It seems unlikely to me that corporate instances would ever actually federate in good faith.

They may appear to be compliant initially, but in the long term they just have different goals.

I'm not sure where exactly the line gets drawn, but at the far extreme, I say we treat money-making instances as bad actors. If they stand to gain profit from their actions, they need to be defederated to prevent the sabotaging or enshittification of the fediverse.

tl;dr: I fully agree with you that there's room for improvement here, but I can't for the life of me decide on a solution I actually like lmao.

Yeah, it's definitely going to be common while the masses settle on which community/instance they want to emphasize.

The question for now is, how do you think this should actually be handled? What counts as identical links? There's several factors that can change, and that makes handling the problem much more complicated than it initially seems.

In your example, it's 1) the same user posting 2) the same link with 3) the same title to 4) different communities. That does seem like basic reposting, and it would initially seem like we should just combine them and have it say "[USER], 10 hours ago posted to [Community1], [C2], [C3], etc"

But each of those communities and each of those instances may abide by different rules. It would definitely be a disservice to each community to pile all the discussion threads into one communal comment section.

So.... I guess if it's 4) a different community, then it's okay to have 'duplicate' threads? Uh oh.

I have a feeling that same argument would apply to veryyy similar threads with 1) different users, 2) different links to the same content, or 3) different titles. So what the heck, how do we improve this situation?? What are we even asking for??

@Biscuit Very reasonable question!

I highly recommend this article, How to Kill a Decentralized Network (such as the Fediverse) by Ploum as a relevant factor in this discussion. Even if there's parts you disagree with, I think that's worth discussing too!

To grossly oversimplify the contents of that article, I think federating in bad faith could look like:

• Joining the ActivityPub protocol, intending to drown the initial userbase with their own so that the fediverse begins catering to the needs of the majority aka their users.
• Introducing subtle bugs that make certain instances function suboptimally, but putting the onus on minor developers to fix it because major portions of the user base comes from them.
• Adding features to the ActivityPub protocol that benefit all users, but forces most instances to adopt their practices.
• Creating their own version of the protocol "ActivityPub+". It's initially open source and well documented, but increasingly deviates from ActivityPub, until it's functionally closed source fully under their control. It's also mandatory to interact their instances.
• Defederating everyone who doesn't fall in step, but that's okay because 99% of content is now on MetaPub anyways. This fractures the Fediverse into confused micro shards (or compliant loyalists).

I love your question! I think these words are examples of a trochee!

In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee (/ˈtroʊkiː/) is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.

It's usually easy to recognize a word that's a trochee because it'll sound like kids TV show title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Power Ranger Mega Turtles lol.

In this case, it's trochaic dimeter because there's two trochees. "LET'S-go RAN-gers!" You may have heard of iambic pentameter, somehow that one always seems popular to people. Well an iamb is just the reverse of a trochee, and pentameter means you'd put five of them on each line.

Now that you know what trochees are, you're gonna see 'em everywhere. Or maybe that's just me lol.

Edit: For extra fun, what do you think is going on with the clapping afterwards? I feel like we're doing something with this at the end, but it's late and I should go to sleep hahah. Good luck!

Discouraging Clout Chasing Behaviors:
Promoting Content Quality and Relevance:

I see your goal here, but how would this actually work? Like what buttons does the user see?

Are we all still collectively deciding what counts as valuable contributions? If so, this sounds veryyy similar to what we already have using either upvotes or boosts lol.

• "Agreement" sounds like an upvote. I like this content.
• "Mark as quality" sounds like a boost. More people should see this.

So what metric(s) do you actually want implemented?

alternative ways to measure influence and impact (insightful comments, fostering discussions, valuable contributions).

If those are the buttons you think we should have, I don't think the internet can be objective enough to make these reliably more useful than an upvote.

If I see buttons saying "Insightful / Fosters Discussion / Valuable", I'm mostly going to just hit any or all of them when I like the content. And I'll click none of them when I dislike content, 'cause duh that's not insightful or valuable!

So what should we actually do to achieve these noble goals?

Engagement, interactions, relevance, and authenticity

Ehh, sorting by interactions can encourage excess commenting or spamming near content you want promoted. More interactions doesn't necessarily mean higher quality. I'm commenting several times on this post, but it could have been one commentary for the exact same content. Should this thread's quality be treated differently based on my format?

Unfortunately, engagement is highest around controversial topics, which again doesn't necessarily indicate the highest quality content.

I'm pretty sure sorting by relevance is how YouTube & TikTok try to serve you content, but I don't think we should aspire to black box algorithms.

Agh, I swear I'm not trying to just shoot down all your ideas. I'm trusting based on your writing that you're open to collective constructive criticism. You're obviously thinking here, thinking more than most people do lol.

It's just that this is a very complex issue, that will need very nuanced solutions. Humans have spent a heck of a lot of time, money and effort trying to figure about it, and we still seem to get it wrong a lot haha.

I miss all my hobby and crafting subreddits lol. Off the top of my head,
Woodworking / Beginners
Sewing / Knitting
Dioramas / Terrain Building
Painting
Survival / Preppers / Camping / OneBag / Travel

Not trying to out myself, but I don't see my Country / Region / City here yet.

Wouldn't mind some health, lifestyle, and research science.

Can we get AskHistorians on here??

Reddit isn't going to die overnight. It will probably not die at all (at least not as a result of this latest stupidity).
I expect reddit will be like facebook in the long run. Facebook is still useful for specific things (marketplace, messenger), but otherwise it's just a bloated zombie hippo now. Still massive and still moving, but definitely bleeding out lol.

We'll have to wait and see how July goes, after all the third parties get killed. In the meantime, the fediverse needs to become as high quality as possible, 'cause a bunch of people are gonna be deciding between a increasingly poor experience (reddit), and a fairly steep learning curve for non-tech people (fediverse/instances/threads/posts/boosts/favourites/reduce/magazines/microblogs/communities).

@Kaldo Thank you for the link, that's exactly what prompted this thread!

I think it's just too hard to draw the line of "not rich enough to be a concern." Amazon instance is obviously bad. Pepsi? If they put their minds to it they could do something lol. Hasbro?? They're greedy enough for sure.

Or what if a company starts as a relatively minor player, but suddenly get big. Steam acquires the entire video game industry or something lmao. Then we still have the same problem, they're going to be motivated differently.

So I say we defederate all profit driven instances. They can still make magazines on our instances, if they can follow our rules. If they have trouble following our rules... Well, then I definitely don't want them in a position to affect the whole Fediverse lol.

Wow, I'm pretty impressed with BC for this.

Having font support really legitimizes a language. It's basically impossible to make digital content if you can't type in your language, so this is really unlocking a lot for the readers and writers of all those languages!

@Biscuit Right!?

This is a slight tangent now, but Tik Tok's Enshitification by Corey Doctorow describes another great example of long-timeline corporate "playbooks" or patterns that are... not good but increasingly common. That's where Reddit seems to be going unfortunately, but at least we can see why.

@Mallard Tabs! That's not bad! It's gonna confuse new people for a bit, but they're already confused lol.

And I guess we just choose which ones are the main display and which get demoted to "+ 2 others" by using the sort option? Top Hot New?

Okay, actually thinking this through more, I think this plus Mallard's tabs may be the best way to start! Display the version of a link that best suits the sort option, stack the rest. Maybe let them be unstacked in the feed (like how reddit comments work lol), so you can still look at the other titles easily.

That's really promising! Okay, someone please poke holes in this plan lol.

Hmm, I think I understand your goals here, but I don't fully understand their implementation. I'm gonna reply in sections because you deserve nuanced response!

Hiding Voting Metrics:

Okay, so I participated in a similar discussion about removing downvotes recently.

Right off the bat, one of the key concerns here is that the technology we're using makes all voting public as a baseline. You can opt to close your own eyes (hide them for yourself or for your instance), but other people or instances will still see the votes because ActivityPub transfers information as "users acting upon other content."

So unfortunately this may be a hard feature to shift without fediverse-wide agreement (or fediverse splintering).

Anyways, I have some concerns about the actual goal here, because we can't actually prevent all fear of judgement or backlash. Anytime you say anything, someone can disagree with you by text comment, which can be very strong disagreement while staying within normal moderation limits.

But! I can see that mitigating the effects of voting may reduce the punishments for participating outside narrow echo-chambers, and that seems important. Even if I don't think this is the correct solution, it is a worthwhile discussion!

I propose making downvotes have no effect on reputation. It's okay to know people disagree with you. We just reduce the extent a downvote harms users. I'm even willing to make upvotes have no effect on reputation either, to address some of your later concerns.

This would let people casually agree/disagree with comments as we all seem to like doing. Rather than committing to a full comment when I don't have a meaningful contribution, a little upvote feels like the correct way to say "Nice!" vs no response and letting the author think they aren't being seen. But benign voting would be for just that specific content with no further ramifications lol.

I do find vote counts have benefits for me, letting me feel the pulse of community response, and I'm idealistic about finding a healthy medium!

@Melpomene I'm concerned about the B-Corp getting big, but staying profit driven. Imagine if Steam had an instance. That seems... fine, I guess, for now. But then let's say Steam suddenly acquires the entire video game industry lol. That's definitely a problem. But what if they do it over.. 12 years? At what point are we supposed to realize we're frogs getting boiled?

And non-profits, yeah, you're probably right that they should be fine.

But okay, do you know MEC? They were initially Mountain Equipment Co-op, technically a non-profit. Now they're Mountain Equipment Company, a retail store, but most customers barely registered the difference. This type of thing concerns me lol.

I think B Corps and non-profits can be allowed to make magazines here, that's fine. They just need to follow our rules. They won't like it, but no risk of Fediverse collapse ever, and honestly it's probably best if we get to hold them accountable this way.

@asteroidrainfall

Actually, I think you can block the /d/omain, and I think? that's the same thing.

https://kbin.social/d/lemmy.world

Nice! Worked for me. 697 subreddits, yikes.

Has anyone used both Obsidian and Trillium? I use Obsidian, so that's my reference point here.

1. How does using Trillium feel compared to Obsidian? Rich text is nice, but I actually like how much Obsidian gets out of your way.

Edit: Hmm, so hierarchy trees means things need to be in one place on the tree, but it can be "cloned" so it can have multiple locations on the tree. That seems like a very complicated way to day "in obsidian, you can link any note to any other note." Am I misunderstanding anything here?

1. How's the conversion process? I have a lot of notes lol, and I find the [[Link]] format very convenient. It looks like this only wants to use text, which is fine but it very slightly breaks my train of writing thought as I prepare the link properly.

@codybrumfield Well, we already have Meta's off-the-record invitation. I'd consider that to be a hint of shenanigans!

@HamSwagwich I think that's where I'm at too. Replace downvote with report button. If it's really irrelevant or otherwise breaking the rules let's remove it properly. If it isn't, well. It isn't, so let it stay without punishment.

Edit: Oooh, okay wait. Maybe let downvotes stay but make it benign. We're okay with casual upvotes for agreement. We should be okay with casual downvotes for disagreement. Its does let people see that their comment has been seen as is unpopular, compared with just unnoticed. I'm okay with that style of downvote being private.

Removing Emoji-Based Reactions:

Easy agreement lol. I'm not really a fan of those emojis reaction blocks you get on discord. They're cute, but people seem to just bandwagon on the fun ones lol.

Hi! I've taken psilocybin on 5 different occasions over about 8 years. Each time was in a safe environment, with at least one sober, trusted friend. I never treated it like a party drug, I always had a goal in mind.

I found it immensely helpful in managing my depression. I try to spend some time with my own thoughts, reflecting on where I've been, and what I'd like to do a little bit differently. After the first time, I did feel a little bit better, and that feeling persisted for several months. That was enough nudge that I had the energy to get myself into the doctors, and therapy, and I've been slowly moving towards... wherever it is that I'm aiming lol.

Each time, I wait and see how long it takes for me to think about it again, and it's been 2 years now and I don't have any interest in it still. I know I have work to do. My depression is... still there, I think, but it's not as scary as it used to be.

I'm not willing to recommend psilocybin to anyone at this point, and especially not strangers on the internet. I had some incredibly supportive people help me with a difficult time. Psilocybin is like a rocket ship for your brain: When you hop in, you are going somewhere else very quickly, but you're probably not an astronaut so it's not you choosing where you end up. Not everyone has a good time.

Some people have a very bad time. My friend had a negative enough experience to never ever want to try it, or any psychedelics again.

Please make sure you fully understand the risks here. Your brain is an incredibly important part of you. Despite my positive experiences, I strongly recommend looking for safer alternatives first.

WITH REGARDS TO ADHD:

Eh. So I describe my ADHD as having 6-8 trains of thought in my head. I take my prescribed methylphenidate, and that helps me by making it easier to conduct the trains (ideally they're directed towards something I need rather than just... flying off lol).

On shrooms (and for several weeks after), it's like there's only 1 or maybe 2 trains of thought. I like to imagine that might be how neurotypical people think, less jumping around to different tracks. It's not uncomfortable, but it is much quieter? (This was before I was medicated for ADHD btw.)

I don't mind that version of me, but I did find that I didn't feel as naturally creative as usual. Less free form brainstorming. I was doing my usual activities feeling more calm, so that was nice I guess, but it's not who I'm interested in being. I like having creative fire, I just need a bit of ADHD meds to help me actually harness it.

I don't think psilocybin is a very effective tool for managing ADHD, even regular microdosing. It might be a subjective quality of life improvement, but it doesn't really help you adult better lol. It helps you be a little kinder to yourself, but it's not helping you with executive function.

If stimulants are working for you, I'd say work towards securing those over experimenting this. Work with your doctor, or someone else you trust, 'cause ADHD people having trouble with bureaucracy should be a clear friction point for anyone paying attention lol.

That's not bad, but that's only the solution for Identical 1) User 2) Link 3) Title, but Different 4) Community. I'm not opposed to implementing it, or something like it! It's definitely a step in the right direction, but it's not complete.

What if it's Identical 2) Link, but Different 1) User 3) Title 4) Community?? Basically, a bunch of different people post the same link to different communities, and they alll write a different title lmao. Basically the exactly same "spam" problem, harder to stack.

I don't really think we should do a whole grid of the different people posting different titles to different communities lmao.

(Don't even get me started on 2) Different Links to the same content hahah)

@McBinary I think it's easier to describe the different users problem by comparing different titles first.

• "WIRED MAG PREDICTS END OF TRUTH!!"
• "Wired magazine cautions detailed psychological research as AI proliferates"

Obviously these are over the top examples, but this kind of difference can be incredibly important, especially when the differences in intent are subtle.

• "Apollo rejects Reddit's new API program"
• that's like technicallyyy true but sure makes it sound like Apollo is being unreasonable here, not reddit.

So which one do we display as the "main" title for the group? As it stands, we give them equal footing (which looks like spam), but pick your favourite controversial topic, and imagine that our stacking solution quickly decides that END OF TRUTH is the only title we really need to show lmao. All the others can just be piled into the "+ 7 others" stack.

We've basically chosen which narrative is the True Main Story, and which ones can be de-emphasized. Uh oh.

Now let's do that all over again, but it's two users. One user is the head of PoliticsA, the other is PoliticsB. They both post an article about their debate. Obviously they choose different titles as above, so the winner chooses the narrative.

But the OP gets emphasized in the comments too, so they get to spread their opinions a little better. Are we cool with most people only seeing the thread that pops off a little quicker?

Most viewers aren't going to go through the de-emphasized posts, it's obvious the main one is the one where all the activity is now. Many won't even notice the other guy posted it too, he's lost somewhere in the + 7 others threads lol.

Equal footing is fair, but ugly. If we smooth over the content, we lose more and more subtlety and eventually we lose details that actually do matter.

Messy, I know. I'm so sorry lol.

@McBinary @Mallard

Ah sheet, that's a good point. I was thinking, surely the most constrained factors is number of communities. Nope, 'cause the OF creator posts to 100 communities, and their fans seem very likely to subscribe to a lot of those communities lmao.

@ShadowRunner What are you imagining would be the title that we see on /all or whatever feed?

Default Condensed/Expanded is a good user setting, we should definitely keep that lol.

@Lasairiona Oh good lol, I feel a lot better lmao. I was asking myself how many there'd be and I guessed 200ish? Haha.

Yeah, we really need to hit critical mass for content more than magazines. We'll see after July 1st!

Hi, I'm figuring this out too. Veterans, please feel free to correct me!

1. If you create a community on kbin, it does not prevent a community with the same name from being created on another site. We have a 'music' community here (kbin.social/m/music), but lemmy.world has a 'music' community too (lemmy.world/c/music).

(kbin calls them /m/agazines, lemmy calls 'em /c/ommunities, if you're wondering about the 'm' vs 'c' in the URLs lol.)

1. Yes! Because Fediverse magic, you can actually interact with the lemmy.world 'music' community without leaving kbin.social. Try it out from kbin.social/m/music@lemmy.world.

You may notice this @[object]@[place] pattern a fair bit.

For example, our own 'music' community is @music@kbin.social. The lemmy.world 'music' community is @music@lemmy.world. Your account is @Spider-Man@kbin.social. See if you can spot users or threads that are from other sites! They're probably already in front of you!

As a second experiment, see if you can visit the music community from beehaw.org, without leaving kbin.social. They have one too, but you don't need a beehaw.org account to participate there!

(This link has the answer if you have any doubts!)

If you visit the actual magazine page, it's next to the subscribe button, just on the right of it. It looks like a Ø symbol lol.

Yeah, I broadly agree with you, but I actually strongly with you about the terminology here. Magazines should just be called Communities.

• Other instances use community, and the fediverse will only be more confusing to newcomers if every instance has their own cute word. (Imagine if there were kbin Magazines, Lemmy SubLems, and Beehaw Hives. Try teaching that to your friends lol.)

• Joining a community is the more correct metaphor here. I can hang out in a community, I can interact with others in my community, I can even contribute to my community. That's what we're aiming for here right, lots of small-medium communities.

• On the other hand, a magazine is not something I really interact with. I do subscribe to it, and then I'll read it when it's delivered. But I can't say I've ever contributed to a magazine, let alone had a conversation with the contents of one.

I know ernest is just doing his best here lol, so he has plenty on his mind as is. But I really think that switching magazine to community sets the correct tone for every user here.

Ooh, thank you!

So from a quick skim there, most of those are actually not kbin mods. I'm still wrapping my head around the fediverse lol, but that modlog is actually from everyone not just kbin and I guess that's on purpose!

@da_g Yeah, I actually basically do slap everything in one folder on Obsidian lol. I love that I don't need to spend time organizing folders, but I still find things easily by taking "paths" through my vault!

Ah, no [[links]]? Well. I'm a couple thousand notes deep on that format hahah.

I don't think this is for me, but I've given your post a boost and an upvote! Good luck!

@FaceDeer Beehaw removed the downvote button? That's interesting. Did they say why?

I'd guess their argument would be that that the downvote's main purpose is supposed to be to mark irrelevant content, but that's just as easily handled by a report?

That's actually a compelling argument to me. A spammer with a negative reputation almost certainly doesn't care. I'd rather have mods look at someone with too many reports and just ban them and be done with it.

People with acceptable but unpopular opinions ("peanut butter and mayo is the best sandwich") can just have a low non-negative reputation, no need to treat that like a bannable offense lol.

@HamSwagwich Oh, yeah, that's why I'm suggesting we just make it benign. Like cosmetic only. We can see the downvote count, but it doesn't affect reputation or sorting.

"There's a bunch of people in the back grumbling about this comment lol." It's anonymous but ignorable. Actual sorting is by upvotes, actual content moderation is by reports.

Hmmm, so on kbin.social we already have that actually! Or we have something close to it.

We have upvotes, downvotes, boosts and reports. Upvotes don't contribute to your reputation right now (apparently that's a bug though, but maybe it's a feature haha). Boosts are supposed to be like a retweet, but I think they're taken into account for sort order too.

So we can already boost meaningful content, and report irrelevant content! Nice! And then for personal takes, we could continue using up/downvotes.

Unfortunately downvotes currently affect reputation, and they're publicly listed, so there's definitely conflict around people unhappy about their negative reputations. I've been fairly liberal with my boosts to try to balance that out lol.

@kjr Oh nice! Thanks for that link. I figured languages would be on the to-do list, but I'm glad to see there's already active progress happening!

There's a kbin setting for font size, under the gear!

I don't need kbin to look exactly like reddit, but I did notice the eyestrain too (on mobile).

Huh, that's interesting. This definitely requires a set of robust moderation tools that kbin definitely doesn't have yet, but I like the thought experiment!

I'd consider using actual activity as the lottery pool, so that we're more likely to promote a user that actually wants to participate. This encourages spamming unfortunately, so it might have to be something like "Every week, collect the users from all threads and comments from that week. Those users have one ticket added to the lottery pool. Draw from the lottery pool every four weeks, and promote that user." No need to spam, just show up lol.

Actually, to mitigate account spam, let's make it so that accounts only start adding tickets to the lottery pool once they've reached a threshold number of potential tickets, let's say 12? So only accounts who were active for 12+ weeks are considered valid participants.

I think this could be used to decide a pool of participants whose opinions are polled for the direction of a magazine. I'd consider that (expanding) list to be a higher quality than just blanket polling the magazine as a whole.

@Sam_uk Yeah, that's pretty much how I was imagining it. If a bot could maintain the threshold checks and ticket pools, then just automatically promote someone (and send 'em a nice template message lmao), then I'd consider implementing this in my own magazine. I'd only need to review the users approaching the 12-week threshold, which is likely to be a fraction of the whole magazine even during peak growth times. If there's anyone concerning (like a bot), I have 12 weeks to filter them out of the pool. Eventually the lottery mods can filter themselves lol.

Assuming it actually works, the pool of lottery mods could be allowed to choose/replace the actual mods too, which is approaching how democracy actually works lmao. That's kind of fun!

Have you read The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith? I think you may enjoy it. Very grossly oversimplifying here, but broadly, as more people have a say in who holds power, corruption becomes increasingly difficult. It eventually even stabilizes into being a competitive "who has the best idea" game, which is really good for society lol. If your goal is healthy societal growth, see if you can always be pushing for more people to have a relevant vote!

@KapmK This morning I was looking at write freely.org, and paper.wf. I'm not sure it's exactly what you want, but they may help someone else who's looking for something similar!

I think, maybe the change needs to happen in us lmao. Maybe, we should look at this as a feature, that lets us compare beehaw's responses vs lemmy's vs kbin vs any community or instance.

You can subscribe to all the communities to get different sides of the spectrum for a broader perspective.

Or maybe you only actually care for the responses from some communities (factors like content quality, quantity, political spectrum, etc) so you get to control exactly what you want to experience, and can unsubscribe accordingly.

I'm not endorsing their behaviour, but I can imagine myself doing something similar to Pips. I'm just hoping to show an alternative perspective here, maybe it'll make the spam more tolerable for you lol.

I follow basically all the warhammer hobby magazines/communities I come across. They're all still growing, some a little quicker, but honestly there isn't a single clear winner. Since they basically all would benefit from more content and activity, shouldn't I post to several admittedly very overlapping groups?

There's only so much content I can contribute as a single user. I either make an OC post when I've painted something up, or I'll link like the one or two noteworthy news articles for this week lmao. I can't create bespoke content for each instance.

I do want them all of them to succeed, or any one of them to succeed. They're all starving for content most days. But right now, the fediverse just doesn't have the critical mass yet. So how should we grow it?

Eventually, a clear winner will emerge, and I'll probably prune my subscriptions list. But we're in the spring of the fediverse, it's just too early to tell which sprouts will flower best.

If I think my comment is more relevant than all the others I see, I even boost myself lmao. No shame hahah.

When I'm contributing to the conversation, I upvote myself. When I'm no longer contributing to the original discussion (like I'm talking with someone and we get somewhat off topic), I don't upvote myself anymore.

It's more about what order a new person should see stuff!