Hello!
I work as a AAA game programmer. I previously worked on the Battlefield series.
Before I worked in the AAA space, I worked at Disneyland as a Jungle Cruise skipper!
As a hobby, I have an N-Scale (1:160) model train layout.
If you follow a Kbin community on Mastodon, the top-level post is the only thing shared to the community’s “profile”. If you click on the post, then the comments section is the Kbin comments section.
Here’s an example of a Kbin post I made displaying on Mastodon. I replied to this post, and my reply shows up as a reply to the top-level post.
Kbin’s federation with Mastodon works as you’d expect it to work.
I don’t know why Lemmy insists on such bad integration with Mastodon. Last I checked, the Lemmy devs were insisting on not having smooth integration with Mastodon.
Doesnt make much sense when you can create a second account on Mastodon or one of many other platforms which already implement user following much better.
It’s one reason why I jumped to Kbin and have been using it for the past few months. Kbin does indeed support user following much better -and it supports threads showing up in Mastodon much better too.
There is a distinction between Communists and tankies.
Tankies are a subset of Communists. Specifically, tankies have rejected Marx in favor of authoritarianism, power for power’s sake. “Everyone is equal, and some people are more equal than others” sort of thinking. They want to show anyone who doesn’t agree with them the barrel of a gun.
The term came from when the Soviets invaded Hungary in order to prevent popular reforms. But I think a better example of what tankies are like (and how they differ from communists) is looking at Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia was a communist country already, but they were doing reforms that would help the average worker and promote equality within the country. The plan was to transition away from a single-party state within Czechoslovakia and towards a form of democratic socialism, where the parties still held core communist ideas but no one figure could wield influence (in line with what Marx expected).
The Soviets saw this as a threat. Their model of a one-party authoritarian state where the secret police dominate everything and the proletariat have no rights is the one they wanted to push everywhere. So they invaded Czechoslovakia and sent tanks into the country.
Later, the Chinese Communist Party sent tanks in to crush peaceful protestors who were asking for human rights and democracy within the proletariat. The protesters were literally turned into jelly by the tanks and washed down into the gutters.
Tankies support these atrocities. They say that a one-party authoritarian state is the only way to do things. Don’t let them trick you into thinking they’re the only true Communists - tankies want an upper class and a lower class, just like capitalists do. The distinction is that to tankies, the upper class are the party elite, the ones who do and say what they’re told. The lower class are the people they don’t like, or those who are unlucky enough not to have friends in high places.
Tankies are absolute scum. Lemmy’s founders are tankies, Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml both push tankie politics (Lemmy.ml is more subtle about it, but does enforce it via their moderation policy), and now Hexbear is coming over to Lemmy in order to complete the tankie trifecta.
I hate that this place is infested with tankies. I don’t mind communists - I’m pretty left-leaning myself - but tankies are not true communists, and they never can be unless they fundamentally rethink their views about equality and freedom.
Agreed. Fuck tankies.
Tankies have really been doubling down the last few days. I hate that this place is infested with them - and it seems to be growing as they start to scare sane people away.
Louder for the people in the back!
Tankies 👏 are 👏 not 👏 true 👏 communists 👏.
God, I hate that this place is infested with tankies. I didn’t realize Lemmy.world still federated with Lemmygrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP),[3] officially the Communist Party of China (CPC),[4] is the founding and sole ruling party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
CCP is a valid name for it in English, and in fact is the way that it’s referred to most of the time in English (which we are speaking currently). You can also see that Wikipedia uses CCP throughout.
Not surprised I’ve pissed off half of Lemmygrad considering you guys are so misinformed you don’t even recognize a common English acronym for the ruling party of the country you adore so much. Stay mad, tankies.
I love how I literally trotted out a source, and you still clamed it was “unsourced”. I also love “You have not made an argument that they are factually similar” after I just explained how they are in practice, factually similar. Here is a Wikipedia page about the genocide China is committing, btw - how is this different than Auschwitz?
But those claims are “western” and therefore automatically incorrect. Because we know China has a free press and open reporting! Their 1982 constitution protects freedom of speech, which is why they arrest people who talk about Tibet!
So here’s a non-western source: Al-Jazeera stating that China has internment camps where they are committing genocide.
You’re not going to listen to any of this, because you’ve completely missed the point. My point is modern communism has not gotten anywhere near the ideals espoused by Marx, and has outright rejected them (paying them lip service at best). It has been replaced by something pretty much identical to fascism, and tankies love it. Since evidently you need a reminder as to what fascism is:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Everything other than “far-right” can apply to the CCP in its modern form. (And even saying China isn’t far-right is debatable… gay marriage is illegal in China still. Hardly “socially left”.)
Ultranationalist: Using Chinese nationalism, the CCP began to suppress separatism and secessionist attitudes in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and among the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in the far-west province of Xinjiang, an issue that persists. (Also: Taiwan.)
Dictatorial leader: China’s Xi allowed to remain ‘president for life’ as term limits removed
Centralized autocracy: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Militarism: Chinese coastguard and navy ships intruded into Malaysian waters in the disputed South China Sea 89 times between 2016 to 2019, and often remained in the area even after being turned away by the Malaysian navy. (See also: Taiwan.)
Forcible suppression of opposition: The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, during 1989. The protests started on 15 April and lasted until 4 June, at which point Chinese government troops carried out a crackdown on the demonstrators around the city and the Square in what is often referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Better scrub your history for that one before the CCP sees that link)
Belief in a natural social hierarchy: Han nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism asserting ethnically Han people as the exclusive constituents of the Chinese nation. (See also: Genocides against non-Han, as mentioned above)
Subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race: Chinese workers allege forced labor, abuses in Xi’s ‘Belt and Road’ program.
Strong regimentation of society and the economy: While the Chinese economy maintains a large state sector, the state-owned enterprises operate like private-sector firms and retain all profits without remitting them to the government to benefit the entire population.
But go on. Tell me that’s not fascism.
Conveniently ignores the genocide and organ-harvesting happening today in the largest communist country on the planet
I’m a leftist myself, but tankies are a bridge too far. The moment a movement starts oppressing the proletariat is when they lose all legitimacy. Stalin, Mao, and everyone else the tankies idolize were oppressive to the common people they tried to protect. Modern-day China is oppressive to the point where they set up secret police in other countries to monitor citizens abroad.
How on earth is that protecting the workers? Now there’s just a new class of bourgeoise, the party leadership who enshrine themselves in perpetual power while they exploit the workers in the sweatshops making cheap goods. The party takes their labor, exports it to the West, and lines their own pockets.
That’s what tankies want? How on earth is that any different than fascism, in practice?
Tankies, fascists. Close enough to the same thing tbh.
Any platform which supports tankies is in itself tankie. If they want “unity,” they wouldn’t associate themselves with people who don’t believe in the core fundamentals of freedom. Otherwise they’re just like PCM where the worst elements will take over.
Have you ever moderated somewhere of any significant size?
I was once a mod on a 500k+ user subreddit on Reddit. Without AutoMod, the place would go to shit within a month. AutoMod caught so many things that would otherwise disrupt the community.
It’s not “authoritarian” to automatically remove posts of people spamming the N-word, especially when you can easily tell the users are trolls. Nor is it “authoritarian” to remove spammers trying to shill their T-shirts or sending links to scam websites. Or those annoying bots that would copy user comments and then try to pose as “real” users so they could build up karma and get around spam filters easier.
At a certain point, it is impossible to keep up with everything happening in your community. While reports are important, mods do have to sleep. We do have lives, and we don’t pay attention to the communities we help run for every waking moment of our days.
If I wanted to ban every person who used the letter “e”, I could do that without a bot. A modbot makes it easier, but simply having a tool available doesn’t make the person using that tool more or less authoritarian. Not to mention both Kbin and Lemmy have open moderation logs, so you can easily see if a place has a moderation style you disagree with.
Yeah, I can’t find the source I originally read it from (I think it was on the KDE subreddit from a KDE dev there), but they gave a talk about it recently. I’ve only skimmed the talk but they do speak pretty heavily about KDE collaborating with Valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0gEIeFgDX0
Steam Deck honestly convinced me to move my desktop over to Linux.
I’m still dual-booting, but I only go into Windows if something struggles too much over Proton (looking at you Satisfactory). I’ve been daily driving KDE Neon for about 2 months without issues.
Plasma is a great desktop environment, too. Usually the desktop environments were what chased me away - GNOME was slow sometimes and always felt… off, Cinnamon doesn’t like multiple desktops despite claiming to, with the maintainers refusing to even acknowledge the problems, XFE is… XFE, and historically Plasma was always super crashy and bloated.
Valve’s been funding the KDE guys to make Plasma better and it really shows. Plasma feels like a modern desktop that can compete with Windows directly - and honestly beats Windows with how bad Windows 11 has become. (Last time I was in Windows it took the Windows 11 Start Menu a full 20 seconds to open - but don’t worry, it had time to serve me an ad for Xbox Game Pass.)
I think it’s more realistic than people think. The Digital Markets Act in the EU is likely why Threads is ActivityPub, and Reddit is (potentially) affected by it too: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en
Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations
- allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform
Let me quickly quote selected sections of the act itself:
The lack of interoperability allows gatekeepers that provide number-independent interpersonal communications services to benefit from strong network effects, which contributes to the weakening of contestability. Furthermore, regardless of whether end users ‘multi-home’, gatekeepers often provide number-independent interpersonal communications services as part of their platform ecosystem, and this further exacerbates entry barriers for alternative providers of such services and increases costs for end users to switch. Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) and, in particular, the conditions and procedures laid down in Article 61 thereof, gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.
Gatekeepers should ensure interoperability for third-party providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services that offer or intend to offer their number-independent interpersonal communications services to end users and business users in the Union. To facilitate the practical implementation of such interoperability, the gatekeeper concerned should be required to publish a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability with its number-independent interpersonal communications services. It should be possible for the Commission, if applicable, to consult the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, in order to determine whether the technical details and the general terms and conditions published in the reference offer that the gatekeeper intends to implement or has implemented ensures compliance with this obligation.
Simply:
You need to allow third-party apps free of charge
You must publish your API publicly
Failure to comply causes:
Initial fine of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover (or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements)
Daily fine of up to 5% of the average daily turnover
Systemic infringements can cause the EU to break up the company entirely
The law has teeth. It could be I’m misunderstanding some nuances of the text, but this part seems pretty cut and dry from my perspective (I am not a legal expert):
gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_communication
Interpersonal communication is an exchange of information between two or more people.
If deemed an internet gatekeeper, Reddit would need to allow interoperability free of charge with all of their “interpersonal communications services” (e.g. Reddit + chat + modmail + etc.) on any kind of third-party app that wants to support it. (Which makes recent decisions even more baffling.)
From a cynical perspective, Reddit switching to ActivityPub would also work to remove a barrier between Reddit and Lemmy. If Reddit thinks they can out-compete Lemmy from a UX perspective, reversing course and going more open by embracing ActivityPub would bring traffic back to where they can monetize it. If Reddit’s UX is better, people will be more likely to engage on Reddit than Lemmy, and thus Reddit wouldn’t lose people.
Of course, there are 2 major issues with this:
Reddit is terrible at UX and is actively getting worse
Spez is a fuckwad who wants to be Elon without realizing he and Elon are about to be royally fucked by the EU next year when this starts to really take effect
Yes. Here are the timelines:
> > > The DMA started applying as of beginning of May 2023. Within two months, companies providing core platform services have to notify the Commission and provide all relevant information. The Commission will then have 45 working days to adopt a decision designating a specific gatekeeper. Designated gatekeepers will have six months after the Commission decision to ensure compliance with the obligations foreseen in the DMA. > >
So we should start hearing things in about 2-3 months, with compliance in 8-9 months.
Relevant sections:
> > > The ability of end users to acquire content, subscriptions, features or other items outside the core platform services of the gatekeeper should not be undermined or restricted. In particular, a situation should be avoided whereby gatekeepers restrict end users from access to, and use of, such services via a software application running on their core platform service. For example, subscribers to online content purchased outside a software application, software application store or virtual assistant should not be prevented from accessing such online content on a software application on the core platform service of the gatekeeper simply because it was purchased outside such software application, software application store or virtual assistant. > >
> > > Gatekeepers can hamper the ability of end users to access online content and services, including software applications. Therefore, rules should be established to ensure that the rights of end users to access an open internet are not compromised by the conduct of gatekeepers. Gatekeepers can also technically limit the ability of end users to effectively switch between different undertakings providing internet access service, in particular through their control over hardware or operating systems. This distorts the level playing field for internet access services and ultimately harms end users. It should therefore be ensured that gatekeepers do not unduly restrict end users in choosing the undertaking providing their internet access service. > >
> > > The lack of interoperability allows gatekeepers that provide number-independent interpersonal communications services to benefit from strong network effects, which contributes to the weakening of contestability. Furthermore, regardless of whether end users ‘multi-home’, gatekeepers often provide number-independent interpersonal communications services as part of their platform ecosystem, and this further exacerbates entry barriers for alternative providers of such services and increases costs for end users to switch. Without prejudice to Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (14) and, in particular, the conditions and procedures laid down in Article 61 thereof, gatekeepers should therefore ensure, free of charge and upon request, interoperability with certain basic functionalities of their number-independent interpersonal communications services that they provide to their own end users, to third-party providers of such services. > >
> > > Gatekeepers should ensure interoperability for third-party providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services that offer or intend to offer their number-independent interpersonal communications services to end users and business users in the Union. To facilitate the practical implementation of such interoperability, the gatekeeper concerned should be required to publish a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability with its number-independent interpersonal communications services. It should be possible for the Commission, if applicable, to consult the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, in order to determine whether the technical details and the general terms and conditions published in the reference offer that the gatekeeper intends to implement or has implemented ensures compliance with this obligation. > >
> > > In all cases, the gatekeeper and the requesting provider should ensure that interoperability does not undermine a high level of security and data protection in line with their obligations laid down in this Regulation and applicable Union law, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Directive 2002/58/EC. The obligation related to interoperability should be without prejudice to the information and choices to be made available to end users of the number-independent interpersonal communication services of the gatekeeper and the requesting provider under this Regulation and other Union law, in particular Regulation (EU) 2016/679. > >
Pretty clear legislation - no lock-in, don’t block access to content, you must publish your API for others to use. Very good legislation.
“I know exactly what React is, I prefer to use Vue” shows you literally have zero clue what React is.
You don’t choose when you visit a website. There’s no option that says “render this with Vue.” It’s handled by the website itself. Lemmy uses Inferno instead of React, for example. You didn’t make that choice, and I highly doubt you chose Lemmy because researched that beforehand. And if you did, by going to Lemmy’s GitHub page… surprise! GitHub uses React!
I think you need to take a history lesson on the web. I gave multiple examples of tech Facebook has backed, and yet EEE hasn’t happened to any of them. There are more open techs that Facebook has contributed code to; a lot of Apache projects, for example. And yet no EEE. Curious. Also I noticed you’re avoiding the “EU will come down on Facebook if they get out of line” side of my argument. Also curious.
But I suppose that’s not a surprise. It’s clear you have no idea how things even work; you probably googled (oh, wait, you probably don’t use Google) “React replacement” to find Vue at all. You probably didn’t know Vue was created by a Google engineer and Google uses it internally. I suggest you change what web framework you use, if you have that magic button tucked away. Maybe switch to Inferno?
Not to mention you say you never used the Reddit app. I never said anything about the Reddit app. I was talking about the Reddit website. Unless you’ve never used the Reddit website, either? I trust you’re going to say you’ve never owned anything but a flip phone and do web searches with a phone book next.
You conclude by making a strawman and putting words in my mouth that I never said. You think if I loved corporations I would be here? But you’ve made multiple factual inaccuracies, you never source anything you say, you just constantly pout like the world is ending and try to force everyone else to do things your way.
But you’re right. We do have different viewpoints. I suggest you stop spreading yours as factual, or use that phone book to find sources.
(And for the record, I despise Elon.)
Are you really saying you don’t use PayPal? I presume you have a job; your job probably uses Slack (or Teams) at the corporate level. You’re never streamed anything? You’re not coming from Reddit? You don’t use Wikipedia? Or Spotify? Or reCAPTCHA?
I most sincerely doubt that you’ve never used any of those, all of which run on tech that Facebook built and helps maintain. And I’m not even mentioning the countless small places that use things like React. I’m not joking when I say you literally cannot use the modern web without bumping into a website running React, which was - again - created by Facebook.
Maybe you think the things I mentioned are “apps” - they’re not, to be clear. They’re frameworks. You generally have no idea you’re using them, because it’s something that gets setup by the folks building the website. You don’t directly download React.js; you go to Discord.gg and Discord will download React to your machine and run it to display Discord. Same thing with Wikipedia - you go to Wikipedia, it uses HHVM to show you the page you want.
If you knew all that already and still think you don’t use tech run by Facebook, then your ignorance of how the web works is shocking.
I also think you’re struggling with the concept of “Meta doesn’t want the EU to come down on them.” They will never extend the network in a way that breaks apps, and they can’t extinguish it because both of those would make them “gatekeepers” under EU law - the thing they’re trying to avoid.
You have to understand that - as much as I dislike capitalism - it is what drives consumers. Linux is the better OS than Windows. That’s proven by basically everything running Linux… except consumer PCs, which are usually Macs or Windows. Because Linux doesn’t advertise itself like they do, not really.
The way for the fediverse to grow is to get corporations to embrace it. The more corporations that embrace it, the less likely it is that any individual corpo can extend/extinguish (assuming they ignore the EU for some reason). Corporations means regular users, and regular users means normalization, which means a healthy and growing fediverse.
Rather than trying to get a big place to reject this at all cost, maybe you should move to a small place like Beehaw that will more readily accept your worldview.
Yet another reason why I prefer Kbin.
The developers of Lemmy have been questionable for some time. See their post announcing Lemmy: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
The instance that post mentions at the end became Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are the same people. This was their first post announcing Lemmy as a real thing you could go use. (It’s also why a good chunk of the Threadiverse is absolutely infested with tankies.)
I never agitated for a fork because generally the Lemmy devs do an okay job at keeping their politics separate from their software. But the more I look at their attitudes and (frankly) the hazing they do towards contributors, the more I’m thinking that it may be better to push for an outright fork of Lemmy, give it a better name, a saner dev team, and excise the original devs entirely. Even if we ignore their politics (which is hard to do, but can be done), they’ve simply not been the best stewards of the project - it’s succeeded in spite of them, not because of them.
That said, I think Lemmy as a piece of software is generally okay. Kbin has more long-term promise, I feel, but Kbin has its own issues and is much rougher around the edges. A lot of the issues Kbin has have already been sorted out by Lemmy, so I think it might be best to make a Lemmy fork and bring in features from Kbin into it (alongside performance fixes and whatnot that the Lemmy devs refuse to action on).