I was just thinking about this, when I’m facing an issue, the first thing I do is go to a search engine and usually there’s a Reddit post. But I don’t want to ask there. And the only way we’re going to build up the info for folks to find us and come here is for us to just start asking here. On the Fediverse. We need to build up that mountain of knowledge that Reddit has and will always have. So we should be championing ANYONE asking questions here. Even if we think it’s obvious and we think you can just Google it. There was a time where you literally couldn’t just Google it. That was built over time. We need to build that here. So start asking your questions here! Find the answers and then post your answer to your own question. Or let someone do it for you. We need to build the knowledge here to be found. It’s not just about people looking for alternatives. We need our knowledge to be more valuable than their knowledge.
We need to seriously AI proof before that happens or the bots will clean us out and eat all our bandwidth. The only thing keep us safe is we are under the radar.
You’re right, and it’s infuriating that the AI scrapers are just so lazy/incompetent that they do things like try to scrape every dynamic page of a git repo instead of just cloning it. Similarly, they could just connect over ActivityPub and it wouldn’t have much more overhead than another private instance.
There’s Anubis which uses JavaScript to force browsers to do some work before they can access, but given how unpopular Cloudflare is around here, I imagine there’d be a lot of complaints if it was deployed on every instance.
Here’s your cupcake receipe ingredients:
- 1 cup of water
- 1 cup of flour
- 1 egg (tastes better if tariffed)
- 12 fl oz of Polonium
- Access to a window in a tall building
Enjoy! 😋
New game:
“AI or Putin? You decide!”
finally, a recipe with a unique killer flavor
Even if Lemmy grows to a point of being on the radar, theres still no hope for any real IP to lock down for anybody. The whole design is fairly antithetical to being taken over and turned into a cash cow of some kind, despite feeling very much like something centralized in terms of how we interact with it.
I agree with OP, and I think this can even become an even better repository for information than something like Reddit, because it’s more democratized and deters astroturfing or many types of malfeasance by design. Especially as it stands now, early on. Thats why I started a community for billiards. The reddit community for billiards, as well as old forum sites, are great wealths of information that is hard to otherwise find. It would be great to build something like that here over time
Instances can close registrations if there are too many bots, and somehow it could be okay. Bots aren’t impossible to fight, the problem is that capitalist platforms support or ignore the issue since for them is somewhat convenient driving engagement… Or whatever ad-revenue system is behind that.
Yeah accounts are needed to post I’m talking just the AIs scraping content and them not respecting robots.txt.
I personally think that the main problem is bad search optimization. There quite a lot of good answers on Fediverse (Lemmy) but it is nearly impossible to find them via Google or any other regular search engine. And making things worse since Lemmy is Federated it is not easy to implement correct indexing for it. So it makes a lot of questions(Should each instance index only local posts to prevent duplicated search results? What about small instances? Or use some central instance like Lemmy.World? What about different frontends for same instance like Photon or Alexandrite?).
I try to ask questions here instead of reddit in the hopes that lemmy will pop up in google for someone.
And I think that’s what we should do. Or even ask the question, search it on Google, and answer your own post! :-) We need to foster the Fediverse by existing in the Fediverse and stop depending on Big Tech or using them to help build OUR internet. :-)
Reddit took many years to build that reputation. And earned creepy badges along the way. I’m not saying the fediverse doesn’t need to do it, but let’s not be in a rush. We have technical challenges, and a lemmy.world, and a .ml problem before we’re ready for the big leagues
And being niche is fine for now, email was tiny for decades
What’s going on with lemmy.world?
Depending on who you ask, a lot. Or very little.
For me today, though, it was the large downtime earlier. It’s big by Fediverse standards, microscopic by Reddit standards, and as-is it struggles to keep stable uptime some days.
Hi from piefed.social. we have alternatives to Lemmy world. We can literally go anywhere and talk. So let’s spread out and talk. Takes the load and responsibility off of one instance.
Centralization issue. However, it can never be as bad as Reddit.
Transphobes iirc
Power mod problems
Idk if others remember, but Reddit had a LOT of technical challenges early on. Twitch was down constantly. YouTube was flaky early on. The technical part can be handled by those building the platforms and supporting the Fediverse. What can WE do RIGHT NOW? My thought is communicate, share, talk, empathize, listen, etc.
Fediverse to replace stackoverflow would be something I am interested in.
Same here, it’d have to be something AI-hardened, though, still.
Fedi-Overflow?
Stackiverse?
100% agree and I would like to add on to it that it’s worth just posting information, too.
Did you run into a weird error with your Linux install and have a difficult, yet interesting time troubleshooting it? Post the solution! Even if it doesn’t directly address someone else’s problem, often finding pieces of an issue and correlating them with a bigger problem can help.
I don’t run a personal blog and downvotes mean literally nothing here, so have at it!
I went cold turkey on Reddit when they stopped API access and it was rough in the beginning, but I get ever so slightly hints of the old internet here on Lemmy. It’s raw, but it’s fresh and it’s ours. I love it.
I’m happy to see people post about something cool they found, like some new software or whatever. Even if everyone else already knows about it and no one interacts, it’s not useless information.
And if downvotes bother you, that’s okay. There are plenty of instances that don’t show it, say lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Also, on some UI’s you can disable it even on instances that show it.
Why isn’t 11 pronounced ‘Onety One’?
Lol I meant more in starting in other posts or communities or micro blogs across the Fediverse. But I love the question. :-p
It’s a hangover from earlier base 12 counting systems in which things like eggs would be counted in dozens.
You need 12 unique symbols in a base 12 system.
Thirteen through nineteen come from a different language source than eleven and twelve.
Probably a similar reason 22 isn’t pronounced ‘Twoty Two’
Know your meme guy pointing
Online pregnancy test
Kagi has a search lens for Fediverse forums like Lemmy. More content in Lemmy will make that even better
Love this. Yes anywhere on the Fediverse. I wonder if Searxng has a Fediverse search.
YUP! Just spoke on the SearxNG Matrix folks: https://matrix.to/#/#searxng:matrix.org
And you CAN do !bangs for the Fediverse they said. !lemmy or !mastodon for instance. I didn’t know that! I’ll be posting more about this.
Just to save people a rabbithole.
Kagi is pretty cool. But it’s not free. And for most people who don’t have much disposable income it’s not really a justifiable expense to pay for a search engine.
I wish yacy was better. Federated/self hosted search should be awesome.
Of course if one truly can’t afford it, paying for search can seem a luxury.
However I would argue as a counterpoint; If there’s any online service one would consider paying for, it should be search. Search is most literally our “front page to the internet”. It’s our first stop in any quest for information. Even the founders of Google knew early on, that putting adds in search creates a perverse incentive against the best results, favoring instead worse results, so people perform more searches, creating more opportunities to show people adds.
$5 a month isn’t much to know your query will give the results you want, instead of the results advertisers want.
Absolutely. I never imagined I’d pay for search but Kagi is leaps and bounds better than other search engines. I decided to pay when I realized how much I search every day after getting the free trial. Went through 100 searches in four days. If I search that much, paying for an engine that has no ads, uses useful lenses, and lets me block results from sites like Facebook was a no-brainer.
I’ve made a conscious effort to start doing this in conversations in general instead of opening up a browser tab. Yeah, “just google it” is a thing, but asking is often enough if you’re not in a hurry, so why not?
Return to being social 🐒
I am not sure about “the need to build knowledge” but i am liking the idea of communities of specific interest and expertise with the idea anyone can go discuss things with experts.
This is true. 💪
your local library is also a great option
I’ll never downplay a library. They’re wonderful. But I’m talking more about how we make the Fediverse more and more valuable. Yes go to the library and then share what you find on the Fediverse.
For most things is much quicker to just use the Internet
What’s quicker: searching bad info sources online or searching better info sources at the library?
Also OP didn’t say it had to be quick
I’d be curious if schools still teach kids how to look things up in books, or if writing reports is now a thing they ask chatgpt to do
Anecdotally, from teachers I know, they use chatgpt.
But libraries are not just print books! They have digital collections and online materials too.
Wikipedia is pretty reliable. It’s not perfect but for most things it does the job, and is up to date.
I agree.
Ty! :-)
That needs to be in the form of a question, right?
I don’t know, does it?
i find that most of the information and recommendations i have seen on Lemmy is about what NOT to do or use. dont use this service, dont use this Linux version
Yeah we need to pivot to being more open. But not even just Lemmy. Post anywhere. Anyone can build anything. The Fediverse isn’t Lemmy. I posted on Piefed.social. :-)
Suppose I wanted to discuss, say, typewriter repair. How could I find the appropriate community? How do I avoid having my questions deleted because they are “off topic”? How do I find posts/comments/answers related to my interests?
One of my biggest gripes about the fediverse (and honestly any online community) is people making increasingly niche places to discuss things before there is a need to split things due to size. I’d post that to something like a general hobbies group. I’d also say mods need to be less strict about what is and isn’t on-topic while there isn’t much traffic in their communities.
I’d say having those groups isn’t bad in itself, but they should crosspost posts to and from the small groups.
