Videlock is reconsidering being a Reddit mod these days but said Reddit's outreach is an appreciated step in the right direction.

In what fucking world??? How is it a step in the right direction? This "outreach" is no more than damage control. It's a company realizing they fucked up, and wanting to mitigate PR damage without actually fixing their shitty practices.

Never really was a fan of the copious amount of awards to begin with. Gold and Silver were fine enough, and they got a point across. If I saw them on a post or comment, I'd have an indicator that someone really liked it, and wanted to praise it beyond giving it an upvote. Silver and Gold were two tiers to this, which coupled with upvotes, was more than sufficient in giving users a metric by which to value posts or comments.

It turned to shit when I start seeing diamond-clad medals, seal heads, unicorns and rainbows, and shooting stars flying across my screen. It took the simple approach and turned it into a clusterfuck of visual noise because the people designing them had no clue about the basics of a user interface.

And then they kill the entire thing because (shocker) it just doesn't work. Typical.

Buy upvotes?

The sad part is, I can absolutely see this happening. Not as an outright "gib money get updoot" but something more roudabout but effectively the same thing.

"Be heard louder with Reddit Premium! Your comments on posts will be displayed closer to the top for others to see!"

To reiterate, the above is just something I mocked up. May not be upvotes, but still rigging threads by paying Reddit money. I just wouldn't be surprised at this point.

I wish people would be more mature about their reaction to this, as well as other people's reactions, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with the choice.

I'm not opposed to piracy, though I understand the risks that come with a platform allowing potentially pirated content. While I respect the decision and see the reasoning behind it, I don't agree with it, and will likely change my home instance to one that allows me to continue communicating with those communities, as I was subscribed to one of them.

I'll still be participating in communities hosted here, and I hope that with this decision, the admins' concern about being potentially sued is substantially alleviated.

I may be in the minority on this, but I wear pants to work every day, even in the summer, and it doesn't feel uncomfortable. I just like wearing my jeans, and if anything, I've gotten more flak from friends about not wearing shorts enough

Honestly, a pretty valid take, all things considered. I can see why many people would find the headline outrageous, but reading through the article, I think it's a message that a lot of people do need to hear. And I think everyone should read what OP is conveying before jumping to conclusions.

I've seen people on Lemmy with mixed opinions on how Lemmy and the Fediverse should be treated. Some want to expand Lemmy and siphon off as many users from Reddit, while others want to keep the gates tight. Some want Lemmy to remain a small, niche community for enthusiasts, while others want the Fediverse to be a new paradigm for the maintstream internet.

I agree, that Fediverse platforms built up with donations and little to no profit incentive will likely remain dwarfed compared to the tech giants that can afford to give the public the high-end, high-production social media they ultimately prefer. As OP said, that's okay. The fediverse can remain a viable alternative, even if it doesn't become the new #1.

I think this is a message people should hear if they think Lemmy has the potential to outright eclipse Reddit at the moment, or think the Fediverse will take over the entirety of the internet and give the top tech companies a run for their money in doing so.

21 yo software dev here, so not quite older, but I'd say I fit the tech nerd bill lmao

While a lot of people are conscious about the software they use, I think being involved in tech, either as a hobby or career, ups the chance that a person will care about things like user privacy, how an app is run, algorithms that might manipulate the user, or even how technologically literate the rest of the community is

And that isn't to be condescending towards people who are more apathetic about it. It's like how a doctor might be more behooved to eat healthy; when you've seen and studied what can go wrong, you're more compelled to avoid it

Wait, Redditors are now bandwagoning on this slander too? I just figured it was a bullshit claim that u/spez made that the rest of the Reddit community saw through and weren't buying.

If there actually is a large number of people actually believing this shit, then my already rock-bottom hope for Reddit has somehow plummeted further.

I've noticed my feed can look stagnant if I go by the default, which is Local and Active. I instead set it to Subscribed and New

On Reddit, New wasn't the best since posts were made so quick and a lot of them were low-effort, but at least in the communities I'm subbed to, posts are generally made slower, but are higher quality, making sorting by new valid.

I wouldn't call it a matter of need. While I want to see Lemmy grow, I don't think that we should rely on outrage on another platform to drive our own activity in the long term. While the number of users joining has slowed down, it certainly hasn't halted.

All we can do is make Lemmy as solid and enticing of a platform as possible, and leave those on Reddit to choose between supporting a platform they don't like and leaving. We shouldn't be responsible for forcing their hand, but we should be responsible for maintaining a healthy community here.

I think even something like a indie video game developer hosting a forum on Lemmy instead of Reddit would do wonders for making Lemmy "mainstream". Or even a youtuber, streamer, or some other content creator at that. But of course, it's not something I'd go out of my way to do; just something that I think will happen in due time.

The Ace Attorney community would absolutely agree

Keep in mind too that the expiration date for many of the mainstream third party Reddit apps is June 30

Just think of the spike in users when that rolls around in 10 days

While I hate the shady data harvesting practices of companies like Meta, I do want to play devil's advocate here, as far as the value of data goes, if only for the sake of me understanding the shortcomings of it better. If a company were to dig through your trash can to get an idea of what you want to eat, so to speak, they'd probably find data on a history of foods you have eaten, if you've been interested in burgers, or any other foods you've been interested in. Or if you've been an adventurous eater in general or if you prefer to stick to variants of the same stuff you normally eat.

It may not give you a foolproof way of knowing what your next actions will be, but wouldn't it give a company an educated guess, at the very least? Enough to improve the chances of targeted ads being more effective, as opposed to missing altogether.

If catching the user's interest is a dice roll, then wouldn't the data at least improve the odds of rolling a number you want?

Can't really comment for certain on OP's behalf, but they did say "in a realm that has a lot of drama"

"In a realm" makes it sound like it's not just their non-profit that's at fault, but is a common issue across all non-profits working in that same field/realm

free-mp3 is the one I use myself

The link may sound shady af, but it hasn't given me any problems

Snappy interface, quick downloads, definitely gets a recommendation from me

Yeah I was gonna say. I'm guessing OP meant cryptocurrencies in particular, but you're not wrong. Federated services are an example of Web3 as well, since Web3 is defined by decentralization, which is the core premise of Lemmy

So I absolutely agree, lambasting Web3 as a whole is rather disingenuous

Going through the Red Rising series, which some of my friends praise immensely. Lightbringer just came out, though I'm only just finished Morning Star, book 3/6 in the series. Going to be starting Iron Gold soon. But until them, I'm reading 1984, which I just acquired a nice hardcover copy of.

Probably to express that a social media app that is largely unheard of managed to make it onto Austrian top 200 list when Reddit, a far more popular platform, could not.

Group of friends is always nice, and there's something atmospheric about watching a film in theaters. I watched Oppenheimer and Across the Spiderverse with my pals recently, and sitting in the reclining seats, putting your feet up, and seeing the film on such a massive screen in a dark theater is a great experience.

It feels more immersive, and the theater speakers make orchestral soundtracks and dialogue sound all the more impactful. Of course, this is all subjective, and I tend to be pretty eccentric, so there's a good chance it may not live up to the hype.

To put it simply, I'd say its a more enjoyable experience than watching at home, and watching it with friends makes for some good memories. My pals and I still talk about movies we went to see in theaters years and years back.

That was my line of thinking too, more or less. After RiF, I was like "I guess RedReader is still up, since they got an exemption! I'll just wait out till July 1 then switch to that.

But the day after the protest, I just decided to drop the platform altogether. It felt spineless calling out reddit on their bullshit, just to fall in line and still give traffic to their site.

Wouldn't most people just look at the rating average itself for the time being, rather than go through the individual reviews?

Though even if they do the latter, leaving a 1-star review with a well-written and concise explanation about why it scores so low would alleviate the issue of people dismissing it as meaningless drama.

And u/spez tried slandering this man as greedy and selfish. Utterly despicable.

Yeah, some of these takes are just off the rails. If Reddit had some scheme to mass-convert people to Republicans, they wouldn't be quarantining subreddits like The_Donald that would theoretically be instrumental in achieving this master plan. Or they'd be manipulating posts on r/politics to be far more right leaning.

Not killing off API usage in hopes of angering the volunteers who protect against bots in hopes that there'll be an uptick in pro-Nazi bots in hopes that it'll sway the result of political elections.

Looking it up online, the subject of Opera being chinese spyware seems to be debated pretty thoroughly, but with no definitive consensus (that I could find at least). Any articles on the subject I could read up on?

I use Firefox myself, so it wouldn't really impact my internet usage, but I'm just curious about what's going on with Opera.

Funnily enough, I think the last time I used Opera was the Internet Channel on the Wii way back when, which was powered by Opera lmao

Only if it's exaggerated for the sake of appearances. Some people might do that, either to make themselves look important or seek attention, but most of the time, people are in fact busy with some task, or are carrying something for a reason. And generally, that comes with some purpose that is important to them at the time.

It's a logical conclusion to draw, even if some people may hijack that reasoning to be deceitful.

Pretty much the main two that I use as well lmao

And even with the apps, you're still able to pay for premium versions, like Reddit Premium for instance Could be that despite the app costing 0 euros up front, it can't be labelled truly free because micro-transactions exist

Even on Lemmy, I've been seeing a bit of this. Like on the front page, for a day or two, there was that meme from LemmyShitpost about US incarceration rates titled "Happy Freedom Day... I Guess"

Come on, do people genuinely want to shit on a country on the day of it's independence that millions of people look forward to celebrating? Can they not keep their negativity and hate to themselves? Any comment that called out this circlejerk was just downvoted and was told that "Lemmy isn't the platform for you" and that Lemmy is only for "People that live in reality". Verbatim.

It's just saddening to see, and it reminds me why I just curate my subscription feed and never look at the general front page. Like yes, a collective outrage at the Reddit admin is what drove the spike in users as of late, but it feels different when you're shitting on other people and the things they're passionate about, for something undeserved.

It's a username I've used since a decade ago, probably. I used it typically for gaming, with XYZ being used in arcade style games where you can only input 3 characters, and Inferno being used for anything where I could enter a full name with no regard to uniqueness. Also, inferno is my favorite word in the English lexicon So I just combined the two, and it's never taken on any platform I sign up for

For me, I mostly rationalize my piracy as something generally unethical that I choose to partake in anyways. People often cite piracy as an issue with the service being provided, but there's just a lot of instances where I'd rather pirate something than pay for it, not because the service is bad, but because "Why pay for something when I can just get it free, eh?"

Though I think there is one specific case where I'd undoubtedly consider piracy ethical, which is for products that are not being sold on the market currently. Take a retro video game for instance. If it isn't being sold by any company, then there is no way to legally play the game apart from getting a secondhand copy. Either way, the company that owns the rights to it won't derive profit, and they aren't involved in secondhand markets whatsoever, so pirating the game effectively results in 0 negative consequences for any party, compared to legally acquiring it.

I didn't know Duran Duran was even disliked lmao

Been listening to Rio by DD as inspiration for a writing piece, and it's a pretty good song imo

The fact that this is done under the name of an admin going by "ModCodeOfConduct" is added salt in the wound.

Implying that it's the code of conduct to blindly obey all bullshit from the admins, never protest any changes that they made, and the like... Fucking ridiculous

The Super Mario Galaxy duology has the best overall OST in my opinion. The orchestral music is amazing for so many of the tracks.

For any individual song, however. It would be Weight of the World from Nier Automata. For context: ::: spoiler spoiler it's the very emotional song that plays during the credits scene of the game, after you complete all 5 of the main endings :::

EDIT: I want to give an honorable mention to the Ace Attorney OST, across all of their games. A lot of people may know the Pursuit - Cornered theme, but every game in that series has banger tracks. Not as widely praised, and very underrated imo, hence the honorable mention.

No, more like, imagine walking into a cafe for a coffee

The cafe in the analogy describes /c/reddit

finding out that the place is filled with people that do nothing but bitch about another cafe.

Referring to people complaining about Reddit...

So you go into /c/Reddit and are annoyed that people area complaining about Reddit. Just block this community then?

Indeed. It's still a good rule of thumb to remember and teach to kids getting used to the internet. Post something on social media that you might regret later, and there's absolutely a chance that it gets downloaded, reuploaded, and circulated without your consent. Which at that point, it's too late to control.

It's useful lesson: think twice before uploading something to make sure you won't regret it later.

Malicious compliance at it's finest! Screwing with the Reddit admins like that will always get a chuckle out of me

It's like they say in gambling, "The House always wins"

Trying to force a community on Reddit to be favorable towards one of its primary competitors is a fruitless endeavor. Historically, the admins, including spez himself, have manipulated comments, upvotes, and posts in order to get communities that they disliked quarantined or banned.

I'd recommend having trust that the people we want to have over on Lemmy will look beyond a post on its competitor's website for fair and accurate information.

Oh yeah, I agree it's more effective, by far. I imagine that's why Google has Opinion Rewards and other companies use surveys to directly understand the needs of their customers. Though getting people in mass to volunteer that info, especially without some small profit incentive like Opinion Rewards might be tricky.

At least in the realm of targeted advertising, the closest example to user input would be when you set up an account, you're prompted to select your interests. Like with Windows 10, when you're setting it up for the first time, you'll be asked about your interests, which Microsoft will then use to send ads and news pertaining to those categories.

But yeah, I see what you mean

This is absurd. Consider the idea that not every moderator is power tripping, and that there are many who manage communities because they want to see them grow, and want people to have a place to talk about a given topic.

When I used Reddit, I was on some smaller communities, maybe a few thousand people tops, with moderators who interacted with their community, were well known among the regulars, and were great to talk to. They don't deserve disrespect just because you want to generalize all moderators under one giant blanket stereotype.

Multiple distros and instances are a double edged sword. It isn't as basic as having one site like Reddit or one OS like Windows, but has the advantage of not being at the mercy of one company like Reddit Inc or Microsoft, should they push some change people don't like. These distros/instances allow for individuals to tailor their experience however they want without having to beg the developers or admins to listen to them.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to avoid the shitshow happening on Reddit now, you may have to make things too complicated for the "average grandma" to understand. That's just how shit works.

Who the fuck cares about instances and whatnot when an average grandma just wants to make a post on knitting in a supportive community?

To put it simply, who the fuck cares about the average grandma when we want a forum that won't turn into Reddit in the next decade?

At some point, I'm sick and tired of this notion that everything on the internet has to be simplified for the lowest common denominator. Lemmy isn't hard to get a handle on. Either people learn how to use it, or they miss out. We can streamline the process as much as possible, but not to the extent of compromising on what makes federation valuable.