this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It's about how the admins informed their users.

A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn't very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.

Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.

I don't agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn't really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).

Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.

Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.

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[–] Fantomas@lemmy.world 160 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's BS to not announce, on lemmy.world something that affects lemmy.world.

Be open and transparent.

I don't like that you blocked the piracy communities but I recognise that you see a reason to do so.

I've already begun migrating my subs to another instance because that's the great thing about the fediverse - I can.

If you want to be the big Lemmy instance with a lot of traffic then you're going to have to protect yourself, I get it. But at least have the balls to announce your unpopular decisions.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

I happened to catch a message on Matrix from @ruud@lemmy.world that he didn't like the way mentions work when you're offline and lots of messages build up, but I didn't realize that meant discord was replacing matrix, especially for community notices.

Add me to the list of folks who won't use discord.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 93 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Discord is pretty much against everything the open web is about. Closed source and proprietary protocols... Probably tons of data mining of users as well.

[–] gabe@literature.cafe 24 points 1 year ago

Not even probably, there is.

[–] mog77a@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Probably? Nah, they legit advertise what their users do. Seemingly increasingly so.

Discord has "drops" (in beta for over a year now to be fair as it wasn't super popular), aka the status snippet that shows when and what app you're using gets shared with developers. Basically, what you do on your system gets logged. You can opt out of that, of course, but still they do collect it. Pretty sure they also stored calls and screen recordings at some point (for convenience reasons of course), but there are now too many users for that. At least, I think they no longer do that. But every single thing you type into discord is logged and can be traced back to you with perfect accuracy.

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm really not happy with using Discord at all for any organisation open to outside users. We got Lemmy for posts about, well, Lemmy. We got something like Mastodon for external updates.

Use what is there.

[–] Excrubulent 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

Also there is Matrix as a direct federated replacement for discord. No reason not to use it.

EDIT: After doing a bit more digging, it's not running on activitypub so not compatible wit the fediverse, but it does run on a federated model.

Although given that both are open protocols, it should in theory be possible to write an adaptor or an update to make them compatible.

EDIT 2: ~~nope lol~~

Edit 3: idk why I let myself be mislead and I don't remember what I looked up, but Matrix specifically says it is federated: https://spec.matrix.org/latest/

[–] ominouslemon@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Matrix is not part of the fediverse. I don't know where people got this idea, but I keep seeing it mentioned on Lemmy. It's just a decentralized messaging software

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[–] kttnpunk@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah I mean, LW using discord instead of a FOSS option is not a good look...

[–] asunaspersonalasst@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Got banned recently from their Discord server by [I'm assuming] me calling out their announcement/decision a clownery (which it actually is, because why make a announcement community when you're not informing your userbase), ngl it's mildly infuritating..

What even is not a good look is I didn't really receive a notice that I got banned there...

Edit: phrasing

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 22 points 1 year ago

Making announcements to somewhere you have to log in to see is the problem. You can't see Discord chats unless You're logged in.

[–] menemen@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

There is a lot of FOSS stuff communicating over twitter... Even The Linux Foundation has a twitter account.

But lemmy.world should primarily communicate via lemmy imo...

That's where I'm at. Discord isn't the issue for me, it's them not using their own platform to communicate major announcements. At that point it's like you've given up on your own platform.

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[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Even having the Discord server is kind of weird in and of itself I thought, you're using one social media platform to talk about your own Social media platform. I use Discord, so it's whatever, but wouldn't it make sense to keep it within the Fediverse and put a "backup" communication channel on some other instance/service like Mastodon? I guess it helps in situations where lemmy.world goes down. I've just found myself liking Discord less and less when companies use it to make "official" announcements and end up leaving alot of people in the dark, since Discord doesn't seem terribly user-friendly for storing long-term information.

You can find it if you know where to look and you have a dedicated announcements channel, I just don't particularly like the format myself personally. I think my biggest problem with it is that the notification settings are so bad by default that it always feels like I'm getting inundated with notifications as soon as I join a server, so I just mute everything on a channel. I only want personal communications through Discord, I don't particularly care to see "official" communications coming out of it.

[–] HRDS_654@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I mean, I can see it if it was used as a backup, but yeah, using it as a primary way of communicating with people is kind of weird.

[–] malcriada_lala@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago

This makes no sense to me. Did they provide a reason for choosing Discord of all things? What was wrong with making announcements on Lemmy? Why wouldn't they choose to make announcements in another federated format in addition and not instead of lemmy? Like, I'm not super tech savvy but I'm sure they could set up an RSS-like feed to send out alerts? IDK

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 49 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I mean, I do get it to some extent.

As an admin myself, every time I make a post on lemmy aimed at members of my instance, it gets drowned out by folk from other instances that want to offer their thoughts and opinions.

That being said, Discord is not the answer to that problem...

[–] nuke@yah.lol 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

If the intention is to have an internal, instance-only post, I believe such a thing could be enforced with an automoderator bot. I had a lot of success throwing the Lemmy API into an AI and generating my own moderator bot from that. Could work for you.

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[–] McNasty@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sh.itjust.works uses matrix like any normal lemmy instance would.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sh.itjust.works uses matrix like any normal lemmy instance would.

Why should announcements happen in a real time chat anyway? Lemmy is actually best suited for announcements.

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[–] resketreke@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] zer0@thelemmy.club 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This gives out the impression they don't care about lemmy being open source and decentralized but rather they are at it for a piece of the cake

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[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

This whole situation is rubbing me the wrong way. I can understand the motives behind defederating even if I don’t agree but it’s been a day and the only announcement is still on Discord. Not ideal.

[–] rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

I couldn't agree more. We shouldn't need to be somewhere else to receive announcements (especially such important ones).

Not to mention Discord's horrible record of privacy and security. I don't have an account and will never make one, and I'm sure many others in the fediverse will agree.

I actually just tested out the account making process, and I got asked for my phone number. No. Way.

We're here because we care about a decentralized, open network. Aside from its confusing and busy UX, it's not even indexable. Discord is literally a black hole for information and terrible for everyone except for Discord itself, who is doing who knows what with all of our data.

Discord is everything the fediverse stands against.

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago

Discord is cancer, and FOSS communities should avoid it like the plague. It's everything that is against foss philosophy.

[–] AndreyAsimow@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It would definitely make more sense to post the announcements on Lemmy rather than another discord server.

IMHO, Rather than dividing the stream of new information it would be better to focus on one platform.

Personally I dislike discord as the conversations there are too fast for me.

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[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] tabular@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

They could have gotten feedback if the comments were not turned off. I'll give the benefit of the doubt there's a good reason to not have comments on for that post but that and using Discord is two orange flags.

[–] vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 1 year ago (38 children)

The moment I learned about defederation, I made an account on an instance that didn't do that.

Here's a website you can use to check what your instance is blocking.

https://fba.ryona.agency/

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alternatively if you scroll to the bottom page of any individual lemmy instance there should be a link called Instances which will take you to a page of all the instances yours is federated and defederated with.

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[–] BitOneZero@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

I've found there is a culture within Lemmy developers and long-time operators to discuss in Discord or Matrix chat instead of "eating their own dogfood" and using Lemmy itself to openly discuss Lemmy technical and project issues. These chat services are legendary for keeping things away from search engines and newcomers getting up to speed. Lemmy itself isn't nearly as search-engine friendly as Reddit was traditionally, it seems like feedback needs to be given as to how important it is to keep things about Lemmy in the eyes of those who actually use Lemmy...

[–] sunaurus@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I think Discord is great, as long as you account for its shortcomings:

  • It should be treated as ephemeral - up to the point of "the service could completely shut down tomorrow"
  • It should not be treated as fully private or secure

I love how snappy it is (I never have to wait minutes for messages to load, as I do in Matrix), and also how there are a ton of Lemmy users who have Discord open in the background anyway. While I wouldn't ever propose moving something like the main Lemmy communication channels to Discord, I do think it's much easier to have IMs with regular Lemmy users on Discord than it is to do so on Matrix (as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed).

By the way, lemm.ee also has a Discord server. It's only treated as a secondary channel, all announcements are posted in our meta community on Lemmy itself, and just linked to from Discord, but it's still nice to have IMO.

[–] Anafroj@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

as in my experience, most regular users do not have a Matrix client installed

I understand your point, but by that logic, we should use Reddit rather than Lemmy, as most users are there. It's not only about ease of use, it's about being sure users won't be abused. Discord is still in its acquisition phase, but you can be sure enshitification will come next.

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[–] gabe@literature.cafe 14 points 1 year ago

The issue people are having is the announcement was made exclusively in lemmy.worlds discord server. Beehaw has a discord server as well, but they relay announcements to there, not from there usually

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[–] rapscallion@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Even assuming my ancient Discord login still works (didn’t they make everyone change their names or something? idk if that affects accounts) it doesn’t look like you can use it on a phone without downloading the app, and I’m not doing that just to check for Lemmy announcements. Discuss controversial decisions there if you have to, but announce them here first.

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[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 8 points 1 year ago

This is disappointing because thus far, I have been really happy with the communication and transparency of lemmy.world. But with this change, I will unfortunately not see announcements anymore.

[–] rDrDr@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

There's admin drama now. Oh boy Lemmy really is busy like reddit.

I left lemmy.world because they were doing nonsense like this. I recommend to others doing the same.

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