Pamasich

@Pamasich@kbin.earth

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some users have zero upvotes on their posts/comments?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But there's zero information gained from a self upvote. If I didn't like my comment, I'd either delete it or edit it until I do.

  Of course I like my comment if I keep it up, so a self upvote adds nothing.
  The only advantage I see is to make this place look more like Reddit, which isn't really something I care about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some users have zero upvotes on their posts/comments?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Might have to clarify that my instance (or rather Mbin in general) doesn't do auto upvotes.

  Though it doesn't really change my stance. You can swap it around to removing the auto upvote, I don't really see the point behind that being possible either.

  If you like your content, keep it up. If you don't like it, either edit it until you do or delete it.
  Upvotes and downvotes are for judging the content of others, not your own. So be it adding one when there's zero, or removing the upvote automatically added by your instance, I don't see the point in either being possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some users have zero upvotes on their posts/comments?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  In my opinion I shouldn't even have the ability to upvote my own comments. I don't really see the point behind doing so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Minecraft able to be forced to put restrictions on online servers, but web browsers aren't held accountable for providing access to the web?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They aren't. The restrictions are mandated by Microsoft, not governments.

  They do have to take action in regards to their own Realms servers, but that's it. Restrictions on random unaffiliated Java servers are either for brand image or other selfish reasons. For example, someone here mentions chat for UK teens, that one is almost certainly to force ID verification into the game, not to actually comply with anything. It's for data harvesting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any service that provide a community growth chart?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Mbin (another Reddit based fediverse project) has that exact chart in the magazine (community) panel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨theoretical considerations on identity management⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The big problem with improving how this stuff works on the fediverse is that you want to stay compatible with other software and instances running older versions of your software. In general, ActivityPub projects expect the id of an actor to be dereferenceable. They expect it to point to a valid JSON-LD document describing the actor which they can request. If you break this expected contract by using a local file as your identity, or even just a non-https URI like did:, you're going to lose intercompatibility with other instances that don't handle that.

  ---

  Also, regarding your description of the three parts, I think you're misunderstanding something that I see people misunderstand often.

  The identity provider basically only makes a proof that "you are you" : you give it your login credentials and it gives you a kind of token that authenticates (proves your identity) to other services. like, i'm on discuss.tchncs.de, but i can post to lemmy.world. this is because the discuss.tchncs.de server says to lemmy.world that i indeed have this account on this server. so they prove my identity in a way.

  So, I might be wrong here, but I interpret you as saying basically that you're authoring posts on lemmy.world with your account provided by discuss.tchncs.de. That's not really how this works. Your data hoster is the instance you have your account on, not the one the community is on. Your instance just shares the posts you make on it with the community, but all it receives is a copy. The canonical version is on your instance, discuss.tchncs.de.

  Again, data hoster and identity provider are currently the same thing. The fediverse is just a bunch of interconnected silos, you do things within your own instance and then other instances receive a copy of the thing you did. You never author things directly on another instance than your own.

  The token stuff there sounds like SSO (single sign on), but it doesn't look like either of those instances support that. So not sure what you were referring to there. The public key to verify the signature maybe? That's more meant to ensure that the object is actually authored by you iirc though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the government raided your house and found a bunch of .mkv files but you insist its all legally obtained, how do they ascertain if they are actually pirated or not?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm not a lawyer and haven't had such a situation before, but isn't the burden of proof supposed to be on the accuser, not the accused? They're the ones who need to prove the files have been illegally obtained, not the other way around.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fediverse needs a Q&A (Questions & Answers) service before Quora runs out of money⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I understand the need for features when it comes to StackExchange (though Piefed has that functionality now), but what did Quora do that existing fediverse services like Lemmy can't replicate?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They are either much higher or much lower than what the servers themselves report.

  Do you have examples? FediDB takes its data (like total users, active users, and total posts) from the NodeInfo endpoint of the instance, so it should be accurate unless the instance reports wrong numbers there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can we make federation less dependent on domain names?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh yeah, this does not sound okay.

  If user@delta creates a post on community@alpha, their post lives on delta, not alpha. Community@alpha should not be able to unilaterally decide that the post should instead live on beta. Delta needs to be the one to decide that.

  Sorry for the political analogy, but this sounds to me like Russia and the US deciding on Ukraine's future without involving the latter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can we make federation less dependent on domain names?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is Piefed implementing this in some weird way?

  Iirc previous work on this in the fediverse involved a very clear way of doing it that makes sure to address the issue you're bringing up there.

  The idea is that you send activities to announce the move and mark the original actor as having moved to the new actor (and the new actor as being the new home of the original actor). Instances then verify this by whether that actor relationship is specified correctly on both sides (does going new actor -> origin actor -> new actor lead back to where we started from?).

  Is that not also Piefed's implementation? Because if it is, I don't see your scenario being viable. Since the move needs to be acknowledged by both sides, it cannot just be faked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the United States of America was renamed, what should it be?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the US naming themselves after America isn't really any different from the European Union naming itself after Europe.

  It's "United States OF America", not "United States that are America". It's a bunch of united states that exist in America, not the states that make up America.

  Please assume that stale carrot man isn't in office and that the U.S. is currently being a reasonable and humane country that actually stands for democracy, liberty, and freedom.

  It's not like the US was a leader in those things before Trump. He didn't invent the issues, he just made them more visible. The US has always overthrown democratically elected governments to install dictators, and people have complained about its own election system for ages. There's a lack of consumer and labor protections, and the fact you only have two right-wing parties and anything left of center is considered extremist opinions doesn't help at all. It's honestly hard to imagine the US actually standing for democracy, liberty, and freedom, beyond empty propaganda.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would a fediverse alternative of Discord be possible?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There's actually shoot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"A curated list of UI clients for accessing the ActivityPub Fediverse social network"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Piefed has only 2k too and it has 6 apps on this list.

  Mbin is at 1.4k according to fedidb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"A curated list of UI clients for accessing the ActivityPub Fediverse social network"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Shame there's still only one for Mbin after all this time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Votely Political Quiz - Most Accurate 3D Political Compass⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  the nordic countries are single-branch

  According to this official government page Norway at least does have separation of powers into multiple branches. I haven't looked into the other nordic countries, but it's hard to believe that they don't at least separate out the judiciary (courts) from the rest.

  Power in Norway is divided into three branches:

  • the Storting – the legislative branch
  • the Government – the executive branch
  • the courts – the judicial branch

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨List of RSS feeds distributed by each software on Fediverse⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your list doesn't look complete in regards to Mbin. For example, tags seem to have RSS feeds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨we need more users⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AFAIK, content-centric networks are only lemmy and piefed as of today, modeled after Reddit.

  There's also Mbin, which I'm using. And NodeBB and Discourse if we go beyond Reddit-inspired and include forums.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What principles you wish to see social networks (or the fediverse) adopt in their design?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I do think that some direct democracy would be good, but there's a reason why Switzerland still has representatives too.

  Having to vote on every single moderation action would be a pain to deal with. Not just in terms of fatigueing users and causing only few to actually participate, but also because it'll slow down the process and empower bad actors to cause more damage.

  What should be a thing imo is what Switzerland has: the ability for regular users to propose new rules and then vote on approving them, and the ability to undo any moderation action through a democratic vote. Both of those being binding.

  Also of course the ability to vote a mod out if they're abusing their power. That's something we're lacking IRL too.

  ---

  Edit: On your other point:

  It gets a bit tricky with technology. Ideally we could do things like democratically decide to have a voice chat (if that's what people want) and somehow 3 months later the platform has a voice chat... But it's not that easy, software development doesn't work this way.

  I think one thing that's possible is to copy the GOG model. Have a wishlist of features that people can add to and vote on. The highest voted features you prioritize in development.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think posting to a group (like a lemmy community) is a good idea because they act like relays. On Mastodon, your posts are only sent to your followers and people you mention. If you're not followed by anyone and don't mention anyone, your post won't be federated anywhere. Lemmy communities however will share your post with all their followers, allowing it to reach a larger audience. So unless you already have a huge audience, I think microblogging users that want to be heard can benefit greatly from interacting with groups.

  To make microblog posts more appealing to Lemmy users, do consider separating out a plaintext line at the start to act as a title. Lemmy iirc takes the first paragraph of the body as the title if there's no actual title given, and that can look awkward when that first paragraph is your entire post. This title pragraph shouldn't include formatting or mentions or hashtags.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They don’t just use office from the web, via Linux? You can access excel, word, …, all of that in a browser.

  Web office has barely any features compared to the desktop thing, iirc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ActivityPub (the model that the fediverse uses for federation) is publishing-based, as the name implies. Like email, you're sending messages to a list of recipients. Usually that's your followers, people you mention, and the person you're replying to.
  If the recipient list is empty, then your message won't leave your instance.

  Threadiverse users don't really have to worry about this too much because communities act as relays, sending your posts to all of the community's followers as well. But microblogging instances don't have that luxury. If they don't have any followers, aren't writing a reply, and don't mention anyone... their post isn't federated anywhere.

  It's also worth considering that only public data is federated. For example I wouldn't be able to recover my bookmarks from another instance, and it doesn't seem like Lemmy federates your list of subscriptions. Your posts may still exist elsewhere even when your instance goes down, but that's not necessarily the data people want to be able to recover.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it really worth starting a lemmy community?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Don't forget the Lemmy Federate step, otherwise that would be the obvious answer to that last step. Especially if you're on a smaller instance.

  Other instances won't get your community and posts therein automatically, only instances with subscribers do. Lemmy Federate automatically uses a bot to subscribe to the community from various instances that have opted in to the service, allowing your community to reach those instances from the start.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does each country have a book/library of the laws of the land that a commoner can consult to check if they're about to do something illegal?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Switzerland has Fedlex. For example here's the constitution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would this be possible with the fediverse?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  What if there were a way to do this with multiple fediverse services?
  What if you have an article, and the comments are 1 lemmy user, 1 mastodon user, 1 misskey user, 1 friendica user, ect ect ect?
  Basically start making ANY fediverse service a viable way to leave a comment, which can be replied to by any other fediverse user, regardless of service?

  That's just the base promise of ActivityPub, the basis of the fediverse. It's not a hypothetical, but rather reality.

  That scenario you mentioned, it's not only Lemmy users that could reply there. All the ones you mentioned would have had access to that blog's comment section and been able to leave replies.

  So if you have user@lemmy.world, and you go to his community, you see a thread, you comment.....your comment is now in the comments section of his blog.

  That's just literally the same as me looking at this Lemmy thread from Mbin, leaving a comment, and it appearing on Lemmy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fediverse wide cross-instance / cross-platform link substitution [UX improvement thoughts]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure if you're already aware, but that relative link there is broken in Lemmy, Mbin, and Piefed.

  If you used it manually, I'd suggest not using relative links in posts targeted at users from software that hasn't implemented them yet.

  If it's some automated feature, I don't think it should be in the source property of the federated JSON in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why isint lemmy more popular?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  most users find the most popular platforms and don't have a reason to move on

  This is definitely a good point. Is even visible here, with not just Mbin but also Piefed still barely having users compared to Lemmy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why isint lemmy more popular?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  federation and instances is a confusing prospect

  Which is why we shouldn't frontload people with that stuff. They don't need to understand decentralization from the start, let them familiarize themselves with the fediverse first before throwing that at them. Just recommend a default instance, maybe change which every few posts if centralization is a concern. They'll pick up the idea of instances as they interact with the fediverse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to interact with mastodon instances from lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Like I said, if you want more integration than what Lemmy offers, do consider switching to Mbin instead. It targets both, the threadiverse and the microblogging side of the fediverse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All that's needed is the reminder (as visible as possible) that content you are looking at is incomplete and you can find the more complete version on this or that URL or app.

  That's what Mbin does, it displays a banner on federated user profiles explaining that they may be incomplete, with a link to the same profile on the originating instance.