With Reddit flirting with requiring Age verification, the next Rexit might be around the corner, are we ready?
With previous Rexit’s like the API debarcle etc. many users were left looking for an alternative, but with decision fatigue and bad UX etc. most did not find the Fediverse a viable option.
What needs to still improve, how can we be ready this time?
I avoid harshly criticising the left, while continuing to do so for liberals (but still being welcoming for the; the wider the antifascist front, the better), and outright rejecting far-right.
Keep in mind that infighting was often initiated by the CIA, in order to undermine the Black Panthers. Likewise we may see such attempts.
i encourage party vanguardists to support anarchists and other free leftists. the stronger the left, the better
my perspective? nah, hornypost all you want (keep it to nsfw communities tho if it’s “hard” nsfw as opposed to “soft”) - that makes it easier to sort.
or use a nsfw tag for the post
For politics I just use a keyword block. If it contains terms related to that orange or such, I block.
Piefed does have a nsfl tag option, a bot filter, as well moving communities to another instance.
Imho, those are the three big things that most fediverse places should have. Being able to move to another instance is a gamechanger, should an instance disappear or get seized by asshats.
I would actually make the bot filter on by default. Is this the case?
For piefed, my main criticisms are these;
Voting Privacy – Votes can be private (not federated); in meme communities, upvotes don’t affect reputation (optional).
Enabling private votes may make it easier for bots, but as these votes are not federated, it should not affect what other users see, I think. Upvotes not affecting reputation in meme communities is an issue because this way someone could make a far-right community and call it a meme community, and get off scot-free. How do Piefed devs tackle this?
Likewise;
Default Comment Collapsing – Comments at -10 score or below are collapsed automatically.
Low Reputation Indicator – Identifies consistently downvoted users.
This can be an issue, with bots en masse downvoting comments to have them be less visible. How is it ensured that the bot filter would work, without far-reaching measures like “age verification”?
Nothing will ever be truly perfect, it is rather an arms race where defenders construct barriers while attackers jump those hurdles - often easily but it does act as a barrier and some bad actors simply give up rather than do so.
In this case, PieFed has several relevant options, one being a per-community setting that only counts subscribed members of the community, which has the effect of reducing the impact of drive-by downvoters from All, but obviously won’t stop a coordinated attack vector. The former scenario is real though, so the feature has actual benefits despite not stopping everything bad that could possibly happen, as it does improve the state of things incrementally.
Another such feature is the option to only count votes from “trusted” instances. This allows for finer-grained control so that e.g. you could remain federated with an instance, but not allow them to constantly brigade your content. Obviously someone could make accounts on trusted instances to do so, but the subscriber numbers being so low overall for the entire Threadiverse and for Piefed specifically seems to suggest that if it is happening, it is not a huge deal (yet). And the usual measures still apply, e.g. if an account only ever downvotes without ever posting or commenting, then it is likely a brigade account in (a not very decent) disguise.
Sometimes they will get more sophisticated, like repositing comics that seems an easy way to quickly generate many upvotes for the new account. But these seem to be shut down quickly… somehow, and anyway at that point whatever their intentions ultimately were, at least they were positively contributing to the Threadiverse community in the meantime, haha!
the cia would try anything, but hornyposting isn’t their main thing. They’d try that with high-profile individuals.
I recall them having made a fake sex video of Sukarno (the first leader of Indonesia), and trying to blackmail him. Upon seeing it, he said he was delighted and wanted more, lol. Here’s a source.
Ek-Hou-Van-Braai
lime!
birdwing
OpenStars