Right?? I normally love it when websites have a fun twist, but this one really needs an off button. The other cursors keep covering the text and it becomes genuinely uncomfortable to read. Fortunately, you can easily block the WS endpoint with any ad blocker.
I appreciate the transparency through all of this. It’s nice to know about the problem while there’s still some time to handle it. To be honest - I probably would not follow Beehaw to any new non-federated platform. Its nothing against Beehaw (I love this community and its admins) but I’m just not convinced that we could ever attain enough regular users to keep critical mass on the niche topics I follow. That’s the real advantage of Lemmy - all (well-behaved) instances get to share their user base.
Unfortunately, I also understand why staying on Lemmy might not be an option. Same with forking or using another Fedi software. Either way - I trust y’all to consider all the options and make the best choice. 🐝💙
They are mastodon-specific, but most fedi software has a similar feature. Or at least, all of the mainstream microblogging software does, as well as some of the image / video sharing platforms. I’m unsure about Lemmy and Kbin. Here are the equivalent settings for FireFish: https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/791e1619-b353-4607-88a7-581b6d87037e.webp
Defederating actually does stop Meta from accessing data (at least through ActivityPub) if you enable AUTHORIZED_FETCH / similar. That setting requires remote instances to authenticate themselves, which prevents blocked instances from querying anything. IIRC, Lemmy either already supports or plans to support that same feature.
Meta could, of course, just use web scraping, but that can be prevented with DISALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_API_ACCESS. Although admittedly, I don’t think Lemmy has this feature yet.
Defederation actually does work both ways if the instance enables AUTHORIZED_FETCH. That setting requires 3rd party systems to prove their identity before they can retrieve any data, which allows an instance to block defederated domains. I don’t know if Lemmy or Kbin supports that, but practically all of the microblogging fedi software does (that being Mastodon / GlitchSoc, Pleroma / Akkoma, Misskey / FoundKey / FireFish, and GoToSocial).
I agree that this is nothing to panic over, but I want to clarify that Lemmy is not safe from this. Lemmy and Mastodon both use the same protocol (ActivityPub) and that’s also the protocol that Threads will use to federate. Just as Mastodon users can like, boost, and reply to Lemmy threads / comments, Threads users will be able to do the same. That’s why it’s important to defederate Threads on all ActivityPub-enabled instances.
I was working through a list of nature-related names, looking for an uncommon one that still sounded like a real name. I was almost ready to try out “Ember”, but then I saw “Hazel” and it just clicked. So that’s what I’ve called myself ever since!
I feel like this design would work pretty well even for a modern phone. Just flatten the bottom-right menu section and extend the screen over it, and you'd get a regular full-size smartphone with a slide-out keyboard and some handy physical buttons!