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.
This gives out the impression they don’t care about lemmy being open source and decentralized but rather they are at it for a piece of the cake
By running a server on donations and barely breaking even? I’m not sure I’m following the logic here, this isn’t a corporate controlled website beholden to board members and advertisers
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So the guy that runs lemmy world for free without ads as a hobby with a group of volunteers are all narcissists because… they use discord? This sounds like a pretty incredible leap
Reddit mods also work for free as volunteers. Don’t underestimate internet popularity and power over communities, not so many days ago there were stories about mastodon instances admins getting invited for talks at meta. Lemmy is an open source and decentralized alternative to reddit, using discord for announcements misses the whole point
And what is the point of that? Providing you with free servers and labor for their hobby? I think you all really need to get a grip, its a website not a government.
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…
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You mean just like a specific recent post on our main about defederating another instance being drowned out by members of said instance :)
“I said beetlejuice three times and now he’s here ruining my life!”
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.
That’s quite a good idea. Not the perfect solution, but better than anything I’m currently using
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.
Now that is an interesting idea! Will have to give that a try
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Discord is pretty much against everything the open web is about. Closed source and proprietary protocols… Probably tons of data mining of users as well.
Not even probably, there is.
Probably? Nah, they legit advertise what their users do. Seemingly increasingly so.
Discord has “drops” (in beta for over a year now to be fair as it wasn’t super popular), aka the status snippet that shows when and what app you’re using gets shared with developers. Basically, what you do on your system gets logged. You can opt out of that, of course, but still they do collect it. Pretty sure they also stored calls and screen recordings at some point (for convenience reasons of course), but there are now too many users for that. At least, I think they no longer do that. But every single thing you type into discord is logged and can be traced back to you with perfect accuracy.
Sh.itjust.works uses matrix like any normal lemmy instance would.
Matrix is a piece of hot garbage on the UX front. Maybe when Matrix stops sucking so hard it can take matter out of galactic core black holes it can be taken seriously as a platform.
I think Discord is great, as long as you account for its shortcomings:
- It should be treated as ephemeral - up to the point of “the service could completely shut down tomorrow”
- It should not be treated as fully private or secure
I love how snappy it is (I never have to wait minutes for messages to load, as I do in Matrix), and also how there are a ton of Lemmy users who have Discord open in the background anyway. While I wouldn’t ever propose moving something like the main Lemmy communication channels to Discord, I do think it’s much easier to have IMs with regular Lemmy users on Discord than it is to do so on Matrix (as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed).
By the way, lemm.ee also has a Discord server. It’s only treated as a secondary channel, all announcements are posted in our meta community on Lemmy itself, and just linked to from Discord, but it’s still nice to have IMO.
The issue people are having is the announcement was made exclusively in lemmy.worlds discord server. Beehaw has a discord server as well, but they relay announcements to there, not from there usually
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The problem at hand is not about the usability (UI/UX, performance, etc.) of Discord but rather it’s private, closed source for-profit existence being used as a “support” channel for a free and open (source, platform, communication) environment.
I agree with you in principle, but on a pragmatic level, it’s very hard to disconnect UI/UX/performance from everything else. I think it’s OK to acknowledge that Discord has a weakness when it comes to not being OSS, but a strength when it comes to UX, and I also think it’s OK to take advantage of that strength for users that want to do so.
Just to be fully clear, I am never planning to make Discord the main communication channel for lemm.ee announcements, nor to make users feel like it’s in any way necessary for them to use Discord just for lemm.ee communications. I am also active on Matrix constantly, and read most of what happens in the Lemmy Matrix channels. Any user that wishes to reach me over Matrix can do so.
Just to be fully clear, I am never planning to make Discord the main communication channel for lemm.ee announcements, nor to make users feel like it’s in any way necessary for them to use Discord just for lemm.ee communications.
Thank you! Not being a fan of discord aside, I believe announcements of a platform shoud be done on the platform itself, with the only exception being uptime/downtime status pages (obviously).
And for those that don’t know (most of you probably do), this (sunarus) is the main/head/founding admin of lemm.ee (and, last I checked, a substantial contributor to the lemmy source code too).
(and, last I checked, a substantial contributor to the lemmy source code too).
I think not a substantial contributor yet, but I hope to become one eventually 😃
as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed
I understand your point, but by that logic, we should use Reddit rather than Lemmy, as most users are there. It’s not only about ease of use, it’s about being sure users won’t be abused. Discord is still in its acquisition phase, but you can be sure enshitification will come next.
I like discord as a communication platform (as long as you keep the spying in mind) as the devs truly believe in their product and as such have created something truly amazing. It will be a sad day when the enshitification phase begins. It somehow hasn’t yet which is very shocking in all honesty. Guess that nitro revenue still more than makes up for the dev and hosting costs.
This is disappointing because thus far, I have been really happy with the communication and transparency of lemmy.world. But with this change, I will unfortunately not see announcements anymore.
Discord is cancer, and FOSS communities should avoid it like the plague. It’s everything that is against foss philosophy.
Wonder who bought them out. Behind the scene money is always an issue with sell outs.
Why would someone buy a lemmy instance at this moment? Does anyone care?
Very reddit of them?
Coins incoming! :)
Just kidding. So much drama, needs some comic relief and this is all I had.
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