If you choose Run A Server, it suggests two main options: Ansible or Docker. It specifically warns against "from scratch".
When I'm developing software, I want people to be building it from scratch. If someone likes something I made enough that they want to take it and build a docker or ansible thing out of it ... okay, that's flattering, albeit a little confusing, and it's not my default.
And I probably wouldn't agree to support those third-party ansible/docker things which someone else felt the need to create.
What happened to rolling a versioned tarball that you can chuck in opt or wherever and point nginx at it? Eg, if I knew I could pull in versions of lemmy server through my package manager, I'd be totally trying it out as my side-project this weekend.
This is what the notice (https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/from_scratch.h...) actually says:
> Disclaimer: this installation method is not recommended by the Lemmy developers. If you have any problems, you need to solve them yourself or ask the respective authors. If you notice any Lemmy bugs on an instance installed like this, please mention it in the bug report.
Supposedly so it's easy to reproduce issues locally. I remember participating in the PHP community long time ago, and constantly having to replicate peoples arbitrary Apache/NGINX configurations just in order to reproduce issues, so it's not surprising that people are using Ansible/Docker for setting up development environments.
I just wished people stopped pushing for that bloated mess in production too, but step by step...
cargo build --release
I don’t see a problem.
Serving the frontend cannot be a challenge either I imagine but I didn’t bother looking at the frontend.
If you do decide to run an instance of lemmy be sure to nuke the absurd word filter - the code is designed to make it as difficult as possible to change out. Thankfully some nice souls [2] are maintaining that anti-feature removal.
If we want to talk about Reddit alternatives, I would rather we look at ones which are open source, including Reddit itself until 2017 [1], the Mastodon Twitter-like web app [2], Discourse [3], Lemmy [4] (use a fork [5] if you can’t stand the slur filter), and the old school PHP discussions boards like PhpBB [6] and MyBB [7].
[1] https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
[2] https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
[3] https://github.com/discourse/discourse
[4] https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
[5] https://github.com/innereq/lenny
I'd rather not support the ecosystem at all if they pull stunts like this.
A test instance is at https://littr.me
Edit: actually it would make sense if word filters themselves were hard to add. But having their own filter and making that hard to edit is bonkers.
Further, a 10 line script could easily patch each new version, replacing the hardcoded code with a loadable text file.
Done.
Updates would take zero time to deploy.
It's all about taking a position.
Taking a position is fine. But, imagine a self driving car which wouldn't let you drive home to Cuntsington, MA (an example)?
The DEVs think this logic is fine?
Strange people.
That list seems very Americanocentric.
Indeed it is. There are comments here and there in the GitHub issues where the devs defend the filter as being targeted at making it harder for "the [American] right wing" to use the platform.
It's naïve, and they don't want to talk about it.
And here's the related code: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/3b37ea6c8beeaa57754df...
edit: I don't get the instant -2 downvotes for just providing context.
Well I don't remember the exact phrasing but I think your original comment did have a part asking people not to discuss this further. I can see how this would not be well received.
Wow, this was a fantastic thread. It very clearly and logically lays out how to kill software by injecting your ideology into it.
RIP dessalines
I'm not quite expert here, but, IIRC, this language problem is partially inherent to ActivityPub. The sender can attach translations, and the receiver can pick one from the set, but no one knows what's gonna happen if the expectations from both sides don't match.
One might, instead, re-fetch the messages from the sender using HTTP + content negotiation, which will definitely cause different types of headache.
> Civil discussion for the center and center right
> Karl Marx: Atheist or Satanist?
> Candace Owens
> transphobic comic
> no links to github/gitlab
is this what passes for "civil discussion" and "center/center right" these days?
This is not an alternative to reddit, where you would see a front page with content on it.
The tech is the easy part, you need to have a place that is worth going before the tech will be utilized.
I get that censorship in major tech platforms is problematic, but the sense of martyrdom in comments like yours feels a little overwrought.
Yeah, sure you can be banned for questioning if an untransitioned man wearing a wig is really a women, but this isn't what most people are concerned about. The censorship has now gone far further and in many cases to simply disagree with mainstream narrative on some politically charged subject will be enough to have you removed. One of my favour YouTubers "Mouthy Buddha" was banned for making some videos about Epstein and paedophilia -- the guy produced "conspiracy" content but it's really high quality stuff with no hate at all.
I mean even the US president was banned for "violence" despite asking rioters to go home, being acquitted and the FBI finding that there was no coordinated insurrection plan.
I'm not coming at this from any political position. A lot of content social media platforms censor I don't like, but that doesn't mean I think it should be censored. Things like racism have been deliberately defined in a very loose way that practically anything can now be considered racist and used as an excuse to censor. A popular comedian in the UK got banned during the world cup for saying, "all I'm saying is, the white guys scored". He was mocking how the UK media had been running stories for weeks about how the "diversity" of the England team is what made them great, but that wasn't allowed because "racism".
For example, try talking about a need for safe spaces for X, and you will immediately get abuse from random strangers complaining that you aren't thinking about Y.
Or try saying anything about treatment Z side effects. You'll be downvoted and insulted for not sufficiently trusting the science.
Some discussions just work better in a less open, moderated forum, where people will try to engage with you, rather than having an angry internet mob materialize out of thin air whenever their trigger topic is mentioned.
That's such a naive and ignorant viewpoint. Everything which one doesn't agree with suddenly doesn't become racist, xenophobic, and homophobic content.
Post from an hour ago:
> Somali feminist: Facebook is being used to silence me
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28452991
Another one from 2 months ago:
> The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645282
From yesterday:
> The Linux Experiments YouTube channel has been terminated
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28443244
Facebook and IG also banned the mother of one of the soldiers who died in Afghanistan last week.
Even women who are against biological men competing in their sports are getting silenced under the label of "transphobia."
One only get to understand what censorship feels like when it comes for them.
https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-...
And now we've moved on to "misinformation" which has no real definition other than being mitigated by so-called fact checkers who mostly work for American for-profit newspapers.
Pretty good means switching to it will not be too tough for Reddit users since most of the users (anecdata) preferred the older UI to which it is very similar and is easier to use on mobile.
What happens if I run an instance and these subs become popular - am I going to be liable legally for their use or will a broader community be able to input into their moderation?
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379
This created a firestorm on Lemmy, on which it was noted that Lemmy removes conservative and libertarian communities with the reason "No conservative communities":
> Removed Community conservatives reason: No conservative communities
> Removed Community Libertarian, in the pursuit of a free society reason: No conservative communities allowed
Perhaps the underlying software is fine, but the largest Lemmy instance is not exactly the friendliest to anyone who wants to express themselves more freely than they are allowed to on mainstream social networks.
I mean, you must be aware by now that those "conservatives" did ruin a couple of actually good communities in the last years (especially in the reddit clone scene) and some people just don't want to deal with those people at all. And they shouldn't have to.
Correct. Ownership is governed through intellectual property laws, the type of license used, agreements and so on. Lemmy's code is released under a GNU Affero license, and so ownership and usage are governed under this license.
Large open source projects tend to set up legal entities (foundations, non-profits) which manage their brand, trademark, intellectual property rights and so on.
> but the operators of the servers are distributed and independent.
In the era of classic web forums, you would download a copy of vbulletion, phpbb,... operators would download a copy of the software and set up their own intance(s) on their own server(s).
The federated model operates the same way. The distinction, though, is that all these instances are interconnected. They can communicate with each other. In the federated model, you have an account on server A, but you can use that account to subscribe and see content of and participate on server B.
> How do they typically manage things like scale, data growth, security, monetisation etc.?
Each to their own. Operators work independently. The operator of instance A is entire responsible for their own setup regardless of what happens at instance B. Operators get to set the rules on their own instance as to moderation, monetization, topics, community growth, etc. etc.
Since servers are interconnected, each instance can use an allowlist to determine which other instances, and their users, are allowed to connect and participate. As an operator, you get to decide that users of B can connect with your server, but users of C aren't allowed.
> Is the experience likely to vary a bit across the operators?
Communities are groups of people. Just like in real life, a community establishes its own culture, its own identity, its own way of communicating. So, yes, the experience can vary across the board depending on who's active on your instance.
Functionally speaking, all Lemmy instances operate the same way. You have communities, comment threads, voting, posting, etc. Barring configuration differences, as a user, the experience is quite similar across servers.
> And how do users trust which operators then want to join?
The same way you'd trust your ISP, your bank, the garage that services your car, etc. You read reviews, you try to gauge sentiment, number of users, etc. etc.
Mastodon - a Twitter clone - uses the exact same federation protocols as Lemmy. Mastodon has an order of magnitude more users across its instances. A big feature in Mastodon is the ability to just move your account from one instance to another instance. A thing Lemmy doesn't seem to have at the moment:
https://lemmy.eus/post/8181/comment/31995 https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/
I just wish, we could have a platform that was; not necessarily politically neutral, but where it didn't consume so much of the site.
Unfortunately when I visit Lemmy, I'm fronted with a lemmygrad.ml, and a "leftist" privacy focused one, which seem to be the only populated instances at the moment. So it doesn't inspire much hope.
The thing I enjoy about Lemmy is that you can join an instance and if you don't agree with the policies and the people there you can join a different instance.
Having more users isn't going to help if the core developers are anti-diversity.
Which is fine, write code, live by your beliefs, but enforcing them in software on other people who might implement it is what I have a problem with.
Open source and federated platforms like lemmy will not magically fix the problem( * ). But they come with two killer advantages: 1) They are open, transparent and evolvable, hence diverse people can work on solutions and 2) Don't have private data monetization as their defining business model which frees up potential to explore less antisocial possibilities.
These "big picture" aspects will take some time to play out in full. But if you have the time there is nothing preventing you from setting up an instance that would strike the right balance (pun) and create history :-)
( * ) What would a "fix" look like? well thats not a easy question to get consensus on, but a workable definition is that at least people do not behave worse than in real life (as in person-to-person contact if you remember what that is :-)
1) at the very least there should be an option to run it as a single community, not multiple communities. Federation means you can have multiple communities, each on their own server, the whole user created multi community paradigm makes sense on centralized services like reddit. Added bonus, you remove site administration and have only moderation, removing bureaucratic layers is good.
2) subscriptions on federated services should ideally be handled client side. If I want to subscribe to a community feed, needing to log in doesn't make sense when a community I follow might not be on my home server. I should only need authentication to interact.
I do not mean ideologically. Just in conversation. More of us learning to talk with one another better is a really good thing.
The American idea of leftism varies widely, and on all axis too.
A similar thing can be found in the right.
Both have populist factions that have a lot in common. Many identify as indie too. They lack a solid party home.
Both have moderate and conservative factions too.
Authoritarianism is also on the rise generally.
All of this can be disturbing. I find the economic policy that way right now myself. Labor seems to be organizing though. Others see that as disturbing!
What I know, having had a ton of conversations in various venues around the nation is the body politic is far more complex. Everyone is listening to some loud or compelling voices and not talking with one another near enough to garner a better sense of where people are at and how policy might make a whole lot better sense.
It does not have to be disturbing. Shouldn't in my view.
The vast majority of people do not want to have that conversation (hence the flagged post of the grandparent).
You have a lot of these so-called leftists rebelling against the philosophies of Marx and other communist philosophers on very fundamental issues (e.g. gun ownership for the proletariat, or the freedom of speech) all because of the current political climate in America. At the same time, these people will support and protect Big Tech and other capitalist interests when it is politically convenient to do so. I've heard American leftism once jokingly called Socialism with Silicon Valley Characteristics.
Ask any one of these new-age leftists what they think of Alex Jones' YouTube channel being banned, and they will hit you with a response that would disturb any of the Gen X leftists who grew up in an era where Communist was a dirty word and the protection of free speech was a top-most necessity. New-age leftists have grown up in the left-sympathetic social media era and cannot conceptualize the pendulum ever swinging the opposite direction.
Having "leftist" in the description makes people (at least myself) automatically jump to the conclusion that one can get cancelled/banned/deplatformed for posting any thought or argument that disagrees with the mainstream. I'm not a conservative or anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but this culture really creeps me out.
Also in the About page the author of the software says things like:
> [Reddit's] libertarian founders have allowed some of the most racist and sexist online communities to fester on reddit for years
(Implying that this community wouldn't permit certain types of discussion, defined by very broad and ambiguous terms that were weaponized such that they can be used against anyone who disagrees with the leftist ideology in any way).
And criticizes reddit for being:
> liberal, and pro-US, not left (leftism referring to the broad category of anti-capitalism)
I wouldn't be comfortable with participating in a discussion moderated by a person who says things like that.
Also, as a person who grew up in a country ruined by "anti-capitalism", I find that trend in American culture extremely disturbing. Can you think of any anti-capitalist country (now, or at any point in history) that you'd like to live in?
Luckily this is a free software and anyone is free to run their own instance.
Politics aside - I wonder if it would be possible to create an instance focused on free speech, without automatically attracting all the worst people?
I don't think it's even worth considering such a community left-wing. They're more like an anime poisoned grooming circle that embraced red aesthetics for shock value.
However pathetic that sounds though, I'm the bigger loser for even being familiar with this nonsense.
it's unastounding to me in the extreme that the right has very little presence on most of the fediverse.
I like to believe 'we' are in a real majority. The point is the same, even if this isn't true: It's not some mythic 50/50 world, and there is no phantom "equity" out there which is a "balance" between libertarian-right, centerist and left views.
Apes, penguins, take your pick. Collectivism is out there. Its a basic model. I'd call it "herd mentality" but that tends to have negative connotations. Sure, there are apex elements in collectivism. It doesn't undermine the main thesis: There is more collectivism, essential left-wing thinking, than a lot of people credit.
In the US, because of individualism, this is often ignored. The belief "most" people in the US simply want to a) be left alone to b) sink or swim on their own and c) pay less taxes is a bit distorted. Really? They just want c).
Capitalism allows people to organize collectively too. Proponents would claim that it enables more freedom to do so than ‘leftism’.
The United States leftism leans heavily to the contemporary idea of all other developed western nations rightism... so are we to be seen as a bit disturbing by the rest of our nation peers? (hint, they mostly seem to :D )
The optimal way to distribute social news: bittorrent-style P2P swarms.
People copy and paste news articles with photos (maybe this is piracy?) and share them as files with known hashes. The swarm pulls down all the articles for you to read locally without ads or scripts. No HTML and script garbage. Beautiful plaintext with minimal markdown-style markup.
A core group of 5 or so people alone can probably scrape what's valuable of the old web on a daily basis, rendering the need for the web moot. The web is going away anyway with the social media giants. We should just own the method of distribution instead of having it locked away in Medium and AMP.
User identities in the system are PGP signed, but can be effectively anonymous. You follow people that you upvote frequently, and articles they upvote are given higher priority in your feed. You share your voting with others to create rich filters. If the system detects noise, you know where in the graph it comes from and can nuke it. It'll take time to build a reputation, so people won't risk it.
You can layer comments on top and distribute them the same way.
Content is ephemeral as you want and decays naturally if nobody keeps or seeds it. Some archive team might want to keep stuff, but nobody else has to go to the trouble of maintaining infrastructure to do so.
No spam. No ads. No VC-funded growth engines that require your phone or a mobile app. Just a solid protocol and beautiful reading and authoring client.
The protocol should include a plaintext legal preamble / poison pill that prevents companies from ever trying to coopt it: BEGIN. BY EMITTING THIS PROTOCOL, WE OFFER SHARES EQUIVALENT OF 1% OF OUR COMPANY ON A DAILY BASIS TO ANYONE WHO CONNECTS TO THIS CLIENT. Or something to make "embrace and extend" impossible by forcing companies into an impossible legal contract.