living my life, trying to be productive, and miserably failing at both.

  • 4 Posts
  • 76 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: March 25th, 2021

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  • if we were talking about lemmygrad, I would agree, but personally lemmy.ml is a place for me that I enjoy browsing and posting to. anyway I think it’s the best opportunity for anyone interested in making a centrist or apolitical instance and get the label of “flagship instance” on joinlemmy to help it grow and become as big as lemmy.ml, it will also make it easier for people who don’t like the politics of lemmy.ml to choose an instance knowing that it has no strong political affiliation.

    but I agree the folks on lemmygrad can be a little bit … let’s say annoying.

    also interesting that their only problem seems to be about the “genocide”.


  • I understand that it is annoying, but I think it’s because we’re still a small community. when our numbers become much higher, users will be almost enough to fight spamming. big subs will have enough users sorting by new and downvoting spams that they won’t get any visibility, and they will have enough mods to remove spams. this is what I said on a similar post:

    I think once we get bigger and report functionality gets added, it won’t be that much of a problem anymore. it’s important to note that any anti-spam method comes at the risk of frustrating users, discrimination and potential for abuse. we could enforce a certain account age or positive karma for posts, or we could introduce shadow bans, or we could make a button for trusted users to empower them, but that would be empowering them over normal users.

    once we get really big though, then just upvotes and downvotes would be enough to throw spams into the dark realm of the forgotten, never to be seen again.


  • interesting. I don’t think a profile would be much useful if it couldn’t be traced back to you, but as you say it’s possible to use writing style and grammar mistakes to fingerprint you. maybe use translation services that rephrase what you wanna say? or make intentional mistakes with some of your accounts? and have different accounts for different subjects, one for foss, one for politics, one for veganism, one for your job, one for your hobbies, one for more personal things, one for answering technical questions …

    but yeah, do what your threat model asks for. but if you’re going to delete your account and leave, just know that it was a pleasant experience interacting with you and your content, ajz :)









  • sigh … I think FOSS, GNU/Linux in particular, can never reach mass adoption as long as the world is like this. libre software cannot beat proprietary software unless you pass a law that bans the creation of proprietary software, or I don’t know, overthrow capitalism while we’re at it. you can get a usb stick with Linux mint on it and a hard drive and go house to house in your neighborhood and offer free migration to linux and a life-time of IT support, and you’ve still accomplished nothing compared to a single advertising campaign of Microsoft or Google or Apple. our cause might be noble and our intentions pure, but that doesn’t mean we can win against a company that can spend more on psychological manipulation of the masses than our collective income. if I recall correctly, Chrome OS got more market share in the last year than linux did since its beginning. if you get an average person to get Linux, I bet there’s a good chance the first program they wanna install is google chrome. so if you give them the freedom of installing it, you have enabled them to give up their freedom. it may seem contradictary, but I think freedom has to be enforced. like what FSF says, optinal freedom is not enough, if our goal is to set people free.

    on a second thought, I don’t think even the collapse of capitalism would end the dominance of proprietary software, spying and tracking capabilities of proprietary software are still too tempting for any government to resist. if it’s free then you can just fork it without the crap. that wouldn’t be desirable for an institution trying to stay in control.

    so do I think foss developers and foss users are wasting their time? hell no! that would be like criticising vegans for not eating meat, or environmentalists for not using products that have a bad effect on the evironment. it just that I think we won’t achieve our goals as long as we don’t seek fundamental change. ok, I must stop rambling xD



  • I think those communities will either revived by someone else or will be ignored in favor of some other more active communities. once we get really big though, then just upvotes and downvotes would be enough to throw spams into the dark realm of the forgotten, never to be seen again.

    I guess I must work on my chill out skills in my Zen Room ;)

    yes, achieve tranquility, feel one with the universe xD


  • I think once we get bigger and report functionality gets added, it won’t be that much of a problem anymore. it’s important to note that any anti-spam method comes at the risk of frustrating users, discrimination and potential for abuse. we could enforce a certain account age or positive karma for posts, or we could introduce shadow bans, or we could make a button for trusted users to empower them, but that would be empowering them over normal users.

    that being said, you’ve got an interesting idea. giving contributors more power to moderate the communities sounds good.