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Anyone else getting these donation ads? Was it just shoved onto an update by the Lemmy devs, or is this coming from the instance admins? It doesn't seem to show on clean browser sessions to lemmy.ca
This is a built-in ad by the devs.
Personally I'm not a fan of their beliefs and stances hence why I am publicly supporting and advocating for the development of Piefed.
I am usually very ad-aversant because i don’t consent to being randomly pushed to feeling like i need a product.
But this interests me, therefore I’m consent. Can you advertise piefed in a way that makes me want to change from lemmy?
Can you advertise piefed in a way that makes me want to change from lemmy
It's completely interoperable with Lemmy (hence you seeing the comment you just replied to), but it's not developed by tankies, it has better mod tools, better migration in the case a community or instance goes down, and it seems to be being developed at a more rapid pace.
What app do you use with it?
What got me hooked on lemmy was wefwef/voyager which is basically a reddit Apollo clone.
https://piefed.social/community/fediverse/wiki/piefed-app
Voyager supports Piefed
It also supports multiple accounts; Piefed here i come!
Mbin is also an alternative. More transparency: https://joinmbin.org/servers
PieFed slants too much on the moderator side while simplifying the user experience to the point that you can't even easily work with the modlog.
you can’t even easily work with the modlog.
What is the issue with the modlog?
Now compare it to every other implementation of the modlog.
It actually has filters now because of an update last month, but it's still not readily accessible if you don't know the URL while most implementations provide links to it, from the home page and filtered within each community page. Even if it gets addressed, it shows that the priorities lie more on the side of creating a Reddit clone than allowing essential access to transparency.
while most implementations provide links to it, from the home page and filtered within each community page.
Piefed has been updated to match that
it’s still not readily accessible if you don’t know the URL
but it’s still not readily accessible
Now show the part where you had to scroll down the whole feed to get to it instead of it being on the sidebar. This is what dark patterns in GUI design are criticized for. I suspect that the devs have the same attitude as yours, it's tacked on somewhere so it has already been handled. That's the point, it's not a priority.
With that logic the /instances page on Lemmy is also hidden as a dark pattern to prevent people from looking up an instance's federation list
There is no instance sidebar on Piefed on the homepage, if someone wants to see the instance stats that person would have to go to the "About" page that is also at the bottom. That's not a dark pattern, just a design decision.
Not really, why do you think whataboutism is a valid form of argument? Dark patterns are essentially bad design decisions. If you can say the same about how Lemmy handles it instances page, then one bad design decision doesn't cancel out another, it can be improved as well.
Like Mbin. Which is supposed to be the context of this subthread.
Mbin also only links to the federation page at the very bottom of the homepage, does this mean that Mbin uses a dark pattern to prevent users from accessing that page?
Outright lying doesn't really befit you. It is at a bottom of a sidebar, which is well above the bottom of the page even when it isn't loaded in a separate frame. And again, whataboutism. If it can be criticized, maybe it should be brought up, but to me, the sidebar is an acceptable compromise.
You seem to have a beef with anything that does not prop up piefed honestly. You "agree to disagree" that just because something doesn't have all of that could facilitate X it can't be better at X, and you seem to be running towards "catch-ya" whataboutism rather than just being able to consider whether even though something isn't ideal, it might be better and more focused than something else. Are you personally involved in the piefed project? It's just odd for someone to seem that invested into dismissing any other preference over it. I personally don't use it as much because I prefer the topics platforms like Lemmy headline, but that isn't going to stop me from promoting Mbin specially where its absence as an alternative has been noted. Not sure why someone would be a proponent of the Fediverse and hostile against more alternatives.
Edit regarding the first sentence: on mobile, the link is at the very bottom of a page that replaces the sidebar . That's how I looked it up yesterday, you can even argue that having the sidebar requiring an extra click on mobile is increasing the chance of mobile users never seeing it, while having it at the bottom of the homepage makes it more visible.
Mbin has been there for much longer than Piefed, but never managed to attract a lot of users. As of now,
Mbin has 768 monthly active users
Piefed has 1757 monthly active users
Only based on numbers, more people prefer Piefed rather than Mbin.
One of the main reason is probably Piefed's development speed compared to both Lemmy and Mbin, and unique features (e.g. comments consolidation, keyword filter, actual instance blocking, etc.)
You seem to have a beef with anything that does not prop up piefed honestly.
And you have a beef against piefed, as shown several times in this thread.
I'm curious, as someone who's mostly only looked from the outside, what "slants too much on the moderator side" means.
I'm referring to transparency features being like seeing who's downvoting and upvoting comments or easy and relevant access to the modlog and comments getting removed. Piefed little effort to making the modlog transparent and hides upvoting and downvoting completely (they basically had to make up a new concern for it, "voting privacy", but its an excuse that allows for the manipulation of the voting system and lack of accountability for already pseudonymous accounts) while also implementing a reputation system that is asking to be gamed. It puts more responsibility and power onto mods, admins, and devs, and it's the second one that's going to be more frequently exercised over conversations.
Basically, does it allow users to police themselves and the content they want to see, or does it give it to the people behind the curtains?
they basically had to make up a new concern for it, “voting privacy”, but its an excuse that allows for the manipulation of the voting system and lack of accountability for already pseudonymous accounts
The "private voting" system has been removed months ago. Nowadays Piefed user can either decide to federate their votes (which can then been seen by lemvotes or other tools) or keep them local
Doesn't matter, the philosophy is still there. I will never expect them to be as transparent as Mbin, who provides voting transparency thus proving that the whole concept of voting privacy is bust and a power play. There is no epidemic of people abusing voting transparency that the "voting privacy" advocates might have argued, never mind that it is also false sense of security when it is completely visible to the server instance admins.
Piefed's level of voting transparency is little different to Lemmys now, except for Piefed defederating from lemvotes. I was also present during the discussions about it - and Rimu was very open about why he initially didn't like public voting. He changed it because of public pressure to do so. That's not an absence of transparency.
In any case, even if piefed.social is poor for this. That wouldn't mean that piefed.zip or piefed.ca would have to follow the same instance policies.
Piefed defederating from lemvotes
Piefed.social defederates, Piefed.zip is still federated with lemvotes
Sorry, yes. Correct.
Mbin, who provides voting transparency
Mbin doesn't provide transparency for downvotes
So by your logic, just because they don't provide all available forms of transparency means they don't provide any? You are just searching for a "gotcha" when it isn't even a counterpoint.
As to why,
If Mbin cannot support this then private communities need to block Mbin instances completely.
That particular exception exists, it doesn't take too much effort to find out why: https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/issues/1115 Among other things, Mbin was threatened to be blocked by Lemmy on default for part of its functionality by the Lemmy devs, and melroy decided to succumb to the pressure rather than split the fediverse on this issue. Honestly, I find the main Lemmy devs to be compromised given how much they want narratives to head in a particular political direction and the tool that lack of transparency on downvotes provides for that in regards to shaping visibility and discussion within threads. It wasn't like that for a long time, but you knew that.
So by your logic, just because they don’t provide all available forms of transparency means they don’t provide any? You are just searching for a “gotcha” when it isn’t even a counterpoint.
I didn't say they don't provide any, I said that their transparency isn't complete.
If someone wants to have full votes transparency nowadays, using a Lemmy instance that federates lemvotes provides transparency on both up and downvotes, while Mbin only gives upvotes.
Not sure if Mbin support lemvotes, but even if it does, then it's similar to Lemmy: you have to use lemvotes to have full transparency
Lemvotes isn't foolproof, and just because something isn't complete doesn't mean it doesn't have it. Although Lemvotes is another good example of how baseless the "voting privacy" argument is.
If I propose Mbin, it's because between Lemmy and Piefed it has the most voting transparency, it doesn't have to be perfect. I'd rather advertise instances that move towards it than those that move away with it due to ridiculous concepts like "voting privacy".
To put it in the words that can illustrate the ideological hypocrisy surrounding it better, it is essentially a tool of the "bourgeois" to obfuscate general access to the "proletariat" of the user base. People have enough power to pseudonymize their votes to anonymous accounts, so it is a testament of insecurity to try to use dark patterns to hide access to it when it is readily accessible through sites like lemvotes to even the most hostile of parties. The sky hasn't come down because these sites exist, and rather than the issue being the small minority of the people who might abuse them, I suspect it might be due to the insecurities of the people who downvote frequently or purposefully.
You speak as if the fediverse has a supermajority of support for public voting. I don't think it does. I think it certainly has a majority of support, but not a supermajority. I've been in threads where users have complained about Lemmy's public voting and objected loudly about Piefed changing their system to incorporate public voting. Rimu straddled both sides completely transparently and came it with about as equitable an outcome as he could with the private non-federated voting and public federated voting.
This is pretty open.
Transparency isn't a popularity game, but it is the fallback when the arguments against it have been exhausted or rebutted. Ironically enough (or the opposite thereof), reactionary populism is the sort of thing a lack of transparency within these systems stimulate since it allows the artificial simulation of a group for users susceptible to group psychology.
Not everything devolves into a popularity game. You are thinking of a reality show.
You're talking about 'transparency' in the accountability context. Transparency of voting, transparency of public posting history etc. I'm referring to it terms of honesty from the developer here about what they want, and reading into what the audience wants and why they want it.
Every site has to make some balance between privacy and transparency for its userbase. If the majority of a website audience does want some interaction on the site to be private, to be obfuscated, something that if made private would have consequences to the sites operations - then that's what they want. I think it would be bad if Rimu just said "screw everyone, I'll do what I like" and overruled the prevailing opinion.
But in any case, as I said, your criticism is not of piefed here but piefed.social as other instances could have always just implemented public voting entirely regardless of what piefed.social chose to do.
If a majority of an audience wants something, then they can fork. That's how open source works. If I considered the issue significant enough and worth the hassle, I could fork it - with varying degrees of success depending on how skilled I was at doing so. Security through obscurity is a big no-no in open source, and that's what this private voting is. Mbin, lemvotes, or just setting up your own instance as an admin - there are plenty of workarounds to get at the data for a bad actor, it just feeds speculation and manipulation for a problem that isn't there, and a popularity contest is not a counterargument.
"Screw everyone, I'll do what I like" is a hallmark of every principled open source developer, a tradition set by Linus Torvalds himself. People don't use their software because it is a popularity contest - there's no shortage of popularity contests that have been excluded from the Linux kernel - people use it because the function meets the demand, and the democratic recourse if they don't like it are forks.
that’s what this private voting is
Private voting using anonymous agents that were used instead of the users has been removed.
What is possible now for Piefed users is
If a majority of an audience wants something, then they can fork. That’s how open source works.
Yes, they can run their own. But obviously people will pressure an instance that is used more than instances that are not. In terms of lemmy, the public policy of lemmy.world is up for more litigation than lemmy.today. Same goes with piefed.social.
But in any case, your argument is still not criticism of piefed - but purely piefed.social.
just because something isn’t complete doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it.
Let's just agree to disagree
On the other hand, I agree with you that votes should be public, but there are a lot of people who want them private
seeing who’s downvoting and upvoting comments
Lemmy doesn't give you this either, though? (Unless you use a service like lemvotes, which I think does it by having admin access.) So how is it different?
Me? I don't. I'm still on Lemmy because I haven't quite managed to work up the energy for the switch, and I'm rather tied to this account.
I believe some Lemmy apps have added additional support for Piefed, but I don't know which. Tbh I do most of my browsing on a computer in a web browser anyway.
With a quick Google search, I found Mlem, Interstellar, and possibly Voyager already has support. But I can't vouch for any of that personally.
Can't say I have any issue with open source devs putting a request for donations inside the very apps they make tbh. Seems like a reasonable thing to do personally.
I don't mind a request for support in principle, and I regularly donate to other similar projects.
It's the implementation that will ultimately make the request succeed or fail. As in how often is it shown and in what manner.
This, that's sort of why I am asking.
There should be conditional and optional consent given to the host to decide whether to allow it or not to show up. They may also be interested in placing their own donation petitions using the same functionality.
This. As long as it's non intrusive, and can be disabled/customised on the instance. Many instances would like a way to have funding support from their communities, and I think it's good will to allow the developers to have some.
It's built into lemmy, you'll see it once per year (tracked on your user row in the db)
It appears to be the devs themselves; which continues to track with Dessalines being a piece of garbage.
I have to admit, even though I appreciate Lemmy, my impression of the devs or the lemmy.ml instance is not the best.
About a month before lemm.ee went offline there was a huge drama about the devs asking various instance admins to advertise their need for donations. Wild that they are already doing this again
"Our funds" Their server. As always ML is a parasite of the proletariat.
I don't have to agree with a developer's politics to use their software or even support it. as long as it doesn't go towards self-destructive or otherwise bad behavior. When Desalines and Nutomic demanded that we must accept our donations, go towards that. They childishly cut themselves off from a large number of possible donations.
If they want to run such advertisements on their own Instance, that's their own prerogative and more power to them. If they are pushing this on the other people's instances, especially without them opting in. That's so on brand, on many fronts for ML. That it is hilarious.
adblocker will fix it