.

On the whole, I think our reputation is closer to nostr and 4chan than it is to Bluesky. Institutionally at least, anything goes - including the worst CSAM. Something must be specifically blocked in order to filter it out (either that, or a new instance can include only trusted existing instances, but that runs into problems where new ones pop up all the time and will get excluded, so this approach seems not to be used by the vast majority of existing instances, at least the major ones).

I'll take a stab at looking at decoupling and identifying key instance on-boarding differences that effect retention.

Wonderful!

Looks like Pylova likes the subscribable block list idea

That team is so energetic and helpful, it's a pleasure to see it!

On the whole, I think our reputation is closer to nostr and 4chan than it is to Bluesky.

I don't go to other social media, so my only knowledge of our reputation is from people repeating things here.

Hopefully "our reputation" can jump to a different comparison scale (I wouldn't want to be compared to any of those options).

Institutionally at least, anything goes - including the worst CSAM.

Okay, I'm going to push back on this. At no point have I ever heard CSAM being accepted or allowed. The only time I've ever heard of it coming up, everyone reacted negatively. The poster was blocked, all the posts were deleted immediately, and new safeguards were put into prevent it happening again.

That team is so energetic and helpful, it's a pleasure to see it!

Agreed

Institutionally at least, anything goes - including the worst CSAM.

Perhaps this is an exceedingly poor way to describe it - I just meant that federation (like with ML, hexbear, lemmygrad, and any new instance) happens by default. Instances that host CSAM - like extremist far-right content - are quickly defederated from by the rest of the Threadiverse, but such requires effort on behalf of the instance admin. I thought, though perhaps I am wrong.

Anyway it could still be misleading even if correct, bc this is at the instance level, whereas someone still has to subscribe at the community level in order for content to begin coming in. So the potential for content - good, bad, or whatever - to spread is baked right into the ActivityPub Protocol from the start, by design. Just like what people keep saying about 4chan (though admittedly I never went there personally).

And people must have subscribed to hexbear and lemmygrad and ML communities on all of the major instances, therefore all of that content was already there for me to stumble upon as a new joiner myself, fresh from KBin where it had been severely curtailed. I - like all other new joiners - then bad a decision whether to flee this place permanently (which I almost did, and continue to revisit that thought every year or so as expectations keep not being met, making it all the harder to hold out much hope for the future) or to begin blocking people, one by one, and even making a (successful) petition to defederate discuss.online from hexbear.net.

All of which is a lot of effort, especially since it must continue to happen with each fresh new alt made to subvert bans. Each new joiner must then be subjected this again and again, like a hazing ritual that we who have been through such already now offer little to no help to new joiners to avoid. Except for your codeberg request that will help to change that - hooray!

Ultimately, it's arguably fine for places like 4chan and nostr to exist (unless you take the position that the echo chamber then breeds toxic trolls that when they leave it, act to harm others, though keep in mind that in this analogy, the Threadiverse itself is 4chan and nostr, in that we allow anything and everything, especially on ML that we then host on all of our machines too - e.g. if ML were to ever go down, that content would continue to remain, foreve, just like happened with Lemm.ee), but what's far less fine is to allow people to stumble upon it unawares, particularly when it is labeled oppositely from what it truly is. A place's reputation should proceed it, not be entirely ignored and force each new joiner to discover it all over again on their own, as what happens with ML.