The Fediverse is huge and overwhelming to a newcomer, with many different types and each with servers to pick from. Which ones would you suggest checking out or avoiding?
I joined this one because the main one was defederating a whole bunch of pirate ones and that makes no goddamn sense. thanks 👍
mods will be like hey let’s make it so our users can’t access stuff. that makes sense. I bet that’s what they want. they want to not have access to things. they think it’s good
smart and federal
.world is squeamish about upsetting corpos because they’re the biggest instance.
Anyone know why the recent spike? That’s not negligible.
https://lemmy.world/post/43035743/22099833 Apparently old forum software was updated to use the federation and all the old users got tallied up and added.
Because reddit moderation has become utterly unbearable, insufferable bad.
I’ve been using BBSs, newsgroups, MIRC, ICQ, a million ass forums and social media for almost 40 years now.
I’ve never been banned from anywhere on the net (and before).
And yet in the last three months I’ve been temp banned 3 times on reddit. All for their AI moderation systems misunderstanding Australian colloquialisms as threatening violence.
It’s utter bullshit.
People are leaving reddit as a result.
“Toss some shrimp on the barbie”
What? Is this Aussie for kill CEOs?? Banned.
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Seconding .zip! I haven’t had any qualms with it since joining a few months ago
I also recommend lemmy.zip or piefed.zip
Zip is awesome! I switched over to db0, but simply because of a technical glitch on .zip like a year ago now, which was rapidly fixed by the admin… and I was too impatient to withstand not being able to post, lol.
A+ instance imo.
What’s awesome about it?
Great head admin, good variety of local communities, great users?
The monthly updates on [email protected]
One that is not blocked by a lot of other instances…
Assuming we’re talking about instances we’d recommend to new Fediverse users, I’d recommend against lemmy.world. Not because there’s anything wrong with the instance, but simply because it’s the largest, by a fairly large margin. A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it’s healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.
I figured joining the biggest one would be the most exciting and active. I believe federation happens when a user on one instance follows another, so joining a smaller one might mean you miss some content. I could be wrong though.
You’re only missing content if your instance defederates from another and vice versa or if you block instances yourself.
It might be a bit easier to find new communities at first by scrolling through the local feed on a bigger community, but you can also do this without making an account there.
I think stability and speed of an instance are better selection criteria since they effect your experience much more. Piefed instances tend to offer a smooth and fast experience. E.g. piefed.social, piefed.zip, and the others mentioned in one of the other comments.
You’re only missing content if your instance defederates from another and vice versa or if you block instances yourself.
You’re missing content from communities that no one on your instance follows yet.
Yep, but piefed and lemmy both have tools to propogate communities to small instances so that they can be discovered and followed. So you won’t see content that no one on the instance is interested in, but if someone is, they’ll be able to find the community for it, even if they’re on a small instance.
tankies need to be on thier own instances so they can circlejerk each other. politics is problematic in .world, they try to hid subtley calling people antisemtitic
Are “Tankies” the sort of individuals you can argue with until the cows come home, but they just deflect and intentionally misunderstand you?
It basically works like that on Mastodon, but on Lemmy, etc. you will see most of the content of all federated instances.
It’s common for new users to overthink the choice of instance - it doesn’t make a huge difference for most users and you can always switch if you find a better fit in the future.
You can pick one that is local to your country/region, or if you have a special interest like art or environmental activism, you may be able to find one that specializes in that. Otherwise choose any instance that is stable.
There are tools nowadays that share communities around to smaller instances through bot accounts that auto subscribe.
It also makes it easier when you create a community, now it will automatically show up on most instances.
Lemmy.world is actually defederated from some larger instances, and many smaller ones defederate it for being too dominating.
Problem with lemmy.world is that because it’s got so open registration, some instances block it entirely. Though it’s a good place to start and know what to expect. Because Lemmy is pretty slow, I personally prefer to browse All - New and just block all Communities (and instances) that I don’t want to see. I subscribe too of course for those times I just want to see the content I’m actually interested in but for casual browsing, browse by all.
A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it’s healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.
It’s certainly healthier for the whole to have users spread across instances, but that’s a matter of emergence. What’s your pitch to convince an individual to choose a smaller instance, when it’s far more likely that their instance will cease to exist, taking their identity, history and hosted communities with it?
It’s trust and uptime data so it seems. Pick the server you think is most trustworthy and will stand the longest.
Personally I’d really like to see more servers physically located in privacy and free-speech friendly places like Switzerland and Iceland (for example). I’m not sure why you’d want to have your social media hosted anywhere else.
Recommend:
Avoid:
- Lemmy.ml (Tankie fascist koolaid. Unless you enjoy being gaslit and manipulated similar to Trump and his fascist thugs, this should be avoided like the bubonic plague)
- Lemmy.world (sorry guys but seriously please reconsider accepting literally everyone for users; it’s crazy how much spam and nonsense is coming from your instance)
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You may disagree with communists, but we are by no means fascists. Fascism is inherently tied to protecting private property and capitalism, communists oppose that and seek to collectivize production and distribution.
Tankies aren’t really communists if you actively defend Putin, Iran and modern-day Russia
hexbear, lemmygrad as well. hexbear make themselves sound"cute" to hopefully trick people into engaging in thier instance, when in fact they are tankies.
Hexbear is openly communist, it doesn’t “try to sound cute to trick people.” That’s genuinely the community, tons of queer communists.
Fyi, you might to clarify that new users should avoid hexbear and lemmygrad.
If someone only skims through the comments, yours can read as an endorsement, especially since the user you replied to had endorsements at the top of their comment
If people are communists, I see no reason why they should avoid the communist instances. If you don’t like communists, wouldn’t you rather they be in instances you’re defederated with or can easily block? People can decide for themselves if they want to stay or not after checking an instance.
Of course, another user of lemmy.ml that can’t figure out the difference between tankies and communists. Why am I not surprised.
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for communists, it’s a strawman that essentially says that the Red Scare was correct, but that that’s a good thing.
I think I have a fairly understandable point of view, as I’m not just a communist online but actually do political activism in real life as a communist. Not as much as I’d like, but that’s something I’m working on.
I’ve seen communists of every denomination get called tankies. I’ve seen progressive liberals get called tankies by zionists for supporting Palestine. I’ve seen anarchists get called tankies by liberals for saying the Uighur genocide is not real. I’m pretty sure I once saw a conservative get called a tankie by other conservatives for not being far right enough, but I can’t say I remember where.
My point is, it’s really not helpful to act like the word “tankie” actually has some agreed-upon meaning. If you’re generally on the left, some group of people out there will consider you a tankie. I guarantee that, it’s just a matter of waiting and seeing.
If you want to say that there are communists who are authoritarian and there are communists who aren’t say that instead, and we can have another conversation.
I mainly dislike lemmy.world because it’s Americans owning the place like usual.
Ironically LW is run by a European team (the top admin is Dutch), but still communities like [email protected] are only for US news…
Just a warning: Piefed has a lot of shady built in hidden karma. Like you posting “this” or a gif only detracts from your karma. They also block you from downvoting if you downvote more than you upvote. It’s not really free speech at all.
For someone entirely new to this, please ELI5 why it matters?
Entirely at random I signed up at feddit.uk
Does it mean I’m walled off from specific content? Am I in a dead part of the fediverse? And how do I change if I am.
Okay, so it matters for a few reasons.
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Instances have different rules. So you can banned by your own instances local admins for things you might not get banned for on other instances.
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If you wanted to make your own community, you’d automatically be hosting it on feddit.uk, so that matters to a degree when it comes to the local culture there.
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Instances have their own blocklists. So your instance might be blocking (defederating) another instance that has a lot of users. Or it might just as likely be blocked by another instance. This isn’t the case for feddit.uk, which maintains wide federation.
Feddit.uk specifically is a UK based lemmy. If you look up the local communities, you can see that is the geographical/cultural focus.
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It doesn’t. Pick whatever instance and if another catches your eye make an account there as well. You don’t have to limit yourself to one account on one instance. I started on feddit.de, then lemm.ee now hexbear and use this account to see some posts I wouldn’t from hexbear since they have more of a safe space mentality than this instance
Well, it depends on what they want. There are different platforms in the fediverse that work very differently. Mastodon and Lemmy/PieFed can interact with each other, but it’s always painful. For Lemmy/PieFed I’d recommend they look for an instance that has a local feed that fits their interests. Ideally an instance that is federated with most large instances, otherwise it gets a little too boring.
Hexbear, pretty chill community that is overtly pro-LGBTQ and inclusive of all kinds of leftists.
booo tankie bullshit
If I wanted to argue with tankies I’d just go back to Twitter
@RalphFurley @mathemachristian how though? It’s not like there’s anyone but bots there
As in Hexbear or Twitter? I don’t think there’s a lot of bots active on Hexbear. I think we have 3 total? There’s the Amber bot, the Volcel Police bot, and the one that replies to comments with twitter, youtube, and reddit links with alternative frontends.
Rude
😂
I think the best thing is to choose one and hang around and if you like where you land then go forward but once you learn how to look them over and what makes them different then evaluate and decide on one and make a new account that becomes your main.
I was wondering why we suddenly had so many astroturfers, shills and bots creeping in and fucking up all the conversations. It used to just be dumb but earnest tankies, now we got all kinds up in this bitch.
I don’t know which ones are bots. I assume nothing is a bot. I don’t know about any bots. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one. Are you a bot? How do I know?
You’re going about it wrong, assume everyone is a bot, because it’s very, very hard to tell now. You cannot tell if I’m a bot.
The best tell is honestly if someone makes a stupid argument, because there are more bots than people making stupid arguments against objective reality and basic human empathy and community and progressive politics, or making radical and dumb far-left calls for revolution, violence or demanding recognition for some obscure and controversial marginalized group to the exclusion of everyone and everything else.
If you understand what they’re trying to do with bot armies and shills working to move culture, you can recognize it a lot easier.
There are also no small number of people who have read these stupid arguments and have unknowingly sided with a bot because it sounds “inclusive” or like proper progressive stances, but haven’t used critical thought. I count them as bots also.
if I assumed everyone was a bot, I wouldn’t be here talking. it would be a waste of my goddamn time. it would be boring
if I assume that everyone with stupid political views was a bot, then I’d just be an idiot
I’m glad I can use reasoning and deduction to actually figure things out or I would be equally stuck in a black-and-white false dichotomy.
For example, I assumed you’re a bot immediately, then I made a small effort and checked for clues, and found the first mod action performed against you on lemmy was a comment removed for asking about microwaving your balls, which tells me you’re likely a human. But I also know in relatively short time even those clues will be meaningless as tactics get more and more sophisticated. It’s just like always being on guard when you go outside. You can be on guard for danger without always being anxious or paranoid.
See? it’s not so hard.
This is ridiculous. You really can’t assume anyone “making radical and dumb far-left calls for revolution” is a bot. By this rule every communist is a bot. You’re dismissing very reasonable responses to the state of the world, in which multiple genocides are taking place and it’s been exposed that various heads of states and billionaires are pedophiles and have been conspiring together for years. If anything, I’m sure a lot of reasonable people could just as easily say that anyone who wants to just vote away the problems is a bot. Why is that position inherently better than revolution?
Also, what are the “obscure and controversial marginalized groups”? Trans people? The disabled?
Ah, another victim of the chaos, flailing and directing energy at an entire narrative spun by people deliberately having dedicated time and energy to making you specifically feel outraged at people who are your ally, filling all the blanks with your worst case fantasies and the lovely opportunity to police your own side.
Get off the internet. https://www.progressivevictory.win/ has people you can support and actually get off your ass and help for local representation and leadership. Nobody is coming. Nobody is saving us. There will be no revolution. Rebuild community and drop the rage.
If the unpopular voices of a random person on the internet are too worrisome and problematic for you to focus on what matters, you’re no good to any of us. I won’t see a reply, I don’t have the energy to deal with .ml’ers right now.
Ah, another victim of the chaos, flailing and directing energy at an entire narrative spun by people deliberately having dedicated time and energy to making you specifically feel outraged at people who are your ally, filling all the blanks with your worst case fantasies and the lovely opportunity to police your own side
Why do you Reddit losers always right like this learned to talk solely from watching anime and Joss Whedon films?
specifically feel outraged at people who are your ally,
Not sure if you understand what my politics are if you say that sentence then link me that org. Blackwater mercs who aren’t repentant at all about all the murder they’ve committed in Iraq are not my allies. The people they killed were my allies, and their living families are the people I care about 100000x more than people like Graham Platner.
Nobody is coming. Nobody is saving us. There will be no revolution.
Ok, then I guess we’ll all just die and boil the planet then. Cool worldview you have there.
Oh, by the way, I’m Puerto Rican and your country doesn’t let me have a say in the federal government nor even our own government’s budget. So your vote-shaming means nothing to me.
Corpo trash can’t stand wrongthink
Huh well I wonder why making your space inhospitable for leftists would attract astroturfers and shills?
Thank you, I wish to be further educated by .ml users on lefty takes such as how Iran mass shooting their citizens protesting in the face is actually good, or how Russia has a god-given right to invade their neighbors, I’ve not heard that enough!
Where should I subscribe to the “anyone anti-West is ontologically GOOD” newsletter?
Is anyone actually saying those things or are you exaggerating the positions of leftists who wouldn’t want Western imperialist powers to be able to topple foreign governments?
This you, defending and downplaying Russias invasion with your week old account?
Get your sealioning bad faith ass back to hexbear 🤡
Yes, that is me defending Russia’s invasion. And as you can see, my argument there isn’t that Russia has a right to do it, the argument is that I think NATO is a tool of US hegemony and Russia is doing my work for me by fighting NATO. See how that’s different from what you wrote? Is any of what I’ve said bad faith, or was I exactly right when I said you were exaggerating (or in this case just completely misrepresenting) what leftists say?
Hahahaha , ohhhhh, you personally didn’t use the quote “god-given”, gee, thats me told XD
Your clownery is literally why hexbear is defederated from a massive chunk of the fediverse while .ml isn’t. It’s like talking to a lefty Ben Shapiro who insists on following into the next room after we leave.
It’s not about what specific words you used. Read my previous comment again, I didn’t even quote the “god given” part.
The issue is you fundamentally misunderstood why some leftists aren’t pro-Ukraine. It’s really not about what Russia has or doesn’t have to right to do. That’s misrepresenting our point.
This is like if a pro-life person said that pro-choice people deliberately want to murder children; you’re imposing a certain framework and a set of assumptions that makes your opponents look bad when that’s not what they’re saying. If you do this consistently, you can just shutter out debate entirely because you can ascribe incorrect or evil positions to your interlocutors until the cows come home.
If you can find an example of a leftist saying that Russia has a literal right to invade Ukraine, then we can talk about that. But that specific reason is, IMO at least, very flawed. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other reasons why someone could arrive at that conclusion.
On the topic of sealioning: I won’t deny that I’m sealioning because it’s pretty obvious that I am. I’ll just invite you and everybody who reads this thread to question whether sealioning is actually a bad thing to do in all situations. If there’s a community of people making racist comments and a Black person joins that community and politely responds to every person who says something racist, they are sealioning. If a woman joins a misogynistic group of men and politely corrects them every time they say something misogynistic, she’s sealioning. And the worst part is, in either of those situations, the minority definitely would be right to not be civil if they desire, but somehow this whole concept of “sealioning” exists to make you out to be a bad guy whether or not you’re polite. Like, seriously, I’d be well within my rights to be impolite to you right now for lying about what leftists believe, but I’m being polite instead and that actually becomes a point against me because it becomes “sealioning.”
So no, no one was actually saying “Iran mass shooting their citizens protesting in the face is actually good” or “Russia has a god-given right to invade their neighbors”
You were just lying.
Take your brain out of the box and use it, please. The people defending Russia’s invasion or Iran’s terror and maiming tactics against their protesters aren’t exclusively posting in spaces invisible to .ml users.
Further down the thread I spent 30 seconds and got receipts for that sealioning goofball defending Russia while acting clueless about .ml users defending Russia. When called out, they proceeded to shit their pants on semantics instead of engaging with the point.
I’m not going to feed the fediverse into a statistical model to prove what anyone with eyes can see, because bad-faith clowns don’t really deserve that effort.
So, once again, no, no one was actually saying “Iran mass shooting their citizens protesting in the face is actually good” or “Russia has a god-given right to invade their neighbors”
You were just lying.
When called out, they proceeded to shit their pants on semantics instead of engaging with the point.
Are you talking about the comments where they were making actual arguments and you are just spamming reaction images?
I’m not going to feed the fediverse into a statistical model to prove what anyone with eyes can see, because bad-faith clowns don’t really deserve that effort.
“I’m so obviously right that it’s bad faith of you to expect me to actually present evidence!”
Blahaj.zone we’re chill AF here
I don’t like that you can’t downvote, though.
Ah, well that would explain why Voyager kept giving errors every time I tried
OHHH THAT’S why Voyager gives me an error.
Sigh, these are the things rhat might drive people away from Lemmy and Piefed. Lemmy devs are tankies, Piefed devs are weirdly puritanical, and instances won’t tell you they don’t allow downvotes.
I’ve only been outside of Hexbear (where there also are no downvotes) for a week and I hate having downvotes. Instead of people replying to something they disagree with with evidence and counterarguments, people just downvote and move on. They really shouldn’t be used to downvote comments people disagree with (because that just promotes groupthink), ideally they’d just be used to downvote spam and low effort stuff; but moderators can take care of that, so what’s the point?
I prefer that the community have some say in deciding what comments are objectionable rather than relying on mods for every little thing.
If something is objectional you should say something about it, it’s one thing for bots and spam, but if you see someone posting an unforced error, you should tell them they’re wrong
not to invoke leddit, but you should be able to communicate with other human beings
Okay, so the community should be able to reply to the objectionable comments with the reasons why they think they’re objectionable. All downvotes do is let people shut down the conversation without even thinking.
Sometimes comments are poor without being worthy of a conversation about it. The commenter can always ask if they see downvotes and are confused as to why.
In that situation those low value comments that aren’t explicitly rulebreaking just proceed to get no upvotes and are functionally the same as a comment that got downvoted. So there isn’t really any value gained from having downvotes in this scenario, while they provide negative value in other scenarios.
To be clear, one comment having 1-2 upvotes and a reply to it having a dozen or more upvotes gets that across just fine, it just requires the reply in the first place.
Wait what that’s not a thing on blahaj??
Nor on Hexbear, or a few other large instances. In the case of Hexbear and Blahaj, it’s to protect queer users from being unfairly downvoted, as well as to encourage discussion over silent downvoting.
Exactly. I look at downvotes on articles as a kind of fact curator. If an article has 50/50, you know it’s gotta be wrong.
People also just downvote stuff they disagree with. If you use the downvotes on a post or comment as the indicator of whether it’s correct or not you’ll just end up believing only the things the majority of the users believe are true, instead of using evidence or any kind of facts.
9 day old account on ml. Stop trolling
One day this account will be 2 years old and its posts will be recognized for their greatness. But until then, it’ll just be a sockpuppet troll account. Very sad.
Discussion of an article’s accuracy is what the comments are for; downvotes are a pretty bad indicator of this as they’re largely used to indicate agreement with the post’s title (which may include disagreeing with it’s accuracy, message, vibe, spelling, etc.)
I really wish Blahaj was federated with Hexbear :(
Are you though? Not as enlightened as you may think.
Are you high?
Moderation should be honest, and without a clear set of rules with an honest way to check it, the fediverse won’t displace the big social medias that themselves lose users because of dishonest moderation.
What the fuck are you on about?
This feels like you’re vagueposting about something entirely unrelated.
Nobody knows wtf you’re talking about mate. You just sound unhinged.
Nobody gives a shit what you, or any of your other bodies, thinks, mate.
Ah, okay, you’re unhinged. Have a good day. Blocked
How is .blahaj.zone’s moderation dishonest?
Responding to someone saying ‘you’re not as enlightened as you think’ with some drug sitgmatisation, on point
come down from your ivory tower bud
you have never said why it’s not as they claim. How did blahaj lemmy hurt you?
As far as I understand, lemmy instances are sort of a community with communities inside. It seems that each isntance has their own like minded userbase. .world has basich mix of everyone due to popularity, .ml holds strong beliefs politically, blahaj.zone is more progressive in gender identity, piefed.social is more mainstream decentralized instance. And of course there are more I didn’t mention.
I am on dbzer0 because I am into selfhosting and sailing the seas. It fits me well. Tied to one instance doesn’t stop me from engaging on other instances except the ones I blacklisted.
Check the instances and their descriptions and find something that fits you.
In addition to being a themed community of communities, instances also have different federation/defederation policy. dbzer0 is defederated from Lemmygrad.ml, for example, while being federated with Hexbear.net. There’s also the differences on how upvoting and downvoting is treated among instances, with some disabling downvotes and some disabling voting altogether.
db0 and sh. are my viiiibbbbbee
db0 wants to ban feddit communities because they believe that mods not letting death threats pass there in moderation passes as zionism.
This is the kind of statement that is so far at the extremes of both vague and unhinged that it’s not so much that I don’t believe you as that I would need to see some kind of evidence of multiple specific and unambiguous incidents. TLDR; you can’t just say that kinda thing with 0 receipts.
I don’t know how to get a generic link to a post so it opens on your instance. But the proof they’re tying to use is laughable. Source: https://feddit.org/post/25634446
I honestly can’t tell if this is just my ADHD or if this is just an overly dense philosophical argument that in true internet fashion has just gotten completely out of hand. There’s no damn good reason for anyone who will never physically set foot in any of these places to have opinions on this topic of that complexity or intensity.
Like my opinion on the topic is mostly that my country should definitely stop giving Israel weapons and probably send the Palestinians some food water and medical supplies. Other than that I’m not personally going to impose my opinions overtop those of people who actually live there.
The answer to imperialism isn’t trying to align your views with whichever side you’ve decided is the most right then loudly philosophizing about it from thousands of miles away. It’s the kind of thing you can’t undo, you can only stop doing it. The answer to imperialism is to shut the fuck up and stop meddling. Now the internet as a whole isn’t great at that (especially not the shutting up part), and I don’t think I’ll ever find a space that’s free of it. So I’m just gonna go with the place that seems as agnostic on the most issues as possible and try not to overthink shit that’s, in the end, none of my damn business.
Honestly I have my own political beliefs about the attrocities committed by Israel, but that’s not the issue here. I think it harms the fediverse in cases like this when the choice of their members gets restricted by universally banning these communities on your instance. This vote is also framed in a certain way and anything but democratic in that sense. Theres not a pro and con argument list or a neutral statement. The db0 admin just doesn’t like the way feddit mods moderate so he framed it in a way that legitimizes him banning these communities. But honestly this is not worth my god damn time. I only know if I was on db0 I’d move to another instance
db0 is also pro-GenAI, which seems unfortunate to me.
You can do what I do and just block the genAI art comms.
No harm, no foul, I just am not interested in the content.
While I can’t say for certain, I would strongly suspect that a lot of the people in those comms are self hosting their LLMs/Image generators, if that makes you feel any better.
But uh, there are a variety of nuanced stances on LLMs and such, amongst the other m@teys I’ve talked with.
Its… not like we’re all super duper no holds barred put AI in everything advocates.
A lot of us are… quite a lot closer to ‘Butlerian Jihad NOW’, lol.
At the risk of starting an argument (sorry)… I see any use of GenAI as support and endorsement of the technology, and I see the technology as a systemic attack on creative work by real people. It’s stealing the results of hard work of people to produce derivative work with the intent of replacing those same people. Thus, while self-hosting does remove some concerns related to big corporations, I think it still empowers them by supporting the tech they deal in.
I do block dedicated GenAI communities, but it’s more widespread than that, showing up in unrelated comms, being used to generate community icons and banners.
And of course an instance isn’t homogenous with regard to its users, and I don’t condemn people for using db0, but IIRC the host of db0 is supportive of GenAI, which is what I primarily referred to, and what steers the direction the instance is taking.
I see any use of GenAI as support and endorsement of the technology, and I see the technology as a systemic attack on creative work by real people.
I mean personally, I do as well.
But… it’s Pandora’s box.
You can’t uninvent it, basically.
We could theoretically limit or heavily regulate its further development, but again realistically, with how much money and power tech corporations have, how much influence they have over lawmakers…
… unless you’re gonna go find an ‘AI’ datacenter and put salt or sulfuric acid or something into the cooling loops, no you probably can’t really do much to effectively impede it.
I do block dedicated GenAI communities, but it’s more widespread than that, showing up in unrelated comms, being used to generate community icons and banners.
I’ve also seen a bit of this, and I also find it annoying… though 99% of the time that I see something like this, its some kind of like cryptobro, when lambo, diamond hands, type person.
I don’t know that it like, stems or comes from GenAI comms on db0.
but IIRC the host of db0 is supportive of GenAI, which is what I primarily referred to, and what steers the direction the instance is taking.
Well I don’t know precisely what db0’s (the admin) exact stance on GenAI is, but I do know that db0 the instance and community has a highly involved and active goverance model for instance rules and associations. There are fairly often major discussions and votes on a good deal of issues… as opposed to many other instances that basically just come down to the whims of the admin + a clique of powermods.
db0 themself has done more than any other instance admin I am aware of to make it so that if the community itself opposes their own personal opinion, they’ll adopt the community’s opinion and simply be an executor/facilitator of it.
I’ve also seen a bit of this, and I also find it annoying… though 99% of the time that I see something like this, its some kind of like cryptobro, when lambo, diamond hands, type person.
I’m pretty sure some of the most popular communities on db0 use GenAI art for banner and icon - checking now, the banner art for piracy, ADHD memes, anarchism, yepowertrippingbastards appear to be GenAI (admittedly fewer than I expected), and the icon for the instance itself is suspicious.
Unfortunately though, that’s also not a problem exclusive to db0, and with the nature of federation it’s kinda inescapable when most people don’t care, unless I want to lock myself to niche communities.
I will also note, I believe db0 is hosting or participating in some kind of distributed GenAI network called The Horde, so it’s not just individual community members’ opinions, it’s an organizational endorsement of GenAI.
A crowdsourced distributed cluster of image generation workers and text generation workers for generating AI media.
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Yep, so its a bunch of volunteers, running their own local hardware, but also linking it together, to provide a kind of mutual usage network for generating images.
And yep, db0 themself is pretty involved in this.
… but you can’t singly host a distributed network.
You can participate in it, architect it, but… the whole concept is that it is distributed, localized.
You know, like Lemmy, as opposed to Reddit or BlueSky, which are centralized.
So… this is what I met by more nuanced stances on LLMs/Neuralnet image generation.
More or less, this is like the rules that govern something like a private torrent tracker and network, but applied to GenAI.
So its an alternative way of providing distributed GenAI capabilities to those who contribute to other people also being able to have those capabilities.
As opposed to the essentially totally black box governance model of a random person getting an API token for a corporate AI network, that has massive negative externalities in that those are run on giant server farms that do things like massively run up local/regional power and water usage/costs, where you can safely presume the corpo networks are entirely harvesting all the data you send in to them.
You can be I guess 100% against the entire concept of GenAI, but see my previous point of it’s Pandora’s Box, you can’t uninvent it, its not going to go away because you don’t like it and think its bad.
… and to be clear, there are a plethora of valid reasons to be critical of it, legitimate problems.
But, a more practical and effectice way to address those things is to attempt to provide an alternate, more equitable, more transparent paradigm for its use.
But, a more practical and effectice way to address those things is to attempt to provide an alternate, more equitable, more transparent paradigm for its use.
Yeah, the issue is that I simply disagree, and consider the usage of models trained on data obtained without permission to be immoral, and thus unless the model is trained entirely on data supplied with consent (which is supposedly implausible), and thus people facilitating and/or promoting the usage of such to be… ethically unaligned me, and thus I don’t want to associate with them
All that said, I also don’t want to argue or try to convince you here, and want to thank you for being civil in the discussion
I live in the PNW. I picked an instance in the PNW. Sometimes I see local news, and often I read comments from people within a few hour drive. It’s nice to have a small, local community here, while still having access to the rest of the world together. So I guess recommend picking the largest instance in your region if you don’t have any other preferences.
The one I am on is from that area, even though I’m in the upper midwest. I just picked it because they don’t block anything, didn’t defederate any communities or anything. Hands off, fast enough, here to stay they say.
I had no idea this was a local instance. Neat!
