Hey yall! Just wanted pop on here to announce some things to keep yall in the loop.

We're here, we're alive. A lot of the team has just been pretty busy IRL so it's been more a focus on making things run smoothly rather than figuring out how to proactively improve things. Thankfully I personally am a lot less busy IRL (for now) and will be using it as an opportunity to put together staff apps and look thru inactive communities a bit more, as well as trimming down the sidebar and fixing up the docs pages.

NSFW Posts show up without needing to login now!

For those who may not have already noticed, but our lovely backend team (major thanks to @yay!) have made it a bit easier to navigate communities and posts without needing to login. Others on other instances should be able to browse local communities here now as well as to be able to access new communities better. We are working on improving the front end and although NSFW posts are blurred by default we are going to make an age gate that you need to click on.

We will be implementing alternative front end UIs

No ETA on when, but that's something people have expressed interest. The mod tools on some alternative front ends are miles ahead of lemmy's current one.

Staff apps are coming!

I am working on staff apps, but I am very averse to google forms. If there is any more privacy focused alternative (self hosted is fine if need be!) then please let me know in the comments below. I am personally more and more averse to google as I use the fediverse more.

Addressing recent spam & defederation

So, lemmy is kind of busted when it comes to cross platform posting especially from mastodon (ok, kind of is an understatement lol) but I defederated from some of the biggest sources of spam thus far.

I also have utilized a "fediblock" block list cataloguing some of the "worst of the worst" instances known within the fediverse. I tried being as selective as possible by vetting instances listed first, finding receipts, as well as using my own knowledge of some of the worst fediverse instances as well. I didn't want to copy and paste a blocklist without vetting what was going in first out of risk that something might slip thru.

We have defederated from a lot of fediverse instances (pretty much all of them arent lemmy, but it's not worth risking it with these awful places we defederated from) and man, there are some abhorrent places in the fediverse. Having things being able to be easily selfhosted is a double edged sword sometimes. Unfortunately lemmy is not like other fediverse platforms that allow hiding domains, so if you decide to peek at the /instances page to view what has been blocked do not interact or visit the instances we have defederated from as more than quite a few are known to host genuine illegal content. You have been warned.

I will be scouring more and seeing which other of the "worst of the worst" places since it feels important to be proactive about other communities that may pose a risk for some members here as our instance grows. Please know I am defederating only the instances that either present a genuine legal problem to our community if their content is federated in or could pose a potential safety risk for vulnerable community members (especially towards trans folks.. there's so many anti-lgbt instances its really quite upsetting.) Know I am doing my due diligence, finding receipts and in some very very select cases (unfortunately) visiting the sites myself to vet them myself.

With that being said, I think it's worth stating given the fact there are just so many anti-LGBT instances in the fediverse (many of which we have blocked thus far) and as more people have shuffled in recently please know that this instance aims to be a safe place for LGBT folks, and has a very strict policy against transphobia. I myself am a gay man, and take support with my trans and nonbinary siblings extremely seriously. The team is pretty much unanimous in our support for LGBT folk, and that's not something we're ever going to budge on. If there's anything that seems hateful please report it directly to an admin and we will take care of it as soon as possible.

New features are coming to lemmy (soon!)

There's quite a few new good stuff in the works for lemmy, and for those who are seeing from other instances you will be able to block domains on lemmy (hopefully soon!)

Of course that doesn't fix all the issues present, but it's a big step in a positive direction.

Anyway, it is 2am here. I'm heading to bed. I will be responding tomorrow morning and throughout the day. Feel free to comment below questions, comments, concerns, what have you. I'll try to respond as I time allows.