So far I really like PieFed, and I'm hoping to set up some kind of online forum as an adjunct to an in-person discussion group in my city.
For now, I expect it will probably be non-federated, and invite-only.
Those things are already features in PieFed as far as I can tell (well, maybe not invite codes exactly, but using approved signups would work roughly the same way in this case).
Looking to the future though, here's what I'd be super excited to see: the option to make some of the communites visible to non-logged-in visitors, and/or federatable with other instances, while still keeping most communities semi-private; that is, only visible to registered & logged-in local server accounts.
Bonus points if some of those semi-private communities could instead be even more private, i.e., posts only visible to approved members of that specific community. To be fair, maybe the chat functionality is good enough in those cases, I dunno :)
I'm guessing this is a big ask. However, this particular group may not need those functions near-term, so I'd be especially eager to spin up a PieFed server if I knew those kinds of things might be in the pipeline.
My other viable choice right now is Discourse, but like, it's kinda corporate, and it's really JavaScript-heavy, which to me is kind of an equity issue when it comes to data plans and user device speed etc.
Yes! So many similar thoughts here - plus the vampire metaphor of drinking people's blood ... and the long discussion about inviting the vampire into their space almost seems like a comment on civility politics maybe?
And yeah as you say, the loss of identity and thereby a loss of connection to the past and future, due to an extractive and homogenizing mode of integration.
To me (and again, my understanding of Fanon is SUPER limited so I could be getting this entirely wrong!) this seems like it draws on Fanon's critique of Hegel's master-slave dialectic, where true recognition of the oppressed in the master's/colonizer's system is impossible due to racial politics, and the only viable option is the overthrow of that system.
The other bit that stuck with me was the part about having been truly free during those evening hours - where there really did appear to be mutual recognition of each other's personhood, even the wooden nickels were ultimately accepted as a worthy substitute to the US Dollars that Stack would have initially preferred.
Still very cool though, even if it's more of a 'vibe' thing than something more explicitly theoretical/philosophical or whatever.
A neighbour of mine is a children's book editor, at one point I asked them what they were working on, and they told me about a book going to print that, in the big moments, has pages that unfold to match the size and intensity of the character's emotions. I thought that was pretty awesome as well, really interesting use of the format.
Which, I dunno, thinking more as I'm typing this - in some ways what Coogler was doing there still fits in with a reading of Fanon, who of course was also a psychoanalyst.
Like, the big moments expanding the screen, becoming an even more visceral experience, while also, due to the ratio shift, inviting the viewer to think not just about what's being shown but how - intentional or not, I think it does speak to something about the way we process things on multiple levels, how we create memories, how we create links to the past and future, what it means to be free ... even if it only spoke to those things tangentially.
At the same time, this could all be motivated reasoning on my part though, protect my own ego via protecting my pet theory ;)
Ha - yeah it's funny, we just have a stereo setup and I made the wise decision to download a file with a stereo mix, even commented at one point that I was glad I'd done that because of how important the sound was
OK so brief thoughts: obviously super creative, really amazing sound/score/soundtrack. But I think also really interesting in terms of theory.
Like, I've barely scratched the surface when it comes to learning about Frantz Fanon, but from what I do know, this movie seems to draw heavily on his work on race, decolonisation, Hegel, and so on.
I've looked around for a review that talks about this aspect of the movie but haven't found one yet. If anyone sees one lmk :)
Anyway, had some interesting chats with the spouse. One thing we couldn't quite figure out was the choice to change the screen ratio at specific points in the movie. I might have a theory, but I'm curious if anyone else felt like they understood why they did this?
Last week's episode of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast also talked about this 'Google Zero' phenomenon. It's a big problem!
A suggestion: news sites should be pushing RSS feeds hard. Firefox should put a reader in the browser by default, and give alerts when a feed is available on a site.
Between RSS and anti-corporate social media, we have the tools to remove intermediaries like Google and Meta when it comes to news. That's not a replacement for doing stuff like taxing them or doing antitrust enforcement, but thwy're things each of us can do pretty easily!
The Naked Gun (in theater): SO SILLY. Lots of memorable scenes, but the one with the snowman was my favourite. Pam Anderson is really funny in this movie.
Black Bag (downloaded): slick cloak & dagger flick from Soderbergh, with an interesting score, stylish visuals, and some fun performances.
A real 'block' option would be nice on the threadiverse. Right now all we have is a glorified 'mute' button. A block, to me at least, implies that the blocked person can't see or interact with my posts or comments (and not simply that I can't see their posts/comments).
It might complicate things if people who block each other post the same link to a community though. And I assume that federation likely makes implementing this more difficult as well ... but still, it would be nice!
Oof, I knew what this link was gonna be before I clicked it. Maybe even the option to restrict up/downvotes to subscribers as well - the pile-on the OP was getting there was ridiculous (although tbf their post was not within the community in question)
If PieFed is going to hide things that get heavily downvoted, then avoiding brigading seems necessary.
The problem seems like it's pretty accurately described here, but the proposed solution (make AI, but like, make it less bad!) rests on the assumption that we're better off with GenAI than without it. Or that it's even capable of functioning as a reliable transmitter & synthesiser of information. Or that there wouldn't be unintended consequences due to our well-meaning fiddling.
Ok so here's my pitch:
So far I really like PieFed, and I'm hoping to set up some kind of online forum as an adjunct to an in-person discussion group in my city.
For now, I expect it will probably be non-federated, and invite-only.
Those things are already features in PieFed as far as I can tell (well, maybe not invite codes exactly, but using approved signups would work roughly the same way in this case).
Looking to the future though, here's what I'd be super excited to see: the option to make some of the communites visible to non-logged-in visitors, and/or federatable with other instances, while still keeping most communities semi-private; that is, only visible to registered & logged-in local server accounts.
Bonus points if some of those semi-private communities could instead be even more private, i.e., posts only visible to approved members of that specific community. To be fair, maybe the chat functionality is good enough in those cases, I dunno :)
I'm guessing this is a big ask. However, this particular group may not need those functions near-term, so I'd be especially eager to spin up a PieFed server if I knew those kinds of things might be in the pipeline.
My other viable choice right now is Discourse, but like, it's kinda corporate, and it's really JavaScript-heavy, which to me is kind of an equity issue when it comes to data plans and user device speed etc.
Thanks!
Yes! So many similar thoughts here - plus the vampire metaphor of drinking people's blood ... and the long discussion about inviting the vampire into their space almost seems like a comment on civility politics maybe?
And yeah as you say, the loss of identity and thereby a loss of connection to the past and future, due to an extractive and homogenizing mode of integration.
To me (and again, my understanding of Fanon is SUPER limited so I could be getting this entirely wrong!) this seems like it draws on Fanon's critique of Hegel's master-slave dialectic, where true recognition of the oppressed in the master's/colonizer's system is impossible due to racial politics, and the only viable option is the overthrow of that system.
The other bit that stuck with me was the part about having been truly free during those evening hours - where there really did appear to be mutual recognition of each other's personhood, even the wooden nickels were ultimately accepted as a worthy substitute to the US Dollars that Stack would have initially preferred.
Still very cool though, even if it's more of a 'vibe' thing than something more explicitly theoretical/philosophical or whatever.
A neighbour of mine is a children's book editor, at one point I asked them what they were working on, and they told me about a book going to print that, in the big moments, has pages that unfold to match the size and intensity of the character's emotions. I thought that was pretty awesome as well, really interesting use of the format.
Which, I dunno, thinking more as I'm typing this - in some ways what Coogler was doing there still fits in with a reading of Fanon, who of course was also a psychoanalyst.
Like, the big moments expanding the screen, becoming an even more visceral experience, while also, due to the ratio shift, inviting the viewer to think not just about what's being shown but how - intentional or not, I think it does speak to something about the way we process things on multiple levels, how we create memories, how we create links to the past and future, what it means to be free ... even if it only spoke to those things tangentially.
At the same time, this could all be motivated reasoning on my part though, protect my own ego via protecting my pet theory ;)
Ha - yeah it's funny, we just have a stereo setup and I made the wise decision to download a file with a stereo mix, even commented at one point that I was glad I'd done that because of how important the sound was
OK so brief thoughts: obviously super creative, really amazing sound/score/soundtrack. But I think also really interesting in terms of theory.
Like, I've barely scratched the surface when it comes to learning about Frantz Fanon, but from what I do know, this movie seems to draw heavily on his work on race, decolonisation, Hegel, and so on.
I've looked around for a review that talks about this aspect of the movie but haven't found one yet. If anyone sees one lmk :)
Anyway, had some interesting chats with the spouse. One thing we couldn't quite figure out was the choice to change the screen ratio at specific points in the movie. I might have a theory, but I'm curious if anyone else felt like they understood why they did this?
Last week's episode of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast also talked about this 'Google Zero' phenomenon. It's a big problem!
A suggestion: news sites should be pushing RSS feeds hard. Firefox should put a reader in the browser by default, and give alerts when a feed is available on a site.
Between RSS and anti-corporate social media, we have the tools to remove intermediaries like Google and Meta when it comes to news. That's not a replacement for doing stuff like taxing them or doing antitrust enforcement, but thwy're things each of us can do pretty easily!
The Naked Gun (in theater): SO SILLY. Lots of memorable scenes, but the one with the snowman was my favourite. Pam Anderson is really funny in this movie.
Black Bag (downloaded): slick cloak & dagger flick from Soderbergh, with an interesting score, stylish visuals, and some fun performances.
Enjoyed both.
Hypothetical SuperMegaDeathVirus could lead to human extinction, very serious people are saying
oh sorry, yes!
Could easily swap some of these with like a dozen other shows, but here's ten (edit - now with numbers!):
That snowman sequence 😂
A few jokes fell flat for me but overall had a great time. Liam Neeson and Pam Anderson were perfect. So much silly fun
Yeah I dunno, that suggestion seems like it would defeat the entire purpose of having separate communities in the first place.
Ah - thanks, it's great to hear this is being worked on!
A real 'block' option would be nice on the threadiverse. Right now all we have is a glorified 'mute' button. A block, to me at least, implies that the blocked person can't see or interact with my posts or comments (and not simply that I can't see their posts/comments).
It might complicate things if people who block each other post the same link to a community though. And I assume that federation likely makes implementing this more difficult as well ... but still, it would be nice!
Hmm. In a sense, votes aren't real, but if that's true, then why do they exist at all?
And if you don't like that your votes are public, then perhaps simply don't vote, since the votes aren't real anyway?
Oof, I knew what this link was gonna be before I clicked it. Maybe even the option to restrict up/downvotes to subscribers as well - the pile-on the OP was getting there was ridiculous (although tbf their post was not within the community in question)
If PieFed is going to hide things that get heavily downvoted, then avoiding brigading seems necessary.
The problem seems like it's pretty accurately described here, but the proposed solution (make AI, but like, make it less bad!) rests on the assumption that we're better off with GenAI than without it. Or that it's even capable of functioning as a reliable transmitter & synthesiser of information. Or that there wouldn't be unintended consequences due to our well-meaning fiddling.