I find it odd, but a lot of newer users on Reddit go with the default suggested username and those follow the word-word-0000 template.

At the same time, it might be better for privacy to do that since it’s less likely that someone can track you across platforms if you use the generator built into each platform.

I had to double-check what Deflock was for:

DeFlock’s mission is simple: to shine a light on the widespread use of ALPR technology, raise awareness about the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties, and empower the public to take action.

This app makes it easy to view and report AI powered surveillance cameras, automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), and other surveillance infrastructure near you.

Sharing information about where cameras are located is terrorism now?

🙄

Regional Instances for Quick Join sounds cool, looking forward to it :)

Whoops, I meant to say “only downside”. Edited it

There are lots of positive differences

Not sure how you mean. Is it too complicated to make a pull request and edit the file I linked above?

Not at all, I accidentally quoted the wrong text in my reply. I meant to reply to this bit: “Most instances are uncategorized, and country selection is by server IP so Germany also has pixelshot.it listed. Manually specifying countries would be more reliable (but also more effort)”.

I was proposing having an automated system that uses the server IP (or another method), and then overriding it with any manually entered information from that file. That could be paired with an extra visual indicator or filter method to differentiate between the two.

Its not random from the whole list, but selected from a curated list (currently only lemmus.org and thelemmy.club, see #545). Its displayed like this because a lot of people complained that choosing an instance is too complicated.

That’s fair. Maybe you could add a line above those buttons saying something like “We have picked a random instance for you to try:”

That might be enough for the user to understand that the highlighted instance is not official / run by your team.

The images are not great, I will make a similar post soon to get contributions, and feedback for better texts.

Sounds great, looking forward to it!

The only difference downside really is the occasional extension that needs a manual install.

I’ve been trying out VSIX Manager for my extensions so that I can keep track of which ones I want to install on each machine. This can make it easier to install the weird extensions that you can’t install otherwise

https://open-vsx.org/extension/zokugun/vsix-manager

It’s hard to tell what was wrong with that post without seeing it. At the same time, we’re not a hive mind. People will disagree from time to time :)

or they need a third party APP

I’ve seen this complaint from other new users. Is there something wrong with a lack of an official app? Would it be an ok compromise for the official project to recommend some third party apps?

A lot of these projects don’t have the capacity (yet) to develop an official app on top of the main platform.

As for the recommendations

• Pixelfed is a good alternative to Instagram
• Mastodon and similar platforms are good alternatives to Twitter/X

These are harder, or there’s not as much motivation for them. The projects are still going, but they’re slower:

• Facebook: a lot of people dropped Facebook completely without replacing it with anything. The only real value is private groups and buy/sell tools, of which the first can be replaced with chat platforms and the second already has a patchwork of proprietary alternatives depending on where you are

• LinkedIn: network effect is extreme with this one since it depends on where everyone else in your field of work is hanging out. Some fields don’t use LinkedIn at all already

• Amazon: I don’t see the benefit of having a fediverse version of this? Building tools that independent stores can use to stay competitive might be better

• Spotify: Funkwhale exists, but there are some concerns around piracy. Other options are self hosting or using one of the many other proprietary streaming platforms

• Cloud storage: there are a number of alternatives https://ca.purchasewithpurpose.io/category/file-storage/

regarding the join button, I actually just saw a user have that same misunderstanding: https://old.reddit.com/r/Silksong/comments/1qltxzy/announcing_our_official_sister_community/o1hlnk3/

I just took another look at the site, and I love the new changes already!

Very good idea, also opened an issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/526

I see the developer also found the issue, great to hear that you both might be collaborating.

The images are just to avoid having too much text, a bit similar to the Peertube site. I already mentioned it in another comment, if you know any better images to put there I would be happy to replace them. The icons on your site are very small, so it would still show a lot of text.

That’s a good point. I like the images you have currently, and I’ll keep an eye out for anything that might be better.

True these havent been updated in a long time. Any specific features that you would emphasize?

A few of them have nice big cards now, so those could be combined. Otherwise the features that I personally would have been interested in are (in no particular order):

• Emojis with autocomplete support. Start typing :
• User tagging using @, Community tagging using !: You could also emphasize that this works across instances. For example: “Tagging users and communities from any federated instance”
• Integrated image uploading in both posts and comments.
• i18n / internationalization support for > 30 languages
• RSS / Atom feeds for All, Subscribed, Inbox, User, and Community.
• By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.

Instances can have multiple topics, in fact you can make a PR to this file to update it yourself.

Thanks, I made a note for our team to look into that in the future!

I like Pixelfed’s join page since I can quickly narrow down an instance based on what’s important to me: https://pixelfed.org/servers

That’s a good point, I’m also not sure if there is a good way for instance admins to change that on Pixelfed’s site. I don’t have a strong preference either way, but having some way for admins to update the information would be ideal. Perhaps an automated system with custom overrides through a file on the GitHub?

Some more feedback on the current version of the site:

• It might be good to indicate that the instance in the first card is a random instance, and not an official or ‘flagship’ instance. That way, if it links to a poorly moderated / maintained instance, it doesn’t reflect poorly on the project. My personal preference would be to have the Browse All Servers be the primary button, and then the join button be secondary. A refresh button might also work: “Refresh for a new randomly selected server”
• Very minor, but some of the images are light mode while others are dark mode. It might look better if it was consistent

If anyone else is curious, here is what I found on the link

https://docs.hollo.social/intro/

Hollo is a simple, single-user microblogging tool that lets you run your own little corner of the internet. Think of it as your personal Mastodon instance, but stripped down to the essentials.

I see the original post got removed by moderators to prevent panic. Would you have an update that you can share in this thread? I’m happy to edit the title of this post too :)

Assuming you’re looking for Lemmy/Piefed clients, you might be able to install some of the front ends as PWAs. Photon and Blorp for example

Thank you!

@alam@lemmy.world is also on the threadiverse, and may post updates about this as it develops

Predictions

Showerthoughts

I had no idea Reddit invented having deep thoughts in the shower, or making predictions

🙄

Am I the Asshole?

Yea they can keep that one

I appreciate that you are gathering community feedback!

Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.

Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:

• https://joinmastodon.org/
• https://joinpeertube.org/
• https://pixelfed.org/how-to-join

How about the instance selection wizard (click “join a server” on the homepage), which lets you select topics and languages to select instances. Do the current options make sense?

This is likely a biased opinion, but could you add ‘region’ as a field, or ‘regional’ as a topic? For our instance, I think that’s how a lot of people are choosing to make an account with us given recent events. It also helps the user find an instance that is nearby (for lower latency), and within a jurisdiction that they are familiar with / can have an influence over through voting or other means. pangora.social seems to be down right now, but I recall them having a nice way of organizing that

Another biased opinion, I agree that it’s better to have large instances near the top since they’re more likely to be up / fixed quickly / on top of moderation. You could include a note saying that larger instances are near the top because of XYZ, and that people can always make more accounts down the road if you change your mind. That way there’s less pressure to pick the “correct” instance.

And the list of apps, what can be done here? For one thing the data is rarely updated, so we would appreciate pull requests.

Could you potentially collaborate with https://lemmyapps.com/ ? It would be easier for users to submit updates to one place (whether it is a PR to you or an update on that site)

If I were to try and critique the site in excessive detail, from top to bottom:

• Could you make the logo have a rectangular / circle background around it? Right now edges look odd over the dark background. The hover effect looks nicer, maybe with different colors
• In the header: News, Docs, & Contact can be collapsed into a dropdown under ‘About’ or something similar, since those are pages that someone would go searching for
• Instead of ‘Join a server’, ‘Donate’ and ‘See all servers’, it might be better to have one massive “Join a Server” button/card on the front page that leads to the instance list page.
  • Join a serve and See all servers are very similar for a user that’s not familiar with how this all works, and they end up in the same place. So instead of a popup, could you have it as a responsive widget on the instance’s page? That way users can quickly figure out how the instances are tagged
  • Since the donate button is already in the header, it might be better to have a large section on donations further down the page.
• The paragraph is a large block of text. I’d prefer something closer to what Peertube did
• The screenshots could be larger and more prominent
• The images give off ‘AI generated’ vibes, even if that wasn’t their origin. Could you have large cards with simple icons, similar to the 3 header cards on our site: https://fedecan.ca/en/
• I like the ‘Create your own discussion platform’ card’s format. It’s a bit hard to read, but otherwise nice
• The ‘more features’ section could be simplified down to the important points, and maybe even combined with what is being done with the screenshots area

On the servers page:

• The community explorer and fediverse observer are external sites, but they look like widgets right now.
• Is every instance under one topic, or would it be possible to let the user select multiple and have instances appear and disappear from the list live?
• I like Pixelfed’s join page since I can quickly narrow down an instance based on what’s important to me: https://pixelfed.org/servers

I always saw the rules against Wikipedia to be around citations (and accuracy in the early years), rather than it harming learning. It’s not that different from other tertiary sources like textbooks or encyclopedias. It’s good for learning a topic and the interacting pieces, but you need to then search for primary/secondary sources relevant to the topic you are writing about.

Generative AI however

• is a text prediction engine that often generates made up info, and then students learn things wrong
• does the writing for the students, so they don’t actually have to read or understand anything

Oh is that what it was 😄

There’s an account that I haven’t used in years, which gets a “Are you trying to log in?” email every few months.

I got 6 emails at once the other day, figured it was the same junk

For sure, I’ll also edit them into the post

Example 1:

• My post: https://lemmy.ca/comment/19153240
• How they see it: https://sfba.social/@otters_raft@lemmy.ca/115267196743748430

Example 2:

• My post: https://lemmy.ca/comment/19202083
• How they see it: https://mas.to/@otters_raft@lemmy.ca/115283224174559468

IMO it’s partially because investors are willing to throw money at anything “AI” related, and so people are throwing everything at the wall in case something sticks