fuser

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] fuser@quex.cc 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, I agree - there have always been malevolent forces at work within the media - but before facebook started algorithmically whipping up old folks for clicks, cable TV news wasn't quite as savage. The early days of hate-talk radio was really just Limbaugh ranting into the AM ether. Now, it's saturated. Social media isn't the root cause of political hatred but it gave it a bullhorn and a leg up to apparent legitimacy.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 144 points 2 years ago (13 children)

the damage that corporate social media has inflicted on our social fabric and political discourse is beyond anything we could have imagined.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 2 points 2 years ago

this shows newest Lemmy communities first and is searchable: https://lemmyfind.quex.cc/

[–] fuser@quex.cc 3 points 2 years ago

Somebody asked for soldering tips on Lemmy today and got several thoughtful responses within 5 minutes. That's pretty amazing compared to the feed a few weeks ago.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 2 points 2 years ago

solder flows towards the heat. Just get the tip good and hot. Once the solder melts on the iron immediately it's good to go.

Alligator clips can help hold wires in place while you're soldering them.

have something underneath the joint that hot solder can drip onto without any problem.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 2 points 2 years ago

The default view is for "Active" posts. This thread is very active. Change to the dropdown from "Active" to "New" and you'll see other stuff. You can also change the view from "Posts" to "Comments" and see new comments to different threads.

if you're looking for new / smaller / diverse communities, you can try this: https://lemmyfind.quex.cc/

It sorts by the newest created communities first (regardless of instance) and you can filter it.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 4 points 2 years ago

Please feel free to add stuff to my rather short list... https://quex.cc/c/recipes

[–] fuser@quex.cc 1 points 2 years ago

to find new/interesting/novel communities I came up with this - sorts by newest communities on all instances with keyword filter: https://lemmyfind.quex.cc/

[–] fuser@quex.cc 1 points 2 years ago

Hi there - just a follow up and I appreciate the discussion because I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Bots weren't really a thing on usenet, That was the wrong term - what I should have said was spam - it was just flooded with spam and got worse and worse over time. The closest thing to an interactive bot that I can remember back then was ELIZA (wikipedia), which I daresay you've heard about but that was a local program that ran on your PC for amusement - I suppose it might have been possible to integrate ELIZA-like stuff on a BBS somehow and somebody probably did it but it wouldn't have been anything like the kind of bot you're talking about on social media that's deployed to comment - more just for the novelty value. Sending nonsense to usenet was not well tolerated, ISPs were not the best moderators but they did act on repeated abuse complaints, usually, and the knowledge needed to spoof and circumvent basic controls wasn't widespread then. I think people at the time were just into the fact that you could actually communicate with strangers via computer about all kinds of subjects. There was no point in making an ass of yourself there.

That's the other thing I wanted to emphasize about the difference between Lemmy and Usenet (there are many similarities) -- I am fairly certain there was no community moderation on Usenet whatsoever - it was a free-for-all. Spam, porn, everything. I think the only control was the ISPs who carried UseNet and they did presumably ban users and remove groups / behaviors that were really offensive, although there were plenty of really awful groups. You can imagine how that worked out - people went to facebook because it was "safer" and the structure was focused around individual connection versus community, which was also a big change. I think this difference is important because UseNet really was very cool and very fucked up at the same time. However I think the bad part could have been fixed if there was some degree of community moderation and control.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 5 points 2 years ago

Ok. I'll stand by and try restarting spam assassin again. Good luck!

[–] fuser@quex.cc 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yes, I completely agree that we are vulnerable to bots. The APIs are wide open by design. It will be interesting to see how it evolves but ActivityPub is supposedly designed with this stuff in mind. Yes it's easy to act maliciously and create accounts. There are a million ways to attack. It's a fact of life, sadly. Also probably the natural order - we've been chucking rocks at one another for millennia.

It happened on Usenet. It wasn't a paradise, it was full of spam and trolls and bots. However the fragmentation and self policing of the Usenet groups somehow kept the experience tolerable. Maybe we just expected less. Lemmy reminds me a lot of early BBS days. Not even any spam so far. It's remarkable - but probably temporary. I'm liking it though.

Mastodon is built on ActivityPub and seems to be thriving. I don't see spam or problems there so far. It seems quite civil. It's more like Twitter in format than Lemmy is, but the big instances have dealt with DOS and malicious actors and seem to be coping ok.

Your work sounds very cool. The development over the past few years in data analytics and machine learning is indeed startling when the ability for deception and manipulation is so easily scalable, but I think we will find ways to isolate or mitigate these issues gradually. It might take years and a lot of suffering, but innovation to solve problems is also our natural inclination.

[–] fuser@quex.cc 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Lemmy setup about is as easy as you could make it. The ansible approach is very simple on Ubuntu. You need a host with ports 443 and 80 open and ssh key login for the server. Happy to help if you need it.

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