Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn’t old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.

I get where this article’s coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn’t last long enough to do much in that regard.

Better than my memory though, here’s an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.

Brings to mind this NSFW ('cause light horror) short film “Circles”

Original article: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-whats-happening-gaza-is-not-genocide-2024-05-20/

It’s pretty clear to me Biden’s trying to thread the needle on this in a gruesome way. The argument seems to follow the form of: civilian deaths are collateral damage, this is unfortunate but this is war and they are not purposely being targeted and so this is not genocide.

However that almost willfully ignores the denial and blocking of aid to the same affected civilians, which is a deliberate action that despite the cover story being to prevent it reaching Hamas, falls entirely flat as regardless, it results in direct suffering and death of the civilians. I say almost because some small efforts have been made to push back against the denial of aid, but as is evident to anyone monitoring the situation, these efforts are all far too small to address the widespread suffering and death of the Gazan people.

This whole semantics game around genocide is simply disgusting. You know those in government know exactly what people mean when they’re calling it that, they want an end to the killing and an end to the deaths of civilians, whether from military strikes or denial of aid.

At a glance this sounds even more intrusive than it’s been with Win10 (and maybe 11?), and sadly it’s no surprise as even without AI junk, I think the defaults with Win10 (and maybe 11) are to track your PC use to try to provide some “convenience” features, e.g. display of recently used programs/accessed files when you go to open a new desktop (Win key + Tab).

If they would be more transparent about this and indicate whether and how much of that info, “anonymized/depersonalized” or not, is being taken by them, I think people would still be understandably annoyed but more understanding; at least with an easy opt out or better still, the default being that you must opt in for any of it.

In strict technical terms, yeah it’s okay, albeit with the shortcomings to be expected of a smaller development team. In terms of population and activity with this format, I think it may be at the top compared to alternatives as well.

There’s still others and other software options though for this format that people could try, which honestly may even be technically better, but lacking population/activity means they’re in an odd spot.

The first of these you’ll read about on here are likely Kbin/Mbin, possibly followed by PieFed or still-in-development Sublinks. Kbin/Mbin is definitely the runner-up in terms of federated Reddit-alternatives, as it was one of the few options available at the time people were leaving Reddit.

PieFed and Sublinks have emerged more recently with different priorities and approaches compared to Lemmy, but with the same desire to offer a federated option for people to deploy.

The last you may read about around here would be of stuff like Discuit, Lobste.rs, Raddle (and any other sites built with Postmill), Tildes, and the like, which are all most like Reddit in terms of their being stand-alone sites, unconnected to any others running the same underlying server software. However each of these, I think, may have lower population than the cumulative population of the Lemmy network of sites.

All that said, cutting to your last question: ultimately it heavily depends on the instance/site you settle into.

Lemmy isn’t a monolith, which is both its greatest strength and weakness compared to Reddit. You may be able to find a Lemmy instance/site that heavily blocks out politics and moderates lightly, but the irony of this is that it means it may have to be overly-policed to achieve that, and might appear less active in the process from heavy disconnection/defederation from any instances/sites that permit political posts/discussion.

Right now though, much of Lemmy is heavily political, and it’s arguably because of lax moderation to keep political posts/discussions to relevant communities, which is itself probably in part because of lacking moderation tools to enable lighter touches to redirect posts/discussions.

Nevertheless, it’s possibly the best option fitting the format available at the moment given the rest, but if Lemmy and federation doesn’t suit you you might check out Tildes or Discuit. Although be advised: Tildes remains invite only for now.

Links to all options/alternatives mentioned:

• Kbin, flagship site: Kbin Social
• Mbin. No flagship, check list of instances.
• PieFed, flagship site: PieFed Social
• Sublinks. No flagship, still in-development as drop-in replacement for Lemmy.
• Discuit. Not federated, but open source.
• Lobste.rs. Not federated, but open source. Requires invite.
• Raddle. Not federated, built on open source Postmill.
• Tildes. Not federated, but open source. Requires invite.

One last point, I swear, but if you do stick around and just want to chat about tv shows, movies, and music, I’d recommend visiting:

!moviesandtv@lemm.ee
!movies@lemm.ee
!music@lemmy.world
!casualconversation@lemm.ee

Honestly I think any general/casual discussion community would welcome posts about those subjects as well, which there are a number of across Lemmy sites to check out.

But compare with GOG then. They sell games, you download them with no DRM so you own the download essentially.

This is the model digital media should take, frankly. Anything less may as well be misleading marketing, as far as I’m concerned.

When other’s, be it corporations or people start to decide which information a person can and cannot access, is a damn slippery slope we better level out before AI starts to roll out en masse.

You highlight the bigger issue here than AI alone tbh. This is why another critical element is becoming literate and teaching each other methods of independent research, using multiple sources to develop an understanding, and not relying on any singular source, especially without careful review.

All the technology in the world can’t help a person learn and understand, who hasn’t yet learned how to learn, much less understand.

I agree with others saying copse, as being my first thought as well, but I’m really commenting to say I love the imagery the description, “a gathering of trees” produces.

Personally, although the terms have become increasingly blurred over the years, I refer to changing to a new version of software (including an OS, and both ideally with some improvements) as updating it rather than upgrading.

I reserve upgrade more for changes of hardware with some form of improvement over its predecessor. I’d suspect I may not be alone in this, but I dunno how common it may be. When switching to a mix of both, I simply say I’m getting a new [insert specific device depending on which].

Although I’d hesitate to call many new phones an all-around upgrade when they’re either removing features (headphone jack/expandable storage) or getting more cumbersome to hold (can you even call some modern phones a handset anymore?).

You might look into either the OnePlus Nord N20 or N30. N20 had an AMOLED display like the S10+, whereas the N30 has a LCD display but high refresh rate. I’m not entirely sure but I think the processor specs are comparable, storage and RAM definitely are.

I know someone with a N30 and they’ve had good experience with the battery life on it so far, albeit they also aren’t heavily using it either. Here’s a little comparison chart.

Ah yeah, my bad, I also see this on another part of the site regarding “zaps”:

From the beginning of the Nostr protocol, it was common to see Lightning invoices in notes.

I think I remembered it otherwise by coming at it from the decentralized comms angle instead of the cryptobro angle.

Do people have to make a living of it?

Can’t we have a place online where out data isn’t being sold, aren’t being bombarded with ads, or begged for subscriptions?

We can, and we do have some such spaces, thankfully. Another question to ask then is, could online workers have the sort of spaces where they’re not ceding their data to be sold by others, where they aren’t at the whims of corporate platforms wary of losing advertisers’ money, and being given scraps of the advertising money and pressed to split their subscription revenue with corporations making billions?

If people don’t want them in the fediverse, and people are sick of the corporate web (either in part or in whole because of online workers there), where are online workers to try to make their living?

I don’t know, but I do understand the exasperation at it all.

That’s what Nostr is supposed to be for. Looking for ways to monetize decentralized social media.

I thought it was more interested in making a more censorship resistant form of online communication, with the crypto/monetization junk being tacked on as kind of an afterthought (but then amplified because cryptocurrency people are nothing if not vocal).

I would feel better if stories like this gave us background on the people involved. Who is Mike Macgirvin? I don’t want the person to dox themselves but I do want to know where he came from, what work he’s done before, what companies he’s worked for and what kind of people, organizations or groups he has worked with in the past. What school, university or program did he come out of? How old is he? What nationality? Where does he live and work now?

Did you miss the interview linked in the article? They interviewed Mike Macgirvin a few years back, and it goes into some of the background you’re wondering about.

I’m not familiar with that one, what was going on with it?

For those out of the loop, 0.19 brings nice features to Lemmy World like:

• Unbroken ampersands (&) in titles.
• Improved 2-factor authentication, which will disable it for those using it, so you’ll want to reenable it after the upgrade. I think in turn this may sign people out, so be sure you still have your login info around, and if things are acting kinda odd, maybe clear your cache.
• Scaled sorting to help surface less active communities.
• Instance blocking via user settings, so if there’s an instance you don’t enjoy seeing communities from, you can block them. This does not block all users from said instance.
• Import/export account settings, which includes your bio & various settings like show/hide bot accounts/NSFW content, default sort settings, etc., subbed communities, saved posts/comments, and blocked users/communities/instances.

[…] but the profitable parts (algorithmic indexer and the app view with advertisements) are very much still in the hands of BlueSky the company.

Yeah, we’ll have to see if/when they fully enable third parties to run their own indexers and app views to see how committed they are to all this, and even then as the thread you linked indicates, there would remain many questionable architectural problems to AuthTransfer.

I came away from reading over the AuthTransfer protocol and its handling of moderation/enabling users with a very major sense of, “We outsource almost everything!”

As L. Rhodes writes:

[…] One effect of ATproto’s structure is to multiply the number of administrative relationships for which each user must decide for themselves—often on little to no information—who deserves their trust. The complexity of its infrastructures seems like it would sometimes make it difficult to assess when that trust has been betrayed, and by whom.

So Bluesky may redistribute some technical power from host admins to users, but it also gives them much more to navigate. It makes their need for power more desperate, and I’m not at all sure that the power trickling down to them through those other layers of infrastructure will be sufficient to the need. No doubt many will compensate by sticking to the parts of the network operated by Bluesky itself—apparent choice, de facto lock-in.

Yes, however without experience with Lemmy’s implementation, it wasn’t clear what the differences were. From what I’ve read of Lemmy’s basic implementation, i.e. submit a reason with your registration/application, this didn’t sound that far from it.

As I read it, Pixelfed’s request for more information form is a good addition (better than the awkward roundabout way you’d have to handle it otherwise, as I think I recall seeing come up with Lemmy), albeit as it’s optional we’ll have to see how well it’s used in practice.

Is there something more to it that’s not highlighted in the linked blog post?