Lemmy

Don't tell people "it's easy", and seven more things Kbin, Lemmy, and the fediverse can learn from Mastodon (UPDATED)

https://privacy.thenexus.today/kbin-lemmy-fediverse-learnings-from-mastodon/

This adds several new sections to the previous version -- including an update on what's happened since then. Here's the new table of contents:

I'm flashing!!!!!
But first, some background

1. Don't tell people "it's easy"
2. Improve the "getting-started experience"
3. Keep scalability and sustainability in mind
4. Prioritize accessibility
5. Get ready for trolls, hate speech, harassment, spam, porn, and disinformation
6. Invest in moderation tools
7. Experiment to find what approaches are a good fit for the current state of the software
8. Values matter

This is a great opportunity – and it won't be the last great opportunity
Ten days later ...
A few more thoughts on moderation

@lemmy @fediversenews

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3245

I posted far more details on the issue then I am putting here-

But, just to bring some math in- with the current full-mesh federation model, assuming 10,000 instances-

That will require nearly 50 million connections.

Each comment. Each vote. Each post, will have to be sent 50 million seperate times.

In the purposed hub-spoke model, We can reduce that by over 99%, so that each post/vote/comment/etc, only has to be sent 10,000 times (plus n*(n-1)/2 times, where n = number of hub servers).

The current full mesh architecture will not scale. I predict, exponential growth will continue to occur.

Let’s work on a solution to this problem together.

(Also- as federation has been completely broken on this particular server for me- there is a good chance I will not be able to see, or reply to anything posted below... That is, also assuming this even posts correctly to this server.)

Can you post to multiple Lemmy communities at once from Mastodon?

I recently made a post from here and tagged three communities in it, on three different Lemmy instances, but it only made it to the first one. Is this just how it is suppose to work? And regardless how does this mechanism work? Does it get posted to the first one tagged and then the others deny it? Or was it a synchronicity that my post just didn't federated to the second two?

[posted to @lemmy]

I've tried to upload a video to a community and it errors out with a syntax error on line 1, is this an unimplemented feature or is it bugged?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/778315

Introducing the Lemmy Instance Assistant (browser extension)

Hey everyone :)

I started using Lemmy during the blackout, and I was finding it annoying to subscribe to new communities that I came across. I wanted to be able to quickly open a link on my home instance instead of copy/pasting the code, searching for it, and then subscribing. I looked around for an extension and didn’t see any * , so I started working on my first browser extension!

Firefox version is live, the Chrome version is still going through the review/approval stage. I’m working on getting it on other browsers as well.

https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/lemmy-instance-assistant

This extension will let you set your home instance (https://lemmy.ca for me), and then it will insert a button onto community pages on other Lemmy instances (see screenshots on extension page). I tried to mimic the existing design for the button, and I included some popular instances so you can quickly copy and paste when selecting your home instance.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Why doesn’t it redirect automatically?

Initially I tried to make it redirect, similar to ‘Old Reddit Redirect’. This is still possible, but it might be a little dangerous to have it set up that way. Since there is no way to predict what URL a Lemmy site will have, we can’t restrict the extension to specific domains. This means that the extension MAY run on other sites, depending on how it is detecting the Lemmy site. A button popping up is less harmful than being redirected unexpectedly.

Future plans:

GitHub link: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant

• As mentioned above, we can’t specify which domains the extension should run on since that’s not something we can predict. I’d like to improve the specificity of which pages the button will appear on, to minimize unexpected behaviour. As this is my first extension, I’d appreciate help with this while I learn it myself!
• Right now the button does not appear if you are already viewing a community in a different instance, even if that is not YOUR instance (ex. You are looking at lemmy.world/c/technology@lemmy.ml, while your home instance is lemmy.ca). This limitation comes from the method I used to distinguish between the community page and your home instance page. I’m planning to change it to use the URL itself instead of card elements.
• It would be nice to be able to jump to a specific post. Currently, it appears that Lemmy post URLs do not include a slug for the community/instance, making it challenging to implement something like this. I plan on exploring this some more (relevant thread: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/875)
• I want to add a button next to other Lemmy links in the post body / comments. However, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do this and which links it should appear next to.

Other thoughts:

Some of the third party Reddit tools that I used the most were the browser extensions. Reddit Enhancement Suite made it a LOT easier to start using Reddit, and other extensions like Old Reddit Redirect (the inspiration for my extension) fixed other annoyances. While there are a lot of areas where Lemmy can improve, I think it makes more sense to implement certain enhancements through browser extensions and separate tools. That is to say, I’m happy to let this be pushed into Lemmy’s code, but right now I feel like it makes more sense as a separate extension.

(*) Also when I started building my extension, I didn’t see any similar ones listed. A few other ones have now popped up, and it looks like a lot of them were forked from this project. So if you don’t like mine, there are others that you can try :) Similarly, I’m happy to collaborate if you want to help / integrate my extension into a bigger project!

So, I’m kinda new to this Lemmy thingy and the fediverse. I like the fediverse from a technological standpoint. However, I think that, if we gain more and more traction, Lemmy (and by extend the entire fediverse) is a GDPR clusterfuck waiting to happen. With big and expensive repercussions…

Why? Well, according to GDPR, all personal data from EU users must remain in the EU. And personal data goes really far. Even an IP-address is personal data. An e-mail address is personal data. I don’t think there is jurisprudence regarding usernames, so that might be up for discussion.

Since the entire goal of the fediverse is “transporting” all data to all servers inside the ActivityPub/fediverse world, the data of a EU member will be transported all over the place. Resulting in a giant GDPR breach. And I have no idea who will be held responsible… The people hosting an instance? The developers of Lemmy? The developers of ActivityPub?

Large corporations are getting hefty fines for GDPR breaches. And since Lemmy is growing, Lemmy might be “in the spotlights” in the upcoming years.

I don’t like GDPR, and I’m all for the technological setup of the fediverse. However, I definitely can see a “competitor” (that is currently very large but loosing ground quickly) having a clear eye out to eliminate the competition…

What do y’all thing about this?

Reddit refugee and Noob to lemmy/fediverse here.

For example, I'm currently logged into my lemmy.ml account, and subscribed to !anime@lemmy.ml and I can see a lot of posts there. I can also see that it has over 3K users.

If I log into lemmynsfw.com, and look at my subscription to !anime@lemmy.ml, I only see a few posts, and I know there are several that are missing. Also, it tells me that the community only has 8 users.

Is this synching problem common in lemmy, and/or the fediverse in general?

Do I have to create a new account on each server hosting communities that I want to keep up to date on?

I am getting a ton of errors in my single-user lemmy install. It's likely a configuration issue but I can't figure it out.

When I try to search for a remote community, I get this error:

srv-lemmy-1     | 2023-06-21T05:49:22.923593Z  WARN lemmy_server::root_span_builder: couldnt_find_community: Failed to resolve actor for lemmy@lemmy.ml
srv-lemmy-1     |    0: lemmy_apub::fetcher::resolve_actor_identifier
srv-lemmy-1     |              at crates/apub/src/fetcher/mod.rs:16
srv-lemmy-1     |    1: lemmy_apub::api::read_community::perform
srv-lemmy-1     |            with self=GetCommunity { id: None, name: Some("lemmy@lemmy.ml"), auth: Some(Sensitive) }
srv-lemmy-1     |              at crates/apub/src/api/read_community.rs:30
srv-lemmy-1     |    2: lemmy_server::root_span_builder::HTTP request
srv-lemmy-1     |            with http.method=GET http.scheme="http" http.host=lem.amd.im http.target=/api/v3/community otel.kind="server" request_id=299619ee-3e51-4833-9311-84f1182aaa3f
srv-lemmy-1     |              at src/root_span_builder.rs:16
srv-lemmy-1     | LemmyError { message: Some("couldnt_find_community"), inner: Failed to resolve actor for lemmy@lemmy.ml, context: "SpanTrace" }

and then nothing comes up in search

If I search a few times, I can usually get something to trigger (though no logging occurs at the WARN level) and pictrs starts downloading.

Search will still show nothing but then i can got to /c/lemmy@lemmy.ml and it will appear.

Any ideas?

I'm kicking around a few feature requests.

One of them I've already created in github as it seems appropriate to mainline Lemmy, but a couple of others I think are more appropriate to third party development. Since I'm more a product management / sysadmin type and not much of a coder, I'm putting these in the aether in case they drum up some interest in those considering features for bots or other tooling.

First is YouTube aggregation - it doesn't have to be limited to YT. I'm interested in the ability to automatically collect notifications from a list of channels (click that bell icon, baby) and generate a community post to link new videos.

Second is RSS aggregation. If a blog or magazine or news site has a feed, and if that feed should feature an entry matching keywords defined by a moderation team, generate a post to the community linking to that content.

If these capabilities exist already for Lemmy, even in a hackish way, please do let me know. Otherwise, these are things I am wishing for :)

I'm sure I'm not the first to think about this, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet. I believe there is another problem with open registration instances besides just the threat of spamming.

If you go through the process of making a new post in ANY community and you attach an image and then cancel the post the image is STILL on the server at the given URL and is publically viewable if someone has that URL.

Theoretically, someone could upload illegal images this way and hotlink to them from another site. Because there are no posts on the instance with the bad image attached an instance admin would have no way of knowing the images were there unless they make a habit of browsing the pict-rs datastore regularly. There's currently no easy way to moderate or delete images in the pict-rs datastore.

I don't think I need to elaborate more on what kinds of images could be lurking on your very own server which could be hotlinked into VERY dark places on the web. Saying that you "didnt know" that they were there is not a defense. When the authorities are knocking on your door because you are hosting illegal images you will be sorry that you didn't take a more active role in your user base.

I realize that even if you close or set manual registration that there's still the danger of a bad user doing this very thing, but I think putting in some minor hurdles would greatly decrease the chances.

Regardless, I think there needs to be a better way to manage the pict-rs part of Lemmy and an easy way for admins and instance owners to be able to view EVERY attachment on their server to make sure there's nothing there that could get them in trouble.

I run a small instance that just have people I personally know on it, so it's not a worry for me. But the larger instances that are opening signups to strangers should be aware and take precautions.

So, let's say you have accounts on multiple instances. And let's say you use each account separately and none of them you consider your "home" instance yet.

It would be cool if there was a web app that could allow you to login to each of the instances, and it would gather your message inbox into one inbox, and allow you to reply to each message from the instance account that it was attached to. Or to switch accounts if you want to start using a single instance as a "home" instance.

Does that make any sense?

Like, I've got separate accounts on Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.world, Lemmy.one. Beehaw.org, etc. and I've been logging in separately to each of them because I don't have all the community subscriptions synced between them all yet and I'm not sure which one I want to use as my home instance.

So it would be cool to be able to login to a single web app and see my reply inboxes from each instance.

Today, a bunch of new instances appeared in the top of the user count list. It appears that these instances are all being bombarded by bot sign-ups.

For now, it seems that the bots are especially targeting instances that have:

• Open sign-ups
• No captcha
• No e-mail verification

I have put together a spreadsheet of some of the most suspicious cases here.

If this is affecting you, I would highly recommend considering one of the following options:

1. Close sign-ups entirely
2. Only allow sign-ups with applications
3. Enable e-mail verification + captcha for sign-ups

Additionally, I would recommend pre-emptively banning as many bot accounts as possible, before they start posting spam!

Please comment below if you have any questions or anything useful to add.

Update: on lemm.ee, I have defederated the most suspicious spambot-infested instances.

To clarify: this means small instances with an unnaturally fast explosion in user counts over the past day and very little organic activity. I plan to federate again if any of these instances get cleaned up. I have heard that other instances are planning (or already doing) this as well.

It's not a decision I took lightly, but I think protecting users from spam is a very important task for admins. Full info here: https://lemm.ee/post/197715

If you're an admin of an instance that's defederated from lemm.ee but wish to DM me, you can find me on Matrix: @sunaurus:matrix.org

Edit:

Official Lemmy Community:

https://lemmy.world/c/syncforlemmy

UNIVERSAL SUBSCRIBE LINK

This should open the community in your instance

Looks like the Boost for Reddit Dev just reserved a Lemmy Community...No official announcement yet.

Proof: https://old.reddit.com/r/BoostForReddit/comments/14ehiqs/_/jouvuok/

Direct Link to the Community: https://lemmy.world/c/boostforlemmy

I would like to change the default View behavior from Local to All for newly signed up users on my small instance. Is this possible?

In Admin settings, I see a setting called "listing type", but changing this did not have an effect.

From 3 other lemmy.ml federated lemmings I cannot fully subscribe to lemmy.ml communities. They all just stay in 'Subscription Pending'. It was pointed out that I would still get updates from these communities, and I decided to roll with it. BUT the thing is… you can't cross-post using the lemmy built in if not fully subscribed.

How long until this might be alleviated? Has lemmy.ml considered asking some communities to move to a less loaded lemmy? Seemingly every floss project seems to have homed here, and the subscription pending thing is getting problematic.

Thanks for all the hard work. I just want to know if it's known/being addressed.

Hi there guys, thank you for making Lemmy. A great software, with a potential to have a nice-looking non-web based desktop client! I have created a community on there and I have some questions.

1. Reddit had a concept of flairs, which were essentially tags you could have put on a post which then allowed for easy search and filter. Does Lemmy have such a feature?
2. Does it matter on which Lemmy instance I make my communities, except of courset he cases where a given community wouldn't be allowed on a given instance?
3. If, for example Kbin offers me better moderation tools for my communities will I bea ble to migrate them?
4. If yes, will Lemmy users be able to access and use them normally?
5. Is advertising of your communities allowed on there? If no, are there any community directories where I oculd post my group?

If you still have a reddit account, please hop in the reddit comments to show support.

Whether you used Sync or not, we could all use more app competition in this space.

hi, I was looking for my subscriptions to see if some can be added and got super confused while looking at my communities. I think the way this list is presented can be enhanced:

I mean... a cloud is not a good way to show it and is very confusing. Just a regular list will do the job better IMO.

I've moved this to the meta community because it is off-topic here.

Some communities that I would like to see (equivalent of some sub-reddits that I am subscribed to):

• Christianity (like r/Christianity, not r/TrueChristian)
• Anglicanism
• DnDBehindTheScreen
• interlingua
• rust_gamedev
• shenzhen
• storyenginedeck

I've checked all these in lemmy.ml's search function and nothing as come up.

I'm not ready to take on the responsibility of moderating these myself.

Of course, they don't need to be on lemmy.ml, just somewhere federated.

I subscribed to !programming@programming.dev from lemmy.ml and hundreds of unrelated posts began appearing.

This is just a 3 second snippet. It's constant, there are hundreds of posts on that page now (i've left it open).

We can currently filter communities in our feed by 'Subscribed', 'Local' and 'All', but I'd really love a way to add communities to custom groupings, and have additional filter options based on those groupings. For example, a 'News' group that I could add all of the News-related communities to, and be able to click a filter button and see only those... or maybe the use case most people would likely use: creating groups to isolate SFW and NSFW content.

If there's a way to do this that I'm unaware of, I'd love to hear about it.

One of the things I like the fediverse is the oppposition to unhealthy social media use. I think infinite scrolling is one of the worst things about mainstream social media. Even when youre consciously against it, it is very hard not to forget and get consumed by the infinite scrolling.

My proposal is that front-ends should default (or at least provide the option) to a paginated interface. You get to the bottom and have to click a "Next" button. It acts as sort of a wake up call to your scroll-numbed mind. It is also a much more ergonomic interface anyways, and more lightweight on resources.

I strongly believe that, if presented the option, most people would prefer pagination over infinite scroll. It seems corporations forced infinite scroll on us for maximum time wasted.