If you’ve never seen it, https://github.com/PeerConnect/peer-connect is a clever solution to p2p CDN stuff.

It’s not Bittorrent for images, but it’s still a shockingly elegant thing.

It’s probably a dead project, but I ran across it and went ‘why is this not how everything works’.

A vast majority of instance software will store all old remote non-media data (that could easily be re-fetched when needed) permanently, even if nobody has seen it in years.

Seriously, this is the most befuddling design decision. There’s no reason to cache that data more than like, maybe a week.

Maybe it’s because I’m a sysadmin background type and not a programmer, but the endless obsession that fedi-software has with caching everything at every stop along the route from the poster to the person reading the post is just the most weird thing to me.

We all knew it was possible

I wouldn’t bet on that, which is why I mentioned moderated groups at all. As you said, they’re rare and even if you used usenet 20 or 25 or 30 years ago, the odds that you’d have ever seen one was shockingly low.

So even ex-usenet users might not have a clue that there was a method for doing that (let alone any of the people who aren’t that old), which is why I brought it up.

Riker, his beard shaved.

You forgot both ‘Don’t send too much email’ and ‘Fail to send enough email’ as qualifiers, as well.

Which I think is the big thing that hits more people than anything else, since ‘too much traffic’ and ‘not enough traffic’ are not defined and so you can easily be caught by one, then the other, then end up in purgatory.

(This is mostly a Microsoft problem rather than a Google problem, but still.)

Off the top of my head: Windsquid, Rockwhale, Waterclam.

convincing ourselves that the fediverse is actually very simple

There’s a difference between ‘technically simple’ and ‘understandable UX’.

Your mom doesn’t need to know how ActivityPub works or the intricacies of federation. She just needs to know to log in and go to c/cutecats.

The early-adopter curse here is causing way too much technobabble to be involved in descriptions that just confuse people, and it’s technical aspects that the nerd cohort here is fascinated by, but uh, nobody else is.

The real leap will be to resist the urge to pull out the PPT and spend 3 hours and 10,000 words explaining how Lemmy works vs the much more concise how-to-use-Lemmy details that people actually want.

There’s a lot of assumptions being made by a lot of people that “normal” people are stupid and couldn’t understand ‘It’s a conversation platform like Reddit, but it’s run by it’s users and that’s why there’s a lot of servers who all talk to each other’ and so there’s a lot of hand wringing about how you have to explain all the details and such, which really, isn’t all that true.

Every non-technical person I’ve explained it to like that immediately understands what it is, how you’d use it, and what it’s used for and I’ll occasionally get a ‘Oh, neat, how does all that work?’ question I can then expand on, but that’s like, maybe 1 out of 20.

TLDR: too many details is not helpful for most people, and nerds loooooove going into more detail than anyone could possibly care about

unmoderated

Fun fact: that’s not strictly true.

You could have moderated groups, where a moderator/group of moderators would get sent every post via email, and they’d only be posted into the group if approved.

The vast, vast, vast majority of groups were not moderated, but that’s not to say you couldn’t do so.

The first one or two, maybe. The next 50, eh not quite as much.

I suppose I’m just a boomer who doesn’t get the kids anymore?

It’s nice when the uh, um, jerks? self-segregate. Saves so much time having to filter them out.

(Also it was kinda obvious they were twats when their admin team was spamming new community communities with endless stupid groups.)

Not a lawyer, but honestly, both of these takes are probably not correct.

I’d say that most fedi-services fall more into the ‘can I make someone delete an email’ GDPR category (tldr: probably not, but maybe) with a dose of the ‘this service is for personal/non-commercial use and includes messaging and social media’ exemption.

This of course won’t work if you’re taking money or doing commercial activity but at that point you’re a business and should consult your lawyers to ensure your compliance. (And if you can’t, then maybe don’t be in that business.)

I wouldn’t want to be the one to spend the billion dollars to litigate that, but frankly if you’re not in the EU, and not a business, then the person demanding removal would have to take you to court to force compliance (assuming you didn’t just do it so you don’t have to deal with a grumpy person) which is… unlikely.

The much more horrifying interpretation is that the data controller, processor, and sub-processor language comes into effect and everyone needs to sign written agreements with every other fediserver to be even remotely in compliance.

Agreed: commercialized services want everyone and don’t want to ban anyone for anything unless they absolutely have to because there’s a risk of legal complications if they do not do so. (I worked that shit for a long time, and ugh, did not enjoy having to have arguments over a user’s “value” vs their behavior.)

And as someone who is nominally running “public” fediverse services (though the user base I’ve served has been minimal because I’m not advertising for users and have outright rejected basically everyone who’s just wandered in, lol) I’m 100% on the this-is-mine bandwagon.

I’m paying for it, I’m maintaining it, and thus what I say goes and if you strongly dislike it, then, well, oh no, too bad. Find somewhere else to be.

One outlier of this uh… moderation challenge? has always been Something Awful. $10 for an account, and they will happily ban your ass without thinking too hard about it if you break rules.

It’s basically the last remaining bastion of old-internet-forums that are still useful and worthwhile and I’m 100% convinced it’s because it’s not free, and that your ass will be rapidly ejected if you’re a dick regardless of you paying or not. Put an actual incentive (if small) on not being a complete shithead.

100%: anyone complaining that the mods are mean are not old enough to remember when the people in the moderator positions had actual real power.

If you pissed off a BBS sysop, they had the power to ban your ass, block your phone number, and tell you to fuck off and never come back. And if you really pissed them off, they’d call/netmail all their local BBS friends and you’d be tossed out of everywhere.

Shitposting on Usenet? You’d find your usenet provider would tell you to stop it, and if you didn’t, they would revoke your account and that was that.

Doing abusive things on someone’s FTP server with your actual email address? Your email provider would delete your shit and tell you to go fuck yourself.

Doing an abusive thing with your connection? (Winnuke, any sort of hacking, whatever) Your ISP would yank your connection and tell you to go fuck yourself.

And, of course, in a LOT of cases these were things provided by your work and/or school, which means you could have even more actual consequences for being a fuckstain.

There’s no longer any painful enforcement of any norms (oh no, i have to spend 8 seconds making a new account!) because there’s no longer any real gatekeepers with actual enforcement power.

Or, if they have it, they’re too scared to use it, because they’re too fussed with what someone might angry-tweet if they do.

I’m now even MORE disappointed we never got this.

I am now sad that we never got a TNG mirror universe episode.

Would mirror Riker be goatee-Riker or fullbeard-Riker

As someone who has one: buy an Microsoft Surface with the Pen and keyboard and shit.

I’m using a… 3? 4? (6th gen intel, so it’s old AF) and it works perfectly. Touch, pen, removable keyboard, sleep, etc.

You have to install some specific drivers from the Suface Linux project to get some of that working, but it’s like a whole 10 minute deal.

Also, they’re cheap as shit at this point, so bonus?

Begun, the Borg Tribble wars have.

(Please don’t hurt me.)

There’s an easy way to tell.

If they’re talking about a bidet without a heater, they’re a bot because no human on earth wants an ass spraying of cold water.

Dathon and Picard when deciding how much to tip the doordash driver.

If it doesn’t yell at me about unexpected creepers in my house area, I’m going to be VERY disappointed.