It’s a lot like email really. If the 14 MB of storage hotmail once offered wasn’t enough for you, switching to the 1 GB of Gmail may have seemed appealing. If Google seems a bit too creepy for you, consider switching to proton or something.

If the admins of your current instance don’t like your cat memes, feel free to move to another one where cats and dogs are equally appreciated.

Nah, foget about Lemmy. The name isn’t edgy enough. Just think about Discord, Squabble, Insultr, TauntTornado, FuryFurnace or FistFight.

Totally remember the lack of apps. Initially, I just had to use Lemmy through a mobile browser. Lots of devs were working hard to publish their apps, and after a few months we had lots of options. That was just amazing how quickly it happened.

BTW shout out to Bean, my favorite Lemmy client. It’s not perfect, so in some cases I still use Voyager to fill in the gaps, so bonus points for Voyager too.

And the papers needs to in the appropriate letterbox by 2023-09-20T16:00.

And it’s a government institution too. Those aren’t well known for their sense of humor.

I asked bing to tldr the article, and here’s what I got:

Here is a summary of the article you requested:

The article discusses how the recent changes in the terms of service of Threads, a popular social media platform, affect the Fediverse, a network of decentralized and interoperable social media platforms. The article argues that the new terms of service are incompatible with the Fediverse’s values and principles, and that they pose a threat to the Fediverse’s future.

The main points of the article are:

• Threads is a social media platform that allows users to create and join communities based on their interests. It is part of the Fediverse, which means it can communicate with other platforms that use the same protocols, such as Mastodon, Pleroma, and Pixelfed¹.
• The Fediverse is based on the idea of self-hosting, which means that anyone can run their own instance of a platform and have full control over their data and moderation policies. The Fediverse also promotes federation, which means that different instances can interact with each other and share content across platforms².
• In August 2023, Threads announced a new terms of service that introduced several restrictions and requirements for users and instances that want to use its service. Some of these include:
  • Users must agree to let Threads collect and use their personal data for advertising and analytics purposes³.
  • Users must follow Threads’ community guidelines, which prohibit certain types of content, such as hate speech, harassment, nudity, violence, etc.
  • Instances must register with Threads and obtain a license to federate with its service. Instances that fail to comply with Threads’ terms of service or community guidelines may be suspended or banned from federation.
• The article claims that these changes are harmful to the Fediverse for several reasons:
  • They violate the Fediverse’s ethos of user autonomy and privacy, by forcing users to give up their data and follow Threads’ rules.
  • They create a power imbalance between Threads and other platforms, by giving Threads the ability to dictate who can federate with its service and what content can be shared.
  • They undermine the Fediverse’s diversity and innovation, by discouraging users and developers from exploring alternative platforms and features.
• The article concludes by urging users and instances to boycott Threads and support other platforms that respect the Fediverse’s values and principles. It also suggests that the Fediverse should develop more robust standards and protocols to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 31/08/2023 (1) TLDR This - Article Summarizer & Online Text Summarizing Tool. https://tldrthis.com/. (2) TLDR 2023-08-14. https://tldr.tech/tech/2023-08-14. (3) Generative AI in big tech ‍ , Stability AI … - tldr.tech. https://tldr.tech/ai/2023-08-09.

You can’t really kill a decentralized service without burning down the whole internet. Another way would be to offer a competing services, but that hasn’t killed e-mail yet.

You don’t see governments or companies using gmail, now do you. Well, small unprofessional companies do, but everyone else has a domain, website, mail server and all the usual internet infrastructure in place. Why should companies and governments use TweetBook or Snapstargram for official communication when they can host their own instance. For the time being, the problem has been that large majority of the people are using these unstable platforms, so companies decided to follow.

I’ve heard about some subs being forced back open, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that’s what’s really happening.

This is truly sad. No matter how you protest, the house always wins in this game. Even though this blackout was doomed from the start, at least now Reddit has shown their hand. Now it’s clear that I want absolutely nothing to do wit that corporation ever again.

Sounds like the kind of title you would find in the Journal of Immaterial Science.

Just noticed that r/tifu had a pretty good summary too: “ Without effective tools (which Reddit has frequently promised and then failed to deliver), moderators cannot combat spammers, bad actors, or the entities who enable either, and without the freedom to choose how and where they access Reddit, many contributors will simply leave. Rather than hosting creativity and in-depth discourse, the platform will soon feature only recycled content, bot-driven activity, and an ever-dwindling number of well-informed visitors. The very elements which differentiate Reddit – the foundations that draw its audience – will be eliminated, reducing the site to another dead cog in the Ennui Engine.”

In other words, people who actually create quality content will be gone. I wonder if the remaining people don’t mind the bot spam and reposts. If they really don’t, then Reddit can just milk them for ad money forever, and I guess this is the plan. However, if people do mind, then ad revenue will begin to decline as more and more subs begin to be filled with trash.

Say hello to Odysee.com

Today I logged in on my trash account to see what’s going on. On r/gaming there was a really interesting conversation about the protest. Seems to me that there is no shortage of people who merely see the protest as an inconvenience. Many of them don’t even see any issues with the default reddit app. It’s sad that there are so many people like that.

Well, they seem to like the ad infested reddit, so let them stay there.

Using flickr or google would be a lighter option. If you put some pictures in a place like that, they are probably going to stay there, but the TOS does leave a very convenient backdoor open. If flickr messes up a database migration, or the datacenter gets hit by a meteor one day, and all of your photos disappear, you can’t hold them accountable. Every option has some issues…

That is a good point. I would discover interesting new places when people specifically mention them. When someone did that, I would go to that sub, sort by top of all time and figure out if I actually care about that place or not. The trouble is, I didn’t bump into cool new subs very frequently.

If you choose to use Pixelfed, you should probably be active in your chosen instance and donate regularly.

I solved that problem by using multireddits, and never visiting r/all. I had one for uplifting stuff, another one for science stuff and so on. In Narwhal and Slide, and they both made it possible to put multireddits in the center stage. Then I tried the default reddit app, and multireddits were hidden behind so many taps, that they must be about remove that feature soon.

I’ve also noticed that compartmentalizing my youtube experience has improved it significantly. For instance, science and technology will stay in one container, while scifi, anime, games, movies etc. goes into another container. It used to be possible to do this in Youtube by making dedicated lists of subscriptions. I used to have a list for all the computer stuff so that when I want to see computers, I would go there. When I felt like watching tea related contend, I would go to the tea list instead and I would se no computers at all. It was great… until YouTube decided to get rid of this feature.

Nowadays it’s just one big bess where the algorithm decides what you should watch today.

Have you noticed that when children try to explain something mundane, they end up rambling on on using lots and lots of simple words, even though you could have said the same thing in a single sentence? Well, that’s because children aren’t that experienced in concise expression. Adults face the same situation when discussing more complex subjects on Twitter. An experienced writer could be able to squeeze complex ideas into a single tweet, but normal people just can’t without making some serious compromises. You could cut the story short and risk being misunderstood or split the idea it into 42 separate tweets.

Even if you manage to find the most concise expression, it might also be so obscure and antiquated, that the other people just wouldn’t understand it. Seems like the limitations of Twitter make it very difficult to discuss complex topics such as climate change, immigration, religion, ethics, politics etc. without starting WW3 while you’re at it.

Alternatively, you could always include a bunch of disclaimers with all of your comments just to point out that you’re actually only saying about 10% of what you actually believe.

BTW I support solar power (with many caveats), nuclear power has its downsides (even more asterisks here), and I use a paper filter when making coffee (super complicated topic).

I always thought the original idea of witter was to share an interesting link with a headline. You know, like this:

Pi-hole FTL v5.23, Web v5.20 and Core v5.17 released https://pi-hole.net/blog/2023/05/28/pi-hole-ftl-v5-23-web-v5-20-and-core-v5-17-released/

If you’re trying to have a meaningful conversation about the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, it’s going to feel very awkward trying post your ideas one sentence at a time.