OpenStars

deleted by creator

Hehe, nothing to see here, these are not the stories you are looking for, move along :-P

On the bright side, Kbin is showing a picture of absolutely gorgeous cherry blossoms 🌸 in the snow for this post. :-P

Just at a guess, people who say that surely must be factoring in medical healthcare costs, to deal with the consequences of obesity and such.

But once you pay farmers to grow corn, they have to sell it somewhere. Hence HFCS, and corn oil, and corn gas, and ofc corn corn, and… The then-head of NIH Francis Collins was once asked what single thing Americans could do to be healthier - he said to eat better, especially less sugar, and Congress could remove the farming subsidies, or at least expand them from beyond corn & soybean to include fruits & vegetables. They laughed in his face. Ain’t nobody got time for 'dat!

The single worst part of it all is that those subsidies were put into place when a huge fraction of aspiring volunteer soldiers were turned away in WWII due to “malnutrition”. Thus the campaign was born to literally fatten up America. It worked!!! And it will continue to work… forever, bc once you create a voting block, ending it or even redirecting (towards a healthier end for us all, but lower profits for Monsanto in the short term) seems next to impossible. It actually is a good argument against socialism, at least in the USA where the government is so enormously susceptible to special interest groups (although there are even better arguments against capitalism so I don’t mean to say that it PROVES that socialism is bad, just that it is one example of its misuse, when the government is in charge of something and also the government is stupid; and before anyone says it, yes this situation is an argument against both at the same time:-P).

An excellent documentary about it, most of what I’m saying here is from part 4: https://www.hbo.com/the-weight-of-the-nation/season-1. I know, filmmakers can be… uninformed some(MANY MANY)times, but this was done as a joint venture between the FDA and NIH, so this is highly credentialed. Also trigger warning; it will make you very very sad watching this, bc facts in this era of end-stage capitalism tend to do that, so if you do not want to see things like mothers feeding their 300 pound 10-year old an enormous meal of pasta - literally killing them right before your eyes, slowly and painfully - then… well, I did warn you at least.

There is no possibility of this ever causing negative effects of any kind, certainly it will not ever be misused (like one pilot being pressured into flying 5 planes at once bc… profit).

• Elon Musk, probably

A study on astroturfing on Reddit, written in the style of Reddit by an astroturfer - oh the delicious irony? :-P

:wq will save and then exit, while :x will save only if the file has been modified and then exit, and then there’s ZZ that does the same as :x, plus there are probably others:-)

Jon Stewart is a national treasure.

And I hope the person you asked responds with such - I was definitely going off on a whole other tangent here.:-)

Or both:-)

Most people yes, but those who feel like their rights extend well up into your nose make a disproportionate amount of noise far out of proportion to hundreds of others who are more neutral, and b/c of how human psychology works, maybe also more than ten or so people who are weakly positive.

I guess I am saying: do not underestimate the human need to create an echo chamber for emotional validation:-D.

I thought I might leave Reddit entirely, but then I realized this as well. So I have taken to posting some things exclusively here, some very few things also there, and when I do post there I post here first then just share the link.

On the other hand, keeping in mind that my “here” is Kbin not Lemmy, I’ve more or less ceased most of my encouragement to try to get people to join b/c of all the bugs that have been present - some of which seem fixed now but overall the set of features present in Kbin is very much behind Lemmy, which is itself enormously behind Reddit still. It makes sense: people were “hopeful” about Kbin/Lemmy, but to actually realize that hope has been slow going. And that too makes sense: Ernst has had family issues that MUST take priority, although it has greatly slowed down integrations of fixes that others have offered into the main code, for a time. And too there is the fact that Kbin, like many Lemmy instances, has been under DDOS attack. These things take time to develop even under the most ideal circumstances, and all the more so in the face of such challenges. Overall, Kbin is still alpha version software at this point.

And even Lemmy is still just a beta version. e.g. just to name one example: you still cannot migrate from one instance to another across the Fediverse, so whatever instance you choose to join is basically a permanent decision - like if you ask all your friends to come with you from Reddit and then jump ship yet again, you risk alienating them by leaving them behind as you hop around looking for the greenest grass. Joining instances here is nothing at all like casually joining subs on Reddit - they will need to learn all about that, and what it means, and how to curate their experiences here, etc.

In comparison, for now at least old-reddit or even new-reddit on a mobile browser with ad-blocking meets many people’s needs, especially with “everyone” more or less remaining behind on Reddit, and it is a tough sell to try to tell them to give all that up for an objectively worse UI/UX experience (the cost-to-benefit tradeoff is worthwhile to us, but is it to them?). At this point, those with the “early adopter” mindset are already here, and more importantly the content creators have already made their choices too. (Though if Reddit kills off old-reddit, that could change things in a BIG way)

I am not saying that there would be no value in such outreach initiatives, just that they have already happened and yet here we are. At this point it may be worth looking into the reasons why people who already know about Lemmy/Kbin have not chosen to come here. And on some level we just need to be okay with the fact that we are likely going to be small for a long time, especially as the code continues to be developed to help it catch up.

Unless Threads causes things to change much more quickly… which it very well could.

(edit: added UI/UX)

Okay I hear you - so self-centeredness may still be present, as is selfishness, purely short-term thinking, loads and loads and loads of toxicity, etc., but it is not only each one of those, but all of them combined that leads to that enshittification effect.

I once had a guy beg me to block him. I was trying to train new mods and felt the need to literally screenshot his request (sent via DM) b/c it was barely believable otherwise - he simply could not stop himself from being toxic to others on the sub. Ofc such people exist in the world, but at some point, it becomes the fault of the systems themselves if they both allow all-comers yet cause the absolute best stuff to become buried amidst a flood of posts sorted by New, plus even Hot has such a heavy newness component, etc. i.e., requiring moderation in the first place + doing everything possible to “increase engagement” (for the sake of enshittification advertising profits, e.g. you get the privilege of watching moar ads by clicking on or scrolling through posts, not writing out meaningful responses), while also limiting pinned posts to strictly 2 slots, plus making megathreads super-complicated to try to set up in the first place without access to a 3rd party bot written for that purpose (then charging communities who already donated their programming time to make that + computing time & access to run that for the privilege of being able to use it) e.g. the latest megathread cannot simply include a link to the previous megathread that it replaces, + other things too like virtually hiding the sidebar/About section (on the official Android mobile app anyway) with tiny fonts and making it disappear as you scroll. => Everything basically feeds forward to reinforce the doomscrolling effect and toxic commenting - to turn Reddit into the next 4chan/Discord? - while taking Reddit away from its forum board origins.

And all b/c the guy in charge worships at the feet of Elon, not even realizing that what at best would have worked for those circumstances (e.g. a public company transitioning into private, rather than a private one wanting to get an IPO to become public; and yes, highly debatable that Musk’s efforts may work even for that other company:-D) will not necessarily work for Reddit.

Though as you said, a lot of this is independent of the specific company & product itself, and relates more to trends that occur purely b/c of human nature. It reminds me of computers trying to fend off viruses: you can’t just exist in a soup of code that you feel absolutely safe running without any protections, b/c it is too vulnerable to selfish, self-centered, short-sighted counter-purposes that can destroy you. And biological cells are an even better and more complex example, as they also fight off cancerous states of being - ones own cells that have been perverted, twisting the purpose to now grow in a selfish, self-centered, purely short-sighted manner rather than working for the health of the overall body. Our immune systems protect us from all of that and more, including literal dirt that we don’t want floating in our bloodstreams, and that reinforces your point: fluff spreads unless you have a system in place to counteract it. It seems like that is literally a physical rule of the universe, that also applies in virtual as well.

So I guess in this analogy, Huffman is like HIV then (!?:-P), in that greatly diminishing the capabilities of the “immune system” (moderation) - not just recently here with the protests but for the past several years worth of changes to Reddit that continually pushed towards “engagement” but at the expense of thinking/reading before speaking - has lead to the result of modern-day Reddit as it is now compared to what it used to be. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step after all, and it should be no surprise that after taking a bunch of steps towards a particular goal, that we they have now reached it.

I got tired of holding the line against that long before the protests - that is why I believe what I heard said about the fact that most mods that cared about their communities only lasted a year, maybe two. I gave up modding one game community, and then along with the protests a second one, and each time I can barely stand to go back and read the posts there, bc they always trend more towards this, as you say bc it takes continual efforts to stop them!

And like, on the one hand, if that is what the people there want…then power to them? Except even they complain about it too, bitterly - both “why can’t I say whatever I want, when/however I want?” while also at the same time “why are others free to say what they want too, can’t they be removed somehow?” (ignoring the obvious answer that yes they can be blocked, though that takes all of two whole clicks!:-P). Also, they seem pissed whenever they ask a question on the sub’s main feed (ignoring the rules & things like a prominent Questions megathread pinned for precisely that purpose, or in some cases a “Questions” flair, instead putting something like a “Guide” flair, representing the exact opposite purpose of what that was designed to mean) but then nobody remains who wants to answer it. Like: “What phone should I purchase?” (ignoring the fact that the previous 10 posts all had an identical title, nor are there any details about what the person is looking for, plus again a megathread for precisely that)

I would say that it’s literal children taking over the internet, except some of the people complaining say they are retirees, others middle-age with kids, others in college, etc., so it is not a matter of mere physical age. Still, it is a childish mindset of wanting others to take care of them, while not being restricted from doing any of the things that they want to do. Nor is it selfishness, I believe, not precisely; although it may be more akin to self-centeredness. In this way then, it is like a public park or playground where people choosing not to abide by the rules destroy the experience for everyone, ironically also including themselves (when they come in wanting to play, and then everyone leaves rather than play with them, under those circumstances).

I think that depends on the circumstances. The peak here is like a million times higher than anything I’ve ever seen on Reddit (possibly I did not look hard enough:-). The average is probably lower, but even that depends on your instance.

One aspect is that Reddit had (has?) more niche communities, which by their very nature may be of more interest to you, and depending on the niche and community, that may remain on Reddit, have moved here somewhat, or elsewhere like Discord or forum boards/Twitter/Mastodon/etc., or just more or less ceased to exist altogether (possibly in a more complex way like a large fraction of content creators post nowhere now).

Also the presence of high toxicity - on Reddit, or here, or wherever - runs people off too. So burnt out moderators (or doesn’t Kbin entirely lack any moderation tools at all?) means fewer comments overall.

This.

I also choose this guy’s wife

And my bow.

“Overall” comment quality maybe should not even be measured evenly across everything when you can easily digest ones like these, but what looks like longer ones yet that contain misinformation are much more damaging to your perception of a place and overall feelings of love or disgust for it.

Finally, another aspect is that Lemmy/Kbin requires much heavier investments from the users - to choose an instance, a community, and curate your experiences in them. But once you put in the work and know how, it should get much better!

I am sure that I offered little in the way of actual solutions here, but I hope you enjoyed these thoughts at least:-).

Many of the niche communities are still on Reddit. Those who follow the crowd, those who simply follow routine, those who would step up to provide content but it is the type mentioned in the OP here, etc. And quite frankly the Reddit UI/UX, as bad as it is, is still 1000-fold better than Kbin, especially on a mobile browser, and I can assume Lemmy is significantly better but surely not perfect either. Ofc there are reasons for all of this and I’m not knocking these FREE services willy nilly, just saying that it is understandable why not everyone has migrated over to Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon yet, or at least a sufficient number to allow niche communities to thrive as much as they once did. We are pioneers of beta (Lemmy) and alpha (Kbin) services, and that’s not for everyone. Though I for one vastly prefer this to the crud of Reddit:-P.

Also, submit daily hourly progress reports providing a detailed accounting of the steps you are taking to work on this. But please, no more than half a sentence, bc I won’t be reading them anyway.

However a LOT of that was from being over-inflated in the first place from during the pandemic when everything Internet was up, vs. now when everything Internet is a bit down. I agree that there is still a story there, about greed and how Huffman probably could have gotten his IPO if he hadn’t held out for even more above what it was worth - one bird in the hand being worth two in the bush and all that.

But that is a slightly different story than what we all are dying to know: what is the devaluation since the time of the protests? And that in turn is complicated by e.g. traffic statistics somehow going up since that time (how much of that is due to activities of people deleting their content though? each and every API request for deletion, and especially additional requests for overwriting, plus more besides to monitor the situation e.g. confirm removal, all count as “traffic”, which I’m sure Reddit will still label as if due to positive rather than negative interest in the site and thus present to advertisers as “user engagement”; plus separately how much traffic has been added from
other types of bots in general as well?), and then ofc r/place just so happened to obscure any traffic stat effects lately… awfully convenient timing for that, one presumes…

It will be interesting to see what that number is, when it becomes available.

Why does that look like the longest handgun I have ever seen in my life? :-P