this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Technology

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I run a few groups, like @[email protected], mostly on Friendica. It's okay, but Friendica resembles Facebook Groups more than Reddit. I also like the moderation options that Lemmy has.

Currently, I'm testing jerboa, which is an Android client for Lemmy. It's in alpha, has a few hiccups, but it's coming along nicely.

Personally, I hope the #RedditMigration spurs adoption of more Fediverse server software. And I hope Mastodon users continue to interact with Lemmy and Kbin.

All that said, as a mod of a Reddit community (r/Sizz) I somewhat regret giving Reddit all that content. They have nerve charging so much for API access!

Hopefully, we can build a better version of social media that focuses on protocols, not platforms.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

Used Reddit for 13 years, tried out Kbin and Lemmy yesterday and settled on Lemmy.

Long story short, I’m going back to Reddit.

  • There needs to be ONE site, Lemmy.com, that people goto. This entire thing about having .whateveryouwant is VERY off putting. Most internet users have been trained to be extremely wary of odd or unusual things, so having anything besides .com/.net/.org will turn away a huge portion of users.

I initially setup an account on Lemmy.world, then realized that I couldn’t migrate it to another server and that when I deleted that account on that server all my comments were deleted.

Deciphering the distributed nature of it took me, a relatively tech-friendly person, almost the entire day and several ‘What the fuck?’ posts. I now understand it more. There are some very low-level guides that have been haphazardly put together, but there absolutely needs to be a MUCH smoother guide/explanation to this whole thing. That learning process will turn people away for sure.

  • BECAUSE I understand it more now, I’m left feeling VERY uncomfortable about my data security. If this is going to become a mainstream thing, as it reaches and before it gets to that critical mass of users, there’s going to be SO. MANY. SECURITY ISSUES. There’s no 2fa at all, hacking and user-account hacking is just going to run rampant, and I’m left wondering ‘Where is my username and password actually stored?’. The answer, sadly, is wherever the dude who’s running the instance/server is. In the ‘Fediverse’ your server instance might be hosted in a US or EU data center with proper digital and physical security, or it could be Joe Blows basement in Iowa running off a NAS. The easy-to-see future here is that Lemmy will fail to attract a critical mass of people because they’ll initially arrive, after a few months their instances will just cease to exist/get shut down/the hosts will decide its no longer a fun hobby to do.

With a large corporation, they have the staff and resources to secure and maintain the servers physically and digitally, and keep staff up-to-date on current infosec threats and get out in front of them. Beyond that, if there IS a breach, they have the ability to recognize it, understand the legalities and requirements of reporting it, and can be held accountable by regulatory bodies. Joe doesn’t have the resources to really maintain and keep a server running, nor the knowledge of his responsibilities for keeping the data safe digitally or physically.

On top of that, if Joe’s basement loses power/gets hacked/Joe decides he’s moving to San Fransisco and can’t bring his NAS with him and the server goes down, and that’s where my instance is hosted well there goes my entire account/comments/data.

  • Finding and subbing to communities is painfully difficult. It should be one-click, but somewhere I need to goto an external list, find what I want, and then copy/paste the URL into the search… and then 50% of the time, it doesn’t work. This is an understandable growing pain and can likely be fixed by UI/UX upgrades, but for now it’s a definite turn-off.

  • There simply is no content. I’m not a creator, I want content aggregated for me, and I’ve gotten used to having a single place to get it from that floods me with thousands of different articles/memes/posts/etc every minute. Until the user base arrives in one single place and starts generating content, there’s no reason for most people like me to be there as by far the larger number of users never create anything at all and only exist to consume the content generated.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Sorry, but a lot of your concerns you outline, I just don't agree with.

There needs to be ONE site, Lemmy.com, that people goto.

No... Reddit's singular biggest issue is the fact that everyone is beholden to Reddit's whim. Leaving any of this to any singular company/persons whims is a big problem. Moderator banned you from a subreddit cause they powertrip? What's your recourse? You have none.

This entire thing about having .whateveryouwant is VERY off putting.

And yet emails are not a problem. Why specifically is this off putting? You've never emailed anyone outside of gmail.com? or outlook.com?

Most internet users have been trained to be extremely wary of odd or unusual things, so having anything besides .com/.net/.org will turn away a huge portion of users.

Statistically this is very wrong. Quite the opposite in fact. Users are terrible at identifying ANYTHING malicious as actually being "Wrong".

I initially setup an account on Lemmy.world, then realized that I couldn’t migrate it to another server and that when I deleted that account on that server all my comments were deleted.

Just like setting up an email on Gmail doesn't mean you can just migrate to Outlook... and yes I would hope that deleting your account would delete all your comments. That's a GOOD thing.

BECAUSE I understand it more now, I’m left feeling VERY uncomfortable about my data security.

What security are you talking about? There's nothing "secure" here. You're posting things to a public forum for all intents and purposes. What security are you expecting?

There’s no 2fa at all

Slated for release with v0.18 which will probably drop within the next few weeks or so... But if your only concern for account security is 2fa... then you probably don't realize that long unique passwords are perfectly fine. I only really see this being an issue if you're a moderator or admin of an instance though. As both of those things... I actually don't currently see a problem. 2fa will be a welcomed addition though.

hacking and user-account hacking is just going to run rampant

Just like on every other service on the internet? It seems that most places do fine without this worry.

and I’m left wondering ‘Where is my username and password actually stored?’

On the instance you signed up for your account on. In your case that would appear to be lemmy.ca. That's the only instance that even really knows who you are. The rest of the instances just believe the origin instance of the data.

The answer, sadly, is wherever the dude who’s running the instance/server is.

Yup. But that's the case with ANY online service. Where's your facebook data? How about the massive amounts of data that google collect on you? Where's every bit of that? The hope and prayer is that it's safe in some datacenter that has armed guards and all that. The reality is that data leaks happen. Engineers go home with harddrives full of backups that have all your data on it. Hell your doctors office probably has this issue... https://www.classaction.org/pediatric-data-breach-connexin. I don't see you complaining about that. This service is not super sensitive... and if you believe it is... host your own instance.

With a large corporation, they have the staff and resources to secure and maintain the servers physically and digitally, and keep staff up-to-date on current infosec threats and get out in front of them.

And yet everyday you hear about some other company that got completely shafted... and more user information leaked out there like it belongs in the wild. But I once again have to ask... Aside from password (which is hopefully long and unique)... What content do you have on lemmy that actually matters? You realize that everything you post on a platform like this or Reddit is public... There's nothing you should ever assume to be "secure" or private on a platform like this, including Reddit. You bring this up so many times... What are you uploading that's sensitive that you think needs to be secure?

Finding and subbing to communities is painfully difficult. It should be one-click, but somewhere I need to goto an external list, find what I want, and then copy/paste the URL into the search… and then 50% of the time, it doesn’t work. This is an understandable growing pain and can likely be fixed by UI/UX upgrades, but for now it’s a definite turn-off.

Finally a legit concern. Yes, finding communities is actually a bit annoying. There's work being done to fix it. Remember this is version 0.17.4 that we're on right now. And the mass influx of people trying the platform out is putting a ton of stress on lots of undersized server instances. Things will happen... But same story with reddit... Reddit just had 3-4 hours of downtime because some subreddits went private. They're not perfect either... what's their excuse? It can't be because it's new and small...

There simply is no content. I’m not a creator, I want content aggregated for me

What? There's TONS of content already. You need to join more communities I think. Reddit was never there to generate content either though. It's an aggregator, not typically a source.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes thank you for explaining it so well. The OP is just spouting ignorance

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