Historically, I've perceived Reddit as slightly left leaning, with strong pockets of conservatives. Recently though, a vast majority of comment sections seem to excuse violence, such as in this thread (TW: police brutality), where people say things like

And I'm seriously wondering when Reddit got so bad that the hivemind supports calls for violence. Are these humans? Are they bots? Why does reddit allow this conduct?

I made an account 3 years ago to make a single post, which I wanted to be anonymous for. I logged in again today as I wanted an account for... um... science, and discovered I was banned a year ago. I find this ban incredibly odd as

1. I did not log into this account for two years between the post and the suspension
2. They do not state what rule I broke, which is not standard in my experience
3. They do not offer the opportunity to appeal, which I also believe is not standard
4. They tell me to make a new account. If I broke their rules, why would they want me to make a new account? Temp ban makes sense. Permaban makes sense. This makes no sense.

The only explanation I can think of is that they want to bump the user count.

Hello! We've reached 15k members (afaik we're still the largest community on lemmy). It's a lot for only a couple people, though there is admin support.

I'm looking for a couple people to join and help moderate. Ideally you:

1. Have a history of contributions to this community
2. Have been on lemmy for a reasonable* amount of time and do not plan to leave any time soon

*Genuinely not sure what constitutes reasonable, I suppose it will be case-by-case. It's a little frightening to appoint someone who just came via the reddit migration, but I understand that 4/5 of this community are newish so it's fine. The main hope is that you'll stick around.

Ideally I'll pick a few people out in the coming days. I'm also going to correspond with the admins before changes.

Thanks

Hi everyone, welcome, ect... It might go without saying but lemmy is open source! The platform is written in rust and typescript (which is a big pro for me). I'm sure we all have our little gripes with the platform, and those are fixed with collective teamwork :)

These are "good first issues", here is a contributing guide), and here is a chat where developers coordinate.

Let's make the best link aggregator!

Hey all, I think it's unfair for me to be the only moderator (plus the admins!).

I was trying to find some good candidates and I certainly found many, but I think it's much more fair to open the floor for nominations.

Some groundrules so this goes smoothly:

• You are allowed to nominate unlimited people, including yourself
• You must make each nomination in a separate comment
• Please ensure the user in question has not yet been nominated, if they have please upvote the existing nomination and maybe leave a comment in support instead!

This is somewhat of a popularity contest, although note I do not promise the most popular candidates will be the ones selected.

This post will be updated when mods are appointed with the logic behind appointment.

@[email protected] has been appointed. This is because

• Overwhelming support
• 7 hour timezone difference (if I did the math correctly)

@[email protected]

• I needed one more, I see tmpod around often

Hey all, if you notice any comments that clearly don't belong here please hit the report button! In the next few days I will be checking in every few hours to ensure this community is in tip top shape.

I have also recruited two new mods.

Email is already nicely federated, but I think it's time for a change. Services like protonmail claim to offer encryption between users, but you can't host your own instance. It would be awesome if there was a spec somewhere for a federated email service that defines

• email encryption between users
• markdown
• ~~connection with activity pub? (What would this look like)~~ I mean some way to "email the web", ie: add comments via email
• compatibility with standard email users (if you send/receive to/from a user who does not have email v2 implemented it just uses normal features)
• somehow better support for email discussion groups (hop in and out, public interface defined)
• this spec should be focused heavily on usage for humans instead of automated mailing, I expect html would not be defined.

I'm just spit balling here. Does anyone have any ideas? Does something like this exist?

Thanks, Evan

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.pt/post/10759

I've tried it already and it's really neat. Drew was also very nice and explained me a lot of stuff :3
What are your thoughts?

Hey! Back after a large break from lemmy and after returning to the community it seems it is more advice focused: what is the best way to learn programming vs story focused what is a bad mistake when you started programming.

My job as a moderator is to serve the community best I can, so instead of changing the rules to recklessly to bar topics further without consent, I want to extend an invitation for you, the members of the community, to share what you want to see content wise from this community.

Examples:

I like it as is!

or

New rules ideas

• Only questions about cats are allowed
• Posts about dogs will result in being banned

Thank you!

Evan

Today when talking on discord someone mentioned their approval for Khan Academy, stating that it was what allowed them to pass their class. I have too consulted Khan Academy on a few occasions, and I thought the teaching was well done. I believe education is a human right, and I thought I would see what I could do to contribute. I was alarmed to discover the lack of ways to do so.

I voiced my thoughts in a brief way in discord, and was quickly attacked by nearly everyone there. People seem to all love khan, holding it as the savior of education, and in some way's, it is. Khan was the first platform I could find to offer easily accessible k-12-beyond learning for anyone, for free. It provides a central place with "trusted" content, but ultimately khan academy solves no issues in our education system, while getting all the support of the internet.

I write this "rant" to be the first person on the internet to say khan is not so great.

A dictatorship

There is no public information on khan academies power structure, aside from the fact that it has executives. There is no way to vote in leaders, and no real way to hold them accountable other than abstaining from donation. This leads to near unlimited power. Sal has networth in the millions alone, and due to its dictatorship structure a hostile takeover to broadcast information on a "trusted" site like khan is possible - as we saw in freenode. This power structure ultimately leaves not only the people but the teachers powerless, leaving for issues like the traditional school board.

Closed source

I don't give a shit about the website source code, but the curriculum is pretty close to closed source. This means if misinformation is spread on the site, we are unable to easily maintain a "correct" mirror. If the site goes down, so does the learning. For similar issues, offline users in low income countries especially are barred.

While khan material is under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US, it's near impossible to effectively copy without using web crawlers.

Closed doors

Finally, Khan contributors are always employees. This means we are relient on bug reports to fix issues, and who knows when or if it will be fixed. Additionally, raised issues are viewable only to khan staff removing even more accountability.

Want to write more new content for khan for free because you love learning? You can't without giving up your job for a paid position.

Uncited

I struggled to find citations for anything asserted on their site. This is especially needed in the sciences and social studies, where misinformation is rampant.

We can do better

I dream of a curriculum where we are free. Free to and easy to clone, redistribute, and to modify. Where there is democratic government, so a hostile takeover is near impossible. Where changes are made in the open so that we hold those that make them more accountable. A curriculum that is modern and interactive, with a smaller focus on lectures.

I don't think this exists today, but for a true radicle education platform something must change, to avoid all the issues we face today with the world's education in an online platform.

At the very least, the world must rid of the "Khan will change the world" mentality.

PS: Sorry if my thoughts are slightly raw, wrote this in a hurry

PPS: These are flaws in khan, but they apply to many other "free" learning platforms. Hell, khan under it's license is "free", but in reality it's far from it. I am yet to find a alternative that really does what needs to be done, although I am hopeful this community is a step in the right direction

This post and all past material written by me that is hosted on lemmy is UNLICENSED. Do as you wish.