https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Lemmy%3F

You’d think if it was all basic biology we would just have a unique gender for every one wouldn’t you?

Nothing in biology is exactly identical between individuums. A common eye color is brown, although there are as many shades of brown as there are people.

It is just practical and how language, or even perception works, that we tend to categorize similarities, and strongly favor common occurrances over outliers.

the doctor is describing your phenotypic sex based on observable characteristics.

Your doctor is assigning you a gender.

Maybe you two aren’t even disagreeing?

I’d say the doctor tries to assign the new born into male or female according to biological sex, and gender is inferred from that.

He calls you either a boy or a girl based on your genital configuration

Yes, that’s what I mean. A two-step process. First, biological expression is assessed. Next, based on #1, social gender is inferred.

Basically, do you identify as your birth gender (not sex, gender and sex are different)?

The additional explanation actually confused me. Let’s compare the two sentences:

• A) Basically, do you identify as your birth gender?

• B) Basically, do you identify as your birth sex?

I assume biological sex can be identified by looking at your body as a new born baby, and gender is usually inferred accordingly. So I would assume new borns are being assigned a gender which mathes their biology, although they probably don’t have any opinions themselves on the topic.

Anyways, what’s the difference between A and B? I feel you felt it was important to point it out, and I just can’t see any.

Sorry for being unclear. What I meant is:

These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore [as a presence in the fediverse].

When they run the most and the biggest popular communities on their instances, do most of the development, offer the best tools and services in the fediverse, they have become too big to ignore.

If they then start playing dirty, it is too late to defederate them. They will play dirty. Let’s not make ourselves dependent.

why would I want to keep in contact with the “head in the sand” people

Forget contacts. Imagine Meta has

• poured way more developing hours in their fork than the FOSS community ever could
• the most effective and easy to use mod tools
• the best search tools for finding communities, topics and everything else (by a margin)
• free instance hosting
• every major wish list feature implemented
• a working feed with endless content you actually find interesting
• a vibrant community for every niche interest you might have
• advanced development so much that it feels a couple versions ahead

The more money they throw at this, the more people will feel tempted to join or at least try their service. It offers objective benefits. It would feel like using lemmy 0.09 when others already enjoy 0.18.

Many people still miss their niche topics. Some size is required for certain things to become viable.

There’s nothing wrong with Lemmy’s user interface design.

The first step is a UX disaster: https://join-lemmy.org/

Only 2 clicks / pages down the road you can start registering an account, and you don’t see what the experience might be before that. Instead, you’re being presented tech talk about servers.

You might argue it’s not actually lemmy but just the landing page. I argue, it’s so good at being a scarecrow, most people visiting lemmy haven’t seen anything else except for that page.

The inner lemmy is pretty fine, I agree. Some parts are still confusing. For example, most people will not figure out they can search for content from within a specific community by carefully configuring the drop downs in the general search form. Most will look for the search directly attached to the community.

If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.

These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore. If you let them gain that much ground, it’s too late to isolate them without doing even more harm to your own network.

Also Meta is not a startup with unknown reputation. Meta plays dirty, that’s a given.

See (and please help if you can with)

• A way to link posts across instances #3259
• [Bug]: local links #3261

It’s the first and only lemmy app working on my old 2015 android phone.

Great to have backwards compatible options. I also like it :)

They are, I get results. My worry is they are not aggregated/unified. Some lemmy instances don’t have ‘lemmy’ in their name, and I’m not sure if they would show up in a search “X + lemmy”.

Ok, but you can only do that if they already joined the fediverse. I replied to “the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse”. It’s also questionable if everyone will block them.

The article is not about single persons who might be trolls or whatever to qualify as a “bad guy”. But about megacorporations like Meta.

Yes, sorry for being unclear. I meant the bad ‘guy’ Meta. Maybe continuing with ‘entity’ would have been better:

we can be sure some entities will join

ensure only good entities enter

The best way to deal with them is-in my opinion-to not cooperate and defederate them as soon as they start to enter.

I tend to agree. Still quite new to the topic.

We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.

How could that be done? Anyone with the resources can host an instance, and there are plenty of instances with a low entry bar.

If the fediverse grows enough, we can be sure some entities will join not because they share our values, but because they see our value.

I don’t see how we could prevent that or ensure only good guys enter. The fediverse is open by design.

the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse

How are they not allowed? How is it checked, how prevented?

As I see it, they can freely use the code, freely set up instances, freely create user accounts on their own or other instances, with ‘independent’ users, employees or bots.

The only thing stopping them is the current fediverse’s insignificance. We’re just not tasty enough, yet. But if we become, how could we disallow them from joining?

Let them join…and be ignored.

I see the threat in the sheer developing power of these giants, making all the shiny tools people were wanting, making their service too attractive to be ignored.

I disagree on moderation, I don’t think any #Fediverse admin would trust #Meta enough to use their software for moderation.

I found the example interesting in principle. We can think of varieties besides moderation. What other features are highly requested and sought after?

What about an easy way to find, join, and engage with even niche communities? Comm lookup and joining is wonky, especially when coming from small instances. Another related feature is user-side grouping of similar comms into one multi-community. Or being able to easily move between instances, relocate your account. Better indexing for web searches.

The list of possible features, ranging from QoL to Enablers, is endless. Big companies with coding experience can easily dominate the scene, and make it hard to not join them or use their service. Their mere presence could spell dependence.

Like I heard we’re using lemmy 0.18 now. Would you voluntarily still use an older version, like 0.9, when you can just as well use 0.18?

If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they’ll do it all over again.

They have that ability, and always will have. They can create as many accounts as they like on as many instances as they like, or run as many instances as they like themselves, use incentivized individuals, or employees, or bots, or any combination of all of the above. No one can stop them, maybe even no one can spot them.

The only thing which is holding them back right now is lemmy/kbin still being too insignificant. If the network continues to grow, more and more big corps will see it as a market and an opportunity, and they will have plenty of ways to interact with it.

if Google or Meta wants to join they should to us not us to them so if they break federation we should not care and continue implement our stuff

As I understood the article, the danger is that large actors like these are too important too ignore. Too many users, too much content to neglect. So while in theory you are obviously right, in reality there will be a temptation to cater to their needs, because it seems so worthwhile.

Technically you need another account if you want to post on another server.

Not sure if we’re talking past each other, but just to be clear:

Our conversation happens on lemmy.ml, while you are logged in on lemmy.pxm.nl, and I write from lemmy.click. So we can post comments on another server, without having an account on that server, enabled by federation.