Being a scientist doesn’t mean you have the technical knowledge to run a public facing server.
Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I feel like scientists should move towards open source solutions … I feel like most scientists are smart enough to launch a mastodon server, but well.
earphone843@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
Being a scientist kinda means to me you’re able to follow a very easy to understand guide to install mastodon on …
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Being a scientist also kinda means understanding what are your strengths, and how you can combine them with other people who are smart along very specific narrow vectors.
Being a scientist means understanding that if you work together with the right kind of smart, curious people you can build amazing things that will improve the world.
Being a scientist means understanding the modern business world is utter bullshit and will rot any science it touches to the core.
Being a scientist, like truly living that ethos means being someone who believes the truth is important and that there are power structures who will fight tooth and nail to subdue that truth or hoard it to themselves for personal gain.
Being a scientist thus effectively means I would expect that after having a brief conversation with you that you would at least understand the grave danger that entrusting science communication in another for profit social media company poses and how it doesn’t seem sensible to take that risk when the actual material barriers to creating Fediverse communities aren’t actually that high.
Don’t get me wrong, those hurdles are real, the fediverse can be confusing, there are lots of growing pains here… however, not every scientist needs to become an expert in selfhosting Fediverse software, and not every scientist needs to become a Fediverse evangelist (although it wouldn’t hurt), but we do need to connect boldly and clearly the hypocrisy of supposedly truth valuing people all shepherding dutifully onto another platform that will silence and betray them violently.
Scientists are inherently aligned with modern progressive politics, or rather scientists need to understand they are at everything up to physical danger from being hurt by conservatives and they need to understand that makes them fundamentally aligned with modern progressive politics.
There is no “I don’t want to get political here” and the failure of the science community at large to recognize how embracing Bluesky as if it was a genuine solution to the unfolding catastrophe of science being defunded and destroyed is embarrassing. Those of us on the Fediverse should be kind, but also we should make fun of them for not using their brains. They clearly have them. Fucking use them you fools.
Natanael@infosec.pub 6 days ago
Bluesky is a public benefit corporation. That’s very different from for profit
glitchdx@lemmy.world 1 week ago
while I agree, the reality of the situation is that when you get down to comparing feature to feature, open source solutions tend to be technically inferior to proprietary ones.
I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).
I use lemmy because I hate u/spez, not because it’s more feature complete than reddit (it isn’t).
I use blender because it’s free and it’s actually kinda great, if all free and open source software was like blender, then it would be a no-brainer to use FOSS all of the time, and it would be easy to convince the normies to do the same.
also also
I’m using linux mint, i have minor complaints about it, but nothing worse than what microsoft is currently doing with windows. It’s just different, and that bothers me. middle click paste is the bane of my existence, but other people swear by it. Just before I switched over, I learned about windows 10’s built in emoji keyboard, and I really liked that. A year later (literally last week) I discovered a program that does most of what the windows emoji thingy did, and I can manually edit a keybind for the function to accomplish amost the same thing. FOSS, yay, it’s free if you don’t value your time in currency amounts. FOSS could be so good if only it were good.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I use linux because I hate microsoft, not because it’s more feature complete than windows (it isn’t).
lol… “Feature complete” if you want terrible features.
Zink@programming.dev 6 days ago
Yeah. Another Linux mint user here, and when it comes to “feature” differences with Windows it’s usually for the better. I describe it to people as the difference between an OS trying to fulfill the diverse needs of all the stakeholders in a mega corporation, versus an OS that was made to serve the needs of only the users.
For a normal mainstream user that pretty much just needs a web browser and maybe a local document/spreadsheet editor it is faster and stays out of the way.
For a power user that fiddles with the system like a lot of people on Lemmy probably are, you learn different ways to fix different issues on the two. Linux allows you the control to do what you want with your machine, and that also means you can do bad stuff. So there’s always a tradeoff.
For people somewhere in the middle, maybe a normal user who has niche hardware for their hobby, it’s a toss up. I’m sure Windows comes out ahead due to its popularity, which means that’s where the vendor puts their effort.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 6 days ago
i just want it to work without having to fix it
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 week ago
Bluesky is open source though
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
No, aspects of the Bluesky system are open source. The moderation and filtering layer is effectively centralized, is specifically not clarified to leave open the possibility for monetization such as forcing as on users, and even if you could theoretically run your own Bluesky network… it would never be a useful alternative to the Official Bubble maintained by the Bluesky corporation that you must submit to or be left out in the cold interacting with users only on alternate, small personal networks.
Natanael@infosec.pub 6 days ago
3rd party moderation tools already exists, using the same API as the official moderation system, available to subscribe to even directly in the official app. If you don’t want bluesky’s moderation decisions enforced, you can run a different client which don’t apply the bluesky labels (or if the bluesky appview blocks something entirely, you can circumvent that and retrieve it directly from that user’s PDS)
is specifically not clarified to leave open the possibility for monetization such as forcing as on users
What
The network is specifically designed around portability and content addressing so they can’t lock you in
it would never be a useful alternative to the Official Bubble maintained by the Bluesky corporation that you must submit to or be left out in the cold interacting with users only on alternate, small personal networks.
There are already plenty of people running their own self hosted PDS servers to host their account, talking to the rest of the bluesky users, using 3rd party moderation filters and 3rd party clients, with 3rd party feed generators to view stuff like topic specific feeds
Also there’s bridgy so you can talk across Mastodon / bluesky by letting bridgy mirror posts and replies between the two networks
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Is the appview part of Bluesky open source? If so why not? How does that not make saying “Bluesky is open source” an inaccurate statement, or at least an incomplete statement? Can somebody reasonably run their own relay while handling a realistic amount of data from interactions?
Also there’s bridgy so you can talk across Mastodon / bluesky by letting bridgy mirror posts and replies between the two networks
A bridge is something you build and maintain, requiring constant maintenance, that joins a place that is connected with a place that is not.
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Never meet your heroes. If a scientist is human, they’re as fallible as any other.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Just because they know using Mastodon they are bad people? What the hell kind of take is that?
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I’m just saying, because someone is a scientist absolutely does not absolve them of human fallibility. I just don’t like the take of “because scientist, therefore smart or wise” and that’s not true, they’re just (hopefully) educated and credible in their one specific field and nothing else.
echodot@feddit.uk 6 days ago
Right but Mastodon is irritating to use isn’t it it has actual problems. I think it’s intellectually dishonest to pretend that it doesn’t have problems and therefore anyone not using it is being ignorant.
earphone843@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
It’s a take that apparently requires a lack of reading comprehension on your part.
echodot@feddit.uk 6 days ago
And absolute rudeness on yours.
I’m just a little sick of this attitude that everyone on here seems to have that everyone should be using Mastodon without consideration for the fact that it does have quite a large number of downsides. It’s ridiculous not to accept that fact and not to want to improve the platform so that the downside aren’t there and then people would use it.
You can’t berate people for not using the product you want them to use if the product you want them to use is annoying to use
naught101@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Some of us have. There are a few science focused servers.
Miaou@jlai.lu 6 days ago
Never worked in academia eh? Plenty of dumb (and, more importantly here, computer illiterate) people there too.
moe93@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
It costs time and money. The handful of times I published articles in an open access journal, I had to pay close to $5K USD per publication.
Theoretically, researchers can publish on Mastodon or something similar but that unfortunately won’t give us the reach we need. That might be fine with well established names, but for dumb-dumbs like myself who are still trying to make a name for ourselves in our field, we want the highest impact publisher we can find. Those typically come with a price tag.
Sometimes the grant also dictates acceptable publishers were you can submit your manuscript.
Sadly, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Most people who work as “scientists” aren’t actually scientists.
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Define “Scientist”.
ubergeek@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Most scientists aren’t allowed to do stuff like that, or purely just don’t have the time.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Oh know how. Just because that scientists doesn’t mean that they are necessarily particularly computer literate. I won’t have to explain to a university professor that wireless electricity doesn’t exist and the Wi-Fi is only for internet. So yeah.
jayandp@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I mean, wireless electricity tech does exist, it just sucks and is horribly inefficient at any reasonable distance.
echodot@feddit.uk 6 days ago
Well there’s two possible implementations of wireless power transfer.
There’s the way we use to charge our phones, Which is just an electromagnetic effect with no real way to extend its range. That technology has progressed as far as it’s ever going to get.
The other way is through power beaming using infrared lasers and special crystals. That technology does have potential but is nowhere close to being consumer ready yet. One day a router may include both features but not today and certainly not in 2016 when this happened.
naught101@lemmy.world 1 week ago
What… Are you taking about? I know hundreds of scientists and the vast majority of them interact with social media just as much as normal people.
finder585@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’d reckon that managing a social media server is more involved than just using social media.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 6 days ago
Not required to join the fediverse, only to host your own community yourself, which is NOT what scientists need to do (unless they want to).
ubergeek@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Using social media is far removed from operating your own publicly available social media server.
This coming from someone who is trying to get most mastodon usage in higher ed. Profs aren’t the ones who operate these things.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 week ago
University IT departments don’t want to be running some random Mastodon on the server anyway. It’s got nothing to do with the universities day-to-day operations it’s just an extra thing that would be required on top of what they already do.
Also the only university professors who would actually be able to run the mastered on server themselves will be those in the computer science domain. A biologist isn’t going to know how to do it any more than any random member of the public.
naught101@lemmy.world 6 days ago
My question was about the “scientists are not allowed to” part. I’ve never heard to such restrictions, and been in the field for more than a decade.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
And when is the next circle jerk about how making an account on the Fediverse is too complicated for “normal people?”