OpenStars

Exactly, yeah like I'm not trying to remove myself entirely from "society" - the physical law of entropy means that people need to put in EFFORT to make things happen, and that deserves to be recognized, plus the dev should have a proper means of support to be able to buy food, shelter, etc.

I even tip at restaurants wherever I go. I don't know if I'll be okay in the future - I don't own a home or know my retirement plans, but I don't think a few dollars will make the difference, but it can boost someone else's day and that's really something:-).

I really like Netflix's player, their CC options, and the quality of their streaming service. It's just too bad about the content going all over the place, and THAT part is actually not their fault.

Though I just could not do that for Google Music, when they pay the original artists so extremely little:-(.

The IPO filing revealed that Reddit sustained $90.8m in losses in 2023

Holy cow that's a LOT of losses! We'll need to find a new way to refer to Reddit from now to reflect that... perhaps something... familiar?

Okay:

They are a company - their obligations to their customers begin and end with extraction of funds to disburse to their shareholders:-(.

Back in the early days when they were trying to ingratiate themselves to the public, they put on a good face - "don't be evil" and all, but the mask is off now. Even now, they still really truly are more ethical (or at least might be, maybe?) than some others, e.g. https://lemmy.world/post/11951288? (but that is not saying very much at all, to compare an evil corporation like Google to a full-on fairly criminal-like corporation that steals artists & other people's content against their will; and I only say "criminal-like" b/c the aging geriatrics in various governments around the world barely use computers much less understand its terminology such as "mobile device", so the existing legal structures remain mired half a century behind what is going on in today's actual world).

Also, I am weird - I will do things like pay for Netflix even though I haven't watched it in months, preferring the high seas that has more content that is no longer there:-P, b/c I want to support continued development of new content (though TV & movies are becoming a dated art form nowadays). That said, YouTube is a VERY different situation, b/c while they do have server costs and what-not, they also are one of the lowest (not THE lowest, but among them... iirc?) contributors back to the artists who actually make the stuff. So a better way would be to find artists that you like, and send them money directly where they would get 100% of the revenue.

Anyway, I like your post that shows that there is more than one reason to support such apps - not just b/c of the content but also more than that too.

Don't you post on Facebook or I'll shut the government down!

Don't you post on Twitter or I'll shut the government down!

Don't you post on Reddit or I'll shut the government down!

Don't you post on Lemmy or I'll shut the government down!

At some point, I start to wonder if they are just searching for an excuse to shut it down?

Also, there are laws about "obstructing the workings of the government", but good luck enforcing them in the current environment, when the enforcers are themselves the ones doing it.

"Can't compete" => won't, ftfy :-P

Google got their money, so they are simply "done", unlike software made by people who genuinely care about stuff, and donate their time for free to improve it.

Lol, well *I* thought it was funny:-P. You might get fewer fake internet point reductions if you threw in a /s.

Oh no, I must have misremembered the details about lemmy.ml and conflated the original developers of Lemmy as being in charge of lemmygrad, not lemmy.ml? (or perhaps it was... both? or something like that?) Thank you for setting me straight. Yes I am with you there... now:-).

Something that sets LG and HB apart from other places is not merely what was said, but the manner in which things are handled. e.g. I say one thing that merely doesn't support their world-view hard enough and even WEEKS later they barage my account endlessly with continued mockery. More importantly, not just once but as a firmly established pattern of behavior. That is just not how I want to spend my time, on the internet or irl. It is LEAGUES apart from this civil discussion format that you and I are having - each willing to bend, not so much to each other but to whatever the Truth happens to be. If I am correct (hey, even a stopped watch...), or if you are, or neither, or both - it is that chasing after TRUTH that concerns us, and unites us in our shared mission.

Neither admiration nor equality are mandatory there (e.g. a hypothetical discussion between an adult moderator and a child first-time lemmy-er), but respect is, being foundational to the communication process. B/c otherwise what good is "tRuTh" when it cannot be conveyed, due to corruption introduced by the message delivery method? i.e. a truthful message is no longer truthful when it becomes corrupted, either by the delivery method or by the deliver-er (the latter goes off on a tangent that could get quite a bit deeper but the short version being that the message thus proferred for deliver is no longer the real message - e.g. if the truth were 1+1=2 but the sender caused the addition of +1 to each element, then 2+2=3 is no longer an accurate representation of the TRUE original statement; nor even would 1+1+1=2+1, b/c while that one preserves the mathematical integrity, it still differs in other ways e.g. it would take more resources to store, or brush strokes and paint supplies to write down if it were intended to be represented in such a manner, etc.).

Getting back to how this relates to LG and HB: their lack of respectful forms of communication makes them "wrong", regardless of whether the message they were originally aiming to convey was correct or not. I do not care if you are a communist, anarchist, freedumb-loving bald-eagle slaying Americunt or whatever, you are respectful to people, and I love that about you. In case you are interested, imho they do NOT seem like "your people". That said, I acknowledge that I am VERY biased myself here, b/c I have judged them by the worst set of interactions that I have had with them... and yet, is that not mostly a fair way to do things? (someone who kills is usually called a "murderer", someone who steals is usually a "thief", and so on) I am aware ofc that not every single person on them is "that" way, nor do I particularly care b/c I had a problem with some large-ish fraction of their userbase, which I solved by blocking them, and now I am happily enjoying the Fediverse, whereas before I was not happy anytime I forgot and accidentally responded even to what may seem like an innocuous meme post on it. If that one simple action (well, that pair of blocks) can dramatically improve my Fediverse experience, then I am happy to think of LG and HB as "a place where people tend to be disrespectful" (surely not all, but enough of them that they warrant that description?). And unless someone convinces me otherwise, I am also happy to share that opinion, in case it may help others to similarly improve their own Fediverse experiences.

Likewise, it seems that you are suggesting that even if in a far more limited scope, lemmy.ml has a lot of similarities. To confirm your suspicion: yes I was thinking about the LW handling of the actual CP. And I guess I do not know about the lemmy.ml handling of it - though I would draw a distinction between some commenter filing a report saying "this is pedo shit" vs. an actual admin implementing a policy, whether written and agreed to in advance aka above-board or unwritten and enacted on the sly. Still, if enough of them do that then... yes, I see that you are correct, that's "witch-hunting".

Though I was pointing out how Reddit at-large was LEGENDARY for doing that, though typically more in the most popular (and therefore largest) centralized subs, while the smaller & more niche subs were able to get away from all of that and at least have a chance at a better mod team. At least, if they did not rock the boat too awfully hard during the protests that went on.

About right-wingers: every accusation is a confession, yeah. Though left-wingers do have a different set of issues, e.g. the ivory tower / walled-garden approach that aims to be "correct" even while not actually being thus, i.e. this witch-hunting that we are discussing now. Between the two though, the Left vs. Right, they do not love witch-hunging "equally": I would say that the Right uses that tactic far more often, at least in the sense that there are some few Leftists who do not use it, where I have yet to see a Rightist that does not.

So I think my point might be phrased as saying that it might not be fully fair to say that the Fediverse has a witch-hunt problem that is in excess of what was observed on Reddit. Though you have convinced me that it is significantly larger than I thought here, while I hope that in turn I have convinced you that it is also possibly less extensive that you thought here (being more concentrated in a few areas rather than baked in throughout the entire Fediverse) but more to the point that Reddit was far more so. Especially nowadays, where the mods are extremely often the literal scabs at best and at worst the very people who were banned from those subs previously for refusing to play nice, and who now enjoy lording their power over others in the same way that they choose to view how others previously treated them, i.e. unfairly, capriciously, etc.

You feel what you feel though. Both of you did.:-)

Thank you. Of course you are free to believe as you like but I did find your comment interesting and enjoy talking about it:-). Let's go from the bottom of your comment up towards the top: I agree that we tend to expect much more from those who act like adults than those who are already acting like children in every other way, so in that sense this would be a good problem to have, as in one source of bias in an otherwise highly agreeable experience, as opposed to Reddit where it's just one more splinter of shit.

Next, I thought the admin team that you mentioned was Lemmygrad? Which doesn't negate your point, it's just that my entire view of the Fediverse (lately) is without either that or hexbear, which explains why I am not seeing it as often, if indeed it is concentrated in such areas (who, like Reddit, seem to act more like children than adults). Although then, if indeed it is concentrated in a few areas, then it is possible for a user to avoid this source of bias. A known bias isn't the same as a non-existent one, but at least its being known allows for it to be controllable. I will be curious to hear how or if your thinking evolves as a result of us discoursing on this particular matter:-).

CP I have to (somewhat) disagree with you on: the definition of a "witch hunt" being "a campaign directed against a person or group holding unorthodox or unpopular views", which implies that a fully welcoming society should not do thus, i.e. that a person should be innocent until proven guilty. On the other hand, CP is literally a full-on actual crime in many countries, so a place sending content such as that out across the entire Fediverse can bring the unwanted attention of authorities not only to the place hosting that content but to any place federated with it as well. i.e. it seemed to me to be less of a "witch hunt" than a "self-policing" so that external authorities did not need to step in and pass regulations (or enforce existing ones) to shut down Fediverse servers, treating them like pirate seeding bays or such. Also, by definition they are not "innocent" if such content has already been shared that "proves their guilt" - the crossing of an actual, legal line really does make the situation different.

Therefore, you likely don't even mean that per se, and rather something one step removed, as in witch-hunting not actual CP but just people being nervous about anything that even remotely seems similar. That... seems understandable though? e.g. if your house was robbed, then you might spend extra time peeking out the window for awhile, for fear of it happening again. Especially if door locks haven't been implemented yet:-). Overall though, the Fediverse has to pick one side or the other there (of the law): either it is a pirate signal that attempts to evade detection and being shut down by authority structures, or else it cooperates with it. We seem to have decided (against the former and for the latter), hence people are understandably nervous about rogue entities that may jeopardize what we are building here. Especially since all a bully needs is an excuse to shut us down - e.g. Reddit, Meta, Twitter/X, etc. - and I would not put it past someone like Musk to intentionally share CP, then use that fact in a campaign to try and prevent his biggest rival (Mastodon) from competing with his profits. Thus, with the stakes being so very high (one morning we may wake up to find that all or a/some major instance(s) has(ve) been shut down?), and the existing amount of protection so low (as you say mod tools are next to nonexistent)... anyway, I would not call this "witch-hunting" then, b/c of the implication (in modern times at least) that the target is innocent in such situations (and I mean that entirely separately from morals, just in the sense of fulfilling the letter of the law). Though I am not sure what phrase would suit it better - something acknowledging that people performing actual crimes using the Fediverse, and which may cause the Fediverse to be shut down, is not good for the Fediverse as a whole? But maybe you meant something else entirely, in which case I hope all of this was at least somewhat interesting to read regardless:-).

Right-wingers... yeah that one I think you are probably right. And it goes along with politics bleeding into non-political matters too like cartoons and memes that specifically ask in the rules to be non-political (as distinct from the actual political memes communities - e.g. one on lemmy.world, another on lemmy.ca, and surely there are others). Fwiw, the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the USA, and the act of Brexit in the UK, really have people on edge lately - some people talking here may literally DIE, or lose their jobs, or some other huge life-altering effect as a result of politics not leaving them alone, even if they wanted to ignore politics. Ironically though, the extremeness of the irl events highlights all the more the dire need to have a place that people can come to get away from all of that, if they wish to escape that for just ONE MOMENT and, e.g., enjoy a Star Trek meme:-P.

That said, being a fairly centrist person myself, I tend to get reactions FAR more often from far-right-wingers accusing me of not being far-right-wing enough than from left-wingers doing similarly. Even in such meta-matters, of talking about how we all talk about such relevant matters, the two sides are FAR from equal. Though, it's also a LOT more common in X (I hear, I literally do not have an account there) and on Reddit than here inside the Fediverse. And yet, I can definitely see what you mean if you are comparing not to "Reddit as a whole" but "certain specific, smaller Reddit communities" - those two categories are LEAGUES apart from one another, the latter being a million times better (and entirely plausibly still worth visiting, even now?) while the former has devolved into a shitstorm that just is not worth going to, for an educated adult human person imho. So: mystery solved then!:-D

TLDR: witch-hunting exists here, and even if far less so than on general (not niche sub) Reddit, it is more noticeable b/c here we expect better. Though is a common problem across all social media, not specific to here. [Insert in-group membership signals here, to increase acceptance of and therefore maximize accrual of fake internet points?:-P]

Fwiw, she was probably just frustrated by "the situation" - like how you wanted to be able to provide food for your daughter, but could not. It's gotta be rough and I hope they can find a fix for it ASAP, even if only in stages and that may take some time as well.

There's just enough room for that, yeah!:-D