Oh yes, I know.
At the same time, I don't trust that this guy isn't going to go into the magazines I run and start spamming the comments section or anything like that.
In 2003? 2004? - somewhere around there - I was the only mod on a small internet forum. A guy got mad at something I did and decided to start putting gore in every single thread. He did it when I was asleep, and I came back on the next morning and had to clean up the mess.
Since then, I've been a bit less forgiving when someone has shown to be a bad actor. Maybe I'm just colored by past experiences, but I didn't want to deal with any BS, and on the bigger of the magazines I run we have a full modteam that can overturn the ban if they disagree. (The smaller doesn't even have any organic activity yet, so I haven't recruited a modteam for it.)
To be fair...
There are alternatives to Lemmy. Kbin, I'd argue, is superior in most respects. (Kbin is still obviously young and rough around the edges at times, though.)
I don't like the Lemmy maintainers, and that was a big jump propelling me onto Kbin. It just made me feel squicky knowing that I was tacitly endorsing their software by using it when there was an alternative available that did exactly the same things. I also don't like using communities on Lemmy.ml because the admins there have a history of removing stuff that doesn't suit their political views.
I don't think these two situations are equivalent, mind, but I do think there is more weight behind "avoid using Lemmy" than "avoid using Calckey/Firefish".
I daily drive KDE Neon.
Sometimes install scripts don't work as expected, since things check if you're on Ubuntu or Mint or whatever specifically and "Neon" doesn't match their regex. It's usually not a big deal and fairly trivial to solve.
Regardless, I've actually started to get away from the command line and have embraced the app store. Discover is actually pretty darn good and has lots of the things I want to install. I can choose if I want to install from Discover via Apt, Flatpak, or Snap.
I usually install Flatpak stuff. The Steam Deck has taught me that Flatpak is generally as good or better than actually installing via apt - you don't need to wait on your distro to update sources, and you aren't adding random PPAs. Sometimes you need to fudge the permissions with Flatseal, but it's a one-and-done thing.
I use Microsoft Edge as my browser (yes, really - the Chromium version is just as good as Chrome, it has nifty vertical tabs, I get news on my "new tab" page, and all my settings are saved there). I use Thunderbird for mail, plus Steam, Zoom, Discord, etc. Surprisingly few KDE apps are preinstalled, to be honest - the only KDE apps installed are the ones I want anyway.
TikTok seems to arbitrarily decide if a video has a seek bar or not.
I'm really not sure why they do that. Revanced has a patch for TikTok that puts the seek bar on every video.
Lemmy doesn't have the functionality like Kbin does. It's one reason why Kbin exists.
Yep. You can even argue that causing a recession is why interest rates are spiking. It wasn't happening naturally, and the plebians were getting too uppity.
To maintain class divisions the upper class decided that the best way to avoid this was to turn off the money spigot, because too much was starting to trickle down.
Turning off the money spigot meant that businesses couldn't raise wages had to start cuts. Causing layoffs meant it would shift from an employee's market to an employer's market. They say it's to "cool inflation"... by making people lose their livelihoods. Then people stop buying and inflation comes down, because the commoners have to keep scrounging instead of improving their lives.
It will get worse; we're just at the beginning. Tech has been a bellwether, but it's started spreading across the entire economy. Places that aren't tech-related are facing layoffs, and as workers get shafted we see strikes coming back in a big way.
But the 1% will hold firm. The Fed will keep the money spigots closed until there's a massive recession and everyone loses their homes. Then the rich will come in, buy everything up for a bargain, and rent it back to you at twice the price.
And of course, politicians won't help you either - if anything, most of them stand to benefit from the change. After all, Biden himself told his rich donors "nothing will fundamentally change" - things were changing, and so he's not going to stand for that. Instead, he'll silently let things revert to the status quo, the way the rich like it. Everyone else kills each other in culture wars or fights over the scraps.
Yeah, I can't find the source I originally read it from (I think it was on the KDE subreddit from a KDE dev there), but they gave a talk about it recently. I've only skimmed the talk but they do speak pretty heavily about KDE collaborating with Valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0
My worry that many articles are going to have a biased take on the situation, or be coming from Mastodon etc. where things don't map up 1:1.
My perspective:
I moderate a medium-sized magazine here on Kbin (@Disneyland, about 264 subscribers here and a couple dozen elsewhere on the fediverse). You can't moderate a magazine from another instance, nor can you redirect a magazine somewhere else. This means I effectively must use Kbin.social, especially since I also mod the /r/Disneyland subreddit and have been redirecting people to our magazine for a month now.
I personally would like to see Threads here, if only because @disneyparks would be a nice fit to have automatically included in our microblog tab. I can't go to another instance that supports Threads because again - moderators on Kbin can't be from different instances. And besides - me being on another instance doesn't stop the fact that I couldn't have content from Threads automatically added here. So my options are basically "deal with it" or "abandon the community here".
It really sucks that there is a way that could make my magazine better by including actual official Disney sources in our Disney-themed magazine, but some people are afraid of EEE they are trying to keep that from everyone. I'd rather federate with Threads and allow users to individually block the domain if they desire.
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If EEE is the worry, fight them at the "extend" step, not the "embrace" one.
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If mountains of spam is the worry - people have to manually follow people from other instances for those posts to federate to Kbin, so not every single account will magically pop up here on Kbin. It'll be accounts that people on Kbin have followed; a small chunk.
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Vice-versa, Threads is full of casual users who don't know much about the fediverse. Any Threads users interacting on Kbin are those who understand the fediverse and go out of their way to subscribe to Kbin magazines from Threads. We know from past history that these are going to be a minority; even within the fediverse, Mastodon is huge (and tech-savvy) but we see very few Mastodon folks posting to Kbin threads.
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If "Facebook is sucking up all my data" is the worry, they could do that anyway. The fediverse is open and public; they can easily set up a "shadow instance" that federates everywhere and slurps everything. They don't need Threads for that.
If people just don't want to see Threads users at all, making the block button defederate on the account level would be wonderful. If people choose to block Threads, then Threads users couldn't see them and vice versa. People who see Threads as a potential useful resource (myself, for the magazine I mod) would still be able to have that content in the community here on Kbin. Everyone's happy.
There's also the regulation angle. The Digital Markets Act is likely why they're federating: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
The interoperability is the big one. Being federated means that Threads isn't considered a "gatekeeper platform". I wouldn't be surprised if Instagram and maybe even Facebook itself start to federate as well. Since Threads isn't currently connected to the wider fediverse, that's probably why they're not in the EU yet.
This also means that fears of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" are likely overblown. Breaking fediverse interoperability means that they'd be a gatekeeper again and subject to EU regulations against gatekeepers. Interestingly, both Twitter and Reddit are now likely subject to being considered gatekeepers due to making their APIs effectively inaccessible.
If Reddit has an employee on staff as a mod that can approve posts, then they lose safe harbor protections. Anything that mod approves is considered representative of Reddit, giving them editorial control and causing them to be handled more strictly. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-9th-circuit/1856011.html
Further, if Reddit gave bonuses to mods, then mods would be considered unpaid employees. Any kind of "swag" or quid pro quo for being a mod of a big subreddit increases the chances that those moderators will be considered unpaid employees by the Department of Labor. AOL famously got in big trouble for giving free/discounted internet access to their volunteer moderators. https://casetext.com/case/hallissey-v-america-online-inc-sdny-2002 (Settled in 2009 for $15 million in back pay.)
Combining the two is terrible news for Reddit and would make their business model absolutely unsustainable. Every mod would be an employee and every post would be representative of Reddit as a company. If a mod approves a link to copyrighted material, then Reddit could be sued.
!Disneyvacation