Or just oligarch or power addict. In the eyes of most people, wealth is about luxury, material goods and fancy toys. Of course that’s part of it, but at a certain point, wealth is no longer about luxury and toys, it’s about power and having control over resources everyone else depends on.

I think it shows that people yearn for power and control over others just look at all the karens, the reddit mods (you know which kind), the trolls, supporters of certain parties and so on.

I think that’s way too generalized. “The internet” paints a very distorted picture picture. First, the absolut vast majority of people online are lurkers, so you don’t see what they think or do at all. “Nuanced takes” barely exist because people just blast whatever is on their mind right now into the void that is then interpreted by millions of differently biased people.

The mods, trolls, etc. are the fringe of the fringe, often the types of people who have no real life, who cannot really fit into society and who have to find other ways to get attention/validation.

Mods aren’t some kind of villanous power hungry monsters, they are socially untalented nerds who want to do something that feels important, but who often feel unthanked, underappreciated and feel as if everything they do is wrong no matter what they do and who have to deal with the worst of the worst on the internet constantly. And then they are expected to have a discussion about every second decision they make because somebody feels that their comment was not interpreted the way it was intended and cries censurship if the discussion is blocked.

Given that it is somehow expected that moderation often happens without compensation (even though it is essential to a community), I’m suprised it even works as well as it does. If people in general were as powerhungry as you seem to make it out to be, people would kill for the chance to become a mod. In reality, the absolute vast majority of people doesn’t even think about it, which means the job is left those who probably having human interactions in the first place.

I guess they imagine that extremist regimes will provide them with that power

Most don’t think too much about that stuff (or anything really) in the first place. Many “right wingers” aren’t like the disturbed “true believers” you see at rallys or stuff like that, for many it’s just the community aspect they crave and the rest is no mostly larping.

Temporararily is the keywprd here…

It’s similar to commercials and ads. Everyone thinks they are not affected by such things, but pretty much everyone is affected by them on a subconscious level. Why would companies such as coca cola spend millions of dollars on advertisements? After all, virtually everyone already knows what coca cola is.

Shock sites always had trouble with the law, which is why most of them have shut down by now and most social media sites remove it. Watching/consuming it is one thing, publicly and openly sharing/promoting it without effectively restricting access to minors will always bring legal issues and legal attacks… And even when the legal charges are fought successfully, it’s still a major pain in the ass most people don’t want to deal with… And then you also have to find ISP’s and hosters who are willing to host this kind of material.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten.com#Legal_disputes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestgore.com#Corruption_of_morals_charge

https://www.dw.com/de/gewaltvideos-im-netz-was-strafrechtlich-erlaubt-ist/a-49871305

https://www.skppsc.ch/de/gewaltvideos-und-illegale-pornografie-auf-smartphones/

That’s why you get a big warning message informing you that DM’s are not encrypted and thus not secure.

But I’d think recovering nazis are frequently “people who say some anti-semitic stuff sometimes.”

Sure, or racist stuff. But antisemitism, racism and sexism are unfortunately not just limited to nazis, there are plenty of other people who say anti semitic, racist, homophobic and sexist stuff.

And I don’t like it when people call all racists nazis because in my view, a Nazi is a specific and extreme version of racist. And of course all forms of racism are bad, but some are way way worse than others.

Why?

Individuals or small teams running instances which don’t take money don’t need to comply to GDPR.

Are you sure about that? So if I hosted a website that shows your name and address, you could do nothing to make me take it down because I’m not an organisation or company?

Well that depends on the comment, doesn’t it? As far as I understand it, if I posted personal information about you, such as your name, home address, etc, in a comment, you could demand from the admin to remove that comment as it would contain personal information you don’t want in the open.

You have to keep in mind, this is about protecting people’s health and lives.

And just to be clear, Nazis aren’t people who say some anti-semitic stuff sometimes. Nazis hurt and kill people. If an organisation manages to help a neo-nazi leave their gang, but that person still holds some anti-semitic views, that’s still a win and anyone who disagrees has some weird priorities in my view…

Would it be better if that person completely dropped those views? Of course, but I prefer a rambling racist 100 times to a neo-nazi throwing molotovs into a refugee home or attacking people in general.

And let’s say I wanted to use it, I’m going to install this and instruct my kids how to use crackpipe?

I mean I get your point, but if you instruct your kids how to use a tool for managing pirated games, they are probably going to see a lot harsher stuff than the word “crack pipe”…

Before last month, lemmy was very very small and comparatively inactive. Lemmy admins are hobbyists who run the server in their spare time, most did/do not want to deal with pornographic content on their server as with it come a lot of potental moderational and legal challanges.

That’s extra work, throwaway services are often blocked

Never had any issues whatsoever, it is less work to me than logging into my mail account and confirming my account, but I also like to have a separate account for every service and never use the “login with facebook/whatever else” option.

it also defeats the purpose of having a backup contact in case of loss passwords etc.

That’s true, but if you actually want to be able to recover your password, there isn’t a way around providing your email.

Why not use a throw-away email address?

Lemmy isn’t going to “die” anytime soon, it has already been around for about 4 years now, it’s not going anywhere…

Maybe activity will significantly slow down, maybe it will go back to being a super small community, but I don’t see it completely getting killed anytime soon.

Isn’t it a bit funny that you are asking that after you have already joined the server and accepted all the rules, etc?

Do we know he’s a jolly good fellow?

I mean that’s up to you to decide, idk. what answer you are expecting… You have the same information on him as we do, the info on his mastadon:

https://mastodon.world/@ruud

First of all, just to be clear, I’m not at all an expert on this topic for those who haven’t noticed. My questions are mostly because I want to learn how it works, not because I want to tell you that you are wrong or anything like that. You seem to know a lot more than me anyway.

Tracking of reads = when you read someone’s post, there is a permanent log record made

When you read someone’s post, you first need to access that information from the server. In order to do that, your client tells the server which post you want to see and the server sends you that post. Those interactions are most likely logged on the server as well as which IP address has requested that information, etc. There is no absolute sure way to make sure that the admin does not use those logs to extract that information, at the end of the day, it comes down if you trust the admin.

But there is also a “show read posts” option which seems to hide read posts overall, which does indeed suggest that read posts are saved and used and which seems to work independent of client.

It’s not mostly an issue of selling data for marketing purposes. The data could also be extracted by cyber attackers, seized by law enforcement, subpoenad in a lawsuit, or whatever.

Sure, I do get the issue to some extend, but I don’t see how it is quite as bad as you seem to imply. For example, I worry more about personal data, such as my e-mail address being leaked, which is why I generally use a throw away email. I don’t really see why I, or some attacker, should care about which posts I have “read”, but maybe I don’t understand the full implications getting this information means.

“Marketing purposes” is a smoke screen anyway.

Of course it is, but I don’t think there are any lemmy instances that use lemmy data for marketing purposes. Data seems to be used only to improve the user experience, at least that’s how it’s intended.

It is not necessary to record voting data except to prevent you from voting twice on a particular topic.

If it wasn’t logged or only logged client side you could upvote/downvote infinitely, no?

There is also no need to remember HOW anyone voted. It’s enough to remember that you voted on a particular topic, and increment the relevant vote counter. That is also how real-world elections work. See also the topic of “receipt-free voting” in cryptography.

That does seem to be a good point.

I noticed previously that stuff I read in the browser does not show up as read in the mobile app. I also just tested it with different browsers and as far as I can see, read posts are marked as unread when I use another browser.

So are you actually sure about your claim? This is very easily testable, so I hope you have actually confirmed this before you accuse lemmy of participating in a “terrible invasion” of privacy…

What do you mean with “tracking” exactly? The way I understand it, tracking is analysing and using user data, for example for marketing purposes.

Posts and content need to be saved on the instance as far as I understand, I don’t see any other way. And posts and comments are essentially public information, anyone can see the posts that your username posts and comments, that’s kinda the entire point of posting and commenting.

Up and down votes too, otherwise I don’t see how the concept of up and down votes could work. The server needs to know which comments or posts you upvote, otherwise it doesn’t register it. And theoretically, the server admin could track that information and make statistics based on it, although this is potentially where legal issues come in if it’s not properly explained what is done with your data.

Same with metadata stuff and data such as which posts you access/read. The server has to know that information, when you click on a post you want to read, you are essentially asking the server to provide you with that post, so the server has to know which post you want to read and this is generally logged on the server for a certain time.

The question is does the server keep and archive this information and/or is this information used and analysed by somebody.

According to the admin, data is not sold or used for marketing purposes.