OpenStars

Regexps are awesome! And also not at the same time:-P. 🎉 Congrats👏!:-)

A study on astroturfing on Reddit, written in the style of Reddit by an astroturfer - oh the delicious irony? :-P

If you’re an OG iPhone or Mac user, then you might remember paid software updates. Over a decade ago, long before iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, major Apple OS updates used to cost users around $10 for iOS and $20 for macOS. By iOS 4, though, Apple switched to free software updates, allowing users to update their devices for as long as they’re supported without having to pay a fee.

Yeah, but nowadays it’s all “free” - as in you only pay for the hardware to enter their walled garden (but then no matter how much you pay, you can never really leave! at least not via normal, legal means, if you want to ever come back - Welcome to the Hotel California 🎶…!:-P).

Although ironically, the OS software itself is free to end users, as are future upgrades.

Google also sells hardware, e.g. in its Pixel line, and there too the OS software is “free”, as are future upgrades, up to a point.

Both sell listings in their respective stores.

These concepts are getting murkier over time.

I hear that, but also…

Well, I was doing the same, but noticed that even in the niche subs, the conversations seemed to be getting more and more… juvenile? Like prior to the Snoopacolypse (as you called it, and I love it! The term not the event in case that needs any clarification:-P), it was a point of pride for me that I had never blocked anyone in my life - whereas now I don’t think twice before doing that bc who has time to waste on someone not engaging in good faith!? Especially if they lack enough self awareness to even realize that fact about themselves while they are doing it. (Tbf, possibly watching Innuendo Studios’ analysis of GamerGate that uses many tactics of the Alt Right in America had something to do with my changing views as well:-).

Ymmv ofc, bc different subs means entirely different people & thus experiences interacting with them, but I’m just saying that rather than stick with the subset of that community that remained after Rexit, I eventually just find myself going or even wanting to go there less and less, instead enjoying engaging here more, even at the expense of not being able to talk about those matters. I haven’t posted there for months, nor even commented for a month, and barely go once a week to read. Bc I use Kbin and the mobile browser experience here is so horrible to write a comment, I find myself not commenting here often either - but when I do I have much more fun doing so, not having to be anywhere near as defensive as that other place that shall not be named.

I hope you find something that works best for you as well, wherever that may be.

Fwiw, I believe that happened bc you dared to comment on a post that was since removed by a mod from a magazine hosted on another instance. Now, that whole post is “gone”, so Notifications cannot reach it, but it is “not gone” in the sense that Notifications cannot properly realize that it’s gone. And it has poisoned your whole notifications system, to the point that you cannot even read other notifications from other posts.

The good news is that it only affects one “page” of your Notifications, so as you continue to operate, it will eventually fall behind to page 2, and thereby still prevent you from seeing any Notification from that whole entire page, but from then on at least you will get new notifications from page 1. Until it happens again, ofc, and the cycle continues. I have ceased recommending anyone to come to KBin as a result of this extremely frustrating bug, along with the other highly frustrating ones like constantly logging you out, and barely being able to type out a comment on mobile. Hopefully it gets better.:-|

Then you are definitely adding more to this conversation than me: actual evidence trumps mere armchair theorizing every time:-).

There is nothing new under the sun it seems, and so many people are so very short-sighted, that your story makes perfect sense, unfortunately.

You could test out your idea by spinning up an instance that offers curated ads, or probably better yet go entirely ad-free and have a subscription service. Some people may be interested in sustainability, especially if you speak in a language that resonates with them, like explain the value-added benefits of being on a sustainable server vs. a “free” one. e.g. the devs get a salary there and also contribute to the overall Lemmy codebase, beyond that instance so that it benefits the entire Fediverse. But it would be up to you to be the change that you want to see in the world, and make it happen. Also, I am guessing those kinds of discussions won’t happen so much on the Fediverse itself, but rather in Matrix or Discord (or Slack?) servers were the actual developers of the Fediverse hang out.

Hehe, I wonder if some technology like Tor could help here, distributing the work across many servers instead of each one having to do all the work entirely by itself? One day, if someone wants to build it, that may come, but it will not be me, nor today it seems:-P.

Relevant post: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/451896/Is-Kbin-dying-I-wanted-to-address-the-deleted-thread, attempting to explain why contributions weren’t being merged in and deployed.

Posts by Ernst since mention lots of bots and ads, and some outright DDOS.

The latest word: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/544021/So-what-s-the-status-on-the-update-edit-ernest-responded.

TLDR: Ernst has had a lot of unexpected personal issues to deal with, had to take on a temporary job, and has not been able to give full dedication to this project. What efforts were originally planned - e.g. an official API - seemed to instead have gotten redirected against maintenance vs. outside attacks rather than improvements to the underlying codebase. Back when he was not keeping up with contributors’ proffered changes, he even planned to step down if he could not catch up, for which he gave himself a 1-month deadline, but he seems to have decided that he has met the basic minimum to not do that.

Looking forward, several months from now Kbin may be significantly better. Or barely better. Or not at all, who knows. But right now it is what it is, which is far behind Lemmy in terms of pure software features at least. I think Kbin’s main selling point was that it was not built off of the original Lemmy contributors, and it does have a very nice interface (sort of, on desktop at least). Not that it matters: account migration doesn’t exist on the Fediverse - even on Lemmy, right? - so those of us who migrated and asked all of our friends to do likewise are kinda stuck with our initial choices, good or bad, unless we make a clean break from our entire history.

Note I have nothing to do with Kbin, I just wanted to offer those helpful resources if you want to read them. I am glad that you found something that works well for you. I halfway wonder if I should make an alt somewhere even if just to more readily read posts from a mobile, b/c the mobile browser experience for Kbin is horrible (reading is mostly fine, but commenting is absolutely horrendous).

Plus the second graph shows the average number of instances went down compared to yesterday, which was itself down further from the day before.

This “wave” is looking mighty sus.

Continued:

© we create a new magazine where the culture is to only offer worthwhile messages. But… whereas my long-as$ essay here may be full of “information”, is it truly “worthwhile”? THAT is in the eye of the beholder. Hence a niche sub where the collection of like-minded people upvote/boost comments that are of interest to them could be of value…

Until it gets poisoned, maybe by a bunch of kids just wanting to have fun, or people who legit disagree about the end goal, and it subsequently all falls apart - e.g. reviews on sites like Amazon or Yelp or whatever, which seem worthless these days? I really wish a reviewer would say something like “this year’s phone model is crap - buy last year’s instead”, but instead the professional reviewers all have to say that “it’s the best one yet, it has zero problems, maybe a slight one with the corners not being as round as I’d like”, and most of the negative normal-people ones I see are more like “I did not enjoy the packaging they sent it to me in, I wanted gold filigree instead, engraved with a President’s signature personally to me” (WTF DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE FUNCTIONALITY OF A PHONE EVEN!? ahem:-P), and ofc the ubiquitous “when I opened this I was standing next to my husband, who was wearing a red shirt at the time, and I distinctly recall that I craved donuts…but there were none to be had”. Translation: I am saying that the default state of the universe is to increase rather than decrease entropy, and if we want to work against that, it is going to require more than a little effort to build a good thing, and even more effort to maintain it, and defend it from “attack”.

And the only solution I can think of is that a community of like-minded people becomes self-reinforcing. New people come in, step out of line, and are put in their places by everyone else. The work is spread out among many people, making both the overall effort easier (b/c people don’t even bother bucking the system) and also the personal efforts can be spread out among many. The entire Fediverse does not need to change (which is fortunate b/c that was never in the cards to begin with!:-P), but those who want memes can have them, those who want a place for yo mama jokes can likewise have their space, and too for those who want deeper introspection? Which again, might even exist already, I simply have not done much looking beyond that BestOf community I linked to.

Re the TLDR: you can tell I have gotten used to a Reddit-style audience indeed:-). But also I enjoy “unpacking” myself here much more:-D. (e.g., can you tell that I also have switched now in this comment to a keyboard? :-P)

You are very welcome and thank you very much for the thanks!:-)

I put that in emphasis b/c I want to keep coming back to it, by adding some new points relating to it:

(4) There really is a “social” side to this place too. That is not a bug but really truly is a feature. We like it even? At least when it is short and easy to pass over - it provides a short-term value, and probably a longer-term one as well, in keeping communities civil & dare I say welcoming?

Sites featuring blogs and articles also exist, if we want to seek those out. The Fediverse would serve as a great way to collect them together, making them more discoverable, but the primary purpose of the Fediverse seems to me to be a “social media” site, so focusing more on the social than on the exact content - and that I seriously doubt will ever change, so any thinking must keep that foremost in mind, the practicality side.

(5) I actually disagree about the mobile issue - or rather I think a much MORE foundational issue is that Reddit was for-profit. That caused them to enshittify their product, regardless of which means you used to consumed it. But then yes, I do see how the device used further compounded that and even here in the Fediverse is going to affect things moving forward, like the overall UI/UX needing to work for both mobile and desktop, putting constraints on what can / will be implemented compared to what would be most optimal for just the latter alone.

(6) Highly relevant to this discussion, it also seems to me that it is a problem of the class of “finding information”, such as how you would handle your email. There, putting things in folders has its set of pros and cons - needing effort up-front, especially if a message concerns multiple topics, plus as the set of folders itself grows larger the problem meta-escalates (one email account for home, another for work, each with its own set of folders, so now which account, which folder, in which other sub-folder, is the thing I want? again, especially crossing multiple boundaries like a non-work meeting, but with your work friends, but during non-work time - is that “personal” now or…? in any case it may need to go onto your “personal” calendar if you do not have access to your “work” machine at that time, but anyway the division lines are not always so clear-cut). Conversely, leaving all messages in one huge pile has its pros as well - you’d need to design a “query” to find it later anyway, but how often do you really “search” for emails to begin with, compared to simply read them and move on? - although it is much easier to “miss” messages this way. Which style we use probably says more about our emotional preferences than which is “best”:-D.

And relating back to the “social” messages such as emphasized above - those legitimately add information too? They indicate receipt of the message for one, as well as friendliness of the recipient. But is that primarily short-term information, so should those simply be “deleted” after being read, or instead stored along with the rest, especially if they are quick to glance at and pass over while looking for something else? Or should the sender not have even bothered to send them, if they were to be considered a waste of the recipient’s time?

Applying the former thought to the Fediverse, how do we “find” the content that we want to see, other than ofc creating it ourselves?

(A) we can create a new sort algorithm, adjusting the “Feed” to suit our preferences, the benefit here is that it affects everyone across the entire Fediverse, who can elect to use the new algorithm or not. But it would take coding, creating consensus, and could take months to more than a year. Google got its whole start as a company this way even, as did the predecessor to Reddit iirc, so the solutions could range from simple to very very complex.

(B) we subscribe to existing magazines, which takes mere seconds and gets us most of the way there insofar as threads at least though not comments.

Oops, it says this is too long.

ithas reminded me that voting records here are public - so that actually would make this place less susceptible, I had just forgotten about that aspect.:-) But the lower volume, and more importantly the signal-to-noise ratio, probably does most of the heavy lifting:-).

Oh right, I actually forgot all about that, yes indeed that would likely help. Certainly anything is circumventable but presenting that kind of a barrier would help discourage it. Thank you for gently setting me straight:-).

The for-profit news media needs to constantly push their product, thus they say what they believe will give them the maximum reward for least effort. And they are often right.

Filters for that - to only push worthwhile content through - would themselves have a cost, and someone needs to bear it even if using donated efforts of common people (otherwise those also being for-profit just continues the same cycle, e.g. Google News serves up what it wants to give you, not what you would like to receive).

e.g. someone could create a magazine to post only the most noteworthy content. One example of that is https://kbin.social/m/BestOf, but look at how many, or rather how few, bother to post to it?

So whoever created the “News” magazine is doing what they feel is appropriate, and if someone/we want something else, like a “Only Relevant News” magazine, we would need to make it happen.

How is it less “susceptible” to brigading and trolling, or did you just mean that it tends to happen less here? If anything I think it’s more susceptible overall (edit: thanks to ithas for reminding me that voting records are public - that actually help tremendously), but then again the need is substantially less too.

Except it can be constant, following you everywhere you go, and affecting you even when you block the person, e.g. they weaponize the “report” function in subs, and some mods simply can’t keep up so end up removing your comments almost automatically.

And that is still fairly low level for Reddit, not even beginning to get deeper e.g. doxing. Sadly, bullying works, and all the more so in a place without effective moderation.:-(

Not that I’ve seen any of that here - it really does seem related to the “culture” of a place, like Discord or Slack or Reddit or… here, where others may call out a bully, or just ignore them entirely but instead provide positive feedback to replace it and reinforce community standards of decency.

As you just did, kudos for being awesome yourself!:-D

(1) Do you remember that ennui engine article that was making the rounds a few months ago as Reddit collapsed? I had already started thinking along those lines so it being more advanced along that road, it really helped me realize that social media being that way is the point. Also, it was extremely well written I thought, or perhaps it was just so very timely, but in any case I recall that I could barely put it down bc I wanted to just soak up that article. I shared this thought both bc the content is relevant, but also bc I want to read more content that is like that, which really makes you think rather than as you say simply doom scroll. (Although typing on a mobile, I have to fight it from changing fully formed words making perfect English sense, to using entirely different words that do not match, which further matches our theme here in saying how technology is not always so friendly.)

(2) Check out this post if you would: https://kbin.social/m/BestOf/t/177639/u-at-lvxferre-at-lemmy-ml-discusses-the-dichotomy-between-effective-moderation-vs-low-content. First it is once again relevant in multiple ways to the discussion at hand, but also note the magazine it is in: an entire one dedicated to highlighting and sharing the “best” content on the Fediverse. Note in particular how there have only been 4 posts since my own that I’m linking here… that was from 2 months ago, which REALLY helps underscore the exact message about the content: the higher the quality filter, the less of it there is. We would love to see an excellent post in our doomscrolling once a day, but what if it were only available once every other month? That magazine btw does not accept primary submissions such as my former one, only secondary content i.e. it takes a second person to nominate a post.

I would love to see a similar magazine geared toward deeper thinking. If you create or find one, please let me know?

(3) If there were such a one (probably there could be and I simply not having done the due diligence to find it yet:-D), I would share this video to it: https://youtu.be/R943_eAvnWw. If you don’t want to watch the full thing, maybe skip to just the end summary, but I am saying that I found it highly relevant to again the type of content we are talking about here, compared to typical YouTube videos.

And once again, the only question is what to do about it. We cannot control others, who e.g. Won’t Look Up, all we can control is ourselves. So what will we do, who want such as this? I cannot create such a magazine btw bc I am on Kbin which iirc has zero moderation tools (or an API). I might create a Lemmy account purely to create such a magazine, but then I cannot migrate my existing account over… that was a major selling point for the Fediverse but turned out to be a lie (for now). So the state of the current tools really does impact the end result. If you have a solution though, e.g. if you will create such a space for deeper thoughts, I would love to join it.

Note it is easy to make a bookmark to a specific magazine, so that someone can check that (once a day? week?) and still have access to doomscrolling on their mobile devices, which ngl is a heck of a lot easier to perform than to type (especially on Kbin using a browser rather than an app).

It is good to start with something other than a daily driver, so that such problems don’t hold you back as much - e.g. an older machine, or as others mentioned dual booting.