partial_accumen

if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected

Several people have responded with things like this, but OP didn’t ask about that scenario. Of course federation solves that problem.

They said:

“If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own ‘eternal September’, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?”

I think the Luigi example applies to the “exploited” portion of OPs post.

You’re still thinking about it as an asymmetrical problem. Taking one portion that has a problem and isolating that from the rest.

I am. I don’t believe there is one version of success nor one version of failure. That’s one of the beauties of the Fediverse. While there can be fully integrated interaction between instances, there doesn’t have to be.

I’m saying if every part has the same problem that doesn’t solve it AND it means the entire network is no longer interoperable, which was the entire point from the start.

Bolding is mine. That is an opinion, but not a fact. I’ll agree it was one of the biggest features, but it is by no means the only reason for Lemmy or the Fediverse’s existence.

What you’re ultimately saying is that you can have a small interoperable network or a large centralized network, but not both.

I’m citing those as the two extremes but I’m not saying those are the only two options.

Which, if you’re right, begs the question of why try to decentralize and federate in the first place if you don’t have a solution to secure that arrangement.

I reject that premise. If decentralization and federation were inexorably linked to Lemmy (and the Fediverse as a whole), the authors of Lemmy would not have built in the functionality to defederate, nor to block other instances. They did though. This tells us that while they envisioned the benefits of sharing, they also recognized those that wouldn’t want to and endorsed it with methods to cut out the sharing.

And, to be clear, even in that scenario now you have an isolated, self-run social network that has exactly the same moderation issues and running costs as Reddit or any other alternative.

Not quite. From an operators point of view, sure. However from a consumer’s point of view, a social media application stack is a massive undertaking to write as whole cloth. Lemmy software simply existing means that anyone can stand up their own social media network with their own rules (and yes, costs). This, in itself, is a better evolution over Reddit as a private platform. If you don’t like that “reddit” you can stand up your own “reddit”.

If you’re looking for me to say Lemmy is the perfect platform without any flaws, you won’t find me saying that. I will say however that it is better than the alternatives we have today. We’ll see if it has enough autonomy and control to its operators to stand the test of time. Irrespective of where we each stand on this discussion, I think we’ll both be hoping it does.

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

If I’m not happy with how /r/knives is run on Reddit, I can make /r/knife to compete with it.

Ah, gotcha. Thank you for that. I understand your example. My response is, irrespective of /r/knives or /r/knife if Reddit bans the word “luigi” both subreddits are affected. That isn’t the case with Lemmy where if one instance bans a word, other instances don’t have to follow suit.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban.

It shows part of the comment. I think there’s a limit on length, and it does not show media. The mod log is a good idea, but there’s room for improvement.

This is good information. I didn’t know about the limit length. I did some Google searches and could only find references to the 10,000 character Lemmy post limit, but nothing about the limit of modlog entires. Any idea what it is?

You make a good point on media. I didn’t know that either.

I will say that for any modlog entry I’ve seen of a removed comment I largely agree with the moderator’s actions about 95% of the time. I’m guessing a character limit would have to be VERY short for it to not capture the gist of an offending comment though. I’m prepared to retract that if you tell me its extremely small.

Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail.

I never said Lemmy will fail, and that is not my position.

Apologies if I mistook your statements. I saw you referring to Lemmy as a whole, and the need for a Fediverse wide fix being your opinion to be necessary for Lemmy to not be eventually destroyed as a whole. If you have a more nuanced opinion on the points we’re discussing, I’m open to hearing it.

You can’t defederate from every instance that allows people to sign up or you end up with a group chat instead of a social network.

You can. Beehaw did. Perhaps that is the future of Lemmy. I don’t know.

“There are tools to do that” is a bold assertion, but nobody has been able to explain to me what those tools are or how they’d work at scale. I’m all ears. Even if I don’t think it’ll be needed I’d love to know what the plan is, if there is one.

Beehaw did. I think you’re still looking for a solution that allows the full Fediverse-wide system of communication with control of bad actors. I’ll agree that doesn’t exist and likely won’t. I’m arguing that it doesn’t need to for certain use cases of Lemmy to operate.

It’s easy to create a differently named community on systems that don’t have this sort of server-based namespacing.

I’m not understanding your point here. Can you reword it perhaps?

The part that’s missing is the original content mods removed. If I’m an abusive moderator and I want to censor someone, I’m not going to put “I don’t like your opinion” in the removal/ban reason; I’m going to put something that sounds reasonable like “racism” or “harassment”.

The modlog entries I’ve read show the offending comment as well as the moderator given reason for a ban. If I see something that isn’t racism being labeled as racism, I’d suspect the community was corrupt. I do get curious when I see a banned comment from a moderator. 95% of the time I agree with the moderator’s decision.

Time will tell. Either way, that’s not a solution for Lemmy as a whole.

If you’re saying there isn’t a single solution for the entirety of Lemmy (or the Fediverse for that matter) I’ll agree with you. Where I’ll disagree with you that one has to exist or Lemmy will fail. With each instance having its own control we’ll see multiple approaches that suit each group of users.

then there are more than enough people to be targeted by more than enough bad actors to swamp EVERY instance with more spam sign-ins than Beehaw ever had, legitimate or not.

I don’t see how your statement applies to a Beehaw type response. Who cares how many bad actors there are if you’re allowing zero signups at your own instance, and you are defederating from instances that do? I don’t know the bowels of Lemmy code well enough to know if there is an “instance federation allowlist” opt-in as opposed to a “defederate from X instance” opt-out. If the former doesn’t exist yet, then it would likely be added to Lemmy code to combat the exact example you give of an infinite number of spam instances being spun up.

Moderation is hard and expensive,

I agree with this.

and there are no meaningful federation-wide tools to manage it in place.

I’m arguing there doesn’t haven’t to be federation-wide tool. There are instance level tools that give enough control depending on how extreme a response the instance wants to enact.

There is no systemic solution to malicious use.

I agree. I argue a systemic solution isn’t a requirement. You’re looking for one thing that solves the problem for the entire Fediverse. That’s a rather un-fediverse concept. The point of the fediverse is decentralization allowing instances to enact their own rules that work for them.

I don’t know how old you are, but decades before giant social media existed, internet forums were a common community posting system. This is an old and known problem. There are a number of approaches that apply from those days to modern Lemmy instances. Yes, many of these would require raising the walls of the garden, but again, these approaches exist. Is it perfect? No, but if thats what it takes, then that will be the result, and the tools exist in Lemmy to do that.

The first to create a community control it.

If the community becomes toxic, its easy to create an identically named community on another instance. A perfect example: when I joined lemmy I subscribed to the “news” community on lemmy.ml. When I saw how it was run, I unsubscribed and instead subscribed to “news” on lemmy.world.

censorship,

Modlog documents all actions including moderator censorship. Nothing like that exists at reddit. If there is censorship happening, its in full view of the users on lemmy.

and controlling a narrative.

Again Modlog, if a moderator is removing dissenting opinion.

If/when Lemmy starts to experience its own “eternal September”, what protections are in place to ensure we will not be overwhelmed and exploited?

Beehaw is an example of a Lemmy instance immune to “Eternal September”. They disabled their easy signups, and defederated from instances that allow easy signups. I don’t particularly agree with their extreme approach, but its what was important to them and it was effective. This is a powerful use of Lemmy and the Fediverse.

The assumption that crappy behavior is somehow localized to a specific instance is bizarre, nothing is keeping people from spamming accounts on instances with free signups.

I disagree. If that is your primary concern, look at what Beehaw (another Lemmy instance) did. They closed their signups to prevent the bad actor spam accounts on their own instances, and they defederate from instance that allow the easy signups.

Its extreme, yes. It limits conversation from the wider fediverse, yes. However it does mitigate the exact problem you’re citing. I personally prefer to deal with the spammers for the wider audience, but I don’t fault Beehaw for their actions and choices.

None. Someone is going to say federation helps here, but the effect is the same as creating an alternative to a popular subreddit under another name.

Which mechanism in Lemmy allows one person in power to decide a single word is a reason to ban a person from every instance in the Fediverse? Since there isn’t one, that is a way that Lemmy is more insulated from institutional abuse.

Nobody can seriously believe that the USA colonizes Canada.

Nobody could seriously believe a US President would allow an unelected billionaire into the halls of power and society to tear it down from the inside, but here were are.

India is no really a challenge.

And Canada is?

We bought a few cans for an elderly relative that has a compromised respiratory system. They have a medical oxygen bottle, but if it runs out or their cannula stops working for some reason we wanted them to have another option besides asphyxiation. There are not many minutes of oxygen in one of those cans, but if you’ve got nothing even a few minutes is a gift.

I appreciate alternate methods of business, but some of your statements here are worrying.

there is the temporary furlough route,

but you also said earlier…

and you’d have to try pretty hard to become unemployed at a coop. there are generally no “layoffs” since there is no greedy billionaire at “the top” needing a second yacht.

Furlough sounds like another name for layoff here.

but ideally there is savings for such eventualities. savings and / or loans can be used to ride out dry spells.

Ideally sounds like wishful thinking. They’re already limiting their work because they only work with NGOs or non-profits, which are usually cash strapped. Further, the lower pay to tech workers mean that the workers have less of a financial cushion should the work dry up for a time. This goes back to my first post that tech workers that don’t live a country with strong social safety nets may find tech co-ops a risky employer.

more stable than typical corporate businesses simply due to the lack of a billionaire class extracting profits and making big decisions on their whims

Yeah yeah fuck the rich, but billionaires are a small fraction of the owners of IT consulting companies. The majority of them are small boutique firms rather than giant fortune 500 companies.

One answer could be that the organization maintains a large fund to act as a buffer to maintain salaries between contracts instead of operating “paycheck-to-paycheck.”

Thats great in concept, but keep in mind they’re already taking customers that likely have small or limited budgets. Where does this extra buffer come from? The only income stream is delivering on limited contracts to cash strapped NGOs and non-profits. Remember, they took corporate work at one point, but hated it. Corporate work is where the bigger bill rates for delivery of contract service come from.

An even simpler answer could be that the co-op chooses to take on a large number of small contracts instead of a small number of large ones, such that the revenue is relatively consistent to begin with.

Its amazing if your org can get so much contract work that there’s jobs available to turn down. This usually requires a dedicated sales and marketing staff, which don’t generate any revenue for the co-op, only delivery of services to. So the sales and marketing arm are yet another drain on the already meager amounts earned from contract awards.

If there was surplus money to be made large for-profit contracting companies would be in here already doing some or all of this work.

My answer wasn’t so much directed at OP but @gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world that had text threatening to quit. If OPs company wants them gone, threatening to quit plays right into their hands. Further, if you ever threaten and not follow through, you’ve lost any leverage in negotiating further changes.

with language like “it was not enumerated” and vague threats of reporting them to the authorities

To reiterate, I wasn’t suggesting using that exact language I put in quotes but was attempting to show OP what was effectively being asked of them by their employer, and how it wasn’t fair to what they agreed, and that there was legal recourse they had if it evolved to that. If you read the rest of my post it was laying out that taking extreme action like threatening to quit, failing to get the certs, or some such would likely result in them losing their job anyway and a better approach is to work with their employer to get some time on the clock for cert study, but also recognize that an absolutist approach can result in the worst situation for OP and likely require they get the certs anyway on their own time because the certs would be required by a new employer.

Nothing with OPs situation will be resolved in a single conversation with any one party at their employer. It will be a series of conversations with each laying out their requirements and hopefully arriving at a compromise where OP still works there, and OP’s employer is satisfied with the effort toward certs.

This assumes the language in question follows the same rules as, in this case, English.

When

In many of the common uses of “when” in English. Mandarin (Chinese) as an example doesn’t use one word for that mixed idea of English’s “when”.

One common English usage of “when” would be substitute for literally “which time”. Or even more complicated, the Mandarin language has a word for the concept of a “completed action” where there is no single word in English that translates. While English may conjugate verbs to communicate when an event occurred or will occur, Mandarin skips this.

An English phrase like:

“I ate breakfast this morning” when conceptually translated to Mandarin, then literally translated back to English would be: “I eat breakfast. Finished. Today. In the morning.”

I’ve been told that the Finnish language uses something similar for time words (instead of conjugating verbs), but I don’t know if that’s accurate. If there’s a Finnish speaker reading this, I’d be interested in knowing if this is true.

And the complexity of the idea desired to communicate.

the difference in salary they’re talking about is more along the lines of small business vs venture capital-backed startup or established huge corporation.

That would make sense if the organization is revenue generating with its own business efforts instead of enabling other organizations, which is what it sounds like is the case for this tech co-op. The co-op doesn’t seem to generate anything of their own. It sounds like they get contract work from NGOs and non-profits. If there is no work, or not enough, what happens to the co-op workers?

and you’d have to try pretty hard to become unemployed at a coop. there are generally no “layoffs” since there is no greedy billionaire

So when the NGO and non-profit contract work declines or dries up entirely for a time and there is less or no money coming in, how do salaries get paid at 100%? Does each tech co-op worker simply get a small percentage of the remaining income? How long do workers actively working contracts for NGOs/non-profits in the co-op continue to subsidize those that don’t/can’t get placed on work?

Certainly, but this is a different animal. What you’re describing is non-profit organization that retains employees doing IT. Like a for-profit, the employee has the expectation of a job irrespective of the level of project work the organization has. The non-profit will have a similar reporting structure and expectations on the IT worker, with the upside that the IT worker is deriving not only benefit from their salary, but from the good the non-profit is doing.

Contrast that with the IT contracting world were rates for IT work are much higher than a standard retained IT worker. The reason the pay is higher is because of the risk to the worker they may be unemployed with the work dries up. So from what I gather from the article this tech co-op is the worst of both worlds: low pay, low job security.

I’d love to be corrected if anyone has IT co-op knowledge/experience.

which roughly translates to good deeds done in secret.

It seems like posting what I do would violate the intent of “intoku” and it would thereby no longer be a “when nobody is watching”.

I’m won’t disclose what I do. However, I’ll say that by not taking credit for any of my positive actions, it lets society take credit for the actions. It means someone doesn’t have to have me or someone like me in their lives, but rather all of us will help you. The person that did the small thing or the hero that saved you from ruin could be right next to you in line at the grocery store. I want everyone to have that feeling that some rando will have your back when you need it in some minor or major way.

The only way that happens is if I never talk about what I do to help. Thats a very small price to pay if it means someone else gets to feel the comfort of knowing others care about them.