This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It’s about how the admins informed their users.

A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn’t very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.

Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.

I don’t agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn’t really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).

Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.

Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    546·
    1 year ago

    I mean, I do get it to some extent.

    As an admin myself, every time I make a post on lemmy aimed at members of my instance, it gets drowned out by folk from other instances that want to offer their thoughts and opinions.

    That being said, Discord is not the answer to that problem…

    • 𝙣𝙪𝙠𝙚@yah.lolEnglish
      151·
      1 year ago

      If the intention is to have an internal, instance-only post, I believe such a thing could be enforced with an automoderator bot. I had a lot of success throwing the Lemmy API into an AI and generating my own moderator bot from that. Could work for you.

      • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        That’s quite a good idea. Not the perfect solution, but better than anything I’m currently using

        • 𝙣𝙪𝙠𝙚@yah.lolEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I had an idea about this today but I don’t know enough about Lemmy to confirm it. Thought I’d run it by you just in case.

          Could you create a post and lock it normally, then directly edit the postgres row to unlock the post? I’m wondering if this would federate the lock but not federate your unlock causing all outside users to see a lock and all internal users see an unlocked post.

          Possible edge case: users who subscribe to the community after the unlock will receive the initial data dump of posts and this will include the post in its current unlocked state.

          However, this would be an easy way to block the majority commenting on a post while maintaining a seemless experience for your internal users.

    • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
      92·
      1 year ago

      As an admin you can use your special admin powers to pin posts.

      I would like Lemmy to have a “don’t defederate” or “only internal votes” checkbox for server-only posts, though.

      In theory you could also drop external votes for an a community. Here’s an SQL query I quickly threw together to select all upvotes submitted to a community that don’t come from the server the community is hosted on:

      select post_like.id, community_id, community.actor_id, voter.actor_id 
    from post
    inner join community on community.id = post.community_id
    inner join post_like on post_like.post_id = post.id
    inner join person voter on (
        voter.instance_id != community.instance_id and voter.id = post_like.person_id)
    where community.id = ?

      You’ll need to change select...from to delete from to wipe the votes from the database. I imagine it’ll take a while to complete, but on smaller servers it should be feasible? You could also add something like and post_like.score = - 1 to only delete downvotes.

    • warmaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      What is the problem with getting down votes ? Visibility? I thought Lemmy supported pinned posts.

      • Odigo2020@lemmy.zipEnglish
        41·
        1 year ago

        They do. Personally, I think it makes the most sense, in regards to instance news like this, to put a pinned and locked post on the actual platform you’re talking about, and then put a discord or matrix or whatever off-site link in the body of the post for those who wish to discuss. That’s what a lemmy.zip admin did recently, and I think it worked well.