I'm curious to get all of your thoughts on this. It's no secret that AI has been growing quite exponentially over the last year. I feel that new models are being released almost every other day. With that said many of these models need a tremendous amount of data to train on. It's no secret that reddit sells its users interaction to the highest bidder. This was partially the reason why they made the changes to the API limits that got many of us to move to the fediverse in the first place.

My question is how does everyone feel with knowing that multi-billion dollar companies as scraping this instance and the others, creating extra load on the servers for nothing more than to be able to profit from it?

What can be done to continue providing a free, open network to users but prevent those who are only looking to profit from the data?

edit: fixed title typo

Does anyone here like the idea of a community to request abandoned communities, similar to Redditrequest back on Reddit where you are able to request a community here if it's been abandoned. Wanna hear your thoughts on this and what you all think about this.

The images were always placeholders while SJW started growing anyway.

Because someone, eventually, is going to make this post anyway, we might as well get it over with. I know someone posted something a week ago, but I feel something a little more neutral would be useful.

There's a lot of talk on lemmy.world right now about lemmy.ml at an instance level (edit: see here: https://sh.itjust.works/post/20400058). A lot of it is very similar to the discussions we've had here before- accusations of ideologically-based censorship, promotion of authoritarian left propaganda, 'tankie-ism', etc. The subject of the admin's, and Lemmy dev's, political beliefs is back up as a discussion point. The word defederation is getting thrown around, and some of our beloved sh.it.heads are part of the conversation.

What do people think about lemmy.ml? Is there evidence that the instance is managed in such a way that it creates problems for Lemmy users, and/or users of sh.itjust.works specifically? Are they problems that extend to the entire instance or primary user base, or are the examples referenced generally limited to specific communities/moderators/users? Are people here, in short, interested in putting federation to lemmy.ml to a vote?

To our admin team and moderators: What are your experiences with lemmy.ml? Have you run into any specific problems with their userbase, or challenges related to our being federated with them?

Full disclosure: I have very little personal stake in this. I don't really engage with posts about international events, I don't share my political beliefs (such as they are) online beyond "Don't be a shitbag, help your fellow human out when you can", and have not run into any of the concerns brought up personally. But I'm also not the kind of user who would butt against this stuff often in the first place.

What I will say is that I have not personally witnessed activites like brigading or promotion of really nasty shit from lemmy.ml. I cannot say this about other instances we defederated from before. But again, this may just be a product of how I use Lemmy, and does not account for the experiences of others.

This is just an opportunity for those who do have strong opinions on this topic to say their piece and, more importantly, share their evidence.

If nothing else, given similar conversations a year ago, this will be an interesting account of what sh.itjust.works looks like today (happy belated cake day everybody!)

On accusations of censorship in service to facilitating mis/disinformation in support of a sociopolitical agenda.

Another community with the name [email protected] that I mod is online but it has a different address: https://sh.itjust.works/c/sino

To me that's confusing to have the same name on the same instance. I realize that different instances have the same named communities, but it seems crazy that you can have the same one on the same instance. Has this been addressed before?

Edit: I should add that I'm not mad or anything about it, whatever you guys say goes. I forget how harsh it can sound in text. I do find it confusing, but in a "I had no idea" way.

.

I am in the opinion that some alternative UIs should be available on the instance (domain) – if possible, of course. Lemmy.world already has many alt. UIs, I think we should have something like that. So, here's a list:

• Alexandrite – a nice modern one
• MLMYM – a familiar old-reddit–style one
• Nemmy
• Photon – sleek af
• Slemmy – again, a modern one
• Lemmy Modern UI – web default UI, but better

… and more, check out https://lemmy.world/post/465785

What do you think?

Threads will be implementing federation in the near future and many instances have been discussing whether they should be pre-emptively defederated to protect the fediverse. See below for our local discussion thread, which will remain active until this vote is complete.

Given that this is a time-sensitive issue and it's the holiday season, we decided to initiate the vote a few days early to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote. The vote will be tallied on Friday, December 29th.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/11011288

Only sh.itjust.works accounts may cast a vote

Vote by commenting either yes/aye/oui or nay/no/non

Any further discussion should be posted in the thread linked above

Additional Context/Discussions

Curent lemmy.world discussion

41% of instances have blocked Threads

Extensive discussion at [email protected]

This article has already been linked 10 trillion times in previous discussions, but in case you missed it

For the hard of hearing

IF YOU ARE NOT A SH.ITJUST.WORKS USER, YOU CANNOT VOTE IN THIS THREAD

VOTE RESULT

In favor (aye/oui/yes) : 200 votes

Against (nay/non/no) : 55 votes

Sh.itjust.works has voted in favor of preemptively defederating Threads.

Thank you for your participation, and happy holidays to everyone!

While Threads' integration with Mastodon has caused a big stir on both Mastodon and Lemmy, it is not the only for-profit company moving in that direction. Flipboard has announced it is embracing ActivityPub and gradually phasing in Mastodon integration. I have read elsewhere that Flipboard already works with Pixelfed, too. This is another big corporate participant in the Fediverse: "Flipboard notched more than 145 million monthly users and is tied with Twitter as among the top five traffic referrers on the web" according to this CNET article.

From what I can find online, Tumblr is also still slowly working to bring its 135 million monthly active users to the Fediverse via ActivityPub integration. I can only assume more companies will connect to the Fediverse as it grows.

In general, how do we want to treat commercial entities here? Should the Fediverse in general (and Lemmy in particular) attempt to be a non-commercial walled garden? Should we federate with commercial entities and leave users to block instances? Or should we federate with some organizations but not others, and if so what is a criteria for making that distinction?

I am expecting spicy comments since this is such a divisive issue. Please be civil and respectful.

(Side note: Users can now individually block instances in Lemmy 0.19, though it is not equivalent to defederation. From the release notes: "any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.")

Should sh.itjust.works preemptively defederate from Threads?

Threads is the not-so-new ~~reddit-like~~ twitter-like public forum platform by Meta, the same commercial company behind internet behemoths like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. They're working on ActivityPub integration so that they can bridge (federate?) with the fediverse. As far as I know, the focus is on Mastodon instances, but in the future that could include Lemmy instances too.

Some have raised the question, worried about the future of the fediverse or even claiming that it goes against its definition.

What do you think should be done?

EDIT: correction

EDIT.2: The Vote is on! Go make your voice heard. You have until Friday the 29th.

Fediverse instances' status on federation with Threads

English message:

As some of you may have noticed, there's an instance with 1.1M bots reposting reddit posts and comments accross communities in several other instances.  

I expect there are multiple valid opinions on the subject and this thread is meant to get a feeling of everyone's opinion on the situation. 

You might also want to read lemmy.ca's discussion on that here which is a pretty decent thread about the subject.  

Things that I think need to be pointed out:  

• alien.top currently has 1.1M bots, only 6 of those are weekly users logging in. 
• together they've made 1.59M comments accross a multitude of communities in other instances.
• That project claims to be trying to get reddit users to switch to lemmy. 
• They have a portal to allow reddit users to claim and take over their bot persona. 
• alien.top has a single local community, the bots all post on different instances with copies of different subreddits.

I don't have an exhaustive list of such communities,  I haven't found an official one.  I'll post a fewfrom my personal blocklist in a comment below. 

And a note on the upcoming 0.19 release: 

• the new user-level instance block feature will block all the communities of the blocked instances,  but will not block these users' posts or comments if they are done on another instance's community.  

My opinion isn't any more valid then anyone else's so I'll put it in a comment below.

Our users' input is welcomed.

What do you, dear users of sh.itjust.works, think about federation with them?

Thanks

Message français:

Comme certains d'entre vous l'ont peut-être remarqué, il y a une instance peuplée de 1,1M de bots qui copient ees posts et commentaires Reddit dans plein de communautés sur plusieurs autres instances.

Il y a plusieurs opinions sur le sujet et ce fil de discussion vise à prendre le pouls de l'opinion générale sur la situation.

Je vous suggères de lire la discussion chez lemmy.ca à ce sujet ici, discussion intéressante. 

Quelques points qui, selon moi, doivent être soulignés :

• alien.top compte actuellement 1,1 million de robots, dont seulement 6 sont des utilisateurs hebdomadaires qui se login.
• collectivement, ils ont déjà fait 1,59 million de commentaires dans une multitude de communautés dans différentes instances.
• Ce projet proclame essayer de convertir des utilisateurs de Reddit à passer à Lemmy.
• Il existe un portail pour permettre aux utilisateurs de Reddit de prendre contrôle de leur version bot.
• alien.top a une seule communauté locale, les bots publient tous sur différentes instances, des copies de différents subreddits.

Je n'ai pas de liste exhaustive de ces communautés, à première vue, je n'en trouve pas une liste officielle.  Je mettrai dans un commentaire ci-dessous quelques communautés que j'ai bloqué au niveau personnel. 

Pour finir,  une note sur la version 0.19 de lemmy qui s'en vient :

• La nouvelle fonctionnalité pour bloquer une instance au niveau d'un uutilisateur bloquera toutes les communautés d'une instance bloquée, mais ne bloquera pas les publications ou les commentaires de ces utilisateurs s'ils sont publiés dans une communauté d'une autre instance.

Mon opinion n'est pas meilleur qu'une autre et je mettrai plutôt dans un commentaire ci-bas.

Les commentaires de nos utilisateurs sont les bienvenus.

Que pensez-vous, cher utilisateurs de sh.itjust.works de la fédération avec eux?

Merci

before people criticize me I am not using my main account because I do not feel safe bringing up these issues there, as these people and issues still are not dealt with. I do not want to put myself in danger, I will not be engaging in or attempting to post polls or votes here.

I would like to start by saying that I've noticed a lot of bad faith or spammy communities pop-up recently. The user is dramaticcat many of the communities break rules 1 and 2, maybe even rule 3 (an example of one such community is [email protected]) as they are purely dedicated to hatred, trolling, and possibly even spam.

Also a small handful of users have also been making threats or calls to violence and while these have been moderated nicely moderators and external instance admins the admins of this instance haven't done anything about this. This is worrying as admins are supposed to enforce the instance rules and remove disruptive users and communities who are in violation of said rules but the admins of Sh.itjust.works have not been doing that. This is a problem because it means that any malicious actor could join at any time and wreak havok on this instance just like Exploding-heads did on another unmoderated instance known as rammy.site way back when. We obviously know how that went.

It's important that we discuss this problem now while we might have a chance of contacting the admins rather than later when the damage has been done.

Hello everyone, I operate an instance previously defederated by this instance known as lemmy.comfysnug.space and we were defederated because many people didn't like our current rules.

Well we have since changed our rules and are no longer allowing the content that so many people complained about. So we were hoping to be able to get refederated with other instances including this one. What do people think, do we deserve a second chance to be federated again?

(I'm posting from a lemm.ee account because my main is on the Defederated Instance, there's no other real way for me to do this).

Say “aye” or yes" if you are in favour defederation.

Say “nay” or “no” if you are against defederation.

Only users who have a sh.itjust.works account can vote. Fresh accounts won't be counted.

Please share your thoughts, concerns and opinions. Try to keep it constructive.

Link to announcement

Some of you may have noticed that there's a new bot in town. But this time, its one of ours.

What should we name it?

Post your entry.

Rules.

• The 5 most upvoted entries will be brought to a vote.
• The winning entry will become the display name of the bot.

Welcome, this vote will determine which image we use for our banner image for sh.itjust.works. The discussion thread is in the Agora, and was also cross-posted to ImageAI

Fantastic work on the banners sh.itheads, I think we've got several excellent choices here. I've reposted the candidates below, with credits to the users who submitted them. I culled some submissions at my own discretion.

Each candidate is labeled with a number. In order to vote, simply comment on this post with the number of your preferred banner. You only get one vote.

Number 1 - @[email protected]

Number 2 - @[email protected]

Number 3 - @[email protected]

Number 4 - @[email protected]

Number 5 - @[email protected]

Number 6 - @[email protected]

Number 7 - @[email protected]

Number 8 - @[email protected]

Number 9 - @[email protected]

Number 10 - @[email protected]

Number 11 - @[email protected]

Number 12 - @[email protected]

You may also specify a few honorable mentions in your comment if you so choose, as a way to acknowledge the artists' work.

The vote will run until next Friday.

VOTE RESULT

1. Banner 8 by @[email protected]: 91 votes

2. Banner 11 by @[email protected]: 49 votes

3. Banner 6 by @[email protected]: 24 votes

4. Banner 7 by @[email protected]: 20 votes

5. Banner 3 by @[email protected]: 19 votes

The two obvious themes in my mind are gears/some sort of complex machine, or computer hardware/circuits.

As an avid Lain Iwakura enjoyer, I added that screenshot because it's awesome and I think it'd be an extremely cool banner, but there are probably much cleaner designs out there that would be more welcoming to new users. I'm sure you guys will be able to come up with some in short order.

You can look on lemmyverse.net to get a quick overview of some other instance banners.

I really don’t know how the formatting and proportions are supposed to work but I will edit that in as soon as someone clarifies.

Lemmy.world looks like this

This discussion will run for at least a week, and then we can take the most upvoted submissions in this thread and put them up for an official vote.

Like the title says. How do we create a new community on sh.itjust.works?

I want to start a new community for a specific topic. How do I do that?

I've seen a lot of discussion about Threads around the fediverse and I believe our main instance community has had a few large discussions about it (here's a recent one).

I didn't see an Agora discussion post, so I'm making one.

Can we all discuss our opinions on whether we want this instance to remain federated with Threads or not and share our reasons? I'd appreciate it!

Hello,

I'm the mod of Japanese Metal. For a few days now, the community appears empty to me, both on Liftoff and my browser on my desktop. Edit: it's fine if I view it on my lemm.ee account, but that's not optimal.

What might be the cause, and how do I fix it? Anyone with a similar problem?

Thanks in advance.

I'd like to ask for @TheDude to make a server-wide announcement, visible to all members of this instance, that a binding vote about defederation is currently taking place.

Without knowing what the Lemmy UI allows, I was hoping for a text similar to the one informing new users that email verification is currently enabled. Here is what I would like the announcement to entail:

"A binding vote to defederate from another instance is currently taking place in /c/TheAgora. Should the vote be accepted, no users of sh.itjust.works will be able to access the defederated instance or interact with users of that defederated instance anywhere on Lemmy. Should the vote fail, the instance to be defederated remains federated, its content may still be shown on the home feed of sh.itjust.works and the users of that instance may still participate in discussion on this instance."

I am of the very strong opinion, that no vote should be binding, unless it was announced early enough to all members of this instance! This vote will have instance-wide consequences, the fact that it is taking place needs to be broadcasted beyond this community!

Edit: fix typos (again)

So the exploding heads vote is well past a day old now. The vote is almost unanimous to defederate. It's been obvious since a few hours after it went up what the community wants. It's now taken well past two weeks to defederate from an obvious alt right troll and bot platform. Twelve days of silence from admins, then a day long debate thread, then an interminable vote. I requested word on when the vote could be called closed, but my question was acknowledged and ignored.

For my own self, I have at this point no faith in the administration of this instance anymore to be able to handle this. It's very clear that wanting to not offend the alt-right is far, far more important than hearing the wishes of the users, and always has been. However, this is the agora, so I'm open to hear a counterpoint explaining why it's actually very reasonable to spend weeks upon weeks in endless circling debate over whether or not it's fine to joke about murdering marginalized people.

Edit: since my thread was locked and I can't reply to accusations, I only joined beehaw because of this, about two days ago. I'm not "a beehaw user", I've barely got my account there active. On this site I have a community and four hundred posts, but I'll be closing that now.

I opened this thread after seeking comment and being ignored for a week. You can see it in my post history if you like. That's enough of that for me.

Please consider using my theme on this instance, so that everyone could enjoy a more more modern, efficient UI when browsing sh.itjust.works. It works with Lemmy 0.17, 0.18 and 0.18.1rc. It has a light theme variant, dark theme or both (auto).

Repository with more screenshots: https://github.com/pkrasicki/lemmy-modern-ui-theme-addon

Theme files for download: https://github.com/pkrasicki/lemmy-modern-ui-theme-addon/releases

It's also a Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lemmy-modern-ui-theme

The only downside would be maintenance. Whenever a new version of Lemmy breaks the theme, someone will have to fix it. But I believe that together as a community we can easily maintain our own theme.