English. But the issue does not seem to be a language barrier.
Proliferation of gatekeepers of /physical/ buildings in Brussels thwart access to lawyers, journalists, NGOs, etc…, often by imposing Microsoft or Google
I appreciate the tip, but I’m not even willing to put an alternative form of contact through Google. In part because I find it disturbing that I have to do a dance just to send the email the way Google and MS want it sent (from an IP address blessed by the tech giants).
It is bizarre how Le Soir, De Standard, De Tijd, and RTBF all stick a gatekeeping surveillance advertiser from the US between them and their confidential sources who they need to earn the trust of. When I manage to reach someone at a front desk, they are always puzzled. They think it’s weird that someone would come into their front door with a story, and they say “we don’t work like that”. They don’t even have enough motivation to hear the gist of the story.
This is so contrary to my hollywood movie influenced perception of how contact with the press would work. I was expecting reporters to be eager to hear a juicy story, as if I would have to fight them off from over-probing investigation.
the site isn’t useful if I keep it locked down like it is now
I’d say it’s crippled but not useless, just as old-fashioned non-federated forums are still useful despite limitations. And as it is now we still have some of the fedi benefits.
bug 1
One bug comes to mind, which should perhaps be reported against kbin. Is the current locked down state something that is facilitated by the software, or did you hack it to redirect outsiders to login screens? If it’s the former, then the software is disservicing users who unwittingly post a link back to the access-restricted resource. If I cross-post by posting a link to fedia.io/yadayada, I should ideally get a warning to say “are you sure you want to post a link that is inaccessible to outsiders?”
bug 2 (more of an enhancement)
One work around is for a Fedia user to create a post, wait for a non-fedia response, then dig up the cached version on the non-fedia host and publicise that link in other places. That’s already possible with a bit of navigation effort. It would be useful if users could obtain a link farm of cached versions of any post or comment. Not just for the situation at hand but with small hosts coming and going coupled with censorship as well, users of mastodon, lemmy, and [km]bin all suffer from dataloss. A sophisticated client could use caching info to locally build/recover a complete thread, as well as track points of data loss.
Anyway, just brainstorming here.
EU directives must be implemented in each EU member state, which the EU then verifies. Is that done in English?
I don't know the Belgian case, but I think it's the same thing in many member states; the publishing of laws online is done by private for-profit companies, and comes with weird restrictions.
Belgium has an open data law obligating the state to make available to the public generally all information that the state has, with some reasonable restrictions w.r.t private info about individuals. Legal statutes themselves would obviously have to be openly accessible under that law. That law was even used to force publication of train routes and schedules. I’ve not read the law but I guess it’s likely sloppy about what constitutes “open”, because the state’s own website is access restricted (e.g. Tor IPs are blocked).
I’ve always appreciated your competence and diligence in setting a good example of responsible hosting without resorting to shitty technofeudal fiefdoms like Cloudflare. Nice to see you are standing your ground and not selling the users out (unlike lemmy world and many other boot licking hosts).
I must say there is a notable side-effect to this. Since mbin does not have a cross-posting feature, I have been cross-posting by creating a link post to my original post from other relevant magazines. Now all of those links are unreachable to outsiders. To outsiders, I polluted their magazine with access-restricted links.
I can think of only two workarounds:
- Make the original post on a publicly open forum, then link to that from other forums. This means the original post can never be on Fedia (which has the side-effect of reducing fedia publicity); and/or
- Copy/paste the payload of the original msg into the cross-post.
Fix 1 is impossible for existing past threads. Fix 2 is tedious and it’s a maintenance burden esp. if a post needs edits or updates. Fix 2 is also problematic because if I withold the original link, users cannot find other discussions that are scattered; but if I supply the original link, then non-Fedia readers cannot reach the OP anyway.
That will mean we don't show up in search engines and whatnot, which for some will considered a good thing and will likely cause others to leave.
Worth mentioning that paywall sites handle this by giving crawlers special treatment. I’m not necessarily suggesting that though.
There is a remaining problem related to the login form. Calls to the login page are breathtakingly expensive,
The login form loads must be through the roof because whenever a non-fedia user follows a cross-post into fedia, they are redirected to a login form which did not happen before.
There would be some relief if Mbin would implement a cross-post feature that automatically copies the OP text into the body, which would cut down on the number of visits. At the same time, I’ve always considered that a sloppy approach because edits are not sychronised. So in principle the threadiverse probably needs a smarter API specifically for cross-posts.
The use of 3rd-party clients would obviously give relief on the login form loading. But I have not found any decent 3rd-party clients for Lemmy or [km]bin - (perhaps because I’m fussy… I could really use a text UI in linux that stores content locally).
EU directives must be implemented in each EU member state, which the EU then verifies. Is that done in English?
If a resource blocks certain IP addresses, that is not open access. It is access restricted. It is a deliberate blockade against a demographic of people.
“Open data” has different meanings in different bodies of law, so your comment is meaningless without context. But in any case, we can call shenanigans whenever an “open data” legal definition fails to thwart access restrictions in an Emporer wears no clothes type of attempt.
IOW, you cannot claim that an access restriction ceases to exist on some emotional plea that you believe the access restriction is just, appropriate, or necessary. An access restriction is an access restriction. “Open” implies open to all people, not some select demographics.
EU directives must be implemented in each EU member state, which the EU then verifies. Is that done in English?
EU directives must be implemented in each EU member state, which the EU then verifies. Is that done in English?
EU directives must be implemented in each EU member state, which the EU then verifies. Is that done in English?
I mentioned that, along with the problem of that. As well as the problem of searching using private sector tools.
We should not be pushed to use private search engines like Google, Bing, or their syndicates to find public resources. Public administrations have an “open data” obligation to some extent. Certainly the EU knows where the member state’s implementations are.
EU directives must be implemented in each EU member state, which the EU then verifies. Is that done in English?
This is generally saying if you are being discriminated against, change whatever your demographic is that is subject to discrimination. Putting oneself inside the included group does nothing to remedy the fact that there is an excluded group of people.
It’s also wrong to assume everyone has clearnet access. At this very moment I am using a machine that does not have clearnet access.
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I see it now. Indeed it was apparently just a very long delay. Perhaps there is a moderation queue.