cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/7623718

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/7623713

I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/7623713

I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.

I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.

not strictly a new community per se, but yeah. it exists! with the new show out, theres some discussion to be had over there if you wanna join :)

!camphalfblood@literature.cafe

!nanowrimo@literature.cafe is the community, if you plan on participating in the challenge feel free to post over there about it :D

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/1220527

How many times even has this happened?!?!

How many times even has this happened?!?!

Linked is the community directory. Here's a list of some of the newest communities:

!classics@literature.cafe - For discussion of all classic books! [New]

!camphalfblood@literature.cafe - For discussion of the Percy Jackson series and other books within the books written by Rick Riordan, as well as the media adaptations of said series. [New]

!speculative_poetry@literature.cafe - A cyberspace for sharing and discussing speculative poetry. [New]

!philosophical_poetry@literature.cafe - A cyberspace for sharing and discussing philosophical poetry. [New]

!writingprompts@literature.cafe - Writing prompts, duh! [New]

!writing@literature.cafe - General writing community. [New]

!ebookdeals@literature.cafe - Ebook deals! [New]

Here is a link to the community directory as well.

https://literature.cafe/post/372004

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/1133610

I am seeing a lot of fearmongering and misinformation regarding recent events (CSAM being posted in now closed large lemmy.world communities). I say this as someone who brought attention to this with other admins as I noticed things were federating out.

Yes, this is an issue and what has happened in regards to CSAM is deeply troubling but there are solutions and ideas being discussed and worked on as we speak. This is not just a lemmy issue but an overall internet issue that affects all forms of social media, there is no clear cut solution but most jurisdictions have some form of safe harbor policy for server operators operating in good faith.

A good analogy to think of here is if someone was to drop something illegal into your yard that is open to the public. If someone stumbled upon said items you aren't going to be hunted down for it unless there is evidence showing you knew about the items and left them there without reporting them or selling/trading said items. If someone comes up to you and says "hey, there's this illegal thing on your property" you report it and hand it over to the relevant authorities and potentially look at security cameras if you have any and send them over with the authorities then you'd be fine.

A similar principle exists online, specifically on platforms such as this. Obviously the FBI is going to raid whoever they want and will find reasons to if they need to, but I can tell you for near certainty they probably aren't as concerned with a bunch of nerds hosting a (currently) niche software created by 2 communists as a pet project that gained popularity over the summer because a internet business decided to shoot itself in the foot. They are specifically out to find people who are selling, trading, and making CSAM. Those that knowingly and intentionally distribute and host such content are the ones that they are out for blood for.

I get it. This is anxiety inducing especially as an admin, but so long as you preserving and reporting any content that is brought to your attention in a timely manner and are following development and active mitigation efforts, you should be fine. If you want to know in more detail click the link above.

I am not a lawyer, and of course things vary from country to country so it's a good idea to check from reputable sources on this matter as well.

As well, this is a topic that is distressing for most normal well adjusted people for pretty obvious reasons. I get the anxiety over this, I really do. It's been a rough few days for many of us. But playing into other peoples anxiety over this is not helping anyone. What is helping is following and contributing the discussion of potential fixes/mitigation efforts and taking the time to calmly understand what you as an operator are responsible for within your jurisdiction.

Also, if you witnessed the content being discussed here no one will fault you for taking a step away from lemmy. Don't sacrifice your mental health over a volunteer project, it's seriously not worth it. Even more so if this has made you question self hosting lemmy or any other platform like it, that is valid as well as it should be made more clearer that this is a risk you are taking on when making any kind of website that is connected to the open internet.

I am seeing a lot of fearmongering and misinformation regarding recent events (CSAM being posted in now closed large lemmy.world communities). I say this as someone who brought attention to this with other admins as I noticed things were federating out.

Yes, this is an issue and what has happened in regards to CSAM is deeply troubling but there are solutions and ideas being discussed and worked on as we speak. This is not just a lemmy issue but an overall internet issue that affects all forms of social media, there is no clear cut solution but most jurisdictions have some form of safe harbor policy for server operators operating in good faith.

A good analogy to think of here is if someone was to drop something illegal into your yard that is open to the public. If someone stumbled upon said items you aren't going to be hunted down for it unless there is evidence showing you knew about the items and left them there without reporting them or selling/trading said items. If someone comes up to you and says "hey, there's this illegal thing on your property" you report it and hand it over to the relevant authorities and potentially look at security cameras if you have any and send them over with the authorities then you'd be fine.

A similar principle exists online, specifically on platforms such as this. Obviously the FBI is going to raid whoever they want and will find reasons to if they need to, but I can tell you for near certainty they probably aren't as concerned with a bunch of nerds hosting a (currently) niche software created by 2 communists as a pet project that gained popularity over the summer because a internet business decided to shoot itself in the foot. They are specifically out to find people who are selling, trading, and making CSAM. Those that knowingly and intentionally distribute and host such content are the ones that they are out for blood for.

I get it. This is anxiety inducing especially as an admin, but so long as you preserving and reporting any content that is brought to your attention in a timely manner and are following development and active mitigation efforts, you should be fine. If you want to know in more detail click the link above.

I am not a lawyer, and of course things vary from country to country so it's a good idea to check from reputable sources on this matter as well.

As well, this is a topic that is distressing for most normal well adjusted people for pretty obvious reasons. I get the anxiety over this, I really do. It's been a rough few days for many of us. But playing into other peoples anxiety over this is not helping anyone. What is helping is following and contributing the discussion of potential fixes/mitigation efforts and taking the time to calmly understand what you as an operator are responsible for within your jurisdiction.

Also, if you witnessed the content being discussed here no one will fault you for taking a step away from lemmy. Don't sacrifice your mental health over a volunteer project, it's seriously not worth it. Even more so if this has made you question self hosting lemmy or any other platform like it, that is valid as well as it should be made more clearer that this is a risk you are taking on when making any kind of website that is connected to the open internet.

cross-posted from: https://literature.cafe/post/641633

I was never extremely active on Mastodon until recently but I followed it's development relatively closely from its infancy. And I will say that it's really strange to watch lemmy face nearly identical issues that Mastodon did when it was in a similar development stages. (Though, some of the drama thus far have been essentially a speedrun of what mastodon went thru over a gradual amount of time.)

The fediverse as a whole is essentially a return to the Internets roots, and with that comes new problems that OG internet communities did not have to grapple with due to the changes the internet has faced in the past few years alone. When building communities, most large internet communities have been largely corporate since the rapid centralization of the internet of the mid 2000s. There is truly no blueprint for this, and the volunteers that are making these communities from scratch are going to make mistakes (as we have already witnessed more than once, even this week alone.)

A large issue that has resulted from the corporate centralization of the internet that is really hard to break from is the expectation of an extremely smooth streamlined experience on emerging platforms like lemmy from new users. And you aren't going to get that in these early days. You just aren't. Things are going to be messy, we are just getting our feet on the ground. And this results in a lot of frustration and just generally a feeling of walking on thin ice with a user base that has been largely built initially from the exodus of an already established platform. To many regular lemmy users there's this expectation that tends to be "well, if other social media platforms can do it, why can't we?" and to admins and those building these communities it can be frustrating and feel like the users are being entitled to things that just aren't possible from volunteers at this time.

With recent drama and inter community issues, the honeymoon phase of this place is officially ending and how we move forward is entirely dependent on how we respond as a community as well as what people using this platform as a whole want from it. You get what you put in.

I don't say this to discount the drama that lemmy has faced these past few weeks but if you honestly think that this place has been toxic so far, the early days of Mastodon would have seemed like pure hell in comparison. Early Mastodon drama was like, doxxings, entire instance admins quite literally being chasing off their own sites over petty nonsense, things like that. It was bad. Really bad. And despite the existence of fedidrama, that stuff has stabilized. Why? Because the community stabilized and gradually formed their own cultures and the community volunteers building communities learned from their mistakes. People moved to smaller communities and stopped being hostile to decentralization. The necessity of defederation was embraced by most who began to understand its importance.

Some of the biggest issues lemmy has right now aren't easy to solve, but we have a blueprint to what solutions worked and what didn't from Mastodon. There's also the issue with lemmy having a generally different culture from Mastodon, and that's OK. We want our own community identity, not the same as Reddit or Mastodon or Twitter. In many ways that is already being built as well.

Right now, the biggest thing is just sticking with this place and persevering the growing pains. It is so easy to get burnt out, and the Mastodon instances that got too big for the admins to actually deal with are clear examples of that. I know it's easy to look at recent events and feel disappointment as well as feel that just generally the most toxic Redditors migrated over, but doing that is just giving up before we even began. If you used Mastodon in it's early days, it fucking sucked so bad. We have a leg up here that it's overall easier to navigate communities and discussions out of the box (and with the current development, it's only going to get better.)

I was never extremely active on Mastodon until recently but I followed it's development relatively closely from its infancy. And I will say that it's really strange to watch lemmy face nearly identical issues that Mastodon did when it was in a similar development stages. (Though, some of the drama thus far have been essentially a speedrun of what mastodon went thru over a gradual amount of time.)

The fediverse as a whole is essentially a return to the Internets roots, and with that comes new problems that OG internet communities did not have to grapple with due to the changes the internet has faced in the past few years alone. When building communities, most large internet communities have been largely corporate since the rapid centralization of the internet of the mid 2000s. There is truly no blueprint for this, and the volunteers that are making these communities from scratch are going to make mistakes (as we have already witnessed more than once, even this week alone.)

A large issue that has resulted from the corporate centralization of the internet that is really hard to break from is the expectation of an extremely smooth streamlined experience on emerging platforms like lemmy from new users. And you aren't going to get that in these early days. You just aren't. Things are going to be messy, we are just getting our feet on the ground. And this results in a lot of frustration and just generally a feeling of walking on thin ice with a user base that has been largely built initially from the exodus of an already established platform. To many regular lemmy users there's this expectation that tends to be "well, if other social media platforms can do it, why can't we?" and to admins and those building these communities it can be frustrating and feel like the users are being entitled to things that just aren't possible from volunteers at this time.

With recent drama and inter community issues, the honeymoon phase of this place is officially ending and how we move forward is entirely dependent on how we respond as a community as well as what people using this platform as a whole want from it. You get what you put in.

I don't say this to discount the drama that lemmy has faced these past few weeks but if you honestly think that this place has been toxic so far, the early days of Mastodon would have seemed like pure hell in comparison. Early Mastodon drama was like, doxxings, entire instance admins quite literally being chasing off their own sites over petty nonsense, things like that. It was bad. Really bad. And despite the existence of fedidrama, that stuff has stabilized. Why? Because the community stabilized and gradually formed their own cultures and the community volunteers building communities learned from their mistakes. People moved to smaller communities and stopped being hostile to decentralization. The necessity of defederation was embraced by most who began to understand its importance.

Some of the biggest issues lemmy has right now aren't easy to solve, but we have a blueprint to what solutions worked and what didn't from Mastodon. There's also the issue with lemmy having a generally different culture from Mastodon, and that's OK. We want our own community identity, not the same as Reddit or Mastodon or Twitter. In many ways that is already being built as well.

Right now, the biggest thing is just sticking with this place and persevering the growing pains. It is so easy to get burnt out, and the Mastodon instances that got too big for the admins to actually deal with are clear examples of that. I know it's easy to look at recent events and feel disappointment as well as feel that just generally the most toxic Redditors migrated over, but doing that is just giving up before we even began. If you used Mastodon in it's early days, it fucking sucked so bad. We have a leg up here that it's overall easier to navigate communities and discussions out of the box (and with the current development, it's only going to get better.)