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

#531

Post by missosoup » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:30 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #511

missosoup wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what the 'no' is in regard to. That's entirely aligned to my comment. Or did you think obstinate devotion to opinions and prejudices only manifests in the the group of people you happen to disagree with?

You focused on unwillingness to change one's opinion. That's certainly a definition, but the more common one in use is about prejudice, especially prejudice based on inherent traits like sex or race or sexuality. I'm sure you're aware of that, which is why it's confusing that you're acting as if you're not. I don't dispute that it's extraordinarily difficult to get people to change political opinions, especially on t…

[flagged]

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

#532

Post by devcouvert » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

jboynyc wrote: post #104

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…

You might be interested in what one of the foremost sociologists studying white supremacy online has to say about this: https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al...

> You might be interested in what one of the foremost sociologists studying white supremacy online has to say about this: https://contexts.org/articles/the-algorithmic-rise-of-the-al....

Depends on how relevant you consider a social "scientist" having build a career on creating a bogeyman on mixing up nationalism, extreme right and white supremacy. A former columnist at "Huffington Post", she is now writing a book on "Undoing White Womanhood". Calls herself a "change agent" on her own webiste.

Sounds rather like "anti-White" activist to me, like an intellectual Robin DiAngelo.

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

#533

Post by brnt » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #489

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the things about bigotry and harassment seem more likely to apply to the site, unless big projects get weirdly abusive issues or PRs. And it is linked from rule 1 on the website, I’m guessing the website rules isn’t referring to rules for contributing. I think maybe it’s both. I certainly don’t get the impression they want to be a Voat style ‘Reddit for after you’re banned’, regardless.

I understood the general goal the same way. As for CoC: I believe it's more of a signalling act than a reaction to past issues. Just like the KKK would add "no race mixing" to the rules, a left wing open source project needs to signal to their in group, and their main way of doing that is to say "no harassment based on [some criteria]".

"No harassment" qualifies as left wing signalling now?

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

#534

Post by nvr219 » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:37 PM UTC

INTPenis wrote: post #450

Afforess wrote: post #24

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…

I don't view lemmy as I did voat. When I saw lemmy my first thought was that I wanted to host my own instance of this once federation works. I'm already hosting mastodon and synapse instances for the community. I believe strongly in hosting small federated community instances. This hobby costs me about 80USD/mon.

Thank you, INTPenis.

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

#535

Post by contravariant » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #416

gopiandcode wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is more of a problem for centralized services - federation gives freedom to the user to choose the level of moderation/censorship they want - if you find certain communities distasteful, you can just join servers that block these communities. I think it is important however to have a strong emphasis on the separation of the servers from the protocol though - no one seems to care that Nazis could use em…

The problem is no one used the federated services.

Sure but Lemmy is part of the fediverse. It even says so in the title.

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

#536

Post by ribble » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

on_and_off wrote: post #459

Afforess wrote: post #24

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…

heck, how is it going to avoid reddit's toxicity as well ? Some of the echo chambers on Reddit itself today are still very disturbing.

r/politics - the biggest joke on the internet

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

#537

Post by brnt » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:42 PM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #493

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel restricted by rules preventing you from being hurtful towards others, the problem is you, not the rules.

If you can't speak out or express thoughts against the rules, you are ceding your own ability to ever change the rules. Allowing a small subset of people to control the rules for the masses has never, will never, and could not ever work in a free society. The small groups of Twitter and Reddit moderators are far too small to ever represent the diversity of human thought. You may think the rules prevent harm today, bu…

Not all rules are created equal. Reciprocity in outcome is an important differentiator and fundamental to a functioning democracy. To equate a rule like 'no guns allowed' with 'all people are granted to right to vote' would be silly and naive.

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

#538

Post by yogthos » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:52 PM UTC

Afforess wrote: post #24

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…

Nothing can prevent terrible people from using an open source project. Meanwhile, Reddit doesn't do much of anything about this problem either. For, example /r/metacanada exists, and white supremacists from there are also moderating /r/canada subbreddit, Reddit hasn't taken any action on that. At least the developers of Lemmy are very clear [1] about their stance regarding nazis, that's more than I can say for Reddit. It's also worth noting that Mastodon has millions of users now, and it clearly isn't attracting the worst people. In fact, I find it's a far healthier and friendlier community than Twitter.

[1] https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/34286

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

#539

Post by devcouvert » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #225

winstonewert wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because far-right is far less palatable than far-left. Consider two possible statements: 1. Hitler wasn't that bad. 2. Stalin wasn't that bad. I think, for most people, the first provokes a much more extreme reaction. Both were objectively terrible human beings, but defending Hitler is seen as far more extreme than defending Stalin. This has two effects: Firstly, far-right people are continually kicked…

I think both of those examples would provoke a pretty extreme response in most people, but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common, at all. You see a _bit_ of "Stalinism was actually good" stuff on the internet (weirdly, occasionally from the right; some more confused Russian nationalists have a bit of a Stalin fetish), but you'll see a lot more holocaust denial.

>but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common

Maybe the figure-head isn't en vogue anymore. The methods are always popular.

Leftists(Socialists, Communists, Anarchists) often publically revel in the idea of when "the revolution comes" to put anyone dissenting up against the wall or sending them to a Gulag camp of some sort. I don't find that exactly reassuring. Seeing how "protesters" in the US and Europe act like chinese Red Guards during the cultural revolution, this day doesn't seem far off.

I'm reading the "Three-Body Problem" right now and the first chapter eerily reminded me of the current situation where not being enough of an "ally" to the racial BLM movement is a thought-crime punishable by having your life destroyed.

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

#540

Post by yogthos » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 1:00 PM UTC

as1mov wrote: post #76

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.

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.

the developers of Lemmy are very clear about their stance regarding nazis at least, and that's more than I can say for Reddit https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/34286

Their developer code of conduct also looks good in that regard

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUC...

Seeing how the flagship instance is run by people who are socially conscious I don't see this being a problem. Pretty much same thing happened with Mastodon Social, and with millions of users the community is still great. It's far friendlier and more civilized than Twitter.