Live data from Hacker News

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

dev.lemmy.ml

471–480 of 678 posts

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

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that new reddit is awful, I still much prefer old reddit to this. Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-restricted, but not the header [0]? The new GitHub UI that went live this week has the exact same problem on wide screens. What kind of UX designer ever approved such a mess and why do so many sites do this? The main UI itself, again very width restricted, but also has st…

On mobile, Baconreader app solves all my problems. On desktop, adding old. as a sub domain takes you back to legacy reddit.

old.* works well for me on mobile too, with the one exception that links opened from modmail open in the bad ui

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

#472
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that anyone wouldn’t maximize all applications, especially their browser, is utterly bewildering to me.

And thus the overwhelming challenge of UX becomes clear. People like different things. I don't maximise any of my windows.

I use a tiling window manager, meaning all windows combined take up 100% of the screen, and all of them are always visible. The only UIs that never handle this correctly are modern, responsive websites which sometimes become unusable and show baffling design decisions at certain window sizes.

Although in the case of Reddit the old design isn't perfect either, because if the browser window is narrow enough it'll have a bug where you can shift the whole website out of the visible area by writing a long line in a comment.

To be clear, I know this is not a trivial thing, but when UI designers don't know how to handle certain viewport sizes they should rather just let the browser's scrollbars do the job they've been doing fine for decades.

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

#473
post #388

So sad, nobody remembers Imzy, the "nice reddit" founded by Dan McComas. It really was nice, had highly varied, friendly communities and a pleasant UI. Couldn't get traction, apparently. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-reddit...

I was unaware of imzy, but reading between the lines of that article the cause of demise seems to be "not enough traction to be successfully run as a business". sounds like there were communities there who were using it and enjoying it, so the real failure was the expectation that it would get as large as reddit and sustain a business model, not in the lack of usefulness to its users.

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

#474
post #76

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.

It's a weird issue honestly. I've been on reddit for almost a decade, and I don't like what it has become. I would love to switch to a better alternative, but the problem is any alternative that pops up seems to be filled with extremists as soon as it starts. This doesn't imply that anyone who wants to leave reddit is a neo-nazi, a lot of us are stuck with reddit because everything else is filled with shit.

Try tildes.net

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

#475

How is lemmy going to avoid the fate of the last reddit alternative (voat)? Voat attracted the communities banned from reddit, e.g the worst of the worst: jailbait, creepshots, beatingwomen, etc. The users most interested in an alternative to reddit are on average, the exact wrong type of user to help with the growth of a healthy community. I don't see any information on how being "federated" solves the hard problem…

Their first rule would block most of that and seems to make it pretty clear they don’t want to host those communities: > No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct. Code of conduct links to https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUC... Their rules are a lot stricter than Reddit’s. I’m not sure how that in practice works with it being federated, but ass…

That sounds like it applies to contributing to the source, not to users of the software, or they really want to make sure that there are few "what programming language should I use" flame wars with rules like Respect that people have differences of opinion and that every design or implementation choice carries a trade-off and numerous costs. There is seldom a right answer.

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

#476
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing wrong with pedophilia or nazis

You’ve got to give people a space to consider both sides of every argument. Better to cordone off that space than have that discussion elsewhere. If you tell someone NEVER GO INTO THE LAST DOOR ON THE THIRD STORY, they’ll endlessly wonder what’s inside. If you show them that it’s your amateur paintings, they’ll never care again.

> consider both sides of every argument

No. Please let's stop with the "both sides" fallacy.

This is what the parent poster wrote:

>> the worst of the worst: jailbait, creepshots, beatingwomen

There is no "argument" being debated here. Only victims being harmed (more) by the sharing of the pictures.

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

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some subreddits were banned because other disliked the content. Like watchpeopledie. While the sub was disgusting banning it was for me the last nail in the coffin of social networks which decide what is the best for me. While I still use Reddit I'm looking for an alternative without the built-in censorship.

This is a really good point. Today most (if not all) social media platforms seem to be relying on a central or centralised moderation system. Meaning that the limits of the Overton window are defined by a small set of people rather than the community itself. Here, I purposefully state 'the community' rather than 'representatives of the community' as these are two very different things. Reddit for example is moderated…

> Meaning that the limits of the Overton window are defined by a small set of people rather than the community itself.

I wonder if that's even the case, or if the range of allowed opinions is rather set by advertisers and investors. If Reddit had a very large, very lucrative Pro-Life community that essentially "kept the lights on" by providing high ad revenue, I doubt that they wouldn't cater to that community's wishes. They lean strongly to the left, because their audience does, and they want their audience to be happy so they stay and watch ads on their site.

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

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Has anyone thought about building something like Twitter blacklists for Reddit so a group of mutually trusting subreddits can share their list of who they ban (for reasons not unique to their own rules) to a list then all ban that person/account proactively?

Aren't echo chambers a more real problem than the always fuzzy "hate"?

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The word 'bigoted' is getting thrown around all over the place in this post and most commenters, including this one, seem to have never actually looked it up in the dictionary. Bigoted does not mean right-wing, objectionable, or things one disagrees with. Bigoted means unwilling to change one's opinion. Which certainly applies to the hard left wing end of the spectrum just as much as it does to hard right. Bigoted: o…

> The word 'bigoted' is getting thrown around all over the place in this post and most commenters, including this one, seem to have never actually looked it up in the dictionary.

On the contrary:

"""One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ."""

It applies very well to people intolerant of other groups, ethnicity or race.

Post reply on HN