As for funding, the servers are supported on a donation basis, with no big corporations behind them. This leads to a problem concerning user data and privacy, as there isn’t a single accountable entity behind the network.
Bit of a weird take now, isn’t it?
I think both things are valid points, but it’s worded in a weird way
A more explicit pro/con would have been better
No big corporation that controls everything
- Pro:
- Con:
This is a good point. Had it been presented like this, it would have hit different.
It’s actually not wrong if you look at it in another way.
- Big tech will abuse your data, but it will do within legal constraints, and there is actuall (though weak) accountability of these companies due to the legal system.
- On federated services like Lemmy, instances are hosted by anonymous individuals. Most social media laws don’t apply to them, and their legal accountability is basically zero.
- Lemmy, for example, does not comply with GDPR. There is no legal notice, no privacy contact person, no banner asking whether you are ok with the fact that your data is sent to unknown servers in random nations, no nothing. Private messages aren’t even encrypted, so any admin can read them without issues.
- There is no way to actually delete your data, as the GDPR requires. Deleted posts are only marked as deleted and you can see their plain text content by just pressing the “reply” button in any of the apps. There isn’t any kind of guarantee, that your post will be deleted on other instances. If federation has problems, the post will remain on other instances and is now permanently undeletable by the user.
- There are no moderation standards. Some instances will delete nazi content, some basically require nazi content. And some instance admin might even edit your posts to say something completely different. It’s all possible and in the hands of random people on the internet.
- Hobbyist-run services are much worse when it comes to availability and reliability. If something happens while the admin is on holiday, nothing will get fixed. If the admin runs out of money, doesn’t care anymore or even dies, the instance with all it’s content and users is just gone.
So there are very real risks attached to a hobbyist-run service with no legal accountability and no transparency at all.
We all know the downsides of Big Tech though, so it’s everyone’s personal choice to figure out which disadvantages hurt them personally more.
@squaresinger @LinkOpensChest_wav yes and don’t let people fall for quasi legal privacy policies that lemmy.world & ilk provide #Lemmyworld #accountability #fediverserated
That happens if you don’t have an actual legal team… I am sure they are doing their best, but if you don’t have a lawyer, you can’t do legal texts.
Very much this. Plus, how easy will instance admin Joe Schmoe fold under external pressure to give access to certain groups, government bodies etc? And how well have Joe Schmoe implemented good security practices on the server and related things? Etc.
That’s a bit misleading to say like that. Go to the website, scroll to the footer and click on “Legal”. Your instance, feddit.de, has a legal notice, with a privacy contact person, mentioning you can request data erasure, and detailing where your data goes. Mine, lemmy.world, has a number of in depth legal documents attached there.
However, yes, other instances they are federated with might not take it as seriously though, and if all your data is going there too, then that’s a hole in your data privacy.
But if I request it there, after its federated everywhere, what happens?
It’s kind of fair, to be honest, and the “no big corporation” seems more like a pro than a con
Eh, it is a con when there are problems, service problems, bugs, etc…
My instance have had a few of them and for a while our 1 admin was unavailable.
It is difficult or impossible to get it resolve because there is no contact point, nobody hired to fix issues that need immediate triage, etc… which can result in longer outages or bugs on specific instances.
I’m not complaining. This is a fantastic service that is being offered completely free from actual altruistic incentives, unlike corporations. There are a few downsides though.
Definitely, that’s why I always prefer instances with at least two admins, and a Matrix room for status updates
That’s great and all.
But feddit.de just became usable again after more than two weeks of being basically unusable - because the 19.0 and 19.1 releases of Lemmy were buggy and there was no downgrade migration possible on the database. No big corporation would break their product for two weeks like this.
Seems okay at the moment, at least !europe@feddit.de properly federates
Yes, it works now.
Version 19.0 and 19.1 were basically not working at all.
Yes, happy to be over that
Yeah, true. It seems like that is a pro that greatly overshadows the cons. Like someone else pointed out, it’s just worded weirdly in the article.
Kind of funny how the privacy crowd is big on Lemmy but it skips over the fact that all of its Lemmy data is hosted on the machines of people that have no accountability…
You’re always free to spin up your own server and host it if you’re concerned about the way your data is being handled. Not something you can do with the corporate alternatives
But as soon as you interact with literally anyone (or anyone interacts with you) your data is still replicated on other servers.
No personally identifiable information or private account information is transmitted between instances. The only thing that is synced is the content of your posts, reports and up- and downvotes. And all of that serves a purpose and is shared willingly.
And the content of private messages.
And only post on your own instance and talk with users of your own instance… Might as well just send emails to your friends at that point…
Emails also go to other’s servers.
But you could just host an IRC server.
I may be naive, but even though I don’t personally know my admin, this is a person who has a stellar reputation, and who I’d trust far more than some massive corporation that has to abide(1) by some anemic laws
(1)if it finds it profitable to do so
there isn’t a single accountable entity behind the network
Yeah, Instead of a single entity i know will never be held accountable for selling my data and storing my information in an unencrypted txt file, there are unknown entities! Like the
Simpsons(d’oh) quote says, “It could even be a boat!”The illogic reminds me a bit of Google’s new targeted ad privacy settings where your “privacy” is google’s pinky swear that they alone are profiting from you.
When you see takes this weird do you wonder as i do whether it is intentionally worded to push some kind of narrative (though i don’t really know what that would even be in this case), or is it written by someone so deeply in the tech bubble world that they are wildly out of touch? I don’t know.
Edit: Family Guy
I think it is a valid point, though. How do GDPRs even work on Lemmy? Do you need to submit one to every instance that your instance is federated with? What about transitively federated instances? Sometimes when you delete something, the delete action doesn’t get federated. That’s kind of terrifying. If you post something personally identifying without realizing it, then try to delete it, you might not be able to.
Imo, it’s something to keep on mind when posting on Lemmy, but not a reason to not use it.
Someone recently reminded me of the privacy issues here on Lemmy. Not so much concerned about my admin, but the inability to delete content was a big concern for me when I was first deciding on a new platform after leaving reddit at the end of June 2023. Sometimes I forget.
It is a good point, and I somewhat regret making that comment. It just was worded oddly in the article.
I used to spend a lot more time on raddle, but my addiction to fresh content is real, and there’s just a lot more here than there. Perhaps I should “be the change” and all that noise.
Discord for large communities is dumb as shit. There’s literally too many people that real communication becomes impossible unless you move to DMs or an empty room.
so. much. this.
Discord is just an AOL chat room. Great for short-term conversations among 20 or fewer people. It’s not a good place to store your FAQ. It’s not a good place for large teams. It’s not a good place for anything searchable. It’s transactional. And I don’t know why people treat it otherwise.
Yeah, I hate discord for many reasons but the primary reason is that I just think it is a terrible place to have a conversation. All the channels I see are always dominated by really low quality effort interaction, interesting conversations just get drowned out and lost by someone sharing another meme or responding to someone else’s low effort meme.
As someone with pretty intense ADHD, Discord is just so fragmented with so many channels each with their own conversations all fracturing out in different directions with no capacity to keep a handle on it. I hate it.
Fuck Discord
I spend a lot of time in the r/furry discord server
It’s a wonderful place to just chat. Imo, discord is fine as a chatroom
In that list, only Lemmy has voting or comments in a tree, both key features that make reddit into reddit. If I was going to put together a list of reddit alternatives, those last 3 wouldn’t be on it.
Oh, except hacker news. But it’s just one topic, people can’t make their own communities/groups/subreddits another key reddit feature.
I gotta look into this Lemmy thing. Sounds right up my alley.
Who?
Lemmy, the singer of Motörhead that died 2015?
No, Lemmy Koopa.
False, god can’t die
Nah, foget about Lemmy. The name isn’t edgy enough. Just think about Discord, Squabble, Insultr, TauntTornado, FuryFurnace or FistFight.
Fuck Reddit, but shouldn’t be so excited for external validation. We’re doing a good thing building this community, we know that without them signing off.
Good publicity means more traffic, which means more people for community, which means more content, which means the network is more entertaining as a whole (hopefully)
I don’t understand this sentiment. We know that, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get excited over it.
Lemmy is great if you love Linux and Star Trek. If you’re really into cybersecurity and privacy Lemmy has it all.
I’m into Linux, but also into Factorio and motorcycles.
Lemmy genuinely is a replacement for r/Linux because the activity here is just as high as there.
But there is very few content about Factorio and motorcycles here. They are communities, but they don’t really replace the reddit ones, especially r/factorio.
Edit: Almost forgot about incremental games. Basically no content exists on those here.
Hopefully they will one day!
As a not really techy person but one who has been cruising online for a long long time I feel Lemmy is a lot like old old Reddit. Reddit was full of techies when I joined. It grew over the years into a bigger thing but it started with a bunch of nerds talking about shit I didn’t understand.
Yes, I feel the same way. Reminds my of reddit circa '07 back when r/Conservative was an anti-Bush subreddit.
Key strengths of Lemmy
- Federation
- Tankies
- Star Trek memes
- Star Trek memes community civil war
Wait the trekies are fighting? i’ll light a candle
Risa had some mod issues, Tenforward was created. The people who actually post have basically all moved to Tenforward, it’s not really a war.
Tankies are a strength?
Tankies?
Lemmy has a large World of Tanks game community
Don’t ask. 🤦
Why are tankies a key strength? Or do you mean purely for entertainment value?
Computer, can you expand on the last point please
A prominent /c/Risa shitposter accused the mods of transphobia, loudly quit Risa and started their own meme community (and later deleted the comments after any evidence of transphobia failed to materialize).
Around the same time, a Risa mod removed some particularly low-effort posts despite Risa having “no rules”, which upset some users and so they fled to the other guys’ meme community.
Now there are two Star Trek themed meme communities.
I read this in Majel Barret’s voice and you can’t take that away from me
A prominent /c/Risa shitposter
This isn’t reddit, you can name names.
Stamets. He actually banned me from the new place after posting a dumb meme he just didn’t like (said I was “ban evading”). Did not know about him crying transphobia but it doesn’t surprise me, the person has a serious temper issue.
EDIT I forgot he also retroactively removed two AI shitposts posts I made after writing a rule about it (yet didnt remove his own)
Thought so. I have had my own run in with him.
In light of the current drama, could you maybe elaborate on your run in, and repeat what the deleted reply by stamets was?
deleted by creator
THE prominent shitposter
???
Are you worried about being banned if you name him?
just blocked the only risa mod there is
- Linux tech support
I had been on reddit since 2008, I was looking for an alternative to the message boards I belonged to after the popularity of Facebook killed them off. I really enjoyed it, not the same level of community that you find in a message board but still good for conversation.
Then trump happened and it turned to shit. It’s so fucking toxic and I ended up getting banned for defending myself. Apparently fascism is good and standing up for yourself goes against community standards.
I’m a disabled 49 year old just looking for conversation. Facebook is also a toxic wasteland now. To say I miss myspace is an understatement but there’s hardly anyone there anymore.
I’m happy whenever I find a place that’s put the social back into social media because antisocial media is just trash.
Welcome! Feel free to join !casualconversation@lemmy.world, usually it’s quite laid back
Squabblr seems like a nest of 13 year-olds trolling each other for fake internet points. Pass.
Oh boy you should see all the drama on r/RedditAlternatives when this shit blew up
There are dozens of us, dozens!
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Mentioned the Apollo / Reddit saga but did not list Voyager as a client for Lemmy which at least for me has been the closest client in terms of Apollo experience. I know this is Android Police but it did talk about Android and IOS clients in the article.
I’m an Apollo refugee and have tried a number of apps but I keep coming back to voyager (the web app, not the app app). It’s far from perfect but it’s the closest to Apollo imo too.
i actually prefer to browse lemmy from a mastodon account but it probably isn’t for everyone: iget every comment on a subscribed community in reverse chronological order in one feed.
deleted by creator
Isn’t mastadon closer to a twitter replacement than a reddit replacement?
I’m so glad I finally got into Lemmy. Reddit was destroyed on July 1st but I couldn’t get into Lemmy until November because the instances were so fickle.
In the meantime I tried saidit but quickly discerned that most of the users there were just really bad Reddit rejects. like the worst of the worst Reddit rejects.
Glad Lemmy finally let me in.
