There is a reason such a large part of Lemmy is developers. There’s no confusion signing up for the developers. Federations and servers and instances are all crazy jargon to regular people. Although we may not want all regular types here, having some more regular people to balance out all the high IQ techies could make things more fun.
New users get overwhelmed with decision fatigue, especially when they have average intelligence.
When selecting a federation, new users should be told:
“Because Lemmy isn’t run by a large corporation, lots of small volunteers run Lemmy and run different copies of Lemmy at the same time. These different copies are called instances. You can choose 1 or just click the large red button and we’ll randomly select one of the most popular instances for you. If you aren’t sure what to choose, just press the button!”
I remember being curious about the fediverse and when I first looked and saw “instances” I got decision fatigue.
I didn’t know if an instance would limit me from interacting with others, could randomly disappear (ie hexbear domain), or if some instances would be a bad fit. I also didn’t know of it was unchangeable. Decision fatigue set in and I was less excited, but still registered.
To overcome that, there should be a “randomly choose for me” button with notes next to it that say you can change later, it won’t impact things, and you can interact with any instance. For random selection, just make it the top 3 most popular instances. Use a fun icon to indicate random change so the on boarding user has to think less.
Instances seem very confusing to an average user, as does federation. There could be an explanation like "Instead of 1 big company controlling everything, there are many copies of Lemmy that are in different places run by volunteers. These “instances” or copies are all Lemmy and can interact with each other, but having many copies means there isn’t ever 1 big company who can set all the rules and suddenly change thing in a bad way. " and then the random selection button which almost everyone would choose.
The average user dosn’t want to RTFM and also has an IQ of around 100 which is really low. The average reading ability of someone in the USA is like 6th grade level or something atrocious. You can’t overestimate average intelligence in an in boarding process.
This isn’t about them being kicked out, this is about the fact we don’t know the process that resulted in this. Was this a decision Linus made after a night coding and thinking about the world? Was the foundation ordered to do it?
It lacks transparency into the process even if the outcome is fine and the way it was done doesn’t feel transparent, even if it makes sense not to include Russian coders in the project.
These projects are so big and complex that even with open-code a malicious actor is sometimes able to insert damaging code. Who suddenly made this decision? Did the US government order them to do this? If the US government can order them to do this, can they order the elevated coding status of a “benevolent” contributor on the US government payroll who is then ordered to put in a very hard to detect exploit? Open code doesn’t mean exploit free, it means exploits are more likely to be patched.
You don’t get it. It’s the lack of transparency about kicking these people out, not the kicking these people out, that is the problem. Who made the decision?
It makes sense to sanction Russia for being an ass but the way this was done doesn’t feel open, and many people sense it.
It would be much better if the company were not in a place in which gag orders can be issued, leaving questions as to transparency.
As it stands now, it isn’t clear if Linus is just “grouchy” about this with a unique personality or if the foundation got a NSL and can’t say anything. And that leads to questions about whether there were other NSLs other than this one and if it’s had an impact on the code.
Exploits are so hard to detect sometimes if done well and often although they get patched… eventually… the damage is done prior to the patch. The US government, despite doing lots of good things, engages in torture. And even if the US government is the “good guy,” this leads to less trust in the open-source ecosystem, no matter what the justification.
But seriously, Linus’s comment regarding this was… just… I have no words… he basically put every Russian in the same basket, called them trolls
There are a huge number of online Russian trolls. That part of his response was not hyperbolic. They do have troll factories there to influence public opinion.
The problem is this still leads to questions about transparency about the project in general and how this decision was made and whether it was made by those involved in the project or was an order from the US government.
Yes, this is exactly my same thoughts.
This is terrifying.
I don’t like what the Russian government is doing and Putin is cruel and evil, albeit intelligent (which makes him even more terrible).
That being said, in the US, government agencies can order a company to do certain things, put in certain code, or whatever and then issue a gag order as part of that preventing disclosure. And although there’s a limit to how much that can screw over open-source software users, we do not know what exploits nation-states have, we don’t know what backdoors are in different chipsets or closed-source firmware.
If a developer writing open source code can be blacklisted so easily without transparency into the process, it suggests the company is being ordered to do certain things and not disclose them by the US government, which is a government that still engages in torture.
Notice how they are not coming out and saying “We were not ordered to do this by any government agency.”
Could the foundation be forced to elevate a developer with government ties who then is able to “accidentally” put in an extremely hard to detect exploit into linux that won’t be detected at first and only patched later?
I really wish companies associated with linux were not in a country that lacked transparency with government regulations and in which gag orders were not possible.
As little as possible. This will probably be a low traffic site. I just want something cheap and not cloudflare.
Oh my gosh I need this now.
Fedora? 🤢 jk
Also what the fuck is a tiling window manager? I want it!
I’m sorry, can you clarify what you wrote? I read it but then got distracted by my cursor moving on its own while I was reading an article about xzutils. Perhaps I should read it again since it made no sense the first time.
I’m so happy.
But also liked when linux felt like a secret.
Microsoft finally did something right: they made their shitty product shitty enough for people to realize it.
There’s a song by Gucci Mane called Pop Music
I would play that really loudly using Pop! OS, like noise violation loud, and then just spin in a chair until dizzy while listening
(also enable TimeShift)
Would there be able to be some sort of online meeting for the different instances with someone mediating to try to find a way to fragment less but also not ban certain views?
Or could there be a settings option to let readers view all deleted posts on certain instances that would make everyone happy?
It’s a good point you’re making about fragmentation and the problems it could create.
Thanks for posting this.
I read the article you posted also.
I think the article is likely entirely true. One of the difficulties I have, as a regular reader not highly educated in Asian politics and history, is that I know Western governments do lie in order to protect their interests. Not only that, many of their rules allow them to lie. There are gag orders, and levels of secret classifications, and ps-ops and we all know that exists.
I am pro free speech and pro protest rights. I think since China does not allow free speech it’s likely the entire post is completely true. I really wish I could believe it completely. One thing that many Western pro-free speech countries don’t understand is that lying frequently, even if it’s sanctioned by the government and justified somehow, means they lose moral credibility with the truth of anything they say. Is it the truth this time… or is this one of the lies?
I still want to live in a world of free speech and women and LGBT people having rights and Western governments seem to be the best at doing this, but I just wish I could believe the article you linked without any doubt at all.
If it’s really that bad on lemmy.ml, couldn’t all the communities be replicated? I use lemmy.world and don’t know if there’s an option for me to block lemmy.ml unless I change federations. The plight of the poor and concentration of wealth among the upper classes has become very bad, and environmental problems will likely kill us all within 300 years (capitalism and democracy have environmentally failed) but I don’t want to be a part of something in which mere discussion of different views results in banning and deletion of comments, even if I have very pro-poor people views.
I don’t know if I like linux now :-(
why are you so sure i’m not bi? also how do you know i’m a dude? couldn’t i be a cool hacker mostly lesbian who has a normal job and pretends to like windows by day and penetrates mostly chicks and networks by night (both with kali)? whom is erasing whom if you want to get technical with bad gramar?
The idea that intelligence has no impact on computer skills and the ability to quickly learn computer skills is magical thinking. Intelligence differences are real and the solution is to make easy explanation to help people learn. I am not among the most intelligent people on Lemmy, the intelligence of the average Lemmy person probably at least an IQ above 115. It’s not about elitism, it’s about accessibility. I have terrible coordination. If someone tries to teach me advanced tennis, it would be bad, but if someone recognizes my coordination limits and is like, the goal is to just hit the ball once, then perhaps I have fun with tennis.