Hey, folks! As the holiday season approaches, and time off work is granted unto some of us, I thought it’d be a good time to post a quick and informal “state of the instance” report....
On version 0.19 you can block instances so that you don’t see any posts from that instance, instead of having to block communities one by one, you still see comments from users of that instance in other posts so it isn’t completely blocking the instance.
It’s not a specific community. I’ve been here since August and have nearly 1.5k posts across a wide variety of communities and wide variety of instances. In that time I’ve seen more and more bad faith comments from people with the SJW instance tag. It’s not universal but it is noticable. Due to my frequent posting, I also have gotten to know admins from multiple instances and all of them have expressed the same frustration. To its credit, SJW did get new admins within the past month or so that are working hard to fix shit and don’t take it lightly.
Just an example of what can happen when mods and admins let things slide for a while.
At first probably just the nsfw instances since I’m not here for porn and foreign language instances since I can’t really interact with them anyway. That alone should help clean up my feed a lot. After that no idea, I’m normally fine just blocking individual communities but if I see an instance where I’m seemingly blocking all their communities, I’ll just block the instance.
Thats valid! Not super familiar with Beehaw since they locked applications when I was trying out the fediverse and are defederated with my main instances.
As a member of the queer community, I respect your opinion and honestly kind of wish it were more common. It’s annoying going to a queer event and more than half of the people there are straight. Or having confidently incorrect opinions about lgbtq+ issues and getting mad when they are corrected.
Edit: It would be rad af to see an instance codify the satanic temple’s tenants in their code of conduct. I’m not like a member or anything, but their tenants align strongly with my values so I’d do the same if I were in your position.
I’m honestly not sure. I only just heard that instance blocking was coming with this update. I’m not sure if it’s like defederating (aka complete block) or just blocks their communities or what.
I wanna see instances federated with most instances now that in individuals can ban entire instances. I know theres still some instances you want completely blocked from the off tho....
My issue with other instances is largely their users and the new instance block feature merely blocks communities, not users. I’m very fine with continuing to avoid users of loli/pedo/alt right condoning instances.
AFAIK you can block the POSTS of another instance from your feed. And only posts from communities hosted on those instances. But their users’ comments and posts will still appear for you everywhere else.
Do instances want to remain legally protected by blocking all those instances?
Er, what laws are we talking about here? You do realize that instances are run out of many different countries with wildly differing laws on speech, right? Also that very, very few countries (probably zero) are going to have laws on the books about fediverse instances federating with one another?
Honestly, I’m fine with the owners of various instances making decisions to federate or not federate with others. That sort of decentralized control is one of the benefits of federation. There is no single point of failure for the whole ecosystem. If one instance’s admin goes off the rails, it’s easy for people to know about and shift to a different instance. Sure, it also means that an admin can go off the rails and start defederating anything and everything they don’t like. Again, that’s not a problem with lots of well known instances out there for us to choose from. And it means that those folks with niche interests can build their own safe spaces to discuss their interests, without every third post being “haha, yur dum!”.
If you really don’t like the way your current instance is being run, then spin up your own and follow your own rules. Maybe you’re right and that’s what everyone really wants. And maybe not, and you’ll quickly find yourself a community of one. But, let’s drop the talk of “legally protected” when this sort of thing has nothing to do with the laws of any country.
As I watch The Internet look like it’s starting to adopt a new phase (let’s call it federation writ large), I’m watching for signs of both success and struggle. I have some strong opinions of features and functionality lacking in the current suite of UIs that might help adoption, but thing I’ve been thinking about more...
Ha, this is me. I did exactly that (with a community for the TV show Andor) and am guilty of the behaviour you describe.
I’ve probably been thinking along the same lines as you and OP though, 'cos I deleted the community a couple of days ago. I realized that if I had something more to say about that show, it doesn’t belong in it’s own niche community, or ‘Star Wars TV’, or ‘Star Wars’, or even ‘Television’. Perhaps a ‘Movies&TV’ comm, although - at this rate - maybe even ‘entertainment’ would be best.
I’m starting to think that instances that limit community creation to admins have the right idea (e.g. Beehaw, or - to use a non-federated example - tildes).
Some instances have started ‘Community Teams’, but I sense that anytime they discover a dead community, their instinct is to find ways to promote it, get new mods, drive engagement etc, whereas I’m more of the opinion that they should be nuked and consolidated (along the lines of what the ‘cooking’ communities have tried to do, I suppose).
It’s been quite a week for news in the fediverse, with the news that Threads has started their process of incrementally adding federation to Threads taking most of the attention. But lots of other great stuff happened in the fediverse as well:
Threads
Threads has started their implementation process of federation and adding ActivityPub to Threads. The first careful step is that a few Threads profiles are now visible in the fediverse, and that posts made by them can be viewed from fediverse servers. For now only the accounts for the profiles of Threads head Adam Mosseri and 2 Threads engineers are visible. Replies to their post made by a fediverse account does not federate back yet. Mosseri says that the process of adding federation will be done gradually in steps, and that he expects that this process will take most of the year. In another post, Mosseri also notes that federation will likely be opt-in for Threads accounts. This is in contrast with most fediverse software, which federates with all other fediverse servers by default, and federation is opt-out (blocking).
PeerTube
Framasoft announced their plans for PeerTube for the next year, in an extensive blog. I also hosted a livestreamed AMA with Framasoft for the community to ask all their questions about PeerTube, and it turned out amazing, with lots of great information. The entire AMA can be rewatched here. I’ll do a larger writeup on all the PeerTube news next week, but for now already the highlights: PeerTube is doubling their dev team, creating a mobile app, and will work on better moderation tools, and a review and redesign of the user interface. Stay tuned!
In other news
Lemmy has released their latest big update, v0.19. In this blog post they go over all the changes they’ve made. Two major new features are improved post ranking and instance blocking for individual accounts. With the new feed sorting of scaled sort, the community size where the post is made gets taken into account. This allows for smaller communities to have better visibility, and should increase their reach. People can now block entire instances as well, which should provide a significant increase in the ability for people to curate their digital spaces.
Discourse has been working on joining the fediverse for a while, and their latest update shows how far along they are. A Discourse category can now follow any actor in the fediverse. Check out their video to show this in practice, with federation between both different Discourses as well as Mastodon. This is a major step in expanding the fediverse, and worth keeping your eyes on.
The links
FediForum, the online unconference about the fediverse, has opened registrations for the third edition, on March 19-20, 2024. More information and registration on the website.
Mozilla.social, the fediverse server by Mozilla, is slowly opening up the server, and have added the first group of people from the waitlist.
Mastodon is experimenting with a new recommendation algorithm for finding interesting accounts to follow. The experiment is only available on the mastodon.online server.
Event Federation is a project that aims to federate WordPress events with the rest of the fediverse, and make it interoperable with programs like Mobilizon and Gancio. They just showed a sneak peak on the interoperability between WordPress Events and Mobilizon.
Bonfire has released documentation on their framework, that further explains how it is both a social network as well as a toolkit for communities to (re)design their digital spaces.
IFTAS has announced a sandbox server intended for moderators to practice moderation in a safe environment.
Owncast has started their own monthly newsletter, the first edition is available here.
Other articles
I wrote other articles as well this week, check it out!
It’s also something I’ve pointed out in the past that netted me bans on other instances (not just the community but the whole instance)
My instance has down votes disabled as well and it’s something that has made me want to switch instances at times. Not to mention the admin really wanting to federate with Hexbear which is absolutely not popular with the users on the instance.
Beehaw does the same. I’m not sure if that’s been the case in our instance. I don’t inherently disagree, but I’m not 100% sold either.
If there’s a clearly bad/misinformed/rude take, they simply don’t get voted on. They rarely have more than the single 1 vote of their terrible opinion/sharing.
It’s common to see +10 to +30 on a positive comment, with the comment it’s responding to at 1.
I don’t disagree that it could be a bad thing, but I think it’s about the community and its practice surrounding it as well. So far in my experience on the instance I participate in I’ve seen it be effective.
Also I’m not sure if this is a thing on Lemmy but on reddit there were downvote farmers. Downvoting could also actually encourage people to perform these terrible comments to accumulate as many downvotes as they can. Downvoting disabled removed this problem in its entirety. Reddit has this issue long before some of its other problems and it has only grown since, up til I left. I don’t know what the state of it is now, and I’m not sure how big of an issue it even is on Lemmy. It comes down to finding the line between what is preferable.
All in all, I think there are good and bad things about not having a downvote. I do think downvote disabled helps some aspects (engagement, active/trending posts) but it could also negatively influence federated content (spam, bad actors). I don’t think a comment being at -30 is any more telling than the same comment at 1 when it’s surrounded by +30 upvoted comments. However, if someone actively sought out getting downvoted, that can no longer exist.
IMO trading having bad comments be visibly negative in order to prevent the downvote farmers is a reasonable exchange
lemmynsfw has implemented (or intends to) an interesting compromise, in that you can only downvote posts on that instance’s communities that you’re already subscribed to. Ideally, this means that downvotes are for the quality of the individual post, rather than as a reaction to the type of content.
There’s always going to be someone taking care of the platform you’re using. You’re free to make your own instance or community too
I agree some platforms need more oversight boards and options for arbitration, in particular when the automated systems make mistakes and there’s no way to fix it.
However that adds a WHOLE LOT of overheard, something that the one Lemmy community you’re upset about does not have the capacity for
Currently moderate m/Cars, m/AskKbin, m/RedditMigration, and while testing out to see if federation works through my lemmy.world dummy account, I can't seem to find m/AskKbin like I used to, same with m/cars....
But the "spam" is no longer the issue, as ever since then, mod requests system has been implemented, allowing many new moderators to takeover communities with inactive moderators, as a result allowing spam to exist within these communities.
This wasn't the issue. The issue was that moderation actions didn't federate from here. I think that this hasn't been fixed and will be once the new ActivityPub stuff is done, though @ernest can feel free to correct me on that.
EDIT: Actually, maybe it has been implemented? Looking at @RedditMigration from Lemmy instances, it seems like the spam isn't there. If that's the case, lemmy.world should definitely reopen full federation.
There's a common false dichotomy about #Threads: cut them off, or leave it to user choice.I can't speak to other software, but Mastodon offers a third option: limiting Threads. This can be done for all users of a server....
Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying at first. You’re right, it’s not everything on the instance that gets sent, only those things that federated instances need.
But as a user, unless I run my own instance, I don’t get to decide when my posts or edits get sent out to any federated servers. That’s what I was referring to. All of that stuff gets sent out “like a firehose.”
And over time, as more people on Threads interact with certain ActivityPub instances, the range of communities Threads will be sent updates for might as well be the entire instance. If I block them, that’s just a visual block. My stuff will still be sent to them, and depending on how they set up their federation, my content might be available on “threads.net” as well.
I think maybe not all apps show the automated cross-post link - I’m not seeing it right now on Jerboa. But yeah I think basically your instance checks the link against all other links it has (both local communities and federated) then it just adds cross-post links for each one, as well as a link to the new post in the old posts.
The funny part is that blocking the instance makes it more likely that people migrate to threads. We’ve seen that when lemmy instances defederate from the larger problem servers, people will jump ship to be back in those larger communities.
db0 , i really like your server tbh but my monyet.cc is serving me currently well the fact that you have a photon , tensorrect etc as alternate frontends is kinda cool as well :p thanks man , we as a community appreciate your instance and its c/piracy -fellow pirate
State of the instance: you may need to re-enable two-factor
Hey, folks! As the holiday season approaches, and time off work is granted unto some of us, I thought it’d be a good time to post a quick and informal “state of the instance” report....
What instances are you going to block?
On version 0.19 you can block instances so that you don’t see any posts from that instance, instead of having to block communities one by one, you still see comments from users of that instance in other posts so it isn’t completely blocking the instance.
Minimizing instance defederation now
I wanna see instances federated with most instances now that in individuals can ban entire instances. I know theres still some instances you want completely blocked from the off tho....
[Long post] Do more or fewer communities lead to increased engagement?
As I watch The Internet look like it’s starting to adopt a new phase (let’s call it federation writ large), I’m watching for signs of both success and struggle. I have some strong opinions of features and functionality lacking in the current suite of UIs that might help adoption, but thing I’ve been thinking about more...
Imagine only being allowed to upvote something? (sh.itjust.works)
This post was made by Fediverse gang.
Lemmy v0.19.0 Release - Instance blocking, Scaled sort, and Federation Queue (join-lemmy.org)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/9347983...
Social media (like Lemmy) is composed entirely of public conversations. Yet it is treated as private property. Doesn't that seem rather fucked up?
Why is some Lemmy instances like Lemmy.world don't seem to be federating with Kbin? (kbin.social)
Currently moderate m/Cars, m/AskKbin, m/RedditMigration, and while testing out to see if federation works through my lemmy.world dummy account, I can't seem to find m/AskKbin like I used to, same with m/cars....
Erik Moeller on Mastodon: There's a common false dichotomy about Threads [...] (nerdica.net) en-gb
There's a common false dichotomy about #Threads: cut them off, or leave it to user choice.I can't speak to other software, but Mastodon offers a third option: limiting Threads. This can be done for all users of a server....
China is flooding Taiwan with fake news and disinformation ahead of a major election. Here’s how it’s fighting back (feddit.de)
Cross-posted from: feddit.de/post/6763982
Threads Has Begun Federating Via ActivityPub (daringfireball.net)
Adam Mosseri:...
what is your favorite lemmy instance?
ngl I may prefer lemm.ee, just saying