Maybe home-grown human intelligence (HGHI)?

…Who exactly is asking for this? AI chatbots are cool and all, but I have no idea why you’d want them in your messages app. What would you even need that for?

Oof, that’s never fun. When I’m typing a long comment, I always spam copy it so that I can paste it back if I end up losing it. On PC, you can even use Windows+V to pull up a clipboard history, which has come in handy more than once.

Anywho, glad my reply was helpful! There are a lot of ways to interact with the content on the fediverse, and it seems like you’re well on your way to finding one that works best for you. Hope you enjoy it here!

I think there are a few culprits here.

• Not everything wants to be an everything app. While everything in the fediverse uses ActivityPub, that doesn’t mean everything has to aim to be interoperable. I wrote a lengthy rant about this here, but essentially, it’s important to have things with a more specific, restricted purpose if we want the fediverse to be accessible. If someone just wants a thread aggreegator (i.e., just Reddit’s style of media), they shouldn’t be forced to grapple with microblogging features more fit for a Twitter-like. There are some platforms that aim to combine different media types—Kbin/Mbin has both thread aggregation and microblogging, and I’ve heard that Friendica tries to work well with everything. Even so, if someone wants federated Reddit, they should be able to have federated Reddit, and Lemmy aims to provide that. The same way that Pixelfed (an image-sharing platform like Instagram) doesn’t need to incorporate Reddit-style threads or Twitter-style microblogs, Lemmy doesn’t have to do it all.

• Federation is still in the works. Something to keep in mind is that most of these platforms are early in development and still working out a lot of bugs. Kbin (the platform I use) is an obvious example due to its currently incredibly spotty microblog federation (tho I’ve heard that Mbin has implemented fixes to fare better in this regard). We have to be patient while all the kinks are worked out. As much as we all wish it didn’t, software development takes time—a lot of it.

• Admins can sometimes be a bit trigger-happy with defederation. I don’t think the fediverse has quite grasped that defederation is essentially the nuclear bomb of instance moderation tools, cutting off interaction with all users of an instance. While there are times where this is justified (even preemptively, such with Threads imo), there are times where the nuke has been threatened over a quarrel between admins or disagreements about other defederations. Hopefully, this will cool down as the fediverse matures, but we’ll have to see how that pans out (especially with Threads federation growing ever nearer).

They’ve been mostly resolved in my experience. Kbin.social has been working great.

@interstellar is being developed for Android, and Lunar is working on Kbin support for iOS. Still a good ways to go tmk, but we’re getting there!

If I’m not free to join the Fediverse from the server of my choice, whether that’s mastodon.social or threads.net, is the Fediverse truly free?

Joining the fediverse is just a matter of using a platform that implements ActivityPub (the protocol that lets servers communicate with each other. If Threads implements ActivityPub, it’s part of the fediverse, and the people on Threads can interact without any instance that chooses to federate.

However, instances don’t have to federate with Threads. That’s part of the freedom of the fediverse. If an instance admin decides that they don’t want to deal with an influx of hate, don’t want most of the content their uses see to be from Meta, or just don’t want to federate with a for-profit company that has an awful track record, they should be able to defederate. If a user of that instance really wants to see Threads content, they should be able to move to an instance that lets them, but defederation doesn’t make the fediverse or ActivityPub less free.

You forgot Rule 1 of the fediverse: Kbin does not exist.

Let me try to explain a bit better.

Let’s take an instance called Instance A. Instance A is currently on the fediverse, which we’ll say is pretty evenly distributed. No instance has a large enough portion of users whereby others would have problems with activity loss if they defederated, which is good. If any instance starts doing things that Instance A doesn’t agree with, they can defederate, and less activity won’t be much of a concern with defederating from that single instance.

But now, let’s take Instance B. Instance B is planning to implement ActivityPub and join the fediverse, and when it does so, it will control 80% of the activity. In other words, it has as much activity as the rest of the fediverse combined.

However, Instance B isn’t particularly trustworthy. They don’t value the open web like the rest of the fediverse does, their moderation is extremely poor, and they haven’t cared for general well being in the past if it meant raising profits.

Here, Instance A and instances like it have two options: defederate immediately, or wait and see.

• If it defederates immediately, Instance A will see some users move to other parts of the fediverse because they’re excited about the 5x increase in activity from Instance B. They probably won’t go to Instance B now, but maybe Instance C or D. However, a lot of people will be fine. After all, activity is staying the way it is, and Instance B is untrustworthy anyway.
• If it waits and sees, this allows people on Instance A to enjoy and get used to the 5x increase in activity. Not bad so far.

However, let’s say Instance B starts having moderation issues (e.g., widespread hate speech and more-than-usual spam) as everyone reasonably predicted. Instance A now wants to defederate.

• If it defederated before, no problem! Nothing needs to be done.
• If it didn’t and wants to start defederation now, good luck. Now, everyone on Instance A has gotten used to the 5x activity on Instance B, and you’re going to have an extremely difficult time convincing them to cut the activity they see and the users they follow by 80%. Way more people will leave Instance A if it defederates now than if it had just defederated early on.

In other words, if people on Instance A come to rely on Instance B for the activity they’re used to, way more people will join the camp of “I’m leaving if you defederate with Instance B” then if Instance A just defederated from the get-go.

Let’s take another example. Instance B wants to try to grab a bunch of users, so after some time, they stop federating at all.

• If Instance A defederated, the people there are fine. They never saw stuff from Instance B anyway.
• If Instance A didn’t defederate, then 80% of the content that people are used to will suddenly be gone. Most of the accounts they follow will be disconnected, and activity will fall a ton. These users on Instance A will have two options: stay, with a horrendous drop in activity and no posts from the accounts they’re most interested in; or just go to Instance B.
  In either case, Instance B will be fine. Most interaction was between Instance B users, so this won’t be that much of a deal. But for users on other instances that are used to seeing stuff from B, it’d be catastrophic.

In short, defederating immediately has much smaller consequences than trying to defederate when whoever you want to defederate from controls most of the activity that your users see.

That’s because I’m not fully sure on how people should act in respect to this Threads situation (which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place). In the recent past, I was all “defederate defederate defederate defederate,” but now considering that multiple large platforms (like Flipboard) will be joining in, it’s less likely that one company will control a majority of activity. Of course, you don’t need a majority for there to be a problem — just a large enough portion for other instances to have issues defederating due to the amount of content they’d lose — but a mere large portion and not a supermajority may not be reason to defederate. Of course, there are other things to consider as well, and I’ll probably make yet another wall of text with my new thoughts on how instances should handle this in the near future. For now, this thread is for me to share the ideals that I think people on the fediverse should prioritize and for others to discuss what they think on the matter.

Of course, these platforms have only federated a handful of accounts, so the “chaos” right now is in the reaction and discourse. However, I don’t think it’s unjustified.

I’ve outlined my main issues with Threads federation here, and while I’m not as sold on preemptive defederation as I was when I made the post, I still find it reasonable to be concerned about about for-profit companies controlling a vast majority of the content, especially when (A) the users making that content may be unaware that they’re on the fediverse to begin with and (B) companies like Meta have a terrible track record and would have incentive to grab a ton of users by defederating if they’re able (though with so many other parties joining in, whether they’ll be able to pull something off like that is becoming more questionable, hence me being less sure of the need to defederate).

Nah, just some teen making very inefficient use of his time

Do you plan to do this with Firefox?
Yes and it will be named Poopenfartenfox.

Well, looks like I’ll just stick to using Invidious.

In 1532, the geographer Jacob Ziegler of Bavaria proposed the theory that the creatures fell out of the sky during stormy weather and then died suddenly when the grass grew in spring.

lol, that’s dumb

This description was contradicted by natural historian Ole Worm, …

well duh, of course people thought that was stupi—

… who accepted that lemmings could fall out of the sky, but claimed that they had been brought over by the wind rather than created by spontaneous generation.

oh

I wonder what exactly he hid from the board that led to this. “…he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board,” isn’t exactly specific.

B-b-but you see, misinformation is good actually! B-because free speech! Yeah! That! This is a good idea. The people in charge of the Site Formerly Known as Twitter are doing great. Totally.

OP set the tone by making an extremely smug, ignorant post.

Neither smugness nor ignorance warrants this kind of response.

Starting with the latter, someone not knowing something, especially something benign like “Oh, expensive satellites being lost is expected,” is in no world a reason for insulting them or telling them to leave. It’s not like OP is maliciously trying to spread misinformation. They shared news that they thought was a bad look for Elon Musk but actually wasn’t. The appropriate response is a simple correction, not a stern “fuck off”, and definitely not a barrage of personal insults.

As for smugness, let’s assume that this post was about something that actually showed Elon Musk screwing up. In that case, it being smug would be fine—nay, expected—here. Smug comments against Elon Musk for doing dumb stuff happen all the time, and nobody’s telling the people making those comments to get bent. Here, OP really thought that this was another Elon fail, in which case nobody would be complaining about the tone of the post. So it’s just a matter of OP being wrong and thus the tone not really being appropriate (since Elon isn’t messing up here), not a bad attitude that needs to be shooed away from the community.

Also, “extremely warped perception of reality”? Come on. It’s just not knowing what losses are expected with satellites.

But here’s the thing: OP didn’t know that it was accounted for and expected. And if it wasn’t expected (or we, like OP, weren’t aware), many of us would probably also mock Elon sort something of the sort. It’s not malice. It’s simply not knowing something.

Why couldn’t this commenter have maturely and informatively told OP why they were wrong? That would’ve made OP aware of their mistake and cautious of making similar errors in the future without discouraging them from contributing entirely. It’s clearly not difficult to do, as other comments did it.

The only reason for someone to personally insult someone over this is because it makes them feel better, they find it funny, etc. It doesn’t help OP or the community. It’s just for someone to get a quick laugh from bringing down other people for not knowing something, and that’s not something people should support or condone on the fediverse.

Okay, being harsh and insulting just isn’t necessary. Yes, OP got something wrong — they posted something that they thought was significant but actually isn’t — but why not correct them like a reasonable person? In general, we should be trying to encourage discussion and foster a positive community, and that means treating other people like human beings when they don’t know much about space stuff.

But noooooo, we need dopamine from cussing out people who’ve been on Kbin for a day because they dared post about satellites being lost without knowing that it doesn’t mean that much. You might as well have told them to fuck off and never come back. And of course, this is the comment that gets all the upvotes.

How are people supposed to feel comfortable posting when any error they make is going to be met with insults and blocks? You’re talking to another person, ffs, and personally attacking them over something as small as this. Communities aren’t enjoyable when people are supporting this stuff.