• 1 Post
  • 10 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle
  • I love the idea and spirit of Lemmy, I think decentralized and federated networks show a ton of promise…

    However my experiences so far trying to engage in intelligent discussion/debate on Lemmy have been far more combative and frankly mean than I can ever recall on even the most “passionate” subreddits I participated in.

    I think it’s a cross-section of the kinds of people who are enthusiastic about federated networks, and people who are knowledgeable enough to be early adopters here. But I’ll be honest, it has definitely cooled my interest in participating in discussion on Lemmy instances.

    I don’t appreciate being called names or being accused of being a bad faith actor simply because I’m asking questions or challenging a viewpoint, and that seems to be the outcome of nearly every interaction here.

    It doesn’t do any favors for changing the perception that Lemmy (and other federated platforms like Mastodon) are populated by terminally online keyboard warriors.

    There’s a distinct feeling that if you support or even just use “traditional” (non-federated) platforms, or otherwise are not fully committed to 100% decentralization or open source, you are the enemy here.

    I don’t want to go back to Reddit, and I won’t because of the absolutely abhorrent things their leadership has done and continues to do, but Lemmy users in my experience are overwhelmingly hostile and it sucks.



  • It’s because the proposed changes would give the UK government de-facto authority to dictate how security and encryption are implemented.

    …a provision that would give the UK government oversight of security changes to its products, including regular iOS software updates. The Home Office consultation proposes “mandating” operators to notify the home secretary of changes to a service that could have a “negative impact on investigatory powers”.

    It would mean in practice that the UK would dictate how Apple employs encryption around the globe, unless Apple was willing to fork their software and build/maintain a UK-only branch for their products.

    Which still wouldn’t solve the issue because if you interacted with someone over any of those protocols who was in the UK, your messages and data would be accessible by the UK government, regardless of the other party’s location.

    I’m with Apple on this. This isn’t a consumer-focused piece of legislation for repairability/interoperability like some of the newer EU legislation, this is a government trying to ensure they have the technical ability to spy on their citizens and others. It’s the definition of anti-consumer.







  • This is Musk’s “Reichstag Fire” moment for Twitter.

    The rate limiting is not because of “extreme manipulation”, but because of piss-poor code that Twitter deployed as part of their change to only allow tweets to be viewed if logged in. Twitter is effectively DDoSing itself right now. But, it creates an opportunity for Musk to create a narrative.

    These “temporary” limits will probably remain inevitably, as they provide another benefit to Twitter - they drive Blue subscriptions. Unfortunately, they also repel free users from using the platform entirely, and at a much higher ratio.

    Twitter is going to become even more of a cesspool than it already is at an alarming rate. Crazy how many established social media platforms have decided to crumble at the exact same time.