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

dev.lemmy.ml

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

#301

Post by TimJRobinson »

rolleiflex wrote: post #151

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’ a…

Have you thought about implementing a decentralized, user centric moderation system instead of electing mods? Like this: https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderati...

Would this work with Aether?

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

#302

Post by holler »

_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.

Thanks for sharing, I'm working on a new convo site called sqwok.im and I've debated whether to ask for email. I ended up with it being an optional field at sign up that's only used to help with account recovery/notifications. Having the ability to generate an account recovery token sounds like a cool idea! You can still chat on the site with only a username/password.

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

#303

Post by holler »

cuddlecake wrote: post #297

I wonder why the developers of Lemmy decided to perform all the content requests via WebSocket instead of HTTP. Is there anyone out there who can answer this?

Obfuscation? I've seen this in other sites (discord comes to mind). Maybe there's a hypothetical efficiency from reusing the websocket connection for all requests? for the site sqowk.im Im working on I use http for content requests and websocket for realtime stuff

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

#304

Post by TulliusCicero »

buzzkillington wrote: post #296
TulliusCicero wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like there's some really interesting ideas here. > Two people with two different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different communities Reminds me of the 'sharding' idea in World of Warcraft. I'm really curious if you'll end up with issues of 'social dissonance' where your perception of a community differs drastically from someone else's because you literally see different content, and if t…

>Also, it seems like with user sovereignty and decentralization, that there will be various objectionable or even vile communities is inevitable, right? [...] I imagine responding to tech blogs with, "yes, there are white supremacist sub-communities, but you don't have to see them if you don't want to" won't come across as a very satisfying answer from their perspective. We comply with the letter of the law for the j…

Describing journalists concerned about bigoted communities present on your platform as "a mob" is certainly a hot take.

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

#305

Post by _8j50 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #153
_8j50 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, making it a default makes sense. Users will not get mad if they get a warning telling them email support will no longer be possible. Alternatively you can opt with giving them a recovery code by which they can contact support or with which email will be enabled for an account when the user forgets their password. The only time you can't turn on email on your account is if you lose the password. Email is not secure, a user that has their login compromised is very likely to also have their email compromised. Moreover, if their email is compromised this completely silly dependence on email will get their account on your site compromised as well so you should be using a non-email means of authenticating users for support or account recovery!!

Email must die. No buts or ifs. It must die. You are a poor or ignorant engineer and architect if you build new things that depend on email in 2020.

If you give the most mediocre hacker 100 emails of users of your service that depends on email for account security, I am confident he/she will compromise at least a 3rd of accounts.

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

#306

Post by holler »

stormdennis wrote: post #115

I'd like a "reddit" that wasn't a confusing mess to navigate on a browser on my phone and wasn't always trying to get me to use the app. It could do worse than take lessons from the design of HN. A separate HN clone for each subreddit.

check out the site in my profile, brand new and under active development, but it's a responsive web app with goal of simplicity/low-friction

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

#307

Post by _8j50 »

notkaiho wrote: post #226
_8j50 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's actully like that. Those services get blocked but why do I have to use a third party when you can just make emails optional. If many users dont feel comfortable giving up their email, just make it optinal. You cant expect my support when you don't care about forcing me to jump through hoops because you don't care about my privacy preferences.

I'd genuinely be curious as to some statistics about how many users do feel strongly about using an email / generating an email. I get that you feel that way, but to what extent is it a common feeling?

I would love to know as well, a poll would be great.

I posed a poll, let's see if we can get an hn specific answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665907

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

#308

Post by justAnotherNET »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #146
as1mov wrote: post #60

One thing that stands out to me is lemmy has public modlogs[1], this is a great feature in my opinion. Something that should be more common. Quite a few people on reddit are frustrated by how opaque moderation is, but looking at the meta community of power users that seems to mod the bigger subs, I doubt the devs will ever copy this feature. [1]: https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog

I moderate a couple of subreddits and agree moderation is a disaster. For popular subs, moderators are basically swamped in a never-ending avalanche of shit. Even if you want to be a good mod, doing so for the long haul is an insane time commitment. The fact that being banned from one sub doesn't usually get you banned from another sub is totally understandable, but combined with how easy it is to make a new account,…

The mods only have themselves to blame. They create insanely broad rules allowing them to ban anything and then limit mod positions to concentrate their power.

The role of mods is to delete off topic submissions and remove illegal content. Nothing more.

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

#309

Post by TheDong »

rsynnott wrote: post #295
ehsankia wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But often these sites start doing the right thing and then restrict it, tkaing a step backward. Before: https://i.imgur.com/sgODcLW.png After: https://i.imgur.com/8j7P1YE.png The latter is objectively worse. I understand that > 1080p monitors are a small fraction of your user base, but that's still not reason to not test your UI on larger resolutions, for a site as big (and prominently used by devs with large screens…

Do that many people use maximised windows on 16:9 or greater screens? Maybe it’s just because all my early experience was on 4:3, but I’d never maximise a browser window on a modern screen. I’d agree this is bad design, but I’d be somewhat surprised if it’s a big practical problem for most people.

There are many many people who keep a single window maximized at all times and alt-tab between windows.

It's the most basic form of window management, and it works pretty well.

It's especially helpful if you want to be able to focus on one thing at a time only, and not have multiple different windows with disparate screen noise visible at once.

I often operate in that mode, using a tiling window manager to have a single maximized window on my primary monitor, and optionally a tile of auxiliary windows on my secondary monitor.

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

#310

Post by justAnotherNET »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #211

Neat, but the big test for a discussion platform like this is what happens when they get big enough to matter, to get the attention of journalists looking for a scoop. It's easy to slide by with haphazard (or no) moderation when you're small. Discussion extremists (trolls, bigots, and the like) are less attracted to smaller platforms; they'd prefer bigger ones, if any would take them. I'm curious what will happen wit…

The solution is protocols.

How do you feel about illegal content hosted via BitTorrent? Will bittorrent stand for “giving a platform” to illegal content? For the technically inclined: exactly.

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