Oh yeah absolutely the app purge is why I’m here. I absolutely despise their mobile app; but on desktop I don’t mind.

The information density isn’t that important to me on desktop since my screen is plenty large and scrolling (or collapsing) comments is easy.

Once upon a time Reddit used to be just a single subreddit. And it was fine. Lemmy already has enough users for separate subreddits to be actually kinda viable, even if they are not too active.

We’ll be fine.

The fact that Bluesky is almost a 1:1 copy (which includes the dumb stuff like post character limit) is precisely why I don’t like it.

I’m an OG user and other than technical issues (most of which have been figured it by now) I prefered both the original redesign and the newest one (though I did like the previous one more, I think).

If you get used to the fact that it’s just a bit different it’s perfectly fine and actually looks better. Especially since it has dark mode.

There are definitely issues with Lemmy but these users specifically seem to just be complaining for the sake of complaining. They want Reddit without the parts they currently don’t like, not realizing that they also need to get rid of the parts that eventually made Reddit go to the shitter - because otherwise it’d just repeat.

It would help of Lemmy had a simple migration option like Mastodon. Then, picking an instance wouldn’t be a big deal.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it also did automatic scans for CSAM or some other BS like that. The article’s conclusion is really funny, too:

In any case, it’s nice to see Google delivering some new safety features in its Messages app. Hopefully the company publishes documentation on how Android System SafetyCore works so other messaging apps can implement their own version of Sensitive Content Warnings. Google Messages is popular, but there are certainly other messaging platforms that could benefit from this tool.

They are quite the optimitsts. Oh and yes please, put the spyware in more apps! We aren’t tracked enough!

That’s just the reality of doing business on the Internet.

That’s just not true. You can absolutely get by on the internet remaining pretty much anonymous, as it is. Very few services need (and verify) your personal data; when they do it’s basically always when it’s government-mandated, and it’s for things that have a “physical” equivalent.

i.e. creating a bank account online requires your actual ID, but so it would if you tried to do it “offline” in a physical bank (and you largely have a choice on whether or not you do it online).

Then you have stuff like online shopping and such where most people probably use their actual personal information but you don’t have to and it’s generally not checked.

This is an unprecedented change, where suddenly for access to a free service someone needs to ask for and validate some very private details. And it fucking sucks.

While Australia’s new legislation is ham-fisted and poorly thought out, the intent isn’t wrong and there’s broad consensus for it (77% approval in Australia). We need to do something about the uncontrolled exploitation, manipulation and endangerment of minors by social media services.

That’s the issue though; I agree that something needs to be done, but you need to do it more or less correctly on the first try or you’ll probably make it even worse.

Someone still needs to create that digital token from your ID, which means someone’s still using and storing your data, and potentially selling it or having it leaked.

Who would realistically buy Chrome that wouldn’t degrade the consumer experience?

Hopefully noone, so it would lead into more fragmentation in the browser space, which is a good things.

The manifest v3 changes primary give a lot of security and privacy changes that stop extensions from doing a lot of questionable things in the background on all your page you visit. But that does stop ad blockers from doing a lot of what they currently do - blocking in page elements and modifying the pages you visit.

It also killed a lot of other genuinely useful extensions.

And if security is their main concern they should have spent resources on making sure the extensions they themselves redistribute are safe, not on killing a huge chunk of extensions. Sorry but you’ll have a very hard time convincing anyone that getting rid of ad blockers wasn’t their primary motive.

But it does not block them from blocking page requests so ad blockers like ublockorigin lite can still function in a more limited capacity to block ads.

It completely changed how they do this, and made it way less effective and more limited. All completely unnecessary from a security standpoint.

Algorithmic patents amount to patenting maths which, by very longstanding precedence, is not a thing, for good reason.

You absolutely can patent “math” (well, more like physics) IRL. What matters though is that the invention actually has to be novel and non-obvious, and IMO it should also be harder to patent if it’s in a segment like software where costs of development, iteration and “research” are generally extremely cheap. Like, it should have a way higher bar for the “novelness”.

And I would not allow any kind of software design patent (use copyright or trademark to protect that).

…and that’s how it still works.

Considering those scanners usually register as keyboards and just do a dumb input “typing” it shouldn’t even be hard, lol.

The worst part would probably be picking a barcode scheme where the inputs make sense…

That’s what PieFed changes though. You can still track how someone votes, but you can’t tie it to a specific profile (without doing some extra analysis and even then you can’t be completely sure).

Or, with my suggestion, you could track how that specific account votes, but it would be easy to obfuscate who exactly it is and (hopefully) impossible to track to the user’s other identities.

I think this approach kinda fixes that issue though, no? You can use it the way it is now, and others can be anonymous.

I mean it would be also nice if you could log into multiple accounts and easily switch between them for each vote and comment, but this is also good, IMO.

Looks like it’s kinda hard to spin up a piefed bot. Not impossible, but it’s a bitch without an API.

What you would actually want to do if you want to bot is take one of the existing apps and modify it to make spamming easy.

Either way, I want to be able to point to their behavior - without the extra step of having to de-anonymize their activity - and tell them to chill the fuck out or get the fuck out. Out means out. Totally and forever.

I can see why you would want that, but my question is is that such a big deal compared to people being harassed for their voting? I don’t think user privacy should be violated - especially en masse / by default just because of some (in my opinion fairly minor) moderation concerns.

And if they are a dick overall, then you will figure it out anyway, ban their “main” account and that will prevent them from voting, too (unless the instance is malicious, but then a malicious instance can do much more harm in general).

It’s very easy to find my IRL identity, and even my online pseudonym (well, both of them) have so much stuff tied to them that they are effectively my real identities. They are very much public, and definitely not anonymous.

Mass vote manipulation should still be easy to spot. It’ll only be hard to check whether the account voting is a real person.

Thanks for being so upfront about how you run your instance. I think it’s disingenuous when people claim that there is “no agenda” or “no moderation” or whatever, because there is always some - even if unintended - just by the pure nature of people running it. So being explicit and opinionated about it is great.