ericjmorey

ericjmorey , 1 hour ago

This suggestion seems to be a bit different from what you implemented on piedfed. I'm having trouble articulating it though. Something more like a feed of user defined subset of subscribed communities/topics.

ericjmorey , 12 hours ago

AT protocol doesn't federate the way ActivityPub does. There are separations between how your dat is stored, how it is aggregated, how it is filtered, and how it is displayed. Each part can be hosted separately and federate differently with separate instances of each part. The aggregation part is the thing that is most critical and there are probably some limited independent instances of that, but BlueSky has offered no support in facilitating this beyond making their peices AT Protocol compliant. You van take what BlueSky built and try to run your own instance of the aggregation service but they provide no documentation or support. You could also build your own, but that's difficult and I don't think anyone is trying.

So it is federated, but pretty much no one is interested in doing the work to federate with the primary infrastructure.

ericjmorey , 17 days ago

Why would you need another site's browser cookies?

ericjmorey , 17 days ago

It's not implimented because the developers of lemmy have been prioritizing other issues and features. They say they're open to code contributions, so someone would have to volunteer to do it.

ericjmorey , 17 days ago

That's very different from what I think people generally want by default, which is that when you're on lemmy.world, it's because that's your home instance and any links to other instances would be automatically converted to the lenmy.world version of the post or comment by default (as long as the two instances are federated).

Anyone that wants more could find a browser plugin or script, but every new user with an account of any instance would have an initial experience that's much less confusing and more consistent and pleasant.

ericjmorey , 17 days ago

I generally agree with you.

However, I want to encourge you to consider softening up your replies to people who you don't have a strong prior social connection with. I've started making an effort to do that and I've found that I'm having more rewarding conversations now.

ericjmorey , 16 days ago

The default UI is how most new users will experience interacting with lemmy instances at first. So it's helpful to create a better first impression. To the extent that this is built into the project itself makes it easier for other UIs to be created and maintained too.

I believe that the Lemmy devs are working on a better url scheme for posts and comments as well. This will also make it less annoying without any browser extension, script, or other third part service.

ericjmorey , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

The people who are in charge of collecting donations and deciding how those funds are used absolutely have power that can be used to exert control.

The caníbals are in the kitchen and now have control which can be used to decide on the procurement of food.

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

Mastodon's moderation model is very different than BlueSky. BlueSky's seems to be much better for targeted individuals and groups. But things aren't entirely hashed out on either protocol or their implementations. We'll see how it goes.

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

Isn't that the same issue with ActivityPub and the instances that host accounts and messages?

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

With BlueSky, it pretends to be similar, but the reality is that everything needs to go through their central server in order to be displayed on a timeline.

They have been saying that this is an implementation detail that will change when they open up that part of their implementation. Which is nice, but until that happens I'm only lukewarm in my optimism for Bluesky and the AT protocol.

On the other hand, every federated network has converged on a central host for the vast majority of accounts and data. That host has outsized influence over the standard used on the network and unencrypted acess to the majority of data. So I'm not sure what really matters to what extent.

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

What's a Lemmy group?

ericjmorey , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Thanks for clearing that up!

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

That was exactly my thought when asking. But it seems it's the former.

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

My first exposure to that interchangable use in the Lemmy lexicon. Now I Know!

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

What is the threat model here?

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

Couldn't a malicious ActivityPub server do similar things now?

ericjmorey , 1 month ago

Since storage costs money, does it allow the admin to offer tiered access to higher quality storage?

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

Wouldn’t it be better (if doable) to take some cues on how actually email (and XMPP for that matter) works, and ask the user for the username and the password instead in one go?

I have to give my email app a lot more information than a username and password. So I'm not sure what you're envisioning.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

The bill in question is H.R. 7888: Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act: To reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

The concerning section of the text of the bill in question.

Elizabeth Goitein's claims are not correct as the amendment is more narrowly defined than she has claimed. But the amendment is still overly broad and an inappropriate overreach of government surveillance.

Elizabeth Goitein is Co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

FYI, the article got the date of the House vote incorrect (it was Friday April 12, not Saturday April 13).

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

They all seem reasonable suggestions:

• Consent matters, even for public posts
• Get broad feedback before launching – and listen to it
• Honor existing opt-in and opt-out mechanisms
• Include an additional opt-in mechanism for your service if it's not just a search engine or profile discovery (or something very close to them)
• Make sure to communicate that you're taking an opt-in approach and honoring existing mechanisms
• DON'T say the things that developers who ignore consent typically say
• Be extra careful if you're a cis guy
• Look at opt-in as an opportunity for a potential competitive advantage

I'm conflicted over the fact that using ActivitiyPub necessarily implies consent for other people to collect the data you send through it. It seems that many people using ActivitiyPub connected services want something different than ActivitiyPub or different default settings on many ActivityPub services.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

Consent isn’t really built into ActivityPub and it’s inherently the opposite of how I understand it to work (copying your content all over the place regardless of your desires).

ActivityPub is a means of sharing information in a way that the information can easily be collected and reshared. By using it, you should expect that people will collect and reshare information you send via the ActivityPub protocol.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

That addressing is insufficient because it begs the question of consent being withheld. But the consent is implicitly given by the sending of information via the protocol, otherwise a service like Mastodon can't exist. The question of asking for consent after it is given is the part that I'm conflicted about.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I did. I'm sharing my thoughts about it. Some of those thoughts are that it seems to make assumptions that don't hold.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I'm not here to score points. I'm expressing my thoughts and reservations about the article. I'm not even taking much of a position on what developers should do. It's more of an exploration of the landscape.

Unfortunately, skipping past a legitimate point doesn't address the point which remains unresolved. It's a nice rhetorical trick though. I'd rather discuss the point. (Even though others have had discussions, that doesn't help me understand and learn.) There's no urgency for me to reach a conclusion, so a bit of rehashing of "tired" perspectives isn't offensive to me.

Reasonable doesn't always mean appropriate or best for the situation. It doesn't always lead to good or better outcomes. Shutting down and dismissing legitimate concerns is not a good way to build a consensus and and will often lead to adverse outcomes. It is ironic that this person's approach is making the same mistakes they are trying to warn against.

There's a clear conflict that literally can't be ignored. It must be considered by all participants, else those participants will be unexpectedly unsatisfied with the outcomes.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

This seems like a reasonable thing to require of services that aren't dependent on each other for basic functionality.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

From a government and societal perspective, there's value in limiting anti-competative activities.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

Today AI is fully self-sustaining, meaning companies using AI are making a profit

How can I verify this?

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I'd like to read the research you alluded to. What research specifically did you have in mind?

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

Some companies are using them to find new and better drugs, to solve diseases, invent new materials, etc.

I have seen the claims of this sort of thing be refuted when results of the work using LLMs is reviewed. For example.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I'm interested in LLMs and how they are being used because that's what large sums of money is being thrown at with very uncertain future returns.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

Yes, it's an example of how there are claims being made that don't hold up.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I think you're not seeing the nuance in my statements and instead are extrapolating inappropriately, perhaps even disingenuously.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I'm not reading that because you clearly would rather argue than have a conversation. Enjoy the rest of your day.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I'd like to see this experiment carried out at a sufficient scale. I feel like there would be a benefit to a gravity like component that takes density and distance into account so that people in sparsely "populated" regions aren't just effectively seeing an unprioritized feed of the entire network.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

If you don't post one, all copyrights are reserved by the author and is automatically granted upon publication in most jurisdictions around the world. So every federated instance is violating every copyright.

That is unless it's seen as fair use, in which case it doesn't matter what licensing the author wants to provide because the use is protected.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Instance hosters are currently relying on fair use since there's been no agreements when I've signed up.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

You can't keep money out of it. You're being subsidized by others unless you are paying for all of the infrastructure that's hosting your data, including when it is federated to multiple instances.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I know exactly how much currency exists and know what the inflation rate is and will be and know that my money is actually safe.

This is misplaced confidence based on core misunderstandings. But I hope you don't suffer for it, but I'm quite certain you will unknowingly. But I also suspect that you're well off enough for it to be of little consequence unless you get absolutely scammed or caught in a legal prosecution.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

This is probably the most reasonable take. But I remember getting tipped and not ever bothering to follow the link to try to collect until a few months later when the service hosting the crypto thing went permanently offline and couldn't be collected.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

I wonder if the legacy webhooks implementation in Lemmy has left some artifacts that show up when the services that comprise Lemmy are split up as they are for larger instances.

This is pure speculation.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

That post seems more academic than practical. I was hoping to see a discussion about what has been shown to work rather than speculation on what could be reasons for some hypothetical things to work.

ericjmorey , 2 months ago

Yeah. I don't think you have to worry about that anytime soon. And certainly not because of Sublinks.