Hmm interesting. I do think it's just as important that we double-defederate unfortunately. Meta/Threads has to be treated as if it's contagious.

If we stay federated with an instance that has accepted the Embrace, what do we do when the Extend happens? Is that when we defederate? Will we even recognize it?

EEE only works because it's difficult to see it happening to you. Instances that ally with Meta/Threads will actually present the same threat of EEE, or even a greater threat, because the Extend step may appear to come from non-Meta instances.

Imagine ActivityPub upgrades developed by a Meta/Threads-ally, let's say improved inter-instance moderator tools. That sounds good right?

It's basically all the exact same arguments again, but with a middle man.

• Meta/Threads have different foundational priorities (namely, profit) and real incentives to monopolize.
• Meta-ally instances have real and implied incentives to accommodate
  Meta/Threads.
• And we have incentives to accommodate the instances that we federate with, so of course kbin would use the well-developed new mod tools right?
• Seems crazy not to, even if it was developed by a Meta-ally. Right?
• Great! Repeat for thousands of tiny changes, that's called Extend.

That's how accepting EEE works, each little step looks great but big picture we're unknowingly in trouble. We'll have to treat any Meta/Threads-ally as if it is Meta/Threads. (Hell, some of them probably will be lol, the fediverse is just asking for astroturfing lol.)

We can trust instances that don't have economic incentives. But any instance that shows they can be swayed by money, or that shows they'll accommodate instances driven by profit, well they're showing that they'd consider eating us to become the next reddit.

It seems unlikely to me that corporate instances would ever actually federate in good faith.

They may appear to be compliant initially, but in the long term they just have different goals.

I'm not sure where exactly the line gets drawn, but at the far extreme, I say we treat money-making instances as bad actors. If they stand to gain profit from their actions, they need to be defederated to prevent the sabotaging or enshittification of the fediverse.

tl;dr: I fully agree with you that there's room for improvement here, but I can't for the life of me decide on a solution I actually like lmao.

Yeah, it's definitely going to be common while the masses settle on which community/instance they want to emphasize.

The question for now is, how do you think this should actually be handled? What counts as identical links? There's several factors that can change, and that makes handling the problem much more complicated than it initially seems.

In your example, it's 1) the same user posting 2) the same link with 3) the same title to 4) different communities. That does seem like basic reposting, and it would initially seem like we should just combine them and have it say "[USER], 10 hours ago posted to [Community1], [C2], [C3], etc"

But each of those communities and each of those instances may abide by different rules. It would definitely be a disservice to each community to pile all the discussion threads into one communal comment section.

So.... I guess if it's 4) a different community, then it's okay to have 'duplicate' threads? Uh oh.

I have a feeling that same argument would apply to veryyy similar threads with 1) different users, 2) different links to the same content, or 3) different titles. So what the heck, how do we improve this situation?? What are we even asking for??

I love your question! I think these words are examples of a trochee!

In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee (/ˈtroʊkiː/) is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.

It's usually easy to recognize a word that's a trochee because it'll sound like kids TV show title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Power Ranger Mega Turtles lol.

In this case, it's trochaic dimeter because there's two trochees. "LET'S-go RAN-gers!" You may have heard of iambic pentameter, somehow that one always seems popular to people. Well an iamb is just the reverse of a trochee, and pentameter means you'd put five of them on each line.

Now that you know what trochees are, you're gonna see 'em everywhere. Or maybe that's just me lol.

Edit: For extra fun, what do you think is going on with the clapping afterwards? I feel like we're doing something with this at the end, but it's late and I should go to sleep hahah. Good luck!

@Biscuit Very reasonable question!

I highly recommend this article, How to Kill a Decentralized Network (such as the Fediverse) by Ploum as a relevant factor in this discussion. Even if there's parts you disagree with, I think that's worth discussing too!

To grossly oversimplify the contents of that article, I think federating in bad faith could look like:

• Joining the ActivityPub protocol, intending to drown the initial userbase with their own so that the fediverse begins catering to the needs of the majority aka their users.
• Introducing subtle bugs that make certain instances function suboptimally, but putting the onus on minor developers to fix it because major portions of the user base comes from them.
• Adding features to the ActivityPub protocol that benefit all users, but forces most instances to adopt their practices.
• Creating their own version of the protocol "ActivityPub+". It's initially open source and well documented, but increasingly deviates from ActivityPub, until it's functionally closed source fully under their control. It's also mandatory to interact their instances.
• Defederating everyone who doesn't fall in step, but that's okay because 99% of content is now on MetaPub anyways. This fractures the Fediverse into confused micro shards (or compliant loyalists).

Discouraging Clout Chasing Behaviors:
Promoting Content Quality and Relevance:

I see your goal here, but how would this actually work? Like what buttons does the user see?

Are we all still collectively deciding what counts as valuable contributions? If so, this sounds veryyy similar to what we already have using either upvotes or boosts lol.

• "Agreement" sounds like an upvote. I like this content.
• "Mark as quality" sounds like a boost. More people should see this.

So what metric(s) do you actually want implemented?

alternative ways to measure influence and impact (insightful comments, fostering discussions, valuable contributions).

If those are the buttons you think we should have, I don't think the internet can be objective enough to make these reliably more useful than an upvote.

If I see buttons saying "Insightful / Fosters Discussion / Valuable", I'm mostly going to just hit any or all of them when I like the content. And I'll click none of them when I dislike content, 'cause duh that's not insightful or valuable!

So what should we actually do to achieve these noble goals?

Engagement, interactions, relevance, and authenticity

Ehh, sorting by interactions can encourage excess commenting or spamming near content you want promoted. More interactions doesn't necessarily mean higher quality. I'm commenting several times on this post, but it could have been one commentary for the exact same content. Should this thread's quality be treated differently based on my format?

Unfortunately, engagement is highest around controversial topics, which again doesn't necessarily indicate the highest quality content.

I'm pretty sure sorting by relevance is how YouTube & TikTok try to serve you content, but I don't think we should aspire to black box algorithms.

Agh, I swear I'm not trying to just shoot down all your ideas. I'm trusting based on your writing that you're open to collective constructive criticism. You're obviously thinking here, thinking more than most people do lol.

It's just that this is a very complex issue, that will need very nuanced solutions. Humans have spent a heck of a lot of time, money and effort trying to figure about it, and we still seem to get it wrong a lot haha.

I miss all my hobby and crafting subreddits lol. Off the top of my head,
Woodworking / Beginners
Sewing / Knitting
Dioramas / Terrain Building
Painting
Survival / Preppers / Camping / OneBag / Travel

Not trying to out myself, but I don't see my Country / Region / City here yet.

Wouldn't mind some health, lifestyle, and research science.

Can we get AskHistorians on here??

Wait so when am I supposed to boost? Upvotes sort now, so I should usually upvote and boost when I think something should be at the top?

Okay, so I'm here on kbin.social. And I see that it's artemis.camp only until 0.2.1 comes out.

Should I just come back in a bit to use my established account? Or is 0.2.1 going to take like 3-12 months so I might as well just make an artemis.camp account?

It seems like the whole fediverse is having a lot of the same growing pains.

Discovery is still basically an impenetrable jungle. If you already know exactly what you're looking for it's fine. But I basically just wander around and happen upon neat stuff every so often lol.

And sorting content is another type of discovery problem. I'm subscribed to some interesting stuff but I need to remember to actually go check them because none of it shows up in feeds.

I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how long it takes to work out these types of issues. But I do know that I'm only still around because I'm hopeful, not because I'm actually finding it particularly useful or entertaining.

The fediverse currently feels like it might be competitive with webforums from 2010: The platform isn't doing much to help, but it's fine 'cause the people have spirit lol.

@minnieo

ONE - GOOD ENOUGH

The most ideal thing would be to discover the exact perfect career that you love forever, one that perfectly syncs with your unique brain lol. But... Well, I'm not you, so I can't know what that would be. I'd be very happy for you if you did find your holy grail though!

Buuuut. A single, super-perfect career is a very high bar. It might not even exist right now.

So screw that, don't look for perfection. Don't look for most optimized career path.

Right now, look for the most accessible job that you can tolerate. That's where we're starting, path of least resistance. Something you can do, anything, so you don't go straight up homeless. Don't sink the ship lol.

For me, my tolerable job involves moving most of the day, a bit of actual thinking every now and then, and never starts before noon lmao. For me, jobs that don't hit those marks are intolerable. For me, this is good enough.

My tolerable job doesn't make a heck of a lot of money. But it covers the basics for me, and I try to plan out my savings for exciting expensive new hobbies in detailed, step-by-step shopping-order lists that I eventually forget about anyways lmao.

For now, find your good enough.

I think you are (as I was) panicking about being a sinking ship. You're right, that is not ideal. Out of your available options, pick the one that seems the most tolerable and start there. You get better at recognizing jobs you can tolerate with experience, but job hopping is work so do tryyy to pick the one that you'll stay at the longest. Job hopping monthly is... exhausting.

@minnieo

TWO - WHAT IF CHAOS WAS THE GOAL?

So Step One keeps you afloat. You need to not sink, because Step Two could take years or decades. My tolerable job keeps me afloat, and staying afloat means I have the space to work on this step.

I use this mantra: What if chaos was the goal?

This takes some unpacking because it's not what you've been told before. Everyone tells you to stuff all your uncontrollable creative manic learning into a tidy box, and put your stupid box into a neat cubicle beside all the other tidy boxes that aren't supposed to be dripping in this weeks paint-pouring hyperfixation.

Nah.

What if chaos was the goal?

What if you were supposed to be chaos?

What if your brand of chaos is what people want?

Our life's work is figuring out how to harness some of your unstoppable creative output into... literally anything that will help you make money lmao.

Consider this: There are people who really like those tattoos that look like "unfinished" sketched lines. There are people who pay to watch an artist do some crazy thing in sand. There are people who actually prefer what you consider to be unfinished random works.

Your chaos output? It's not useless, that's the plan, man. CHAOS IS THE GOAL.

I can't help you with this either, you gotta figure it out for yourself. Figure out how to turn your brand of weird brain into something that someone wants.

Yes, you jump around a lot. WHAT IF THAT'S WHOLE THE POINT? Some people do it, and a lot of folks really like that apparently.

MAKE CHAOS THE GOAL.

To be responsible here, you gotta find your tolerable survival baseline. But outside of that, you neeeeed to be figuring out how to convert your chaos energy into something that's going to help you out.

It's not going to be an easy job. You're a ship full of TNT. Everyone else is saying you need to keep a lid on that exploding shit. I'm telling you, keep your boat steady, and let's figure out how to focus your exploding shit into a damn rocketship.

Hi, I'm figuring this out too. Veterans, please feel free to correct me!

1. If you create a community on kbin, it does not prevent a community with the same name from being created on another site. We have a 'music' community here (kbin.social/m/music), but lemmy.world has a 'music' community too (lemmy.world/c/music).

(kbin calls them /m/agazines, lemmy calls 'em /c/ommunities, if you're wondering about the 'm' vs 'c' in the URLs lol.)

1. Yes! Because Fediverse magic, you can actually interact with the lemmy.world 'music' community without leaving kbin.social. Try it out from kbin.social/m/[email protected].

You may notice this @[object]@[place] pattern a fair bit.

For example, our own 'music' community is @[email protected]. The lemmy.world 'music' community is @[email protected]. Your account is @[email protected]. See if you can spot users or threads that are from other sites! They're probably already in front of you!

As a second experiment, see if you can visit the music community from beehaw.org, without leaving kbin.social. They have one too, but you don't need a beehaw.org account to participate there!

(This link has the answer if you have any doubts!)

Reddit isn't going to die overnight. It will probably not die at all (at least not as a result of this latest stupidity).

I expect reddit will be like facebook in the long run. Facebook is still useful for specific things (marketplace, messenger), but otherwise it's just a bloated zombie hippo now. Still massive and still moving, but definitely bleeding out lol.

We'll have to wait and see how July goes, after all the third parties get killed. In the meantime, the fediverse needs to become as high quality as possible, 'cause a bunch of people are gonna be deciding between a increasingly poor experience (reddit), and a fairly steep learning curve for non-tech people (fediverse/instances/threads/posts/boosts/favourites/reduce/magazines/microblogs/communities).

@Kaldo Thank you for the link, that's exactly what prompted this thread!

I think it's just too hard to draw the line of "not rich enough to be a concern." Amazon instance is obviously bad. Pepsi? If they put their minds to it they could do something lol. Hasbro?? They're greedy enough for sure.

Or what if a company starts as a relatively minor player, but suddenly get big. Steam acquires the entire video game industry or something lmao. Then we still have the same problem, they're going to be motivated differently.

So I say we defederate all profit driven instances. They can still make magazines on our instances, if they can follow our rules. If they have trouble following our rules... Well, then I definitely don't want them in a position to affect the whole Fediverse lol.

It's really scary that I opened kbin to this and it's EXACTLY 5:37 lmao.

If you're open to a dexterity games, I'd highly recommend Animal Upon Animal, Rhino Hero, or Click Clack Lumberjack for that age group. Even left to their own devices, I've seen a group of highly concentrated 6 year olds stack animals surprisingly high lmao.

Considering he's already into boardgames, King of Tokyo is probably in scope, or will be soon! If not, the mood of Shadows in the Woods (Waldschattenspiel) can be just so good for young kids!

I'm having some trouble thinking of collaborative kids games, but maybe Dixit? That might be an 8 year olds game tbh, I don't think most 5 year olds are subtle enough yet lol.

Good luck!

Hi friend, you got this.

I've been exactly there, and you got this.

Obviously, there's a lot going on here, so right off the bat:

Give yourself time to change, don't expect everything to be different right away. Every day, what you do adjusts your ship's direction like maybe 1° lol. Maybe 0.0001°.

The goal is to eventually be aiming somewhere that you like, but it's okay if you're having trouble steering today. If you had a shit day yesterday, and you steered 3° the wrong way... It's okay. Today, it's time to steer a tiny bit back. Just a bit of work. Tomorrow hopefully a little more work, we'll find out when we get there.

Good luck, captain!

It's okay to ask for help with this. Therapy is professionally trained help so that's extra good, but asking someone you trust for support can make a big difference.

I'M SERIOUS THOUGH, IT'S YEARS MAYBE DECADES OF GENTLE STEERING. WORKING SLOWLY BUT SURELY. GOOD LUCK CAPTAIN.

So two things helped me, and maybe they'll help you too.

1. LOOK FOR GOOD ENOUGH.
2. WHAT IF CHAOS WAS THE GOAL?

I vote both!

There's a lot of situations where shared bikes are a great idea, so to me that's a default "Yes!" answer lol.

But my own bike can be better suited to my needs and preferences, so that also becomes a "Yes!" to me too lol. For example, I usually prefer my bike's seat to the ones on shared bikes.

But! If I've walked to my friend's house, and we get invited to a game across town, I'll gladly pick up a shared bike rather than detour home lol.

@Biscuit Right!?

This is a slight tangent now, but Tik Tok's Enshitification by Corey Doctorow describes another great example of long-timeline corporate "playbooks" or patterns that are... not good but increasingly common. That's where Reddit seems to be going unfortunately, but at least we can see why.