I briefly hosted a Lemmy server on my machine just to see how it works and my god never again. The pictures that were automatically synced to my machine did not only make me lose faith in humanity, but it made me shut down and wipe my machine immediately because I was terrified that some of those images would land me some serious jail time. So if you choose to host something like this, be very aware that there are so…
As much as I try to avoid AI hype, this truly seems like one of the best uses of image recognition tech
Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.
But users are not mindless drones. Even the least computer-savvy is aware that they're being asked to make a choice and is probably unpleasantly reminded of the dark patterns in user agreements etc., so they'll feel like they're being guided down a sales funnel immediately after installing the app/signing up on web. What percentage bounce at that stage? It's probably large. I did so, and although I later relented and…
It's not about users being mindless drones, it's giving them a clear path they can follow to succeed without thinking. The book "Don't make me think" is a classic design reference that makes this point really well.
I'm not sure what sales funnel you're talking about. If you have an aversion to monetization, I'm not sure what social media you'd use except the fediverse.
Wouldn't that be easy to bypass by just adding one or two proxy accounts? Say person A invites me (a bad actor). I could invite a second throwaway account, with which I invite a third throwaway account. I do bad things on my third account. Could you reasonably punish person A for this? You'd first have to prove that the throwaway accounts all belong to me.
No one has to proof anything. If A invites B and B invites C who acts openly bad, you can remove all parties at once and maybe revoke on appeal. All up to the community. Otherwise it would be indeed simple to defeat. But before banning A, one can also just give a Warning. No restrictions here in principle, but I am also open for concrete implementations that work well.
The point is that either there has to be a limit for how much you get punished for the acts of your grandchildren, which leaves room for motivated abusers to work around your system, or people can expect to be banned for basically no fault of their own if they ever invite anyone, in which case your system is DOA.
The HN cycle for federated alternatives is now complete: email → chat → microblogging → short video. We're speedrunning the "open-source version of things we claim to hate" timeline. Can't wait for the federated, self-hosted casino.
I always thought a casino might make more sense if it was run as a cooperative where members were also shareholders, so you could have fun gambling but your money came back to you eventually
That's what a friendly neighborhood poker game is. There is no house take. I am not a lawyer, but have been given the distinct impression by one that in US jurisdictions the house take is what makes gambling go from entertainment amongst friends to illegal racket.
I briefly hosted a Lemmy server on my machine just to see how it works and my god never again. The pictures that were automatically synced to my machine did not only make me lose faith in humanity, but it made me shut down and wipe my machine immediately because I was terrified that some of those images would land me some serious jail time. So if you choose to host something like this, be very aware that there are so…
This reality alone has made me severely curtail my own social media use and reach. I really only care about a handful of forums attended by (at least... seemingly) people who actually care to think, or have some basic intact humanity and want to converse.
So despite the fact I am very interested in the federated social media to keep my intelletual property out of the cashflow of businesses whose actions are much louder than their pretty sounds in court, it's still one-shot-and-out digital graffiti. I don't think it's worth it.
I actually looked at several graphs before posting. Wasn't easy to share crude data so I didn't link it. Now that I'm googling for more deliberate correlations, I see other people are talking about this: https://roytriggs.medium.com/internet-use-and-birth-rates-an... https://fortune.com/well/2025/03/28/phones-declining-birth-r... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/dating-marriage-c... "The phone killed babies…
This is completely ignoring the most common reason for not having children that I've heard amongst friends and family: "I can't afford a house, I'll never be able to afford kids."
Actually poor people don't seem to have that problem.