rglullis
@rglullis@communick.news
- Comment on What's a good instance to be on at the moment? 4 hours ago:
Seeing the instance as infrastructure is what I want to see more of
Yes, exactly! A good manager to me is the one that is just focused on solving the problems that are on the way of the rest of the team.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 5 hours ago:
Host them on your instance, then.
Hummm, gladly?
I’m running more than 15 instances for communities. I was running alien.top which at one hosted 600k accounts with more than 2M posts + comments, a lot of them being sent to the topic-specific instances. I’m constantly reminding people that the instances are there, and that I can create communities for anyone that need it.
I just checked the first two pages (…) No Twitter thread, no Mastodon thread.
Cherry-picking data points is not the way to make an argument. That just makes you seem clueless and/or biased.
If you really want to refute my statement, you’ll need to take a look at all submissions in the past two years and compare the number of posts to twitter vs the number of posts to any Mastodon instance.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 7 hours ago:
Of course they are, the same way the vast majority of microblog users are still on Twitter compared to Mastodon.
I gave a very specific example to illustrate where Mastodon had become more relevant than Twitter. Again: it’s not about absolute numbers.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 16 hours ago:
I reply when I see absolutes such as “all communities on Lemmy are dead”, "all mods are bad ", “all communities are about politics”
- I didn’t make any of these statements
- There is a big difference between “sweeping generalizations” and “categorically correct statements”. The former are the statements you give as examples, but the latter can apply to the absolute majority of cases, even if someone has a data point (“the exception that proves the rule”) in the contrary.
It paints the platform in a bad light
Why would you think that?
The original argument was “Communities don’t need a lot of posting to survive here”, and my response is basically saying “we should strive for more than surviving”.
It seems like that instead of focusing on the part where I am calling for more action, you decided to focus on what you perceive as criticism and you try to attack that as soon as possible.
Stop using absolute statements and I’ll stop replying
It feels like your problem is not with the “absolute statements”, but that you are doing your best to reject reality.
It doesn’t matter if the number is 100% or 99% or 92.376%, what matters is that it has been two years since the Reddit boycott and we still do not have a good example of a thriving community here. We had many attempts (the /r/selfhosted people, the /r/blind), but they are by and large still on Reddit.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 17 hours ago:
Oh, wow. Thank you for a very good example for self-selection bias!
Seriously, though: why is it that you feel this intense urge to dismiss any and everything I am saying? Don’t you think that is a little bit sad that all you can do is this mindless pontification?
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 17 hours ago:
However, is giving your credit card or bank transfer information to a website
You are not giving your payment information to the website. You’d be giving to a payment processor, which has to go through all the regulatory oversight. So, yes, I trust Stripe to handle my payment information more than I’d ever trust any random instance admin with my email.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 17 hours ago:
It’s still open for registrations. The instance is not just for me.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 17 hours ago:
I did already. The solution is to charge a small payment from every user. I’ve been saying that for everyone that cares to hear since 2022.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 20 hours ago:
You don’t need 5 posts a day for a community to survive here
“Surving” != “Thriving”.
A couple of years ago, I noticed that the front page of HackerNews was consistently getting links from Mastodon posts. That was interesting because it showed that at least one significant part of the tech conversation had moved away from Twitter and into the Fediverse.
No such thing has happened for Lemmy. There is no particular community which is thriving. There is no example of subreddit community that had successfully boycotted Reddit and transplanted here. We have the usual handful of posters, each one trying to maintain their communities “alive”, but that is far from its true potential.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 20 hours ago:
My instance does not require email validation and so far I have zero spammers or bots. There is one thing I am doing different than everyone else. Can you guess what it is?
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 23 hours ago:
I’ve noticed you tend to always assume the worst before every trying to give the benefit of the doubt.
There are very legitimate reasons to not want to give your email to any random website that asks. They can be hacked, the instance might be a front for some data aggregator, etc. And if your response is “just use a masking service” or “just use a disposable email address”, then what is the point of validating the email address in the first place?
Admins add email verification because this is one extra layer of protection against automated bots, but this is far from a guarantee they are protected. It might help them to give some paper trail in case someone does something nasty on their servers, but the best they can do is take an (easy to create) email address and report to the authorities along with the IP address.
Compare with an instance that only accepts paying members:
- no bot or spammer will be interested in paying a few dollars per month to send messages
- if some spammer is stupid enough to sign up to the service and sends clear spam, then we point the ToS to them, kick them out and they will be left without any money
- we have a much stronger paper trail in case some user does something nasty.
- Comment on is there is any Lemmy server that care about privacy(does not require email), Does not impose limits on community posts like my current instance and does not have high amount of restrictions? 1 day ago:
communick.news fits all you requirements regarding users - only paying members can join, so the instance is pretty much guaranteed to be protected from spammers and bots.
Regarding your communities: I really rather keep a strict separation between “instances for communities” and “instances for groups”. The topic-specific instances I am running are meant for specific niches, but perhaps I can find one domain that can be used for more “generic” subjects. Would you be interested in that?
- Comment on The recordings of the speed demos from FediForum June 2025 are now online 1 day ago:
I did the demo for CareerCupid and the AP toolkit. AMA.
- Comment on Voting in the threadiverse 2 days ago:
The problem then is that by responding, you’re engaging with it which typically helps it spread in the algorithms*
But then the solution is to fix “the algorithms”. One more reason that I should say we should get rid of “votes” is that they are an artificial constraint created by the closed social media platforms that gate-keep and limit user choice. If “the alogorithms” are plentiful, easy to customize, and chosen by the user, then everyone is able to rank and sort the data as they see fit.
Removing downvotes and banning users who disagree is the typical cult strategy
The only ones with power to remove contents are moderators and admins. If moderation is transparent (as it should be), then it is easy to figure out if mods are are acting in good faith and according to the interests with the community. Then it is up to us as users to figure out if we should continue participating in that community or leave it behiind.
- Comment on Voting in the threadiverse 2 days ago:
you can’t downvote just wrong information anymore.
If “wrong information” can be properly defined, then either you challenge it (by responding, calling it out) or by reporting it. Downvoting it just because it you think it is not appropriate is a recipe for creating echo chambers.
- Comment on Voting in the threadiverse 2 days ago:
Do you think vote sould be private ? Public ? And why ?
Making them private is absolute idiotic. People participating in a discussion forum are willing to engage in a public conversation, if you are not willing to respond in public, then don’t respond at all. And if you think that the original comment is bad/harmful/offensive, report it and move on.
Are you sastified with the current voting system ? And why ?
“Votes” are not real votes. It’s just a terrible misnomer for “Liking” and “Disliking”. I think we should get rid of votes altogether and use the real vocabulary.
I’d also would like a system where users could define their own scoring algorithm, and I would like to assign different weights depending on the person and the topic/community. I for one think that downvotes (dislikes) should only be counted if you are a member of the community and if you have made a positive contribution to the discussion.
What way do you imagine to highlight content and improve search, discoverability ?
I’d like to be able to follow people just to see what they are liking/commenting on.
- Comment on Clarifying Costs of Running the Fediverse with Jerry from Infosec.Exchange 3 days ago:
This is not the flex you think it is…
- Comment on Clarifying Costs of Running the Fediverse with Jerry from Infosec.Exchange 4 days ago:
What is a “substantial amount of people”, relatively to the total amount of people in the Fediverse that (a) are already here, (b) do not object to using stripe and © still don’t donate anyway?
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 4 days ago:
Not charities, the underlying projects. I am pledging to donate 20% of the profits to Mastodon, Lemmy, Matrix Foundation, Funkwhale, GoToSocial, Pixelfed, etc.
For that to happen Communick needs first to turn a profit, though.
- Comment on Clarifying Costs of Running the Fediverse with Jerry from Infosec.Exchange 4 days ago:
Things would improve by a lot in Mastodon if they implemented separate storage engines between local and remote resources. Then instance admins could have a way to host, e.g, local resources on their own infrastructure but push all remote instances to some “shared cache”, based on IPFS/torrent/TahoeLAFS.
- Comment on Search sucks! Yeah, it does, and here's why. 4 days ago:
I understand where you are coming from: search is not easy, but at the same time I think we already have solutions that are “good enough” and doesn’t require a ton of work from the developers. PostgreSQL FTS works well enough to power the search system for Lemmy and it works out-of-the-box, for example.
- Comment on Search sucks! Yeah, it does, and here's why. 4 days ago:
Is this rant Fediverse-specific?
- Comment on Clarifying Costs of Running the Fediverse with Jerry from Infosec.Exchange 4 days ago:
- There is a lack of payment options. A lot of people that use the Fediverse use it because it is the only Free Software platform that there is. And those people would be the most reliant of it to keep existing. Because for them to go back to Facebook or Twitter is not even an option. Yet those same people cannot donate because donations require things that are not libre. I really hope that more options will appear to support as many donation channels as possible in as many libre projects as possible. So those people that are the most passionate about the whole thing will be able to support it too.
Realistically, how many people object to using a payment processor online on the grounds of “it’s not FOSS”?
- Comment on what fediverse software is similar to lemmy? 6 days ago:
Brutalinks does not have separate communities, so it works more like HackerNews/lobste.rs
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 6 days ago:
If we all donate a little bit to the project, their budget will be larger. If their budget is larger, they can get more steady collaborators.
And even if they can’t get more people, by helping them we show we value all the work they have done already.
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 6 days ago:
Then you charge by default and carve out exceptions to those who can’t afford. Instead of having 2% of people donating and 98% of freeloaders, make it that every 5 paying subscribers guarantee one free spot. Alternatively, set up a Caffe sospeso system where donations are still accepted, but accounted directly for someone who wants to claim it.
There is really no excuse to keep the donation model as a rule.
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 6 days ago:
I am not disagreeing, I just think these options are not mutually exclusive. We should try all of those that we can. And while I can not force schools and universities to implement their own Mastodon instance for their students, I can pay a little bit per month to support developers and service providers of the libre platforms out there.
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 6 days ago:
It shut down because the admin team didn’t want to do it anymore.
It shut down because the admin team didn’t want to do it for free anymore. There were just too many people, too many bad actors for little reward. By charging for access, you manage to both increase the reward and reduce the amount of people, so the whole equation changes significantly.
how does charging for access change anything? The owner could decide they have had enough, walk away, and shut everything down anyway, no?
Sure, but the amount of pain that I get from my ~50 paying customers is infinitely less than the headaches that you’ll be getting.
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 6 days ago:
I didn’t insult anyone. You are putting names out there of admins of existing instances when I was talking about the general story of about how there are constant wheel of new people coming up.
You are gasping as straws, as if ostracizing me would ever validate your arguments. This is getting tiring.
- Comment on We have to solve the money problem! 6 days ago:
Instead of going for these complicated architectures, it would be better to simplify and make activitypub less dependent on server software.