Critical support for the Lemmy world peeps in their fight against pro-intellectual property nerds

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Neat! Deeply ineffective communication! Starting to feel more like reddit by the day!
- There was a short time at the beginning of the user influx on Lemmy were it actually felt friendly. Now everyone starts getting mad again. I think it’s in part because the critical mass of edgelords and otherwise hateful people has been reached. And it’s contagious or something.
  
  It's honestly hilarious every time someone tells me to go back to Reddit
- Yeah, people are starting to catch on that federation for a Reddit style platform is not a good idea. Who knew it was actually deeply deeply flawed and poorly thought out?
  
  What is the best alternative in your opinion?
  
  A new federated platform that is self-run, hosts your identity only and allows you to interact from websites from your own app on your own phone or computer, to start. None of this signing up 500 trillion accounts for each and every website garbage.
  No more Lemmy instances hosting content from other servers. The content should be downloaded from the server you're trying to interact with to the user's system, and only what little content the user chooses to see, and is deleted like a cache as soon as the user closes it out.
  No more fucking downvoting 😠
  One account, one unique cryptographic identifier or ID tied to machines so people can't make alt accounts or botnets
  There's a LOT Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole needs to fix
  
  I agree with most of this, although I think that downvotes are an important part of platforms like these. They allow shit takes to get their visibility reduced.
  
  That's the whole problem. No one's posts should be affected by the opinions of others and the fact that they are incentivizes all of the problems we are facing. People are making alts, brigadeering and building botnets to get around being downvoted and that breaks the system.
  Downvotes are not legitimate in any way at all except that they make people feel better and we can't build a future based on such auspices.
  
  The main issue is this:
  Say 1,000 people are arguing over an issue with 10 different sides, on a platform where you can upvote as many comments as you want. 250 people agree with one side, and the other nine sides have no more than 150 people in agreement. In this case, the comment arguing this side would have 250 points.
  Now, in a system without downvotes, this would rise to the top. However, say all 750 other people disagree with the side and can downvote it. In this case it would have -500 points. Let's also say that the 250 people in agreement with this point also downvote all the other comments that disagree with them (in true Reddit fashion). The second most popular opinion would be sitting at -100 points. Basically, downvotes allow massively unpopular opinions to be shoved to the bottom.
  Bots and brigading are significant problems that need attention on platforms such as these, but removing downvotes isn't the answer.
  
  That presumes downvotes represent honest disagreement, which we both know and I have proven they don't.
  Because now one asshole with 500 different alts across the fediverse can take any post he wants and massively downvote it, enforcing consequential action against opinions he doesn't like, and no one is the wiser.
  That's why we deal with the one having 250 upvotes, and give 500 upvotes to whoever disagrees with it, letting that opinion rise to the top instead.
  
  Again, this is why one account per person is the most important part of this system functioning. Bots, brigading, alts, etc. all undermine the way the system should work. In fact, they undermine an upvotes-only system too, since one person with 5,000 bot accounts can make anything look popular.
  
  Which is not possible because you can't guarantee one account per person, anyone can make as many alts as they want, specifically on other servers that can then inundate a post on a target one. That's why it's so problematic.
  In retrospect, federation itself is a terrible idea the way it's been implemented. I don't think the developers took the fact that humans are inherently evil into account.
  In fact, they undermine an upvotes-only system too, since one person with 5,000 bot accounts can make anything look popular.
  This also is true. 🤔 Allowing people to vote on other people's comments in general is so deeply problematic.
  
  Downvoted
  
  A new federated platform that is self-run, hosts your identity only and allows you to interact from websites from your own app on your own phone or computer, to start. None of this signing up 500 trillion accounts for each and every website garbage.
  But Lemmy can literally do this. I am doing it right now. I'm the only user on my instance.
  
  It's done in the most ass way possible and isn't really suited for being an app for one individual. We need one specifically made for like one person.
  
  How would the content get on the server?
  
  This guy would put it there

350 comments