Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development • Hacker News Board

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#151

Post by rolleiflex » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

We have something similar to this, Aether. https://getaether.net. (code at github.com/nehbit/aether)

Always glad to see more eyeballs on the space, so I wish then the best. Here are a few differences I can see at the first glance:

- Aether is decentralised (as in torrent) this appears to be federated. That means Aether truly has no servers and every user is a peer, while federated means there are smaller ‘Reddits’ as servers that talk to each other.

- By proxy that means we can’t really have a web app unfortunately (working on it by the way of running a daemon on a raspberry pi) and they can - we need a native app running on your machine and seeding context to the network.

- By another proxy, this means Aether avoids the issue of having a ‘middle management’ in the form of the ownership of your home server that federated networks have. You are the home server, so no one can control what you see. We call this user sovereignty

- In Aether we have elections which elect mods based on popular vote and you control who is a mod, precisely because the ‘social compiler’ runs on your machine and allows you to compile it however you want. Two people with two different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different communities

- We have a mod audit log and have had it for a while - everyone’s mod actions are visible to everyone (this I think they also have)

- Lastly, we have made the decision to not monetise Aether itself and create a team communication app called Aether Pro, and monetise that. This creates a ‘Chinese wall’ between where we make our money and the P2P network, which means it’s a shield against drifting towards trying to make money from a social network. The code bases are separate but similar, so that also means work done on the Pro helps Aether as well. We have gotten some funding for the Pro, and we consider the P2P version a ‘marketing / goodwill expense’ in the context of that funding. That aligns us towards making sure Aether is long-term viable, well maintained and monetisation-free.

In contrast I think they’ve gotten money to work directly on this, which has both good and more hazardous sides. In summary, we opted for a long term structure that has less moral hazard (in my opinion, of course), in favour of a more stable app without a need for monetisation that has fewer, more stable releases.

For context, here's how a recent thread looks on my Aether client: https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#152

Post by gregf » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

holidaygoose wrote: post #64

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

I would say reddit is on the far left not the far right, you can't have any opinion that isn't towards the left on reddit with being attacked.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#153

Post by TulliusCicero » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #119

judge2020 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is always 'how do i allow this user to reset their password', or more 'how do i verifiably contact the user'/'how do i verify someone emailing support is who they say they are' - without email, it's completely on the user to know and remember their password, something a lot of people can't do (and most don't use a p/w manager). HN does fine here since it's a 'tech' community where the majority likely does…

If you choose to opt out of email then you also choose to opt out of email support and being able to reset passwords via email. Two factor auth solutions let you store a one time recovery code for example that you write down or store somewhere safe, that's one option if you care to support it but I wouldn't mind losing the email only features you mentioned either.

> If you choose to opt out of email then you also choose to opt out of email support and being able to reset passwords via email.

And the users will get mad and blame the service provider. That said users are dumb/wrong or whatever is irrelevant, what matters to the business is that they're pissing off users and getting a bad reputation. Thus, requiring emails from the user is entirely rational and in fact is a good business practice.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#154

Post by lodovic » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

holidaygoose wrote: post #64

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

No moderation: right wing posts flourish. Strong moderation: left wing posts flourish.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#155

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

holidaygoose wrote: post #64

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

It's because everyone puts up this herculean effort.

There's a large population of people out there with views that annoy left-wing people, who don't really have a place on most internet platforms, because all internet platforms are left wing, because the dominant culture of silicon valley is much more left wing than the mean of, say, US citizens. (And everyone who wants to keep their job pretends to be more left wing than they are, too.)

Anyway, this means there's this mob of people without a place to talk, and they want such a place. So if a place ever opens up that doesn't strictly persecute right-wingers- well, it's like being a town during the inquisition that doesn't persecute witches. Obviously, all the witches are going to flock to you!

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#156

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

holidaygoose wrote: post #64

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

It's because everyone puts up this herculean effort.

There's a large population of people out there with views that annoy left-wing people, who don't really have a place on most internet platforms, because all internet platforms are left wing, because the dominant culture of silicon valley is much more left wing than the mean of your average person. (And everyone who wants to keep their jobs pretends to be more left wing than they are, too.)

Anyway, this means there's this mob of people without a place to talk, and they want such a place. So if a place ever opens up that doesn't strictly persecute right-wingers- well, it's like being a town during the inquisition that doesn't persecute witches. Obviously, all the witches are going to flock to you!

(Witch metaphor courtesy of Slatestarcodex, may it rest in peace.)

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#157

Post by intothemild » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #149

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

There a situation going on at SomethingAwful where if ownership isn’t transferred, a vocal group of users is going to leave. Some of them have suggested BreadnRoses.net, which advertises supporting an open community and being inviting to all. However, it’s too far to the left and focused on solidarity to take all of SA’s threads and even forums. You have such a mix over there, everything from tech to politics, guns,…

Looks like ownership will be transferred.. but we're talking about Lowtax here.. he's rather unpredictable

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#158

Post by kelnos » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

jka wrote: post #98

holidaygoose wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social forums become far-right oriented? Is it because: - People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on the internet? - Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservativ…

My guess would be that attention-seeking and disruptive behaviours are part of the explanation. In a forum with ten reasonable conversation threads and one highly controversial one, attention is likely to move towards the controversial topic. The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online and can witness and partake in minor and major conv…

> The phrase "don't feed the trolls" is well-intentioned but it's difficult to scale the message when so many people are online

I think this is similar to the economics of spam: the cost of spamming is so low that even if a small fraction of a percent respond and convert, it's still profitable to spam.

People who troll are just looking to rile people up. All they need is one or two people to respond (out of hundreds or thousands or more). Even someone who knows better will occasionally be triggered enough to respond to a troll.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#159

Post by TulliusCicero » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #149

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

There a situation going on at SomethingAwful where if ownership isn’t transferred, a vocal group of users is going to leave. Some of them have suggested BreadnRoses.net, which advertises supporting an open community and being inviting to all. However, it’s too far to the left and focused on solidarity to take all of SA’s threads and even forums. You have such a mix over there, everything from tech to politics, guns,…

> Some of them have suggested BreadnRoses.net, which advertises supporting an open community and being inviting to all.

It does?

> B+R is a community-owned space that seeks to foster solidarity between people from all backgrounds that share a common character. We reject policies of social dominance, Neo-liberalism, patriarchy, the gender binary, white supremacy, and other social ills espoused by capitalism. We support worker/union/trans rights, empowering those without a voice, and each other.

> Do not advocate for obvious bad shit like landlords/cops/capitalism/etc. This is a leftist space.

Sounds like they're quite explicit about what things they're non-open/inviting about.

Their attitude sounds like D&D/C-SPAM turned up to 11. Even as a Bernie-loving social democrat, I'd have to say 'pass'.

Re: Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

#160

Post by rglullis » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #53

rglullis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's federated, each instance would be a subreddit. Don't like a instances because it is run by a deplorable? Don't subscribe to it. Is a deplorable posting deplorable things on the instances you are subscribed to and trying to piss on your pool? Downvote/mute/ban them.

But I already see many "subreddits" (here called communities) on the main website: https://dev.lemmy.ml/communities Also you have a big "create community" button at the top. Surely that doesn't spin a completely new instance of the application every time? And if not, how can we tell which instance a community belongs to? Honestly I don't really understand the need for something like that to be federated. In the olden…

Well, currently Lemmy does not even have a working federated implementation. Maybe it's too early to guess?

> For instance, what would we gain if we decided to turn HN into a Lemmy federated service?

It doesn't have to be a "Lemmy" Service. But let's pretend that dang decides to implement ActivityPub for HN. What would we get? Some guesses:

- Less people trying to game/break HN. There is great value in gaming HN now because of its centralization. If HN is just one in a place with a bigger number of actors, I would guess the incentive to game it would be reduced.

- Easier to have cross-pollination of ideas. There is an overlap between some subreddits, HN, lobste.rs, etc. Now, we can accept these services are big enough that there is always some cross-posting. What about the other topics that are HN-worthy (gratifies one's intellectual curiosity) but are under-represented elsewhere?

- More room for dissenting/non-status quo views. With ActivityPub, your client could easily allow you to subscribe to an account. So let's say that I want to see whatever more controversial people post - e.g, idlewords. With HN, I need to either stalk him or hope that the echo chamber has decided on his favor on a given day.

Granted, I think is highly unlikely that dang or YC would have any interest in doing something like that. They would be giving away control of the conversation and the risks are unknown for very little benefit. But is it really our job to be concerned about this? I'd rather have more people and more actors sharing this control than having to trust entities that become too big to fail.