It's definitely convenient to have everything in once place, and Steam has way more features, but it's good to avoid Steam becoming too monopolistic. We saw recently how badly that can go with reddit.

Despite the widespread worshipping of Steam and GabeN, I've had lots of issues with Steam and Valve over the years.

Yep. This is the primary thing preventing me from contributing to, and recommending Lemmy. People confidently posting and upvoting harmful misinformation, and toxic/unintelligent people. I've already left Reddit and Facebook (a long time ago) for similar reasons.

It seems like it would be difficult to keep track of all the instances that have/haven't banned the communities/instances you're interested in.

Like if someone wanted to move to an instance that hasn't banned these piracy communities, how would they even know where to look?

EDIT: I found this:

Awesome Lemmy Instances has a list where you can see how many instances block/are blocked by each other https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

4chan's been going downhill for years as well. It's been extremely ban-happy for a very long time. I recently got permabanned for posting a screenshot from Hatching 2022. Something similar has happened to me every time I've gone back over the past 10 years.

Chronic disease and general poor-functioning has been skyrocketing and the vast majority of people just ignore it like it's no big deal.

Obviously it's a big deal when the intelligence and competence of a majority of people has been severely diminished. We're now living in Idiocracy. And it's why for two elections in a row we've ended up with the choice of two senile old white men.

I was thinking something similar. It's not good that everyone goes to lemmy.world. Keeping the fediverse diverse is important. Shitjustworks is a good instance too that has low blocks.

Tildes is NOT a good website to recommend.

I made a Tildes account many years ago when it first started up. I knew the founder was a Reddit admin, and I'd heard that it was a haven for Reddit admins & power-mods, but I hadn't spent much time there.

I recently made a post about the problems with Reddit, and while there were intelligent people and comments on there, the majority of votes went to people who were being extremely dishonest, and even outright lying; attacking me in every way possible while urging the admin to ban me. Neutral people don't behave like that. So they couldn't have made it more obvious that Tildes is merely an extension of authority-figures-of-Reddit with a different UI. All the same problematic people & behaviors exist there.

Based on the accusations one of them was making, and my history they were pulling up, one of them was either a Reddit admin or someone in cahoots with one of the Reddit admins that banned me. Tildes is invite-only, and the main accounts attacking me were brand new.

The Tildes admin removed my comments debunking the lies they were telling, and deleted my account.

There's a github issue request to solve this:

Add a local user setting to filter out image / meme posts, similar to NSFW filtering https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4988

none of the major providers will deliver your email without your mail server having first built a reputation

There are definitely major, and easily-abusable "features" being implemented by the major email providers, but I don't think your statement is correct. I have a Hetzner server, and I can receive email from it (to Gmail) just fine, as long as I have SPF, DMARC, and DKIM set up. I can also create a new server with a new IP and not have any issues. The issues may arise with shared IPs/ranges that are also being used by spammers. Otherwise, if you're planning to send bulk email you just need to warm up the IP.

It will definitely start to happen more as more forums start to join the fediverse (discourse for Eg).

I won't pay for Youtube because they keep making their product worse and treating creators horribly.

I've been testing other search engines, and I found that SearX/SearXNG and Mojeek both turn up results for smaller websites that Google puts in 50th place for the exact title of the website/page.

First time I'm seeing what it looks like. Looks exactly like Twitter.

I've never seen "nazi shit" on Lemmy. The threads that have been deleted have all seemed on-topic with normal discussions taking place. The last one was a "what made you leave reddit?" thread with hundreds of comments.

It was said in the previous thread that the TPM and Microsoft account requirements can be overridden with Rufus, so anyone can update to Win 11.

It would be better if they gave their AI the task of finding alternatives to antibiotics.

While antibiotic resistance gets all the attention, the damage being done to our host-native microbiomes is arguably as big a threat as climate change, as the damage compounds over generations, and once it's gone you can't get it back. (Apr 2019).

Yeah, here's a fantastic recent article about it:

The Discussion Forums Dominating 10,000 Product Review Search Results - Reddit's dominance and the downsides of that https://detailed.com/forum-serps/

I mean the software I'm running on Win 10. As far as I know, a lot of it still won't run on linux.

Anyway, moot point since people said in this thread that you can bypass the TPM and Microsoft account requirements with Rufus. So anyone should be able to upgrade to Win 11.

I really dislike the bloated UI they’re all using, but it looks like there are solutions on the way.

I’m wondering, is this still your opinion?

I've gotten used to it and I like that many instances default to a dark mode. I used to use the old.instance UI, but I think I ran into problems with it and ended up just using the standard Lemmy UI.

Regarding lemmy being complicated, I've mostly learned how it works and I definitely think it's the #1 reddit-alternative at the moment, and the most promising option for the future as well. Along with independent forums of course.

I also set up a Mastodon account, but unfortunately most people are still using Twitter. I also petitioned the Xenforo developers to join the fediverse, and I like that other forum software like Discourse, etc., are joining the fediverse. I definitely think federation is the future.

I've been thinking about updating that blog post but I'm not sure where to add the updates.

Thanks but I don't think this is a good method. We need an addon like RES, or built-in like on Saidit, or a script like this: https://gist.github.com/NathanSweet/de43d5b2cb0c0836763b

How would you even tell that it was that instance that was the problem since the whole fediverse is interconnected?

It's decent after blocking all the fluff/low-quality communities. But it needs a way to follow threads & highlight new comments.

fluff

Low-quality, mindless content designed to keep mindless people infinitely scrolling.

Lemmy has pretty much all the same problems as reddit does but at a much smaller scale because it’s just not as big. Would you suggest Google use Lemmy?

I agree, and I covered that in my blog. Lemmy is astroturfed and may even be easier to astroturf than reddit. I would like to see a more diversified "discussions and forums", that's not just reddit links.

In general, privately-owned forums (running Xenforo, etc.) seem much better run than most reddit subs. I have never experienced the plethora of problems with reddit, on forums. I think it's harder to spam and astroturf forums, and the owners & moderators have different incentives than reddit mods.

The bar to entry as a new person on smaller forums was often high.

I don't remember experiencing that, but it makes me think of the bar to entry for running a reddit sub. Anyone can instantly create one for free and do whatever they want with it and get on the top of search results pretty quickly. Setting up your own forum is a lot more difficult and more of a commitment. I think there are benefits to that.

I agree with your last paragraph. I think the type of warnings Twitter implemented are a decent idea. I think in general people need more warnings that what they see on reddit and other social media is not policed for legal content -- people can and do say whatever they like, and much of what people say is misinformation and disinformation.

I don't think most people realize that reddit and other social media platforms have no obligation to take down illegal content. People seem WAY too trusting of things they read on reddit. If Google is going to be highlighting reddit results and putting them at the top, then they bear some responsibility for this.

Since the CDA’s passage in 1996, § 230(c) has been consistently interpreted by U.S. courts to provide broad immunity to platforms for hosting and facilitating a wide range of illegal content—from defamatory speech to hate speech to terrorist and extremist content.12 Notice of illegal content is irrelevant to such immunity.13 Thus, even if a platform like YouTube is repeatedly and clearly notified that it is hosting harmful content (such as ISIS propaganda videos), the platform remains immune from liability for hosting such harmful content.

The ideal scenario would be to download your data, then upload it to your own static website before deleting it.

Here's an example of it: https://www.rareddit.com/

But you'd need a static site generator built to do that, and I haven't been able to get a response from the person who made that website. I've tried posting about it elsewhere, and didn't get any solutions.

It should be simple enough for someone to make a template or instructions or an SSG for people to use. Unfortunately, no one has.

When I researched and tested some, I found the Presonus Eris E3.5 to be the best bang for the buck. The other close one was Mackie CR3, but the Presonus is better.

I agree about reddit, but unfortunately, I don't think lemmy is free from astroturfing. Myself and others have noticed that there are many users on lemmy who seem to be purposefully antagonistic towards other lemmy users. The possible reason may be to drive people away from lemmy and hinder its growth.

I've experienced pro-reddit astroturfing on lemmy. I posted this criticism of reddit on the reddit@lemmy.world comm, and it was heavily astroturfed and then deleted by the mod for a bogus reason.

A year later, someone used that post to attack me while insinuating purely from the title that I was at fault because the reddit admins would never do something like that (despite all the public information to the contrary).

https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer developed by Valve and released on February 25, 2022. The device uses Valve's Linux distribution SteamOS, which incorporates the namesake Steam storefront. SteamOS uses Valve's Proton compatibility layer, allowing users to run Windows applications and games.

This doesn't sound like a valid option for desktop PC users. Do other linux OSs have something similar?

There are public instances: https://searx.space/

This is one someone previously suggested, and the one I tried that seems to work well: https://search.disroot.org/ - I see it's not in the list above though. Not sure why.

Years and years of reddit getting more and more problematic and lower quality:

Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a viable alternative.

A major problem is that most content isn't automatically visible from/to small/new instances https://futurology.today/post/166237

I use Ecosia instead of Google, but I know that Google recently added a "forums" category to the top of their search. Have you tried that? Hopefully it will help bring back to life independent forums.

Yep, that's why I listed it separately. I used a script for highlighting comments on reddit: https://archive.fo/kgsfz

Perhaps it would be simple enough to modify it to work on lemmy.

EDIT: Saidit has it built-in.

It's true that I'm also struggling to use the fediverse for my own needs, and opted to move my communities to a forum instead. But for this issue, I found this:

Awesome Lemmy Instances has a list where you can see how many instances block/are blocked by each other https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

It's inconvenient for sure, but monopolies are worse.

Some relevant info I shared yesterday:

While antibiotic resistance gets all the attention, the damage being done to our host-native microbiomes is arguably as big a threat as climate change, as the damage compounds over generations, and once it's gone you can't get it back. (Apr 2019).

Resistance can be solved by restoring lost microbes with FMT: https://humanmicrobiome.info/antibiotics/

I've had worse experiences on lemmy.world subs so far. I switched to using the lemmy.ml equivalent due to it.

EDIT: A good example is the reply I got here: https://lemmy.world/comment/10323234. This !reddit@lemmy.world is full of pro-reddit trolls & shills, and the mods don't fight it. !reddit@lemmy.ml seems better so far.

For me, it needs features from RES, Toolbox, highlight new comments, etc.

A good point, but this kind of atrocious moderation has existed for many years. https://github.com/MaximilianKohler/Archive/wiki/Reddit

The main thing that changed recently is that the admins are now as capricious as mods. The admins don't live up to a higher standard, they do whatever they want.