Still figuring things out here. In the world, I mean.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Ending slavery doesn’t reset everything back to zero. Imagine if you’re running a race against someone else. The person officiating the race (no clue what this kind of person is called 😅) lets your opponent start running the race and keeps you back at the start line. Then, they have a moment of clarity and say to themselves, “Wait a second… This isn’t fair!” So, they stop that person where they are, apologize to you, say they promise never to do it again, and blow the whistle so that you can both start the race.

    But wait! That person still ended up starting way ahead! But we already ended head starts before the race started so it’s OK, right? Well, no, because the person who got the head start still got to start from their advantaged position.

    But this isn’t quite the same because your issue crosses generations. So, a better analogy might be a relay race. Maybe the head start is stopped just as the second person on the opposing team receives the… thing you pass in a relay race. (Why am I making an analogy to a thing I know nothing about? 😅) They didn’t personally get the head start. So, it’s OK to go ahead and start the race now with one relay team already on their second runner while the other is on their first, right? It wouldn’t be fair to punish that person who didn’t directly gain the advantage of the head start.

    Well, no, because that team still got an advantage and the other team still started at a disadvantage. Reparations are less about punishing an individual and more about leveling a playing field.


  • Not a lawyer, but I believe if you want to take content others have posted on Reddit and repost it here, you would violate their copyright on that content. You would want to get their consent before you post it here or else the instance you post them to could start getting DMCA requests and could ultimately be sued. I’m guessing you could also be sued for writing the software that violated the copyright.

    It’s not likely to happen but it could. My concern would be less about what ill effects you and/or Lemmy might incur and more around the ethics of taking content belonging to other social media users and reposting it without their permission. Reddit TOS says users retain copyright on their content, so it’s other users’ rights you’re violating in doing so.

    Now if you’re talking about a bot that reposts only content you have posted on Reddit, you’re probably in the clear.


  • Reddit can’t be divorced from the leadership. If you hate the direction leadership is taking Reddit, how can you still like Reddit itself? What is it apart from that?

    This argument makes more sense to me with Lemmy. Yes, if you hate the direction one instance admin is taking their Lemmy instance, it doesn’t make sense to hate Lemmy as a whole… but Reddit has only one “instance,” so if you hate the “admin,” you hate Reddit.


  • Lemmy.world seems to be frequently under attack

    You’ve seen for yourself that it does have a significant effect. You may not want the largest instance because that paints a big target on you. You also need to pick an instance with admins you can trust, or at least reconcile yourself to jumping ship to another instance if they do the wrong thing.

    I started on lemmy.ml about a year before the reddit exodus. It was fine, and I didn’t use it much because there wasn’t much activity. I started using Lemmy more heavily when everyone came over… but at the same time, performance at lemmy.ml became horrible. They also disabled community creation because “(they) have enough communities.” What does that even mean? I still haven’t created any communities, but I would like to be able to if I choose to.

    I ended up jumping ship to another instance I’m happy with so far… but I almost went to vlemmy first, which no longer exists. That would have had an affect on my experience.

    If I were evaluating an instance today, I would start by scrolling to the bottom of the page to see what version they’re on. Is it the latest? That means the admins are engaged at least enough to keep the software updated. If not, you should probably move on. Are they on a pre-release version? If so, are you comfortable with a little instability to have bleeding edge features and fixes? Then, I would just poke around a little to see how performance is on the instance before creating an account. Is it acceptable? Read the server sidebar. Are you OK with the rules? Last, I would find the support or “meta” community for the instance. See what kinds of discussions are happening there. Are the mods and admins active and are they philosophically aligned with you? Are problems being fixed? What are the big announcements? Does the way the server is being managed make sense to you?


  • I’m a long-time PC gamer but first time gaming laptop (“notebook?”) owner. I’m traveling at the moment, so I had to ditch my desktop for the laptop. Mine is still fairly portable so I’m often tempted to use it on my lap… but I’m always afraid to cover those vents so I’m left scrambling looking for something in my hotel room or AirBNB that would approximate a lap desk. 😅

    I’ve been baffled by this design decision. Thanks for the context. It makes a bit more sense now.



    • Sip- samples colors on the screen
    • TripMode- lets you decide which apps can access the internet. Great to conserve bandwidth when you’re tethered.
    • SideNotes- adds a drawer on the side of the screen you can pull out to make some quick notes
    • Espanso- cross-platform text replacement
    • Amphetamine- keep the computer awake on a schedule or under certain conditions
    • FreeTube- privacy-minded YouTube client
    • Mona- Mastodon client
    • Session- best pomodoro app I’ve found


  • Because they own the content and control over how it is distributed. They chose to grant it to reddit, and you have decided that also grants you a license, although it actually doesn’t. You are taking it anyway which violates their rights to control their content and who may distribute it.

    I agree with you that the users are being exploited by Reddit, but that doesn’t mean that we can come in and further exploit them in the interest of trying to avenge them. That should be (and legally is) their choice to do or not to do.

    And I also agree with you that the exploitation is the issue. The API stuff just shined a light on it (or should have anyway, but I also agree that it became just a footnote in the story).


  • Back in the days of shopping malls, you could travel and go to a mall in any city, and it would be virtually the same as a mall in any other city: same stores, same (or similar) restaurants in the food court, same teenagers trying desperately to impress each other… all shoved into a slightly different layout. It was kinda bleak. One reason we don’t just copy our content from somewhere else is that we don’t want to re-create this nightmare hellscape on the internet, where every new social network is a slightly different skin on the same content.

    Lemmy is not Reddit. Please let Lemmy continue to not be Reddit. If you want to fuck Reddit, do it by not going to Reddit. Reddit doesn’t own the content, but the contributors do. (Read section 5 of the Reddit terms of use; when you post on Reddit, you retain ownership of your content and grant Reddit license to it.) When you repost their content without permission, you’re not fucking Reddit; you’re fucking them.