Lemmy does not have basic features, to the point that one of the big instances is considering moving off lemmy.
I think we have a lot more following to do before we can lead with new features.
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Which instance, and which features do they feel are missing?
You've had answers from others but basically moderation tools are non-existent. When you report something, there's no way to pick to send to admins or community moderators, so if there's an issue with a community the moderators can just resolve reports before the admins see them.
There is no site-wide moderator role, so if you want someone able to take action when CSAM (etc) is posted on a remote community you have to make them admin and also give them access to approve accounts or change the name of the website, etc.
The only actions available are to temporarily or permanently ban a user. You can't restrict new users from posting 100 posts in the first 10 mins or anything like that.
There is not even a way to report a user. If someone makes an account on one instance and starts spamming on a different one, there is no way to report it to the user's instance admins. The user's instance admins are the only ones that can ban a spammer in a way that federates to other instances, so if you can't report it to them then each of the 1000+ instances needs to each ban them. (in reality, admins will normally message each other or post in a spam matrix channel, but the simple option to report a user should exist)
CSAM is especially bad in Lemmy. You can remove the post, but that doesn't delete the image file. You need the server admin to get the pict-rs token out and craft an HTTP request to the internal pict-rs server to delete a file by ID.
If course, you shouldn't delete CSAM if you live in places with mandatory reporting. On the other hand, keeping those files accessible is essentially hosting child porn. That means you'd better add some specific web server configuration to deny access, because copying the file out and then deleting it from the server would be super illegal.
As an end user, the upload problem is also present. If you've accidentally uploaded the wrong picture from your gallery (oops, uploaded nudes instead of a meme!), you'd better keep the deletion key that the API request returned (there is one single app that does this) or you'll never be able to delete the picture. If you've picked the wrong file and correct yourself before hitting the post button, your image will still be there!
The disconnect between deleting posts and deleting pictures is such a baffling design issue. I don't know why Lemmy doesn't have a private user-specific media gallery with delete buttons.
Beehaw. And effective moderation tools.
Not that instance, but Lemmy is missing a lot of moderation and federation tools. Right now you only have sledgehammers to deal with tiny nails, in regards to tooling.
Can do both. e.g lemmy had full text search for a long while before masto
That is such a basic feature that it should not even have to be mentioned.
I still miss text searching a community. Often I vaguely remember what I saw, how it was called and in which community, but this information is worthless with the current state of the search function.
As did Pleroma and several other fedi servers — that’s not really innovation, it’s something simple that Mastodon devs deliberately avoided implementing.
Lemmy is under constant attack by unknown malicious entities. However, all that is doing is accelerating Lemmy's evolution. What does not kill you, makes you stronger.
Who do you think these malicious entities are? My guess is Elon and Spez.
Scriptkiddies
My guess would be the suck and spez
As others have stated there’s some basic things that need to be addressed first and who knows if they will. I believe Kbin is in a potential unique position to get things right and drive innovation. There’s the one dev but others have offered to help and once things are more stable and mature it will get better. I actually disagree somewhat with Mastodon, if you look at its public roadmap it’s planning on taking measures that will have a significant impact, some of them are features longtime users have fought against. There’s plenty of growth to be had and innovation. I’m so excited on the future of the Fedi
Interesting. Where can I view this roadmap?
Here you go https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap
MAS-48 Quote posts
Oh wow, they gave in to the tweetheads ... mastodon is going to become a whole lot more toxic.
I don’t think so. That was their reasoning for not implementing Full-text search and Quotes yet other Fediverse platforms have had these features and I haven’t come across any reporting and or posts about these being used as tools for abuse.
Mastodon is the biggest service in the fediverse and attracts mostly people who use short-form communication (just like twitter). IIRC quotes were frowned upon and the creator of mastodon resisted their implementation for a long time because he saw it as major cause of the toxicity: talk about somebody without having them in the discussion. I agreed with that assessment, which is why I'm surprised it's being implemented now.
Probably people want the same features as on twitter and don't care what effect it will have.
What was your reasons for agreeing with that assessment? It wasn’t just used for negativity. All of these are tools and they can be misused. Having a social media account in general opens people up for harassment
I think what he said is correct:
Another feature that has been requested almost since the start, and which I keep rejecting is quoting messages. Coming back to my disclaimer, of course it’s impossible to prevent people from sharing screenshots or linking to public resources, but quoting messages is immediately actionable. It makes it a lot easier for people to immediately engage with the quoted content… and it usually doesn’t lead to anything good. When people use quotes to reply to other people, conversations become performative power plays. “Heed, my followers, how I dunk on this fool!” When you use the reply function, your message is broadcast only to people who happen to follow you both. It means one person’s follower count doesn’t play a massive role in the conversation. A quote, on the other hand, very often invites the followers to join in on the conversation, and whoever has got more of them ends up having the upper hand and massively stressing out the other person.
From github quoting a blog entry.
You can read the conversation there and most of what people who are against the feature said, I agree with. It encourages bad behavior, simplifies talking about somebody "behind their back", and just copies a feature used primarily to dogpile onto people the quoter disagrees with.
I have read it and I can understand but it doesn’t encourage bad behaviour. It’s a tool, it will be used how people decide to use it. I also believe most of the concerns are disingenuous as there’s plenty of abuse that has happened and still has happened on Mastodon. Have you and those that agreed advocated for the abolishment of PM? That is significantly worse than QTs and search. That’s the primary vector of harm. What’s worse is that it’s hidden. Black users have been harassed via PMs
It’s a tool, it will be used how people decide to use it.
That's like saying a gun is just a tool. I know it's hyperbole and it's done explicitly to bring the point across that a tool isn't just always a tool.
We don't see eye to eye on this 🤷
That’s nowhere near the same and disingenuous. A gun was made to cause damage, irrespective of the reason for sad damage. Thus it’s not the same. Quotes, full text search were not designed to cause damage. That is misuse. That’s fine, we can disagree. You neglected to respond about private mention though and I think that’s telling
I don't even know what a private mention is dude. But sure, it's telling.
It will if/when the userbase grows significantly. Look at the explosion of mobile apps the past few months. However, it ultimately depends on the lemmy devs, and how much time/effort they are willing to spend to drive innovation. The unfortunate reality is that commercialization and competition also drive innovation, and the fediverse is largely driven by passion and effort by people who have the capacity to do it without the expectation of financial gain.
It's weird that everyone keeps looking at this thru the eyes of capitalism. We don't need neck-break-speed feature updates, we don't need to appease our shareholders. If one platform grows on the Fediverse the others don't get "left in the dust".
We're not in competition, we are a community.
Not necessarily lemmy, but the fediverse will drive innovation in social media.
I see the fediverse as the next big evolution of social media (a return back to social networking again), and considering I wasn't not really that big into social media before, and I like talking to people more than talking at people, so I want to gamble on being an early adopter here and see if it pays off.