Spyke

Replies

Comment on

Lemmy is so good right now for no particular reason

Reply in thread

I think the barrier to entry also helps a bit. The folks willing to put up with the rough edges that Lemmy has are also likely willing to participate with the intent of making Lemmy a success rather than just "hangers on" as it were. With a 1600% growth in "active" user population, there are definitely a ton of lurkers, yet. Once it becomes more approachable, we'll see if the community feeling that Lemmy has begins to tarnish and fade as the volume of interaction and content rises.

Comment on

*Permanently Deleted*

In today’s world, MFA (multifactor authentication) is a necessity for literally any account in which you store information you don’t want to be stolen by someone. I’m more upset that several services I use still don’t support it, or only support MFA via text or email, neither of which is secure enough to be of much use.

You don’t want the place where you store your passwords, likely including your bank account, health insurance, social media accounts, etc. to be more difficult to hack? You live in a post-quantum world. Passwords aren’t enough.

Comment on

You probably don't need a VPN

This article is basically summed up: “VPNs don’t completely eliminate your digital footprint, so don’t use them unless you need to accomplish these specific things.”

It seems pretty disingenuous to discourage people from taking steps to protect their privacy in this way. It may not be sponsored, but it’s still bullshit.

general

Comment on

*Permanently Deleted*

Reply in thread

It's most likely a combination of both. I'm not a huge fan of the divisive "normies" vs "whatever the hell we are" stance, but Reddit became what it is because it was poorly designed from the beginning to handle how rapidly it needed to scale. It was never envisioned when the project started as an internet killing behemoth, but ultimately that's what it became. Without in-built tools to manage that growth, Reddit succeeded because the community willed it to be and in spite of its own codebase.

What's happened to it now is likely correlated to a number of factors:

  • Significant user growth as the popularity of the site among habitual internet users grew over time
  • Positioning within popular culture - namely the practice of appending Google search queries with 'reddit' to improve results, which is common among people who otherwise don't browse the site at all
  • Unchecked bot traffic with limited mechanisms to control or curtail the propagation of duplicative, low effort / value, incorrect, harmful, or misleading information on a massive scale
  • A philosophical pivot from being a community driven by community to a company driven by a desire for profits
  • Algorithmic manipulation of how content is displayed to maximize advertiser return at the expense of organic community dynamic shifts a combination of 1- a rapidly grown userbase, 2- positioning within popular culture (vis a vis, appending Google search queries with reddit to improve the results is common even among people who otherwise don't use Reddit)
  • The hurt feelings of a CEO with an easily bruised ego

Comment on

Star Wars should learn from Andor and stop making Disney Plus shows that are so obsessed with the Jedi

As a longtime (read: older) Star Wars fan, I feel like completely eschewing Jedi is a mistake. What I’d love to see is more exploration of the world from the perspective of people who aren’t Jedi and aren’t directly involved in the mystic struggle, but are present to bear witness to what happens when literal gods play politics around them.

The Jedi should always be a central theme to Star Wars. They’re what make the universe what it is. Without them, it’s just another space opera, and sci fi needs its MacGuffin. But it would be super interesting to see stories told from outside of that central narrative, reacting to, interacting with, and otherwise existing around the Jedi.

I know this has been explored to some extent with Mandalorian and Andor, but the latter - while a great show - still felt like it would be improved with more direct involvement of the central theme of the universe.