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.

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.

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.

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

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/

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?

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.

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

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.

fluff

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

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?

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

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

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.

What about Arch? I was told:

mint is garbage. The only thing easier about mint or any of those "noob friendly" distros is the initial install

any time you want to do anything outside of its strict little ecosystem it becomes a massive headache

arch's wiki is unparalleled

Not open-source, but I was using Metacritic as an alternative to Steam. Unfortunately, they've severely degraded their UI in recent years so I started using GOG.

Yeah I saw that. I like it. I've seen people complain about the phpBB UI, so that made me shy away from using it for my website even though I personally like it.

I started looking into forums some months ago, and in that time Lemmy has already come a long way, to where I think Lemmy would possibly be the better option soon. But I wanted to get my site up and running ASAP.

A few things that factored into my decision:

• I think Reddit and its alts need the features of /r/enhancement and /r/Toolbox.
• I don't like the default UI of Lemmy. It's too bloated. I'm using old.lemmy.world now but it's definitely lacking in features and a bit buggy (IE: I have to switch to the "regular" site to edit my post).
• I saw beehaw defederate due to lack of mod tools.
• lemmy.world showing Lemmy's vulnerabilities (ddos, security, etc.).
• I'm still familiarizing myself with Lemmy and the fediverse. It's a bit complex.
• The voting system has its upsides and downsides. I think no downvote button is the best option.
• I don't like the time-based nature of reddit-type sites. With forums, you don't need to always be there to answer right away. Discussions can take place over longer periods of time.
• As you say, a full step-by-step guide is essential.
• I'm now very hesitant to trust any 3rd party. I'd have to trust that the Lemmy instance I choose won't do the same thing reddit did to me.

I wasn't really considering hosting my own Lemmy instance at the time. But I think it can be installed onto a subdomain of any website?

Yes, I understood that. I never experienced it.

Doesn’t that mean that docker containers use up much more resources since you’re installing numerous instances & versions of each program like mumble and leftpad?

I did that and made my comments available on github

How? I've been looking for a way to host my data elsewhere.

I found this website https://www.rareddit.com, but I'm not sure how to do that, and I contacted the author and didn't get a response.

I moved to my own forum because the alternatives are:

1. Trust that the lemmy instance I choose won't do the same thing reddit did.
2. Host my own Lemmy instance.

For #2, Lemmy isn't polished enough, so I went with a traditional forum option that's been around for a while.

I guess all the people solely cheering for this aren't aware of the damage we've been doing to ourselves with 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).

Resistance may already be a solved problem: https://humanmicrobiome.info/antibiotics/#fmt-to-counter-antibiotic-resistance

if I wanted to bring the Fediverse down or at least keep my customers from going there, I would sow this stuff as much as I can

Agree. And that's been my experience here too. I made two posts critical of reddit and they each seemed to have been astroturfed by toxic reddit shills.

I think it would require a lot of active and dedicated mods and admins, which I'm doubtful is doable. I don't know that there's a fix for this but a "true block" (instead of the current "mute") might help; but there are major downsides to that type of feature as well. I wrote in a blog that it might require an advanced AI to moderate everything.

Yes, it's all set up. Finished it about a month ago. I had an existing static website and I added the forum to a subdomain.

It is most aimed at community creators, not users. It's true that users have limited options & autonomy either way.

But from my experience, forums tend to have less of the "mod corruption" issues that Reddit has. Probably because a forum is a monetary investment and they have an incentive to draw people in. Whereas lots of people just mod on reddit for power.