partial_accumen

You’re still thinking about it as an asymmetrical problem. Taking one portion that has a problem and isolating that from the rest.

I am. I don’t believe there is one version of success nor one version of failure. That’s one of the beauties of the Fediverse. While there can be fully integrated interaction between instances, there doesn’t have to be.

I’m saying if every part has the same problem that doesn’t solve it AND it means the entire network is no longer interoperable, which was the entire point from the start.

Bolding is mine. That is an opinion, but not a fact. I’ll agree it was one of the biggest features, but it is by no means the only reason for Lemmy or the Fediverse’s existence.

What you’re ultimately saying is that you can have a small interoperable network or a large centralized network, but not both.

I’m citing those as the two extremes but I’m not saying those are the only two options.

Which, if you’re right, begs the question of why try to decentralize and federate in the first place if you don’t have a solution to secure that arrangement.

I reject that premise. If decentralization and federation were inexorably linked to Lemmy (and the Fediverse as a whole), the authors of Lemmy would not have built in the functionality to defederate, nor to block other instances. They did though. This tells us that while they envisioned the benefits of sharing, they also recognized those that wouldn’t want to and endorsed it with methods to cut out the sharing.

And, to be clear, even in that scenario now you have an isolated, self-run social network that has exactly the same moderation issues and running costs as Reddit or any other alternative.

Not quite. From an operators point of view, sure. However from a consumer’s point of view, a social media application stack is a massive undertaking to write as whole cloth. Lemmy software simply existing means that anyone can stand up their own social media network with their own rules (and yes, costs). This, in itself, is a better evolution over Reddit as a private platform. If you don’t like that “reddit” you can stand up your own “reddit”.

If you’re looking for me to say Lemmy is the perfect platform without any flaws, you won’t find me saying that. I will say however that it is better than the alternatives we have today. We’ll see if it has enough autonomy and control to its operators to stand the test of time. Irrespective of where we each stand on this discussion, I think we’ll both be hoping it does.

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

If I’m not happy with how /r/knives is run on Reddit, I can make /r/knife to compete with it.

Ah, gotcha. Thank you for that. I understand your example. My response is, irrespective of /r/knives or /r/knife if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected. That isn’t the case with Lemmy where if one instance bans a word, other instances don’t have to follow suit.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban.

It shows part of the comment. I think there’s a limit on length, and it does not show media. The mod log is a good idea, but there’s room for improvement.

This is good information. I didn’t know about the limit length. I did some Google searches and could only find references to the 10,000 character Lemmy post limit, but nothing about the limit of modlog entires. Any idea what it is?

You make a good point on media. I didn’t know that either.

I will say that for any modlog entry I’ve seen of a removed comment I largely agree with the moderator’s actions about 95% of the time. I’m guessing a character limit would have to be VERY short for it to not capture the gist of an offending comment though. I’m prepared to retract that if you tell me its extremely small.

Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail.

I never said Lemmy will fail, and that is not my position.

Apologies if I mistook your statements. I saw you referring to Lemmy as a whole, and the need for a Fediverse wide fix being your opinion to be necessary for Lemmy to not be eventually destroyed as a whole. If you have a more nuanced opinion on the points we’re discussing, I’m open to hearing it.

Casual genocide denial from I see.

That’s absolutely delicious considering you’re defending Russia and their actions in Ukraine. You have zero credibility. You want to see genocide, look in your own history and you’ll see what Russia did to Ukraine in the past with 3.5 million dead Ukrainians with the Holodomor.

You can’t defederate from every instance that allows people to sign up or you end up with a group chat instead of a social network.

You can. Beehaw did. Perhaps that is the future of Lemmy. I don’t know.

“There are tools to do that” is a bold assertion, but nobody has been able to explain to me what those tools are or how they’d work at scale. I’m all ears. Even if I don’t think it’ll be needed I’d love to know what the plan is, if there is one.

Beehaw did. I think you’re still looking for a solution that allows the full Fediverse-wide system of communication with control of bad actors. I’ll agree that doesn’t exist and likely won’t. I’m arguing that it doesn’t need to for certain use cases of Lemmy to operate.

It’s easy to create a differently named community on systems that don’t have this sort of server-based namespacing.

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

The part that’s missing is the original content mods removed. If I’m an abusive moderator and I want to censor someone, I’m not going to put “I don’t like your opinion” in the removal/ban reason; I’m going to put something that sounds reasonable like “racism” or “harassment”.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban. If I see something that isn’t racism being labeled as racism, I’d suspect the community was corrupt. I do get curious when I see a banned comment from a moderator. 95% of the time I agree with the moderator’s decision.

Time will tell. Either way, that’s not a solution for Lemmy as a whole.

If you’re saying there isn’t a single solution for the entirety of Lemmy (or the Fediverse for that matter) I’ll agree with you. Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail. With each instance having its own control we’ll see multiple approaches that suit each group of users.

Most of the video applies to a Millennial and younger audience. These generations got screwed on the necessary components for compounding to work. Forced to pay for exponentially more expensive education than generations prior put them deep into debt right out of the gate. Further, they entered the workforce during the Great Recession which forever put them 10 to 15 years behind in earning power. Lastly, saddled with the two other things, it prevented many from buying homes which appreciate in value.

In short, the younger generations got totally screwed. The compound interest promise still works for X-ers and above.

I agree with the very ending premise: We need to massively tax the ultrawealthy.

then there are more than enough people to be targeted by more than enough bad actors to swamp EVERY instance with more spam sign-ins than Beehaw ever had, legitimate or not.

I don’t see how your statement applies to a Beehaw type response. Who cares how many bad actors there are if you’re allowing zero signups at your own instance, and you are defederating from instances that do? I don’t know the bowels of Lemmy code well enough to know if there is an “instance federation allowlist” opt-in as opposed to a “defederate from X instance” opt-out. If the former doesn’t exist yet, then it would likely be added to Lemmy code to combat the exact example you give of an infinite number of spam instances being spun up.

Moderation is hard and expensive,

I agree with this.

and there are no meaningful federation-wide tools to manage it in place.

I’m arguing there doesn’t haven’t to be federation-wide tool. There are instance level tools that give enough control depending on how extreme a response the instance wants to enact.

There is no systemic solution to malicious use.

I agree. I argue a systemic solution isn’t a requirement. You’re looking for one thing that solves the problem for the entire Fediverse. That’s a rather un-fediverse concept. The point of the fediverse is decentralization allowing instances to enact their own rules that work for them.

I don’t know how old you are, but decades before giant social media existed, internet forums were a common community posting system. This is an old and known problem. There are a number of approaches that apply from those days to modern Lemmy instances. Yes, many of these would require raising the walls of the garden, but again, these approaches exist. Is it perfect? No, but if thats what it takes, then that will be the result, and the tools exist in Lemmy to do that.

The first to create a community control it.

If the community becomes toxic, its easy to create an identically named community on another instance. A perfect example: when I joined lemmy I subscribed to the “news” community on lemmy.ml. When I saw how it was run, I unsubscribed and instead subscribed to “news” on lemmy.world.

censorship,

Modlog documents all actions including moderator censorship. Nothing like that exists at reddit. If there is censorship happening, its in full view of the users on lemmy.

and controlling a narrative.

Again Modlog, if a moderator is removing dissenting opinion.

If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

Beehaw is an example of a Lemmy instance immune to “Eternal September”. They disabled their easy signups, and defederated from instances that allow easy signups. I don’t particularly agree with their extreme approach, but its what was important to them and it was effective. This is a powerful use of Lemmy and the Fediverse.

It was at peace. That changed when Russian crossed the border as “little green men” unmarked Russian troops started the hot war there. Putin even admitted this was Russia:

“After two months of denial, on 17 April 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed that the Russian military had been operating in Ukraine.[9][10] Furthermore, numerous sources, including Russian state-owned media, have confirmed that the little green men were a mix of operatives from the Special Operations Forces and various other units of the Spetsnaz GRU. It likely also included paratroopers of the 45th Guards Spetsnaz Brigade of the Russian Airborne Forces,[11][12][13] as well as mercenaries from the Russian state-funded Wagner Group.[14][15] While their status as soldiers acting under the orders of the Russian government was continually denied, their nationality was not. Alexander Borodai of the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic stated that 50,000 Russian citizens had fought in Ukraine’s Donbas by August 2015 and argued that they should receive the same benefits as Russia’s other war veterans, though he maintained that the Russian government did not send them.[16]” source

The assumption that crappy behavior is somehow localized to a specific instance is bizarre, nothing is keeping people from spamming accounts on instances with free signups.

I disagree. If that is your primary concern, look at what Beehaw (another Lemmy instance) did. They closed their signups to prevent the bad actor spam accounts on their own instances, and they defederate from instance that allow the easy signups.

Its extreme, yes. It limits conversation from the wider fediverse, yes. However it does mitigate the exact problem you’re citing. I personally prefer to deal with the spammers for the wider audience, but I don’t fault Beehaw for their actions and choices.

None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.

Which mechanism in Lemmy allows one person in power to decide a single word is a reason to ban a person from every instance in the Fediverse? Since there isn’t one, that is a way that Lemmy is more insulated from institutional abuse.

Nobody can seriously believe that the USA colonizes Canada.

Nobody could seriously believe a US President would allow an unelected billionaire into the halls of power and society to tear it down from the inside, but here were are.

India is no really a challenge.

And Canada is?

We bought a few cans for an elderly relative that has a compromised respiratory system. They have a medical oxygen bottle, but if it runs out or their cannula stops working for some reason we wanted them to have another option besides asphyxiation. There are not many minutes of oxygen in one of those cans, but if you’ve got nothing even a few minutes is a gift.

It feels like we’re about 5 minutes away from RFK Jr recommending injecting each other with …I dunno…artisanal organic chlorine bleach or something.

Yanukovych was a Putin laptop that was thrown out by the citizenry as well as the Ukrainian military. You’ll find Yanukovych in Russia now, but I probably don’t have to tell you that. You’re probably closer to him than I am.

Ukraine underwent a violent coup against the democratically elected government

Yanukovych was a Putin puppet that turned armed forces against unarmed civilians. The armed forces themselves turned on Yanukovych. That tells you how bad he was for Ukraine. If you’re looking for Yanukovych now, you’ll find him in Russia. I wonder why…

Ukraine was to cease NATO membership plans; downsize its military forces; forbid foreign countries from hosting military bases; and pay reparations.

That’s none of Putin’s fucking business. Ukraine is a sovereign country that can make its own decisions about its future. If your bullshit reasoning is reasonable, if Putin takes Ukraine fully are you justifying Putin invading Poland and Romania for being in NATO with foreign miltary bases too?

Ukraine was at peace in 2014 before Russia invaded. The only reason there is not peace is because of Putin.

Putin meanwhile gave out very lenient peace terms in 2022

Putin invaded in 2014 seizing Crimea. Ukraine did not attack Russia.

Putin invaded Donbas and Luhansk just months later. Ukraine signed multiple peace deals which Putin violated at that time.

Putin performed a full scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022.

Nothing about Putin has offered peace terms for Ukraine that Putin honors. He’ll keep violating any “peace” deals until he controls all of Ukraine or he’s dead.