I’m learning with Java. I like that I don’t have to think about memory management compared with C or even Rust. I dislike how slow it is.
I’m also using HTML, CSS, and Go for a bunch of static websites I’m building with Hugo. I love HTML. I like CSS only in the context of Bootstrap. Otherwise I dislike the way my style-sheet documents turn out. And I haven’t really tried to understand Go’s whole “context” thing because I want to use Rust. This last comment is why I want to finish my current projects and then immediately leave Hugo for Zola.
I also just finished learning about and using R and the Tidyverse for a couple of statistics projects. I really dislike R… On the other hand, I love the Tidyverse with my whole heart. It’s been one of my favorite experiences with any language.
The maintainer created a poll to rename the project. 4Chan came up with Sneedacity. Apparently it’s a Simpson’s reference. It’s a silly name. The maintainer didn’t like it, and started saying things about 4Chan that others (see thread mentioned below) have characterized as exaggerated. 4Chan responded with threads full of mockery and bullying. The threads are available in the post where the ex-maintainer explains why they’re stepping down.
In summary, the 4Chan people who care care because they had an opportunity to do something silly and because they saw an opportunity to bully the maintainer.
Man I just spent too much time reading about this, going down the rabbit hole, and I’m just glad that I’m part of a community (Lemmy) that is so clear about how we’re supposed to treat each other. We not only care about each others’ experience, but we’re able to avoid reproducing tropes that reinforce awful ways of understanding and treating each other.
Others can claim that the ex-maintainer of the fork at hand fanned the flames, but the flames would have never been there to begin with in a more humane context.
Conveniently, someone just asked for a Reddit alternative in /r/AlternativeTo. They would probably like to hear about this or something 😉
What a coincidence! Just last night I started reading this book! https://pragprog.com/titles/bhhugo/build-websites-with-hugo/ I like that the chapters are short and that there are exercises :)
Perhaps ironically, Reddit. It just has so many people that there’s loads of novelty, serendipity, and people that can relate to what I post…
Stack Exchange. Sometimes it’s wacky, but most of the time it’s super interesting to see how people solve personal and professional problems. Also, I like seeing small slices of specialized fields. Like reading stuff about space or math or chemistry…
Do GitHub discussions for bugs I’m hoping will be fixed count as a forum? 😅
This sounds like a good way of getting a better idea of who you’re talking to.
But I dislike the idea of things becoming parochial. For example, “He just joined the community two days ago! What is he talking about?” Or “Keep out of this community. If you’re not part of it don’t bring your uninformed opinion here!” In my case, I like the idea of pseudonimity being the only thing people know of me. Not even my karma is immediately visible to people. Just my pseudonym.
Similarly, sometimes I want to comment on something without up-voting it. The reason is that up-votes mean different things to me at different moments. Sometimes I up-vote because I like the content and I want to signal that.* Other times, I’m not particularly pumped by something but I think it’s important, as in it’s important for others to see. And yet other times, I am part of discussions and yet I actually down-vote the post because I think it’s not a topic that I’d like others to see (don’t worry, I didn’t do this with your post! Nor do I with the vast majority of posts). Other times I don’t do anything; I comment without touching votes.
But when I do vote, part of why I do it is because I know my vote will be aggregated. I trust that it’s kept private.
* Funnily enough, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a post I straight up dislike. I guess I’ve found them all interesting or haven’t bothered to down-vote? However, comments can sometimes be sour— those I do down-vote when I dislike them, mainly the style, not always the content.
This is a great space for FLOSS and federated software to fulfill a need.
What I mean is that Tinder and otherwise for-profit software uses drop feeds, so they deliberately give you only a bit of what you like in your feeds. How do they know what you like? The same way Facebook (via Facebook.com, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and all other for-profit social media companies do: they collect absurd amounts of data from you based on your behavior on the platforms. They then build predictive models to know what to show you, when to notify you, how to ask for money in the forms of “boosts” or “unlimited superlikes”. For example, “you found some attractive people today but didn’t kick it off with anyone just yet? Well, come back! Tomorrow we’ll send you a notification telling you someone liked you! Oh, you could also just boost your profile by paying.”
In effect, this keeps you on the verge of finding someone you would really kick off with quickly. This doesn’t have to be the case at all given what we know of how humans develop relationships and how algorithms can be used to arrive at clear-cut goals.
So FLOSS and federated software has the opportunity to actually define those algorithms in such a way as to satisfy people, either in a hookup-y sense or a relationship sense. That incentive, and not the one to maximize engagement and profits, is what could make stuff like Alovoa flourish.
I do think any FLOSS (and federated) dating app should leverage this as a marketing point: people are really kicking it off quickly.
I replied elsewhere, and I would’ve liked to reply the same here. But I didn’t wanna spam, so here’s the link: https://lemmy.ml/post/68696/comment/58928
I see how calling it “hate speech” is more intuitive for lots of people. It totally makes sense. However, “hate speech” is narrower than “oppressive speech” because it is limited to legally protected categories. This expands upon the phrase “the law is not necessarily moral”, adding “the law may ignore some categories and systems of oppression”.
For example, take the United States. Its supreme court has ruled that statistical evidence cannot be used in the court system to show that there are racial disparities, no matter how overwhelming that evidence is.
This only covers racial disparities, but you can expand that to see that many other categories of discrimination —no matter how overwhelming the evidence of their existence is— become invisible by not being considered or protected by the law and therefore not being considered hate speech.
This shows that “hate speech” covers certain categories, but it’s much narrower than “oppressive speech”.
That’s why “oppressive speech”, as a phrase, is necessary, but it doesn’t define it. The explanation given by @dessalines@lemmy.ml seems good!
This sounds like a way of getting a common identity here. And that is something I agree should be cultivated!
However, I think that the common ground so far is tacit, in that users seem to appreciate FLOSS and decentralized software. That is exactly how I found Lemmy in the first place.
But more importantly, the points of disagreement are fundamental! By that I mean that they reflect different world views that sometimes clash inevitably because they arise from different basic understandings of what the world is like. In effect, this makes it so that searching common ground (or at least in the way that I think you’re proposing) doesn’t change those fundamental schemas.
This is not to say that it doesn’t create a common identity, but it misses the mark as to what people care about.
But your sentiment is still laudable! And in that line, what I think can be done is discuss those fundamental differences in a kind way and use effective rhetorical tools to have people clearly see and perhaps identify with your view. This, as the practice that could become part of our Lemmy Identity™️©️®️, could arrive at the common ground that you rightly want.
Oof… you’re touching upon an issue I’ve discussed quite a bit with a group of friends: the tension between effective rhetoric and expressing your true inner feelings. We’ve had these discussions in the context of different types of asymmetrical power relationships, but we often talked about the experience of one of those friends who is gay.
My highschool friend
He grew up being constantly being bullied, including constant jabs from the very same friend-group. Yes, we were regressive, asshole brats; as you may imagine by my tone, this has changed quite a bit. Anyway, the thing is, we changed as a friend-group partly because of the incidentally (or not) inclusive media we consumed. We also changed partly because one of us who went overseas to a hyper-inclusive intentional community would systematically point out micro-aggressions. For example, when someone would say “Oh, he’s such a removed” to mean that someone is weak or fearful, this woke friend would badger them with deliberately nonchalant stuff like “Oh, how could you tell his sexuality based on [that behavior]?” or “Oh, I didn’t know he was into men”. Finally, we were able to change partly because none of us had our identities particularly tied to a regressive expression of a religion or some other ideology (with “ideology” defined in the broadest possible terms).
But that’s not the point. The point is that my friend hated the whole regressive behavior we had. And although he hinted at how he felt by brushing us off with “Alright, alright. Leave me alone”, back then he never expressed his emotions in terms of feeling alone, different, hated, fearful, even disgusting at times… Today he’s able to be more candid with us, and so are we. We can all talk frankly about being fearful of a declining romantic relationship, of having screwed up flirting, of the uncertainties and the shitty certainties aging, of being lost career-wise —you know, the total opposite of stereotypical cisgender men like James Bond.
But I can’t help but wonder whether my friend could’ve changed our regressive views by expressing his awful experience candidly. Honestly, I’m not sure it would’ve worked. We would’ve needed very different schemas to internalize his plight, schemas that we just didn’t have until much later. At the same time, his own experience, expressed strategically, could’ve created those inclusive schemas. But that rhetorical work, which is usually in the hands of capable artists and witty activists, would be too much to ask from a preteen.
My American friend
This is quite a different scenario to another, unrelated, friend. She grew up in a poor, white, and overwhelmingly Evangelical American city. She used to go by the Fox News discourse of the time, of which the most laughably absurd talking point was the whole “Obama, show us your birth certificate”. She ate that up… And her best friend didn’t. Her best friend sat down again and again to talk about these topics, showing her sources, asking critical questions. Eventually, my friend came around and she recognized how absurd her previous point of view was. Today, she’s incredibly grateful at the work her friend put into having her re-think her views.
My neighbors
A last example: my neighbors. They have a dog. It barks all the time. It’s left alone all the time. It’s had no training. The owners themselves told me they don’t like dogs. They have it because their son went overseas and left the dog home. The barking drives me crazy. I try to study and I just can’t think when his barking spouts begin… The law isn’t on my side either: I talked to a lawyer and the most that we can do is get the police to knock on their door and tell them to get their shit together. And so now, my daily life is navigating the tension between (1) wanting to yell in their face about how insensitive they are to leave the dog suffering all day long and how incredibly incompetent they are as owners, and (2) having to approach them with an effective solution. I’ve spent so many hours reading about dog-training, rhetorical tools, how humans change… ugh… it’s been a ride. And, by approaching them strategically, it has improved: now they give the dog walks daily (which is not really a solution to the barking, but at least it makes the dog’s day more interesting) and now they let the dog into the house when they’re not out working. But when they leave the house, so does the dog, and the barking begins…
This whole thing is not so structured, but I’m just trying to let you see where I see the tension between being candid and being strategic. My ideal solution would be to find ways being candid in a rhetorically effective way. But this puts the burden of work on the hands of those who are suffering… and that sucks. Yet I think it’s what I have to continue doing to fix the dog issue, among many other things I’m interested in changing in the world.
Thanks for your self-aware and prosocial approach in this reply— although I’m sure that if a reader thinks genocide didn’t really happen, your designation of genocide-denial as gross wouldn’t really be seen as prosocial. But besides that, my point still stands. I’m sure having a post like this, dedicated, in a way, to you, could be discouraging.
Disclaimers…
I worry that, given the context of this thread, this makes it seem as if I’m a liberal/imperialist. I’m sure I haven’t adopted a critical-enough stance. I wish I had it, I genuinely wish I would read more Anwar Shaikh or Noam Chomsky, for example, especially if reading them and adopting a more critical stance still enables me to be kind and understanding in discussions. However, I also think I am currently able to be harshly critical of liberalism. I hope saying this makes it visible that I am open to reading about Nazis in NATO, as I am about Uyghur genocide.
Saying that also forces me to say that I don’t believe ‘the truth is in the middle’. That’s a fallacy. But these are two lines of discourse (Nazis in Nato and Uyghur genocide) that I think deserve my attention, given the stakes at hand, the sources presented, and my interests.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with that, but I guess I am defending myself preemptively from attacks that degrade discussion. How else would someone express their disagreement? I think kindness can help.
Why kindness and understanding are not hippy-dippy kumbaya, but strategic rhetorical tools
Why? Because, while I think cancel culture* signals a shift in values that are largely more inclusive and therefore positive, it can also backfire. It can convince those who are in the middle (1st rule of thumb) that the accusing/cancelling extreme is excessive, and side with the backfiring/conservative extreme.
What to do if not cancel? Swaying, showing how the world would be better if we thought or acted, not that way, but this way. Inglehart, the author who wrote the ‘backfire’ paper, also works with Welzel, who shows how education and the internet/interconnectivity are changing values around the world like never before. This shows that changes in values, and everything that that entails, is possible. In short amounts of time.
Disclaimer 2
And yet I’ve seen plenty of people in Lemmy making amazing contributions with super interesting articles or websites, posted in good faith and with the intent of teaching. I’m really glad to see this happening.
* I use “cancel culture”, but I’m not convinced that’s an appropriate way of describing the interactions OP is referring to. And yet it resembles what I’m trying to describe… Regardless, my point about backlash, those in the middle, and swaying still stands.
I agree that maybe there’s something that could be done.
Fact checking is tricky
As to fact-checking, I’m not really sure what to do. On one hand I worry the ‘reputation’ system would be too restrictive. On the other hand, in general (by which I mean that I haven’t seen this crop up in Lemmy but I wouldn’t like to see) I’d hate to see anti-vax, flat-earth, or otherwise blatant fake science showing up.
Nudging cognition and affect is as well, but seems more viable
But there is something that could be done regarding the way in which the Lemmy interface nudges our thoughts and feelings. The paradigmatic example in the Fediverse is Eunomia. I wonder (and don’t doubt we could find) literature on these nudges to improve interactions.
The goal could be to avoid finger-pointing as well as aggression, and to incentivize thought/understanding, kindness, and, in general, positive emotions so that we’re able to be both flexible and critical. Note that the positive emotions part is not me being hippy-dippy; by now it’s well established that positive emotions enhance cognition and permit a much broader set of automatic thinking habits than negative emotions. In particular, negative emotions have no desirable characteristics that positive emotions can’t deliver (make sure you read p.110 ¶2 sentences 4 and 5).
It would be great if we can find a way of changing interfaces in such a way as to nudge us towards positive emotions and critical thinking.
But until the heavy lifting for that is done (something that, once I feel comfortable with my CS training, I could attempt), I wonder if the minimal Democratic manifesto could be done with tricky situations like these in mind. In other words, make an explicit, clear, and widespread expectation that we’re here to share, understand critically, and interact kindly.
I agree. And for what it’s worth, I don’t dislike Lemmy’s interface. Maybe I grew accustomed to it? I am aware that it’s sparse, rather than cluttered like Reddit, but other than that I haven’t really thought about it… Maybe if I was a graphic designer or a “Laws of UX”-er I’d be more aware of the interface and, if necessary, how to improve it?
It’s fair to both be critical of how “democracy” has been wielded as a weapon in the past and trying to make an evaluation of whether a country is democratic. In other words, you’re both onto something.
The discourse of democracy can be used as a rhetorical weapon. It was used as such in Iraq. But it is different to have democracy as a discourse and democracy as a social practice. What is the alternative to democratic social practice? Hierarchies. And it so happens that we can measure both types of social practices and their gradients in between. This is what @wiki_me@lemmy.ml did by finding the correlations. In other words, democracy as discourse is much more condemn-able than the incredibly powerful democracy as a social practice.
Amazing! I actually sent the What I’ve Learned video to vegan friends to see what they would respond. The only criticism we could come up with on the fly was that in the U.S. and in Brazil, there is plenty of soy and other human-edible grains that are being used for cows instead of humans. So the whole “cows eat food humans wouldn’t otherwise eat” argument in those cases are not true.
But the video you linked was much more comprehensive! I’m excited! Hahah! A bit inline with the post someone else made regarding how awesome Lemmy is, it’s exciting to find this content and have these discussions here!
Lemmy has amazing potential, but I worry two threats could hamper it: a small size and vague/nonexistent values.
A small community limits its potential for good ideas. I’ve described why here. In summary, we need a dense and malleable network for good ideas to flourish. Lemmy, by design is malleable, but it may not necessarily be dense.
As to values, vague values lead to individual rumination and communal discussions without direction. To avoid that, values need to be clear, explicit, and reinforced.
In a sec I’ll try to explain my thought process behind these worries, their potential solutions, and how that translates into features.
Wise Nudges that Reinforce the Sense of how Alive Lemmy Is
I like the fact that I can see updates in real time of other posts being made. This creates the impression (or, if you’re less of a phenomenologist and more of a positivist, “emphasizes the reality”) that this website is alive. I think features like this, that show how active this community is, can somehow make up for the fact that it isn’t nearly as massive as Reddit.
Yes, there are people who say the small numbers are a good thing, but a dead community isn’t. While in reality it is an alive community, we have to see it to believe it. I mean getting a gut sense that this place is alive.
That sense is conveyed through the already-existing real-time updates of posts, community statistics (under certain circumstances), and trending communities/posts.
I say community statistics only reinforce aliveness under certain circumstances because seeing 0 users per week is quite discouraging for a community. I wonder if there are non-deceptive ways of emphasizing that a community is growing. Maybe seeing users who recently posted or a couple of selected posts? Heck, this also makes me think of (take out your crucifixes) Stories: while they may be annoying because they show things that we don’t value, they do convey the sense of activity. I’m not married to them, but they serve a purpose. Also, I’m speaking without really knowing what would be the best ways of conveying life and inviting participation. Perhaps reading some Nudge could help. Or some Switch
But we’d Sell Out and/or Degrade Content!
I see this proposal being responded to with two objections: One is related to ‘selling out’ to methods of deception. Another one is regarding the quality of content.
As to selling out, it isn’t immediately clear to me that deliberately choosing which facets of oneself to show is problematic. This is certainly the case if you’re under oath at a trial. Even then, most of us would choose to be our ‘pensive’, ‘frank’ and ‘reverential’ selves. Choosing which selves we are is something we do all the time. But if done (1) with clarity regarding Lemmy’s values, (2) through wise nudges, and (3) for the purposes of making Lemmy a thriving community, the worries about (1) being duplicitous and (2) falling prey to the market’s discourse regarding what a ‘business’ has to do to keep afloat, largely subside.
As to the related objection, that the quality of content would decrease if we ‘get people hooked’, this is not necessarily true and also not necessarily a problem. It’s not true because, again, if users have clarity regarding the values and norms of this place, the vast majority of the content will abide by those values and norms. But also, I am a human, not a robot philosopher-programmer-privacyEnthusiast-politicalBeing. I like dank memes. I like silly jokes. I’d absolutely hate Lemmy if it was a place where I’d always have to pretend to be poised. Instead, I can sometimes laugh at silly memes or talk about my favorite TV shows —you know, be human! In community! With smart, principled, and funny people!
Clarity of Values that Orient us All towards Democracy and how to Convey them
But we shouldn’t only think in terms of not selling out or not degrading content. Avoiding things leads to overthinking if we don’t have things to look forward to. We need a vision as to what we want.
I suggest Lemmy is a place where democratic principles can be enacted through open source and federation. This implies that we want to create the conditions for such a democracy, which are: (1) access to Lemmy, (2a) explanations or resources to learn, which is part but separate to (2b) a sense of belonging, and (3) fair and consistent moderation. These guarantee that people can effectively participate, at (1) a technical level, (2) at a cognitive and affective level, and (3) at an institutional level.
I think Nutomic and Dessalines have been stellar at making Lemmy technically accessible. They’ve also been incredibly generous at letting us know what’s happening, or giving us cognitive resources. Through the norms that come with FLOSS communities, I’ve gathered a sense of belonging too! The public modlog is part of the sense of fair and consistent moderation. Those are all there.
That is the big picture, the goal: orienting us all towards reinforcing anti-intolerant-discourse and its flip-side, inclusion.
But I wonder if a stronger sense of the democratic values that we all hold is possible. Could it be done through a minimal manifesto? One that simply states “We recognize freedom depends on (1) resources, (2) education, and (3) institutional enforcement. Therefore, we are committed to making Lemmy (1) FLOSS, open-government, and efficient; (2) a place with a culture of thinking, teaching, and visible learning; (3) swift and fair moderation, with a strong anti-intolerant-discourse stance.”
Of course this is not a set-in stone proposal. But I think the emphasis on democratic principles is important, because it does not prescribe a particular political belief outside of those that are necessary to maintain democratic principles. So, for example, white supremacists would be clearly not welcome here. But again, this is not about distancing oneself from bad things. Rather, it’s about being explicit about the vision of the future of Lemmy.
My mini-manifesto is just a tool to make that vision shared among all of us. Another option is to take inspiration from Project Eunomia, which was researching how changing UIs could help reduce misinformation. Or, you know how on Reddit there’s this “Starting a post with ‘upvote if’ is against intergalactic law”? What would be the equivalent towards reinforcing the values of democracy? These are all ideas on how to reinforce democratic principles.
A Conclusion, I guess…
I tried to lay out why (1) having more people here, (2) having silly posts, (3) and making Lemmy explicitly about democracy will make it better. I presented it in a sort of philosophical-principle-y way. But I also suggested some ways of making those principles tangible. Those ways are not at all set in stone. My point is to be clear about our visions. Which tools we use and how should follow that.
If there is a single thing that I’d like to convey, it’s that:
TL;DR: The benefits of having us all see that this community values and reinforces democracy are immense. We should find ways of conveying that to everyone, so that awful people aren’t enticed to be here (since we are anti intolerant-discourse), so that Lemmy never falls prey to the closed-source switch of Reddit, so that we get a sense of belonging, and so that we (and newcomers) participate more, abiding by the democratic principles of Lemmy.
Donations. For example, the Mastodon instance that I’m in sometimes publishes its financial situation. Most of the time the donations cover the server fees comfortably. But since the amount of users keeps growing and people post more, those donations are sometimes not enough. Only once has it been at a point in which I was worried.
Note that since there are less metrics being systematically hoarded from users, the servers need less power to make similar services work. For example, I bet Reddit’s servers have to account with every little movement I do there. But here, in Lemmy, you can see the source code and notice that there’s very little tracked.
Lemmy in particular is powered by Rust. This makes it more efficient than running a server in, for example, Ruby, which is what Diaspora does. But this is specific to Lemmy and not to the Fediverse, since different Fediverse instances can run their servers using different languages.
Thanks for sharing this! It’s interesting to think about it.
To be honest, it was a bit jarring. Partly because of my associations with milk— very different to those with alcohol. But apart from that, in my mind, a big enough market of this product could boost cow reproduction, rather than reduce the amount of cows in the world.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that, today, the leftover whey is not being used in any way, so this innovation would help prevent waste.
But investment and research reduce costs and can drive up demand. That is why I’m skeptical of this investment/research. I don’t want to further justify the excessive reproduction of cows and their awful existence in this planet. I want to create the conditions so that we reduce our reliance on methane-producing and suffering fellow mammals.
I do want to realize that, while saying that, I hear in myself a critical voice that may be shitty to hear. I’m sorry about that…
Now, having said that, (1) thanks again for sharing this and (2) yeah, although I wouldn’t make it a habit, I’d give it a try. It sounds interesting.
Depending on what level you’re tackling this issue at, I might be guilty of having done this.
The thing is, I recently created “DankMusicFragments”, and I posted there a bunch of times song fragments that I like. That meant my community was ‘trending’, which is true in that there was a lot of activity, but also sort of feels a bit cheap. So I stopped posting.
I may post here and there in the future, but I actually didn’t like that the community was having so much ‘activity’ to appear in the trending section…
Just a consideration to have regarding blogspam: I’d like to be able to post lots of my favorite song fragments, in case other people like them and so that users see that the community is alive. But at the same time, I don’t want to annoy y’all with a community or posts that y’all aren’t really that interested in… Is there a way of making both of those desires (post a lot of my favorite stuff and not annoying y’all) viable simultaneously?
I’d say the lack of retro and pre-2010 gaming discussions is partly because of the novelty and the relatively small size of Lemmy. Since it’s small and a sort of direct competition to the already-massive Reddit, Lemmy users sort of self select. In other words, it’s generally people who care about FLOSS or federation, anarchism, privacy —just to name a few of the things that I’ve seen a lot of here.
But that does not mean at all that those are the only kinds of topics that you’ll find, nor that new kinds of discussions are possible! As other users have suggested, go ahead! Create your own community! Or join an already-existing one and talk about your interests! You might be pleasantly surprised!
Thanks for the post!
“As you know, the Linux Foundation and the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board submitted a letter on Friday to your University outlining the specific actions which need to happen in order for your group, and your University, to be able to work to regain the trust of the Linux kernel community.”
I tried finding that letter, but I don’t know if it’s a private or a public one. Do you know?
ah, yes. superb execution. sublime