this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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Absolutely no surprise there. When you keep the barrier to entry low and throw in an algorithm to increase βengagementβ via outrage, the soup turns to poison quickly.
This is why every time someone says the Fediverse is βtoo confusing,β I just smile and nod. That attitude of petulant, lazy, self-imposed gatekeeping is whatβs keeping the Fediverse a much nicer place to be.
If the βhotβ and βactiveβ filters continue to work as expected and bots get reasonably moderated or blocked, I donβt even think Lemmy needs a high barrier to entry or petulance. The most important thing is to not optimize any recommendation or sorting algorithm on session duration, ads seen before closing session, and revenue per user.
This is so true and people seem to have a really hard time seeing this. The cultures on other social sites are far more manufactured than we'd like to believe. I think the human driven systems of Lemmy and Mastodon are brilliant but the true killer feature of the fediverse is going to be an open content recommendation algorithm. A collectively developed non-profit driven algorithm would undoubtedly be better at surfacing positive impact content than either system.
Can we use ai to judge emotional content of threads so I can get recommendations for threads where people are relaxed and happy?
Actually yes and I donβt think itβs a bad idea. Sentiment analysis is not a hard task nowadays. If overused the site would become a bunch of artificial positivity, but I think there could be a place for this. Could be part of a mod toolkit too.
Unironically, yes absolutely.
Completely agree that this is where the really exciting potential is, but equally a potential for misuse as algo development will be a black box to most.
It's like IRC. Just zany enough to keep out the riff raff.
Oh the IRC days, what a time
/slap speaker_hat
*Veltoss slaps speaker_hat around with a large trout.
Veltoss (~[email protected]) has joined
This just awakened some repressed IRC memories I didn't know I had.
IRC is hugely flawed but also, I miss it. Could we have a federated discord? It'd basically be irc but easier to find stuff right?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what Matrix is?
All matrix is to me is a classic late nineties action sci fi movie.
The Matrix but they use the Matrix protocol on a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel talking about talking about The Matrix in the Matrix protocol in a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel (woops sorry that is the Matrix 2 I think my bad)
There's also a way to add matrix usernames to Lemmy accounts, so it's possible to make an app that ties the two together. Is that a feature people would care about?
Man I'd love that. I feel like we will soon honestly. I just hope the lemmy/Kbin apps bring these other federated projects inside, so we can do it all on one app too.
matrix.org is basically IRC 2.0. It's federated and has a lot of cool clients.
My first instinct would be to say, "This is the 21st century, learn to use a damn computer already!" But then I think of the long term and WANT people to think it's too hard to join Mastodon or Kbin, just to keep the average IQ of these sites above room temperature.
It seems to me that if technical difficulty is the filter, it would actually only select for people good at computers. There are otherwise dumb, shallow people who are good at tech. (I'm not saying its difficult using lemmy, just replying to the idea in general)
Absolutely agree. I love the high barrier to entry and how it has kept the conversations (for the most part) more substantial.
I know I'm an old school techie, but was there really a high entry bar for lemmy compared to say twitter or Instagram? I honestly don't know, other than r3dd!t the last social media I signed up for was what? Facebook well over a decade ago?
If the few steps it took to make a user name, pick an instance, and then get my head around the fact that I had to also join any instance I wanted to respond to, is enough to keep the unwashed internet masses out, well, they are just even dumber than I already thought.
I'd say it's less so a decline and moreso a lack of literacy to begin with. The number of relatives I have that are fucking stupid with the internet is insane. And surprise the kids are just as stupid with tech, since the parents are dumb and companies made tools for them and the kids.
Wait. What? Why are you doing that?
Non-techy guy here. I read an infograohic and made an account. 0 issues whatsoever. And the infographic was just to help me understand how it works. You don't really need to understand lemmy to interact with it
It's concerning just how many people can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to pick an instance... Keeps it nicer for us though
I don't really think it's fair to pretend that, before two weeks ago, anyone under god had any idea what an instance was unless they were already heavily tech-oriented.
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand what the hell I was looking at and what kind of consequences that unexplained choice would have, and it really seems like a good number of users that initially struggled forget the learning curve extremely quickly the moment they're over it.
I started off going down that road of trying to understand it, but my laziness and impatience got in the way and said "just start using it and you'll work it out." And that's exactly what happened for me. In a way, the explanations made it all sound much more confusing than it really is. Sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and dive in.
Same. I signed up for the first instance someone mentioned positively. Seems fine, only about 5 minutes of research invested
There was no learning curve for me. I randomly picked an instance LMFAO!
It was a case of: Lemmy.ml isn't accepting new users atm BeeHaw requires me to tell them why I'm a good user So does this other instance... Why do I have to justify myself!? Hey, Lemmy.world let's me just sign up! Perfect!
And that was how I chose an instance. Thank you for joining story got with Valek
Decision paralysis is real even for stupid things. Like, βwhat are the implications if I pick the wrong instance?β Was something that made me put off finishing signing up for mastodon and Iβm not embarrassed to admit it. Acting like itβs trivial isnβt helpful to anyone even if it was trivial or you
I've been explaining it like email. There's no email webpage you go to to create an account. It's just a protocall a bunch of people have agreed to use, so you go to one of them and you create an address. I also think your username in the fediverse should be called an address too, but I don't think that'll catch on. It makes it a lot easier to explain, because everyone can use email, even the most tech illiterate people.
Well said! A high barrier to entry, and a low barrier to exit working as intended. Let's enjoy the good times while they last.
Its not even a high barrier. You just have to choose an instance from a list.
Well, it's not easy. I fell it's like choosing a Linux distro to use.
Yeah that's why everyone gravitates to the most popular one, like Hannah Montana Linux.
What the hell did you make me Google
"Hannah Montana is considered fast, stable, and powerful by most users".
Ok, Lemmy has officially gotten my first "ok now people are looking at me" laugh.
This this this. The fediverse being "confusing" keeps the idiots, boomers, trolls, and overall horrible people away. Having to learn something new is too much for those people. Lemmy/Mastodon and so on are "nerd" platforms, and I really like it that way.
Easy on the boomer stuff. You just lumped "horrible people" into the same group as regular people that happen to have lived more years than you. If you are looking for a "nerd" platform, you'll do well to remember that there are a ton of extremely nerdy boomers out there and you just helped turn the soup to poison for them
If extra layer of "difficulty" is introduced by giving the users the choice of an instance is enough to keep them away, then I'm all for it.
It just needs to be easier for the ones that managed to figure it all out (better apps, stability, UI/UX, and QOL updates)
IMO the only algorithm I'll accept for lemmy/kbin is slightly faster "expiration" for posts, sometimes some posts stay too long on my frontpage.
Kbin generally seems to churn faster than Reddit for me, but posts on Lemmy do seem to stay around for a awhile.
The default βLocal/Activeβ sort algo needs to be tweaked. It makes it look like there are no new posts for days. If you use All with Top Day, Hot or New thereβs way more going on.
Self imposed gatekeeping. Damn that's real