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.

What a shitty response to a valid question. I’ll make this easy and just block you so we can end this here.

Sure, it’s manageable now, but it quickly won’t be if Lemmy continues to grow the way it currently is. “Add mods in the future” is kind of a hand-wave of the problem, which is that you need mods who are:

• fair and responsible
• willing to dedicate (potentially large) amounts of time and energy to moderating
• willing to moderate for free

That disqualifies a large swath of people from moderation.

Now of course, it’s possible and it’s happened before, Reddit has a huge number of dedicated unpaid mods and it’s because of them Reddit was able to grow to the platform it was.

But it’s a little more complex than “throw more people at the problem” when you need people who are incentivized by something other than payment.

The unfortunate problem is that once you remove money from the equation, power is the closest great incentivizer. And power hungry mods are bad mods.

Wrongly blocking people simply because a report was submitted against them, even if it’s unsubstantiated, is better than users having to do some proactive blocking/filtering?

A report has to be reviewed for accuracy, there’s still time and resources required. It’s not as simple as just blocking every post or user that has a report submitted against them. People abuse report systems all the time.

Rules are only as effective as the mechanisms enforcing them - I don’t think anyone wants ads on Lemmy instances, but removal requires moderation tools and staff (volunteer or otherwise) to review everything that’s posted.

I imagine the problem we’ll see is as growth accelerates, post velocity will outpace moderation manpower - short version, you’re always going to have to do some blocking/filtering of your own.

Super shitty response to the question you still haven’t given an answer to, after I reiterated again what my understanding of the “so obvious” point was.

Whatever you want dude, happy to block you.

If it’s so obvious why can’t you state it clearly?

It seems like the insinuation is that Threads is artificially inflating user counts with “shadow accounts” that aren’t real - however it’s been clearly determined that they aren’t.

So, if it’s not that, then, again… what’s the “so obvious” point I’m missing?

Threads only shows users who have signed in to Threads. If you mention an Instagram user in a Threads post that has not signed in to Threads prior, the mention is removed because it’s not a valid handle.

I urge you to read through the link in the original post to the Mastodon user who originally made this claim, where you’ll find plenty of people more eloquent than me explaining why this is inaccurate.

But the point you’re making isn’t clear which is why I asked if you could clarify - what is the point you’re making?

What is Meta doing here? I’m not clear on what the point being made is.

If you’re insinuating that they are doing this to artificially inflate user counts, why wouldn’t they be reporting about how there are 2+ billion threads users in the first week?

They don’t need to manufacture hype - like Meta or not, in the first 96 hours they brought in almost 100 million users. Thats a third of Twitter’s entire active user base, in less than a week.

I too understand where you’re coming from, but I think it’s an important distinction, not semantics.

If Meta was simply creating a duplicitous profile for every Instagram user, that would be pretty predatory and misleading.

However, if that were the case, they would also be bragging about having 2+ billion Threads “users”.

It also implies that users could interact with these “shadow accounts” even if that person never used Threads, which is not the case.

As it currently works, if you try to mention a user who is on Instagram but isn’t on Threads, nothing happens, the mention is stripped because it’s not a valid handle.

It’s not forced on you. If you don’t download Threads and log in, you’re not on threads.

This is akin to saying Google Calendar is “forced” on you if you have a Gmail account. They are separate services that use a common credential, you are under no obligation to use any or all of those services.

It’s probably even more simple than that - a single DB with a flag for threads_enabled = true/false.

They made it super clear in advance this is how it would work, the app is called “Threads, an Instagram app”, but as always people froth at the mouth for any opportunity to say “Zuckerberg bad”.

That’s not some big secret. Everyone knows meta sucks. We don’t need to make stuff up to prove that. They do that on their own.

There’s plenty of things to hate Meta for, but this is inaccurate.

You log into Threads with your Instagram account. There’s no “shadow account”, you’re logging into a second service with the same account and credentials.

Your ticket entitles you to a seat, even if you don’t pick it yourself. You’ll just likely get stuck with a less desirable seat like a middle seat.

You’re witnessing the birth of a meme, friend

ka chow

I’m here for beans

oh good my weekly bean delivery is here