Google and Bing search has been horrible with that for some time. Bing AI will at least bypass the crap website’s for now anyway.

Curious if someone in an abusive relationship could use this trick if their phone was being monitored. If the abuser was just monitoring them with the phone’s parental controls this would work but if there was an app probably not?

Seven Samurai is an amazing movie. It set the groundwork for so much more to follow.

Harold and Maude Silence of the Lambs Thor: Ragnarok Singing in the Rain Unforgiven

Silly to hold us to five but those were the first to come to mind.

I nearly spit out my drink. Relatable and funny.

We need a remind me bot. I’ve no clue other than Putin fled Moscow and they guy controlling a bunch of mercenaries is coming for him. I’ll look back at this post later to see what the consensus is and if they supply links.

Porteus is cool. I messed around with it when trying to set up an idiot proof browsing pc for a relative.

Pop or Mint are fantastic. They are my go to.

Agreed but they will bleed off users more than likely with their shenanigans. The Fediverse is at a tipping point. It will either develop to be robust and fun/informational, or it will remain the playground for a few. Societies only become better when more people are actively involved. We need the involvement now more than ever to guard against fracturing.

The thing is that Meta and Reddit are masters of social manipulation through their algorithms. They know what low common denominators get the most engagement. I blame FB for a big number of echo Chambers and that just fed people their own negativity right back, made them spiral into a bad place mentally.

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

It’s the halcyon days of the Fediverse. Negativity on my feed is nonexistent. There’s discussion. There’s respect for differences. I know things will change with time but it’s important that the big instances never work as proxies for big tech. It’s important that big tech doesn’t get a seat at the table. Voices should remain individual and not some mouthpiece to an industry that wants centralized control.

I just read a good article about big tech is never a friend to decentralized stuff. You can find it here.

An excellent read. My synopsis is that if any big corporations joined the Fediverse they would fracture it, and that no matter what Meta, Reddit, Google, etc. would never want to see a decentralized platform succeed.

Pretty much the Fediverse needs to never let a big company tie into it. Our group needs to work at growing but at a sustainable rate.

I would argue that the only low level post that would be worthwhile is the social variety. For those in the Fediverse who want this to be a place to visit everyday there needs to be posts that create a dialog of sharing life events. Some of the best posts on reddit were the ones where the comment thread was better than the post. The post sparked something to share and people dog piled and created something fun and entertaining.

Maybe the Fediverse isn’t big enough for that to happen spontaneously right now. But I do like when my communities/magazines ask the general low level question. It allows me to participate and not wait for a post where I have some expertise to share.

BTW, good observations and good ideas in your post.

A big shout out to Lemmy.one. I signed up not knowing but love the fact now. Down votes don’t add to the discussion. And posts and comments that are in poor taste should just be reported. Ignoring poorly made comments and posts is the best way to extinguish them. It forces the writer to improve their input if they care about the up votes. Down votes just make the user give up in wanting to contribute at all. Lemmy is about contribution. For now it is anyway.

Magic can McGuffin any answer you need but it sounds like you want a non magic means to keep people away.

Have a guarded door, be it creature or armed guards. The room that is guarded is not the real room, just a place to hold private meetings. It’s used on the regular to keep the focus on the guarded room.

The real room is in the town’s bizarre. It’s passed by all of the time and is curated by the most hated man. No one likes going to his shop. He’s rude and his wares are over priced. Within his shop is the real room that is visited by the few who know.

My wife is a teacher at a small district. She’s watched student’s abilities drop over the past twenty years and the time of covid left them severely lacking. Yes. Their writing skills are practically not there. It’s truly sad.

The negativity is definitely less. Sure, out of say fifty comments to a post there’s maybe two disgruntled souls. Overall it’s conducive to discussion.

Over on reddit I kept to just hobby subreddits for the most part to make comments. Only way to not come across the trolls.

Yes, the clean UI is wonderful. It’s good to have something simple. It’s also fun to watch something grow.

You make excellent points.

You’re correct up to a point. A statistical bell curve is present in most things. You’ll have those who lurk, those who comment, those who post, and those that will moderate in any group. Make that group bigger and each category will grow too. The group can skew the results, lower the lurkers for instance, by making them answer questions before joining. They self select themselves as being more engaged.

But I agree, the current business models are big on numbers and not necessarily what is going on with those numbers. We’ve been taught quantity over quality in real world applications to our detriment. It’s sad really.

Wasn’t that labor ward responsible for mixing babies some time ago?

Sorry, I don’t follow the rules. wild card