This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It’s about how the admins informed their users.
A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn’t very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.
Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to [email protected]. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.
I don’t agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn’t really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).
Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.
Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.
This is disappointing because thus far, I have been really happy with the communication and transparency of lemmy.world. But with this change, I will unfortunately not see announcements anymore.
Lemmy.world announces blocking communities via Discord
I can’t even verify if this was posted on their site.
- Discord is currently up. It’s usually up.
- https://lemmy.world/ is currently down. (Cloudflare - bad gateway.) It’s often down.
It would definitely make more sense to post the announcements on Lemmy rather than another discord server.
IMHO, Rather than dividing the stream of new information it would be better to focus on one platform.
Personally I dislike discord as the conversations there are too fast for me.
Personally I dislike discord as the conversations there are too fast for me.
Same. I never really liked how it’s used for discussion purposes because the conversation format doesn’t work there, especially if tons of people are chatting at the same time.
I mean, I do get it to some extent.
As an admin myself, every time I make a post on lemmy aimed at members of my instance, it gets drowned out by folk from other instances that want to offer their thoughts and opinions.
That being said, Discord is not the answer to that problem…
What is the problem with getting down votes ? Visibility? I thought Lemmy supported pinned posts.
I’m not sure I follow. Where do downvotes come in to it?
I misread drowned as downvoted. 🤣
They do. Personally, I think it makes the most sense, in regards to instance news like this, to put a pinned and locked post on the actual platform you’re talking about, and then put a discord or matrix or whatever off-site link in the body of the post for those who wish to discuss. That’s what a lemmy.zip admin did recently, and I think it worked well.
If the intention is to have an internal, instance-only post, I believe such a thing could be enforced with an automoderator bot. I had a lot of success throwing the Lemmy API into an AI and generating my own moderator bot from that. Could work for you.
That’s quite a good idea. Not the perfect solution, but better than anything I’m currently using
I had an idea about this today but I don’t know enough about Lemmy to confirm it. Thought I’d run it by you just in case.
Could you create a post and lock it normally, then directly edit the postgres row to unlock the post? I’m wondering if this would federate the lock but not federate your unlock causing all outside users to see a lock and all internal users see an unlocked post.
Possible edge case: users who subscribe to the community after the unlock will receive the initial data dump of posts and this will include the post in its current unlocked state.
However, this would be an easy way to block the majority commenting on a post while maintaining a seemless experience for your internal users.
Now that is an interesting idea! Will have to give that a try
You mean just like a specific recent post on our main about defederating another instance being drowned out by members of said instance :)
“I said beetlejuice three times and now he’s here ruining my life!”
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Yeah I mean, LW using discord instead of a FOSS option is not a good look…
Got banned recently from their Discord server by [I’m assuming] me calling out their announcement/decision a clownery (which it actually is, because why make a announcement community when you’re not informing your userbase), ngl it’s mildly infuritating…
What even is not a good look is I didn’t really receive a notice that I got banned there…
Edit: phrasing
I’m assuming the reason would’ve been trolling. Considering the bottom of this is all you did and didn’t put a statement like “I don’t agree with this channel, I think it’s uncalled for” etc etc. although even that I would put into [email protected]
Just tagged a channel and said clownery with no activity in the discord really. Just wanted to add the additional context here and figured a SS would help too.
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What makes you think it’s “just to read announcement”. The initial post didn’t even mention announcements, nor was it the purpose of the discord. Yet that’s all you can seem to hold on to. It’s already been stated there was miscommunication on one announcement and that was that.
Do you see the issue now or do you need help?
This doesn’t even make sense because it appears you didn’t even read the original discord post or even have an understanding about it.
A) It’s not a requirement to join discord, and never was made to be.
B) Discord is of itself a community communication platform for IM.
C) Millions of people actively use discord, it’s a popular platform and easier then others like Matrix. If it was something I didn’t already use, I would’ve never joined.
Your message is filled with incorrect assumptions and it appears your unwilling to go find the answers that are even on the same page as these comments. It’s very surprising with the internet nowadays and people can’t even seem to find information that is right in front of them, yet they act like they already have the facts.
trolling
no activity in the discord really
Why would I be active in the DC when its supposedly purpose was announcements about the site and whenever this site is down? Why would you assume/expect people join in a DC server to interact?
Why would I be active in the DC when its supposedly purpose was announcements about the site and whenever this site is down?
Could you please clarify your source, the discord post as OP mentioned doesn’t read that. Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. And if you looked around the main purpose isn’t focused around announcements. It seems there was miscommunication and it wasn’t posted to lemmy, mistakes happen.
“Why would you assume/expect people join in a DC server to interact?”
That is sort of the point of Discord as a instant message community platform.
I joined the discord because:
- The internal lemmy direct messages sucks.
- I already use discord anyways.
- It’s a great way to not spam unrelated comments. etc
Why did you join?
There is a lot of FOSS stuff communicating over twitter… Even The Linux Foundation has a twitter account.
But lemmy.world should primarily communicate via lemmy imo…
Even The Linux Foundation has a twitter
Because Linus Torvalds doesn’t care about the Free Software movement and user freedom. It’s why his kernel is still on GPL2.
But lemmy.world should primarily communicate via lemmy imo…
I find the same attitude holds for developers who like to hang out in real-time Matrix chat and don’t seem to use Lemmy itself very much and things like code blocks ruining greater-than and less-than slip right into release without much concern.
That’s where I’m at. Discord isn’t the issue for me, it’s them not using their own platform to communicate major announcements. At that point it’s like you’ve given up on your own platform.
Making announcements to somewhere you have to log in to see is the problem. You can’t see Discord chats unless You’re logged in.
Even having the Discord server is kind of weird in and of itself I thought, you’re using one social media platform to talk about your own Social media platform. I use Discord, so it’s whatever, but wouldn’t it make sense to keep it within the Fediverse and put a “backup” communication channel on some other instance/service like Mastodon? I guess it helps in situations where lemmy.world goes down. I’ve just found myself liking Discord less and less when companies use it to make “official” announcements and end up leaving alot of people in the dark, since Discord doesn’t seem terribly user-friendly for storing long-term information.
You can find it if you know where to look and you have a dedicated announcements channel, I just don’t particularly like the format myself personally. I think my biggest problem with it is that the notification settings are so bad by default that it always feels like I’m getting inundated with notifications as soon as I join a server, so I just mute everything on a channel. I only want personal communications through Discord, I don’t particularly care to see “official” communications coming out of it.
I mean, I can see it if it was used as a backup, but yeah, using it as a primary way of communicating with people is kind of weird.
This gives out the impression they don’t care about lemmy being open source and decentralized but rather they are at it for a piece of the cake
By running a server on donations and barely breaking even? I’m not sure I’m following the logic here, this isn’t a corporate controlled website beholden to board members and advertisers
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So the guy that runs lemmy world for free without ads as a hobby with a group of volunteers are all narcissists because… they use discord? This sounds like a pretty incredible leap
Reddit mods also work for free as volunteers. Don’t underestimate internet popularity and power over communities, not so many days ago there were stories about mastodon instances admins getting invited for talks at meta. Lemmy is an open source and decentralized alternative to reddit, using discord for announcements misses the whole point
And what is the point of that? Providing you with free servers and labor for their hobby? I think you all really need to get a grip, its a website not a government.
Very reddit of them?
Coins incoming! :)
Just kidding. So much drama, needs some comic relief and this is all I had.
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Fuck discord, communicate on platform you fucks
I agree with your opinion on Discord but dude, don’t call volunteers who run a Lemmy instance that way. What’s wrong with you?
Don’t just ban communities over a personal huff then?? And turning comments off? Come on.
Don’t just ban communities over a personal huff then?? And turning comments off? Come on.
I did not ban any community. Why are replying to me? I don’t understand.
They could have gotten feedback if the comments were not turned off. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt there’s a good reason to not have comments on for that post but that and using Discord is two orange flags.
This makes no sense to me. Did they provide a reason for choosing Discord of all things? What was wrong with making announcements on Lemmy? Why wouldn’t they choose to make announcements in another federated format in addition and not instead of lemmy? Like, I’m not super tech savvy but I’m sure they could set up an RSS-like feed to send out alerts? IDK
With my very limited understanding of it, I believe Discord was something mostly for “as we are down so much, you can get updates here if we are down”.
I believe Discord was something mostly for “as we are down so much, you can get updates here if we are down”.
@woelkchen Hi, I am on holiday so not sure what the question is about exactly, but announcements are done on Lemmy and when we’re down you could check the status page. Discord is not for that.
At this point they should just make a new instance for their announcements lol
Maybe they wanted something off Lemmy so that the attackers can’t target both the main and the backup, with the same system.
Isn’t this where Mastodon.world kind of comes into play? Off Lemmy but still a federated service, can even pop whatever LemmyWorld status account there in to one’s RSS readers or whatever.
But still, why pick a proprietary platform?
I guess cause it is entirely separate from Lemmy, so can act as a different option.
Also it’s real time posting ( like a chat, not a post) and many people already have it.
As a secondary, it’s not a bad choice.
What would you recommend?
Another Lemmy instance would also get ddosed
Yeah, this is where I am. I’m a .world person, and I honestly think the admins have been doing a good job generally. I’m not a real Discord person, but I joined theirs after it was recommended a few times. Like you, I think using it as a backup because of the ddos attacks taking them down so much is reasonable, but they should use c/announcements as the primary communication venue. Note that there are a number of people on it who really seem to be enjoying the real time chat, and some even using the voice chat option, so it seems to be serving some people, at least.
I also think they made a potentially understandable mistake on blocking these communities, which I said at length in that thread. I’m inclined to think one issue with the overall Lemmy paradigm is that we have a lot of hobbiests as admins - people who may not have much experience with that, who don’t have legal teams, and who might be gun shy about any potential litigation. We can’t expect any person who decides to run a Lemmy instance on their laptop to have much feel for what content they’re liable for and what’s completely safe, so stuff in the grey area is going to make some people squeamish.
Matrix
I’ve found there is a culture within Lemmy developers and long-time operators to discuss in Discord or Matrix chat instead of “eating their own dogfood” and using Lemmy itself to openly discuss Lemmy technical and project issues. These chat services are legendary for keeping things away from search engines and newcomers getting up to speed. Lemmy itself isn’t nearly as search-engine friendly as Reddit was traditionally, it seems like feedback needs to be given as to how important it is to keep things about Lemmy in the eyes of those who actually use Lemmy…
I think Discord is great, as long as you account for its shortcomings:
- It should be treated as ephemeral - up to the point of “the service could completely shut down tomorrow”
- It should not be treated as fully private or secure
I love how snappy it is (I never have to wait minutes for messages to load, as I do in Matrix), and also how there are a ton of Lemmy users who have Discord open in the background anyway. While I wouldn’t ever propose moving something like the main Lemmy communication channels to Discord, I do think it’s much easier to have IMs with regular Lemmy users on Discord than it is to do so on Matrix (as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed).
By the way, lemm.ee also has a Discord server. It’s only treated as a secondary channel, all announcements are posted in our meta community on Lemmy itself, and just linked to from Discord, but it’s still nice to have IMO.
And for those that don’t know (most of you probably do), this (sunarus) is the main/head/founding admin of lemm.ee (and, last I checked, a substantial contributor to the lemmy source code too).
(and, last I checked, a substantial contributor to the lemmy source code too).
I think not a substantial contributor yet, but I hope to become one eventually 😃
The issue people are having is the announcement was made exclusively in lemmy.worlds discord server. Beehaw has a discord server as well, but they relay announcements to there, not from there usually
as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed
I understand your point, but by that logic, we should use Reddit rather than Lemmy, as most users are there. It’s not only about ease of use, it’s about being sure users won’t be abused. Discord is still in its acquisition phase, but you can be sure enshitification will come next.
I like discord as a communication platform (as long as you keep the spying in mind) as the devs truly believe in their product and as such have created something truly amazing. It will be a sad day when the enshitification phase begins. It somehow hasn’t yet which is very shocking in all honesty. Guess that nitro revenue still more than makes up for the dev and hosting costs.
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The problem at hand is not about the usability (UI/UX, performance, etc.) of Discord but rather it’s private, closed source for-profit existence being used as a “support” channel for a free and open (source, platform, communication) environment.
I agree with you in principle, but on a pragmatic level, it’s very hard to disconnect UI/UX/performance from everything else. I think it’s OK to acknowledge that Discord has a weakness when it comes to not being OSS, but a strength when it comes to UX, and I also think it’s OK to take advantage of that strength for users that want to do so.
Just to be fully clear, I am never planning to make Discord the main communication channel for lemm.ee announcements, nor to make users feel like it’s in any way necessary for them to use Discord just for lemm.ee communications. I am also active on Matrix constantly, and read most of what happens in the Lemmy Matrix channels. Any user that wishes to reach me over Matrix can do so.
Just to be fully clear, I am never planning to make Discord the main communication channel for lemm.ee announcements, nor to make users feel like it’s in any way necessary for them to use Discord just for lemm.ee communications.
Thank you! Not being a fan of discord aside, I believe announcements of a platform shoud be done on the platform itself, with the only exception being uptime/downtime status pages (obviously).
This whole situation is rubbing me the wrong way. I can understand the motives behind defederating even if I don’t agree but it’s been a day and the only announcement is still on Discord. Not ideal.
