I think we have far more that we agree on in this conversation than we disagree on. We can get into the minutiae of specific UIs but that probably misses the point.

Where I agree with OP is on the first impression of the default Lemmy UI to users trying to migrate from big-corpo products

For better or worse, these folks have come to believe that “slick looking” = thoughtfully designed = featureful and advanced. And that “sterile/boring looking” = amateur UX design = complicated and difficult

We can’t break that mentality in the general public by simply repeating over and over that they’re wrong. It just doesn’t work that way, sadly.

On my Mastodon server, we have the Elk frontend available and have it listed prominently right next to the sign-up/sign-in button as a “Twitter-friendly UI experience” (also on our About page). Then, we periodically throw up an announcement telling users that apps, Elk, etc don’t provide all of the features available on the modified webUI/PWA, along with a list of what they’re missing and how to learn more.

It’s an “abopt, extend, extinguish” approach and it works. There’s a reason corporate enshitification pioneered that strategy. We can use it too, but for good :)

If the goal of Lemmy - and specifically lemmy.world is to be a boutique, niche aggregator then fine. But that is explicitly NOT the goal. That may be what some users want but they are free to go form their own small servers and isolate as much as they want

I am not suggesting that every community needs to be growth-oriented. Small groups are great.

But they are also weak, and virtually incapable of creating and maintaining the systemic change required to protect themselves long term.

If the attitude is “let the capitalists take over everything else, I’m happy with my underground movement that struggles to survive” then that’s honestly bordering on selfish. “I’m happy so I don’t care about what happens to others. They can figure out how to find us and do what we do or get fucked” kind of energy. It’s privileged in the extreme

The best way for small communities to thrive is through collective action. And in order for that to happen there need to be enough small communities to have any sort of influence as a collective. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be an entry-point into the collective that is accessible to newcomers.

That is what Lemmy - and especially lemmy.world - have positioned themselves to be. It’s not dissimilar to Mastodon(.social)

Get ratiod and blocked, weirdo. Go try to impress someone else with your misuse of logical fallacy terminology. Some people might be convinced you’re smart but probably only on hexbear lol.

Buh-bye, chief 👋

LMAO this chump thinks hexbear is a good example of…well, of anything, really.

Go circlejerk in your little group of isolationists if you want but please stop telling the rest of us about it. You sound like a weird voyeur

That’s quite a novel way of saying “I don’t know what enshitification is actually about, nor do I understand why broad adoption is critical for protecting the long-term existence of community maintained software”. Kudos on your creativity!

Seriously though, “keeping good things small for the sake of keeping them free of interference by capitalist interests” is misguided. Quite the contrary, leaving a large audience on the table is a surefire way to guarantee that an opportunistic capitalist will capture that market and drive community maintained options into obscurity.

I think their point was: even if you’re uncomfortable, what are you going to do about it? Interfering in any way - even just suggesting that this relationship is a problem - is controlling.

As another reply said, if you want to say something like “I’m not implying anything about this guy, but it does remind me to make certain you know the signs of predatory relationships”, that’s probably a good thing.

Just know that your son may react defensively at the perceived threat to his first meaningful friendship outside his home town (even if you’re not actually a threat), and you have to let that be okay.

For the record, I’m 40 and have had friendships that started in my early 20s with people much older than me, and am currently friends with some kids in their 20s. Especially for introverts and people with niche hobbies, there’s a lot more care for shared interests than social norms like age gap.

I don’t agree with the determination either, and I definitely wouldn’t run my own community that way

But I’m also a community admin elsewhere and have been doing that kind of stuff for like 25 years or something.

So I don’t really begrudge any admin for deciding what things are off-limits for their community. It’s up to me whether I participate there or not

It’s not your space to make that decision for. You are not the one who has potential problems if it draws negative attention. You aren’t the one responsible if server admins choose to block that community due to the law-breaking information you’re making available.

The appropriate place to share information that clearly instructed people on how to break the law is in private, or in a space you have created and control yourself.

It’s uncool to demand others allow you to use spaces they are in charge of like this. Have a little respect for the people who actually created these spaces.

Yeah that’s is definitely not well presented, but I’m willing to assume good intent here I think? Like, I can get behind the difference between people who are suffering due to dysphoria being fundamentally different than people who are suffering from the expectations placed by society on their gender. And I feel like that was at the heart of their statement, despite the presentation being awful

Exactly this. And some of these communities have very good reasons for being insular in order to protect specific goals they have established.

The opinions on the morality of harm reduction are irrelevant. The ADHD community on Lemmy is not the appropriate place to spread that knowledge for a ton of reasons that have nothing to do with the morality of harm reduction.

I’m not surprised you got banned. You were putting the administration and moderation team in a very difficult position. You should have simply stated ‘I have knowledge about X. Contact me on direct messages or Session/Signal/Matrix for details’

For the record I completely agree with your position on harm reduction

Are you exaggerating when you say meth? Were they helping people who couldn’t afford medication find prescription medicine at reasonable prices? Or was it literally street meth?

I think reading it as “clothing choices as a reason someone might trans” is reductive of the point being made

From reading their posts, op is either sarcastic to a degree that does not play well on the Internet, or continually dip their toes into communities with highly charged opinions and then acts surprised when their peers take offense.

The transmedicalism accusation is borderline spurious and I think the accusations is extreme given what I read (they’re more taking note of the difference between fashion expression and gender. They’re not saying who is it isn’t trans to gatekeep, they’re presenting the idea that some people might be less confused and make different life choices if more people tolerated traditionally-gendered subjects (like clothing and makeup) from anyone without judgement

I’m curious what you mean by “better moderation”? Are you comparing to specific instances? Or do you mean consistency, because it’s more centralized?

Unfortunately, no, not really. They are absolutely able and willing to confiscate your devices at any time once you’re on Chinese soil, and once you’ve lost physical control, that’s the end of trust for that device. Even beyond that, it’s not unheard of for there to be vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc that make your device susceptible to wireless attacks. IMO it’s not worth the risk.

Here is just one example of this type of thing uncovered by The Guardian, New York Times, and others in a joint investigation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveillance-app-tourists-phones

Do not bring your normal personal devices to China. They are notorious for injecting spyware on foreign devices at every opportunity. Use a freshly formatted device and create all new accounts to use with it.

Regarding services: do not use self-hosted services unless you you spin up fresh, isolated instances of your services for use while abroad and spin them down afterwards, including formatting any OS they were hosted on.

Regarding VPN: because we are assuming that any device used in China is compromised, do not connect to your VPN unless you have set up a segregated VLAN and are connecting through a VPN server instance created specifically for use while in China.

Basically, assume anything you use in China is compromised. And assume your connections are being monitored. And assume that any device you are connecting to from China is at risk of being compromised. So everything needs to be segregated from the rest of your network and set up specifically to be deleted after you’re back home.