Part of what they are saying is that they distrust mainstream media sources. Which if I were to rephrase as the for-profit media that aims to maximize engagement regardless of the long-term effects upon the user, would that help it become more understandable? The media lies, some portions of it more than others, and even when it tells the truth it does so in a manner that is highly skewed towards maximizing their profits.
And then the whole "people say" gets even worse, because who vets those people? During the pandemic, literal doctors were prescribing Ivermectin and telling people to avoid the vaccine, and there was a huge conspiracy theory about Dr. Fauci.
Normal people can't understand the science on their own, are too busy with their lives to learn, and also they simply don't want to. But they're not entirely wrong - you really can't trust what "people say" (e.g. they also say to buy crypto) - and that germ of truth is what helped sell the lie.
i.e. the disinformation peddlers were quite strategic in predating upon our weaknesses, where "news" would do things like talk about Donald Trump nonstop, which gave him millions of dollars of free publicity, and helped him get elected (the first time I mean, but probably also the second).
So "we" are not blameless here either, if we turn a blind eye to the faults on one side and simply would rather blame "the other side" as if that were all that were needed to explain the entirety of the situation. That is a comforting lie, an "alternative fact" if you will. I may not have explained this well, but I hope you see what I was trying to say.
Well there you go: there is a bright side to all of this. One: fire produces light 🌞, hence "bright"😎 (groans in dad joke).
And two, humans are so creative! We really probably could find a way out of this mess, if only we would apply ourselves to doing so...
If only...
And we are so glad to have your comedy added to the intake of our collective:-). Our resistance to laughing at such was... futile? :-P
And you could just hear that pronunciation, right!? :-P
Bold of you to presume that we are aren't also melting down this week as well.:-)
Patrick Stewart always gives it everything he's got!
I dunno... in reproduction accuracy sure, but in humorous selection Data would fall behind.
Here, have a plate of nuggets:
Oh, looks like Barclay ate them all.
Hey I have an idea, alcohol nuggies! And... you know where this is going, right?
Okay, next idea: can we shift nuggies into gaseous form, perhaps even plasma, so that he can't get to them...?
Holy fuck, is there nothing that man will not eat!?
NO BARCLAY, PUT SPOT DOWN RIGHT NOW!!?!!
Depending on how many nuggets you are, you might give multiple shits!? :-P
(I am not creative enough to make things, but this image looked funny so here goes:-P)
I mean, tbf we kinda are. If they are willing to lie, cheat, steal etc., but meanwhile nobody is willing to oppose them, then we aren't players in their set of strategic moves.
The only thing required for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing to stop it.
That is why I try to think now in terms of disinformation, more than merely misinformation, when it seems intentional.
And this right here is why I like the Fediverse. Not immediately presuming the absolute worst case scenario and confidently asserting such, refusing to hear anything to the contrary? Offering kindness as well as accuracy in your answer? You didn't go for the jugular in trying (even if failing) to "pwn" your victim!? You, sir, would make a very bad modern Redditor 🤪. Which is why I hope you stay here, where I can keep getting to read amazingly kind replies like these:-).
I never said that that image proves that the originator is a tankie. For one, such content turns people away from the Fediverse, regardless if offered by a conservative, a leftist, a tankie, or whoever. Mainly why I included it is that it is an example of content offered on an instance known to have tankies. See e.g. https://feddit.nl/post/16246531.
What "makes" them a "tankie" instance is that they literally deny that the Tiennamen Square massacre involved any fatalities (and ban anyone from every community on Lemmy.ml, even ones that you've never posted or commented in) if you say otherwise. They are really quite open about it too - it definitely is no secret, though you won't see it immediately upon looking at the sidebar for the instance, so usually people from the Western world (which they seem to be so against in many of their more politically aligned communities) have to discover that fact on their own, then get disappointed (especially those considering themselves liberal and therefore a bit "left-leaning", not knowing just how far left the scale really goes, i.e. nearly every American is fairly right-leaning, when using the global rather than USA scale).
But more generally, if that instance wants to make fun of the West, particularly Americans, that's fine - do their thing - but then why is it so shocking when Americans get offended by that? All the more so when reading the sidebar of such places as e.g. Lemmy.World and Lemmy.ca, but then the content federated from Lemmy.ml's communities work according to an entirely different set of rules.
As we try to entice people over here from Reddit, it's confusing to them to have all these conflicting sets of rules and behaviors - e.g. in some instances people are allowed to behave as trolls, even encouraged to do so apparently by their admins, but then they also come out and do it here as well, where it is a violation of the rules.
Anyway, again, I'm not using that image to try to prove tankieness - that's already been established. This is content from tankies, as the person I replied to said "that place is full of whack jobs", and this whataboutism seemed a kind of illustration of that, not proof.
Oh I've seen it - some people receiving downvotes between replying to me and me seeing their content, which I thought was odd so I checked out their post history and literally everything had been downvoted. Obviously that's a sort of troll attack (except one case where the person said that they were doing it to themselves, so as to imprint upon themselves how worthless those scores really are). Admins can see such and ban accounts doing it, but some instances allow automated signups so there can be an unlimited number of accounts that would need banning though, if someone were determined enough to keep making new ones.
But that's not what drove my irl friends away - that was content that e.g. made fun of the Western world & society, and which they considered "extremist", and did not want to see so they left. And as others have noted, if you remove politics and Linux, then other than Star Trek what else do we even have here?
A community, that's what. But that takes awhile to see, yet they were already gone.
I hit the post character limit so could not explain there hence will add here: Mbin allows you to block URL-style posts containing links pointing to the instance that you specify - however it will not remove users or communities (I don't know about other post types?). In any case, apparently Mbin does not offer user-blocking of any user-specified (rather than needing admin support) instance. At this time it looks like only PieFed or Sync or Connect can do that.
Hey Fedizens, what are we now?
Mbin in the last six months doubled their number of comments being sent out across the wider Fediverse. PieFed is making strides forward all the time. Sublinks hasn't seemed to keep up, but Lemmy.World has floated the idea of potentially moving to it at some point.
So we are not all just "Lemmy" anymore. Though "Fediverse" seems far too broad a term, when it can include such diverse aspects as PixelFed (like Instagram) as well as Mbin or Xhitter as well as Lemmy or PieFed or Sublinks - see e.g. A lot of good stuff is happening in the fediverses!
So people have taken to calling us the "Threadiverse". Tbf that name predated Mark Zuckerberg's "Threads", but still that name now seems tainted by it? Though otherwise accurate & precisely descriptive as it emphasizes how people talk in topic-based conversations, rather than the user-focused approach of Mastodon and Xhitter.
So what I do (when I don't say that we are on the Fediverse) is simply list out all the possibilities - Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed, and soon Sublinks - though that gets cumbersome. Or maybe there's a new term that we could use? @[email protected] mentioned:
> most people think of microblogging when they hear "Fediverse". Maybe "Nestedverse" or "Forumverse"?
Or I suppose we could say "Threadiverse except don't worry we specifically exclude Threads", whenever we talk about ourselves, especially to mainstream people (who don't use Arch btw!:-P) e.g. to people on Reddit. (oh who am I kidding, ofc I mean @[email protected], who regularly tries to attract new users to here and deserves some kind of award like "Ambassador of Lemmy" - oh and there we go again, just what the heck are we!?:-P)
Also, it is up to each instance whether they want to specifically exclude threads.net or not - and one could in theory not do that, so that whenever threads.net decides to turn on its federation it would absolutely flood that instance with content, drowning out the source from Lemmy (or WHATEVER we are!:-D).
So it can all get so complicated - what would help simplify it? Just call it "Lemmy" and leave it at that? Unless Lemmy.World moves to Sublinks, that is where >80% of the userbase lies and therefore much of the content is coming from atm. Or "Fediverse" even if that is too broad? Or "Threadiverse" even though that's a loaded word now? Or something new? (ngl, I kinda REALLY like "Forumverse")
People will call it whatever they want ofc - I intended this to be a silly & fun question to provoke us into thinking about it:-). Especially since I'm posting to Lemmy from PieFed - which is fucking beautiful that none of those details actually matters and we all can just share the content and enjoy it, together!:-D
How do I block users from an instance of my choice?
I keep seeing people ask for this. There are basically only two ways, neither of which are terribly easy unless you are willing to switch to a Lemmy alternative and then it can be a breeze with just a couple of button clicks.
First, note that on base Lemmy, it basically cannot be done, short of either spinning up your own instance or trying to do some advanced programming with spamblock filtering rules (that is likely to mess up the pages in some way). There is a related feature though - in User -> Settings -> Blocks -> scroll waaay down -> Block instance - except that unlike blocking a community or a user, this does not actually "block an instance", and instead merely (& misleadingly?) hides the communities on those instances. You will still see comments from those users, they can still downvote you, and ping your notifications, etc.
About the only thing the above approach offers beyond blocking those communities individually is that if ever new communities were to be made from those instances, they would be automatically hidden from your account. So not all that helpful imho.
(1) Use an App
I have heard that the Sync and Connect apps (+ maybe others?) offer this, as well as a plethora of other features. Note that Voyager does not work for this - it is the same type of blocking as mentioned above.
Check them out? If anyone wants to supplement this section, please submit a post to this community to help people who want to know! (and/or at least add it in the comments here)
(2) Lemmy Alternatives
What I do use is PieFed.social, which in addition to this feature also offers several other advancements not currently available in Lemmy such as Categories of Communities that makes finding additional content a breeze (though overall it is not as feature-rich or easy to use as base Lemmy; and yet its choice to use Python rather than Rust should help it to catch up extremely quickly, plus the admins are extraordinarily responsive to deal with any issues).
To block all users from a PieFed instance, the easiest way is to start from a user on that instance, click their account, then click More -> Block everyone from [instance_name]. Or you could go to a page with the instance name in the url, like https://piefed.social/instance/lemmy.ml and just click "Block everyone from [instance_name]" there.
PieFed also offers additional opportunities in-between blocking trolls vs. not doing so: accounts that meet certain criteria levels will have icons placed next to the account name, so that you can still see their content (rather than have it automatically removed) but not have to spend as much time parsing it as you would something that is more likely to have been offered in good faith.
Mbin likewise offers Categories, and cross-connection with Mastodon. Overall I find that whole style confusing - e.g. "communities" become "magazines", downvotes become "reduces", upvotes are both "favorites" and also upvotes exist too that are entirely separate from that, plus you can see who offers favorites, but only from other Mbin/Kbin users and you cannot see the same for reduces. Though if you want Mastodon integration with Lemmy in one account, this is definitely the way to go (b/c it's the only one that does both:-). From @[email protected]:
> It's not anywhere in the settings at all, lol. Like a hidden option. You have to go to the url https://fedia.io/d/[instance_domain_name], like https://fedia.io/d/lemmy.ml. Then it will give you the ability to block, and that block will be reflected in your settings page.
Edit: according to @[email protected], this does not actually work:-(.
Either of these alternatives should make you quite happy with the result!:-)
(3) Honorable mention: relying upon an instance admin
As a normal user, not an admin yourself, you cannot implement a custom block of users from any specified instance. However, you can either ask your current admins to implement such a block for you (would need the support of the entire community on that instance ofc), or move your account to one that has already done so?
The only instances I've ever heard of that block the big-3 (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml) are:
- lemmy.cafe - has very welcoming messages, including a link guiding new users to this community!:-)
- Tesseract on dubvee.org - extremely impressive, if not for everyone, but definitely worth a look
- quokk.au
The caveat to all of these is that each is a single-admin instance. Those of us who recall the story of e.g. Kbin.social (or dmv.social or so many others) know how worrisome that can be in that it could vanish overnight with little to no warning. Then again, unlike Kbin.social, they seem quite healthy for now - definitely worth at least taking a look?
Bug report: themes get lost/forgotten on Android Firefox
I have enjoyed PieFed much more from my desktop and I finally figured out why: the theme keeps disappearing, leaving blank white text that is harder to read.
Starting fresh (restarting my mobile device, force-quitting the Firefox app, and loading it again), and starting from the homepage at https://piefed.social, clicking most links will cause the theme to be discarded. On mobile Firefox though not mobile Chrome, nor various desktop browsers. I am using Firefox version 132.0, last updated October 21, 2024, and Android version 14, and this effect has persisted I think since I made my account here last week. Firefox mobile seems an important target for our FOSS userbase:-).
The themes affected include PieFed and Card Shadow, though Hercules 1982 seems unaffected (I did not test that one as extensively). The button links I tried visiting included: the homepage (again, even if already on it), any post, any community, my Account->View profile, the "more communities" button, etc. - even the "back" button, after force-quitting the App and restarting it again. Always the text would switch from blue to white. Reloading the page does not help - only force-quitting the app and restarting it will restore functionality, until a link is clicked that is. Even after the theme is discarded, opening a link in a new tab will restore it to work - only in the new tab ofc, not the old one.
I hope this report helps PieFed to improve!:-)
suggestion: disable the option to "Retrieve a post from the original server"
I gather that it had a use unrelated to Lemmy but for Lemmy posts I make a case here that it is more misleading than helpful. For a moment, please ignore the underlying reasons why things are the way they are and focus on how the issue presents to the end-users.
(1) By pulling in solely the post, but not any of the comments, it at best provides only partial information - which if all you wanted to read was the post, then why bother pulling it here at all? (as opposed to retrieving from its original location - I mean, to do it you already need the full URL...) While if instead you wanted all of the comments... - e.g. to be able to reply to - then too bad, b/c it won't do that?
(2) It also does not pull in any of the old vote counts. So if hypothetically a post had 1000 upvotes, and then after pulling it here it received adjustments +2 from upvotes and -4 from downvotes, then its total would then be 998, right? Except PieFed would instead display "-2", a qualitatively different score for a highly popular post that is a terrible misrepresentation of the actual facts about it.
(3) It conveys a distorted view of things to the end-users. e.g. see [email protected] where there are 6 posts from the last 2 months, right? Right?! No, there is actually only a single post there in its entirety, then a few more that I and what I assume was Blaze pulled in - note how those other 5 have zero comments, and total scores near zero, due to the aforementioned issues. Really the "earliest" post that PieFed.social reliably has from that community is from 4 days ago, and then beyond that is a scattered, partial mess. There are actually MANY more posts from the last two months, which are not represented here. Ergo, the initial impression that a quick glance at this community offers turns out to be false, due to these federation issues.
(4) showing only partial information is often called a "false positive" or type I style of error, whereas showing nothing at all for those posts that are not fully here avoids that pitfall. If certain content is not here then... well it is not here, and that's that, but for only some of it to be here leads to much confusion, imho.
Almost entirely distinct from this issue, the ability to find an existing post given its URL should be added to the search menu, b/c that is where people will go to find it. But ofc all the more so if the retrieval button is removed or made less prominent, so that that find ability is not lost along with that.
I understand that there are hard limitations of the federated model itself. So if e.g. older comments and votes cannot retroactively be pulled in - or possibly even if so - then maybe this function should just be abolished? Or perhaps a couple more layers of "are you sure you want to do this?" added, or better yet moving it from its prominent place showing up to everyone on almost every page to a more subdued location where only those who know what it is and what will happen if it is used are likely to access it? I now feel that I actively made the situation in [email protected] worse by pulling in those posts, and wished now that I hadn't done so, as it could lead people astray into thinking "this is all the posts that the community has to offer from this time-period" (NO, it actually has MANY MANY more than that, on the original server!?!!). Now that I know this I can refrain from using it, but it would be nice to help others who climb this ladder after me as well:-). So I am sharing my thoughts with you in case that helps.
PieFed is freaking awesome and you all who work on it are magnificently extraordinary to share your knowledge with the world:-).
there is something wrong with federation of posts
See e.g. https://piefed.social/communities?search=forward - there are 2 communities listed there, both go to the same place if you click them, and that place has no posts from the last 3 days.
It almost looks like the existence of the second version of that community - changed mere seconds ago at the time of my writing this, except again, when you click the link it doesn't show anything new for several days - is soaking up all the new posts, but since it is inaccessible by the normal means those new entities cannot be accessed.
This is my favorite spot in the Fediverse, so I hope it is addressed soon! That community in particular is doing great work to make the Fediverse fun & welcoming to come to by all us nerds:-).