theotherben

Wow, first time I hear of Bear Blogs, thanks for sharing, I will try it out!

I also find blogs more cozy, nothing wrong with emails for communicating (if you use a good email provider/self-host).

And I can’t get my friends to join my Matrix channel instead of the discord server they are used to using.

I have managed to get friends to use Matrix but not switch, if they don't even bother to try using it (i really mean use, not replace or switch, that's a bigger ask) they are either just lazy (I don't mean it in a bad way, some people usually are because they are in a bad mental state and just too exhausted day-to-day) or it's just not worth your time as much as you think. There are friends and there are people who are just going along.

so my bias is definitely towards non-real-time social media sites. Growing up with dyslexia and AIM

Have you heard of Neocities? They're also open-source.

I agree that small communities are better, by the way, the way you talked about is mostly how it is in language learning servers, some are really comfy, even more if its of a single language only and one that isn't usually listed as most spoken languages worldwide since people learning those others have very really specific curiosity/need/couldn't find many communities on it. Maybe you'd like it more, I don't know if there are Matrix servers like those yet, maybe I just haven't found too.

When it comes to Discord, I think it's easier to sign up on Matrix than Discord though, Element is pretty straightforward and already pre-selects an instance when signing up for those who isn't familiar with decentralized tech yet. I bet if Lemmy had a landing page for people to share when trying to convince others to join to sign up and pre-select lemmy.ml (since it is maintained by one of the devs, you are already trusting using their software anyway) it could help, or not, just an idea.

I was criticizing your approach to atttempt to keep people "private" while having their identity openly to show to anyone, Meta already does some of it and that does not solve it.

While you did acknowledge the dangers you tried making points there are workarounds to make people safe while pseudo private if they want to. I'm saying there's no such thing if your identity is public, it doesn't matter if its a bare minimum, that will give it a start to stalkers. Your line was drawn on this:

I can only imagine what happens to all those people who have basic walkthroughs for Nintendo emulation only to have hired mobs show up to their door to break their knees within the week. Or a conservative government find a reason to jail (or worse) someone asking about abortion options.

...

So if you can’t be anonymous and talk about sensitive topics without it resulting in rage and propaganda and you can’t have your name attached to sensitive topics without it resulting in a risk of doxing or violence, what’s the answer?

That's what I was addressing while taking your possibke workarounds to make someone pseudo private.

You and I agree that there are pros and cons of anonymity, but it falls on good faith and high quality moderation to make sure anonymity is better than having your name attached to something.

If that was your final point and whole stance, then we do agree. But I don't think moderation is solution to when people are exposed, there ain't just a single page on the internet where people can spread doxxed info on someone. However, if you mean that the problem with anonymity although the best choice is lack of proper moderation, then we're definitely on the same page.

And it’s gotta be web based, unlike Discord communities.

What do you mean by that?

Funding is necessary because academics people are just people as anyone else living under a system where people need money to afford to have things and have a place where they can feel secure and so on. As I said, being emotional and rational needs to be reconciled, that doesn't mean you have no right to be emotional, by your response I just notice you don't know how either, and it's okay. Therapy could help if you can afford to.

I have no idea where you got the idea of emotion being demonised, and maybe that's why you feel set on being misanthropic.

You basically just described the situation with Facebook/Instagram and they don't really help much, ever heard of web scrapping and OSINT?

So if you can’t be anonymous and talk about sensitive topics without it resulting in rage and propaganda and you can’t have your name attached to sensitive topics without it resulting in a risk of doxing or violence, what’s the answer? I honestly have no idea. :/

So basically you criticize but provide no solution for people who can have their identity stolen/stalker who can happen to be very tech knowledgeable/work or administrate that very social media/corrupt law enforcement.

You have a picture of where people can openly say anything as long as they don't promote hatred while others can know who said it and try finding all their online footprint to stalk, extremely idealistic and zero pragmatism, who's to say the stalker isn't violent and because of that now the person is in physical danger? Your problem is lack of proper moderation where people can be anonymous.

Did you seriously not see that I acknowledged the privacy and safety concerns?

You didn't before but now you edited 2h after my reply which is public for anyone to check, a bit immature to pretend you just didn't do that now but fine.

I don't, maybe it's the question for another that we will get to 42?

I think there probably is no straight solution to this other than heavy funding in academics (including social studies - which is undervalued in most places) so we can have more questions to possible answers that will lead us to more questions.

What if we knew how to solve it? Do you think every country would suddenly pledge peace and chip in to participate in such transition? That's why I think it's far in the future if that ever happens because it certainly sounds insanely crazy to say that would happen in this century.

The top issues right now is misinformation and weaponizing it to make people make terrible political choices for their country (if it's a democracy) and if not, it'll just weaponize the hate against opposition. We are capable of bring rational but we are also capable of being emotional, how do we reconcile the two? One without the other won't be healthy and I doubt most people can think of an answer to that in the tip of their tongue.

We're product of past generations and acting like we're like 100 generations ahead where people might live closer to an utopia and knows better is just unrealistic. Misanthropy is not the answer nor helps.

I think the most practical way of something like this is the Fediverse, it can be helpful to make this kind of thing you want, because I think one of the worst issues would be moderation. My thoughts: chunk of small social medias defederating from and to anywhere else but federate to each other, maybe like per neighborhood, so they could moderate in small communities better and properly distributed. Although then it'd maybe now a closed platform? Yeah... it's not really practical.

To clarify: by small community I mean a community under 100 members so it's easier to be moderated and faster to react throughout.