Yesterday, you probably saw this informal post by one of our head admins (Chris Remington). This post lamented some of the difficulties we’re running into with the site at this point, and what the future might hold for us. This is a more formal post about those difficulties and the way we currently see things....
GDPR is not an issue per se - we can delete people’s stuff easily. Can’t delete it from other people’s computers, that’s all.
This already applies to email and online archival tools - Lemmy is not much different in that regard. What is on the internet stays on the internet - all we can do is ask for it to be deleted.
Well, we have stated that we are not trying to be reddit. There are more reddit-like alternatives than the more traditional forums that are possibilities.
We entirely expect that if we move away from Lemmy, we will lose people. Will that be for the better or the worse? Nobody can know as nobody can predict that future. It’s a very difficult position.
Some of the moderation issues that we’ve talked about in the past are linked in the OP post. I will say that it has only gotten worse over time. I cannot think of a single moderation feature which actually fully works. That is how bad I think things are. They’re all broken in subtle ways. Yes, even reports are broken.
Some of the posts linked in the OP include such a list but honestly, feel free to name any moderation feature and I’ll tell you how it’s actually broken in some fashion.
So the obvious potential confusion here is in the case where I changed a sandcastle how would you decribe it?
I think all 3 are examples of destruction and creation. I think destruction often has a negative connotation. I think this is why we like to use the word “change” : to describe both destruction and creation at the same time.
“I created a sandcastle” is actually “I destroyed the smooth beach to create a sandcastle”
“I changed a sandcastle” is actually “I destroyed the sandcastle as it was to create a new one”
“I destroyed a sandcastle” is actually “I destroyed the sandcastle to see the pile of sand that it was”
Destruction entails that what existed no longer does. Creation entails creating something that didn’t exist.
Is creation the act of bringing forth something that did not before exist, or does creation include creativity?
Yes - it can include creativity as it can include evil.
Creativity can be expressed through these acts of maintenance, nurturing, and care, all of which set at odds of destruction.
Sure it can, that said - I don’t think maintenance, nurturing or care are at odds with destruction.
Maintenance can require the destruction of other ideas. For example, if you try to build a society built on love, is it wrong to destroy bigotry? That’s not to say that the people expressing these ideas need to be killed but rather that the idea of bigotry must be destroyed from their mind for tolerance to take its place.
Nurturing can be born out of destruction. For example, is Beehaw not born out of the destruction of other platforms? We try to nurture a different culture but I can hardly think it would exist without destruction happening in the first place.
Caring can bring people to destruction. For example, is it not care that makes us want to destroy authorities that harm our loved ones? Is it not care that makes us want to destroy the police system as it exists today?
Well, when we get into more technical bits and less big ideas or structures, I think the idea of destruction and creation can become a bit more absurdist sounding.
I think I’d say that adding the sticks of RAM does ‘destroy’ the computer as it was to make it have more RAM. It functionally no longer offers the same functionality (it can offer more).
And if we were to think about it in a software project sense (and this is getting a bit further from the hardware example) - adding a feature is an additive function but to accomplish that, you are sacrificing some of the simplicity that was there before the addition.
The idea being that originally, things were created out of raw chaos; after that, you need to deconstruct something to create something new. Either way, it’s violence: the imposition of one’s will onto something else.
I think this matches really well with what I’m getting at. I should read Nietzsche someday.
How do we balance our very human urge to create with an ethical imperative against violence?
Is violence necessarily evil? I understand aversion to it but there are plenty of improvements to society which people unfortunately had to use violence for and many of which I’d continue advocating for.
i think it’s possible to create passionately without destruction. i have a passion for animation. i could spend a few hours to create a flipbook animation for fun - am i destroying the notebook i used in the process? am i destroying the pencil and eraser to create this? am i destroying the time i spent to do something i enjoy? do these sound like silly questions?
Well, if you spend stretches too long that can have a negative effect on you - such as we can see in crunch culture, it could be argued to be a form of self-destruction. I know that to many artists, they tend to push themselves too hard because of their passion, not necessarily because of company policy.
That said, it could also be said that the notebook you’re using will never virgin again so it could be said that you’ve destroyed the book.
I do think the idea of destruction and creation can become a bit more absurdist sounding when they are applied to very small scales, I’ll give you that 😛
This may seem somewhat trite but really and truly: it’s about how you define “destruction.”
Well, I did think of it more in an idea space rather than a physical space so there’s certainly a big difference in the application of destruction.
If we go with a more idea-based concept of destruction, destroying your own country is not necessarily a negative. Our countries and institutions are rarely perfect (and sometimes not good at all) so destroying them to create them anew or simply leaving their place empty can be good.
I would disagree that these are useful semantics because of the case I mentioned where I feel like adding a turret to a sandcaste is something meaningfully distinct from reducing a sandcastle to a pile of sand, walking 100 meters down the beach, and making a new one with the turret.
I guess to some level, this is the ship of Theseus problem. At what point is it still the same sandcastle?
I guess my theory of destruction assumes that for something so small - the addition of a turret seems to change the nature of the sandcastle. For example, in my mind, a sandcastle is simply an old medieval house for the aristocracy. If you add a turret, it no longer seems like a simple house - it gives new meaning to the castle.
If you agree that it’s meaningfully distinct then why insist on framing it in the same concepts instead of using the concept of change?
I think people certainly use it in distinctive ways but I think that framing it as destruction and creation makes people understand that to build something new, we must first abolish and deconstruct the old. I think the origin of my theory is harder to apply to a general context because of that.
For example, let’s say that we have a big friend group or some kind of self-governing body and we want to make it more diverse and inclusive. The first steps would be to deconstruct why the existing structure is pushing people away and once we’ve found why (say, people use slurs or regularly make “racist jokes”) then we have to destroy the ideas that made these behaviours socially acceptable. Only then can we build something anew.
I don’t catch how you correlate destruction and passion though. Would you like to elaborate?
Passion often leads to creation (which I interlink to destruction). The way destruction can be seen can vary a lot. It can be self-destruction when passion carries people too far; it can be destruction because we need to destroy the old to create the new; it can be destruction and creation because we are misguided about the current state of existence (I think the NieR games can be a really interesting exploration of that).
That’s certainly an interesting perspective but I feel that it leans too much into quantifying destruction and creation based on the moral merit of these actions. It feels kinda like trying to justify rather than explain the relationship, I might be completely off base. What do you think?
I personally think it’s likely. Facebook is one of the companies that will be targeted by EU’s DMA and since they co-authored this standard, it seems likely they’d want to use it to respect the DMA. If Facebook uses it, others will adopt it because of their sheer control over messaging services.
obligatory preface: we’re 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us....
I haven’t used a non-link-aggregator forum in a long time, so I might be biased; but I don’t personally like the style of them. I prefer the information density of Lemmy/ Reddit/ Tildes style link-aggregator forums. The ability to have multiple independent comment threads for each link definitely helps encourage discussions (in my opinion).
When I first joined this community I saw it as a respite from reddit where I was free to chill with people without being constantly expected to debate or defend arguments or anything. Just a forum where people are nice....
Given the approach/philosophy of Beehaw, I’m kind of confused and surprised by the choice of Lemmy for building this community space. Not that I disagree with it, but it undeniably complicates administration/moderation in a variety of ways thanks to federation (as has become apparent with new Lemmy instances & the population...
Was this something of a hindsight is 20/20 situation, wherein with more consideration, something else may have been adopted?
We considered many other problems when in the inception phases and had initially decided to make our own - this did not turn out as we had wanted and so we came back to the drawing board.
Or has it been banking on some optimism in federated communities becoming the new norm?
I would certainly say that some of us have rose tinted glasses for federated communities but it’s certainly not unanimous.
As for whether or not we made the right choice, I don’t know. I do genuinely think there are big problems when it comes to Lemmy’s lack of focus on moderation and some of these are compounded by broken federation.
If someone is consistently disruptive, even if they don’t technically break the rules or are borderline, show them the door.
I will say that’s exactly why we have the one “be(e) nice” rule. It’s entirely subjective and it allows mods to more freely act on that without someone being able to ruleslawyer.
And there is something to be said for if people only used downvotes on incorrect information, spam, or rudeness, the Beehaw admins would probably find themselves less overloaded with work.
I think that while this is true, it would also invite for more deresponsabilization about the spaces we make and who we allow in these spaces. I generally think it’s best for those things to be reported because in most cases - we don’t actually want people like that in our communities and simply hiding it means that they silently remain.
Does it matter if someone jerks off to JaLo in the Fappening or some random AI generated BS?
The issue is that this technology can be used to create pornographic material of anyone that has some level of realism without their consent. For creators and the average person, this is incredibly harmful. I don’t want porn of myself to be made and neither do a lot of creators online.
Not only are these images an affront to the dignity of people but it can also be incredibly harmful for someone to see porn of themselves they did not make with someone else’s body.
This is a matter of human decency and consent. It is not negotiable.
As mentioned by @ram, this can also be used for other harmful things like CSAM which is genuinely terrifying.
Does imagining a different partner while having sex or masturbating count? I would imagine most people would say, “no”.
You can’t share that though so while I still think it is immoral, it is also kind of impossible to know.
Now a highly skilled portrait artist paints a near replica of somebody he knows, but has never seen in the nude. They never mention their friend by name, but the output is lifelike and unmistakably them.
Maybe a digital artist finds a few social media pictures of a person and decided to test drive Krita and manipulates them into appearing nude.
Those would be immoral and reprehensible. The law already protects against such cases on the basis of using someone’s likeness.
It’s harmful because it shares images of someone doing things they would never do. It’s not caricature, it’s simply a fabrication. It doesn’t provide criticism - it is simply erotic.
Taking that a step further, is it illegal to find somebody’s doppelganger and to dress them up so that they look more like their double?
If the goal is to look like you, I would imagine it is possible to defend by law. Otherwise, it is simply coincidence. There’s no intent there.
I don’t think it is a stretch or slippery slope. Just as a picture is captured by a camera, a drawing is captured by a person or a machine.
Both should be the same and it is often already the case in many jurisdictions around the world when it comes to CSAM.
I don’t like grading evil for this very reason so I think I will refrain from doing so - thank you for catching me doing that. I will refrain from doing that.
That said, AI CSAM could enable other forms of abuse through blackmail. I can also see very harmful things happening to a child or teenager because people may share this material in a targeted way.
No. I think that it would still be bad if it were self-use because it is ultimately doing something that someone doesn’t consent to.
If you were to use this on yourself or someone consenting, I see no issues there - be kinky all you want.
Consent is the core foundation for me.
The reason why imagining someone is different is that it is often less intentional - thoughts are not actions.
Drawing someone to be similar to someone you know is very intentional. Even worse, there is a high likely chance that if you are drawing someone you know naked, you likely never asked for their consent because you know you wouldn’t get it.
I mean maybe calling it evil is part of the problem ?
I call it evil because it is intentional and premeditated.
There are degrees in everything. Punching somebody is less bad than killing somebody.
Trying to put everything on degrees is bound to show ignorance and imply that certain things are more acceptable than others.
I don’t want to hurt people with my ignorance and I do not want to tell someone that what they experienced is less bad than something else. They are bad and we’ll leave it at that.
Btw its totally humane because we invented the shit.
I am working with this definition : “Characterized by kindness, mercy, or compassion”. There is a difference between human-made and humane.
We can try to rationalize it, sure but I think that doing that generally is a disservice. I don’t want to make decisions based on this severity scale. The people who suffer from these problems are all equally deserving of help.
I know how to subscribe to a community on a different instance. Is there a way to subscribe to the entire instance on Beehaw, other than individually subscribing to all the communities on it?
Feel free to message me on Beehaw or email at [email protected], I’ll review the message and say why I might’ve denied it though I can’t answer for others.
Mozilla.ai is a new startup and community funded with 30M from Mozilla that aims to build trustworthy and open-source AI ecosystem (mozilla.ai)
Beehaw on Lemmy: The long-term conundrum of staying here
Yesterday, you probably saw this informal post by one of our head admins (Chris Remington). This post lamented some of the difficulties we’re running into with the site at this point, and what the future might hold for us. This is a more formal post about those difficulties and the way we currently see things....
Josh Simmons is now Managing Director of the Matrix.org Foundation! (matrix.org)
Previously held positions on the Open Source Initiative board.
Passion and destruction - a collective exploration
I’ve recently been thinking a lot about self-destruction....
A giant leap forwards for encryption with MLS (matrix.org)
The September 2023 Beehaw Financial Update (opencollective.com)
obligatory preface: we’re 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us....
Have you used other forum software? Which ones did you like?
Only ever had experiences with Reddit, Lemmy and very little bit of Discourse.
How Coded Character Design Works (Dragon Maid Blew up on Twitter and Everyone has a Hot Take) (youtu.be)
has beehaw gotten more argumentative as of late?
When I first joined this community I saw it as a respite from reddit where I was free to chill with people without being constantly expected to debate or defend arguments or anything. Just a forum where people are nice....
So, what led Beehaw to decide to use Lemmy?
Given the approach/philosophy of Beehaw, I’m kind of confused and surprised by the choice of Lemmy for building this community space. Not that I disagree with it, but it undeniably complicates administration/moderation in a variety of ways thanks to federation (as has become apparent with new Lemmy instances & the population...
Jessica Watkins (mtf) sentenced to 8 years in a men's prison for Jan 6 involvement (www.youtube.com)
deleted_by_author
Inside the AI Porn Marketplace Where Everything and Everyone Is for Sale (www.404media.co)
shared via feddit.de/post/2805371...
How do I subscribe to a whole instance?
I know how to subscribe to a community on a different instance. Is there a way to subscribe to the entire instance on Beehaw, other than individually subscribing to all the communities on it?
Is defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works still necessary?
This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion....