Ok yeah that’s super interesting, and maybe kinda sums up the whole thing: the devs make tech that reduces the opportunity for thought and engagement, and that frictionless experience results in worse outcomes for users, but better outcomes for profits.

And yet, paradoxically, there are probably plenty more folks like yourself that would prefer to use a different kind of app!

I mean, I was lucky to find a life-partner before dating apps were the default, so I’m going to be speaking a little out of turn here.

But I’d imagine that if those apps were a little more friction-y - like, if people weren’t using an almost literally frictionless swipe left and right, but instead were encouraged by the interface to learn something about a person first, or, say, had to click reasons why they were swiping left or right - that it would be easier to make meaningful connections. You’d be designing in self-reflection and curiosity.

And sure, you might turn away some users by doing that - but what if that’s actually a good thing?

I think there’s a bit of irony in that the most ‘frictionless’ (and dehumanizing) way to interact on Lemmy might be to hit the downvote button. It’s the thing that rewards the knee-jerk, un-considered reaction.

In a way, the downvote button is the thing that perfectly expresses the demand that one’s experience confirm to pre-conceived notions of comfort - without having to face a response from the person being downvoted - and denies the downvoter the potential for growth.

I like this essay too :)

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I agree that it can be difficult for people to hear that a place they enjoy has issues with anti-Blackness. It can feel like a personal attack, and most people consider themselves ‘not-racist’.

I think the real thing to strive for is to be ‘anti-racist’, rather than ‘not-racist’. We all ultimately have prejudices - the point is are we able to simultaneously be honest with ourselves, forgive ourselves, and improve.

In many ways, the overall reaction to this piece actually proves many of its points. The overall reaction seems to have been to deny that the problem exists and refuse to investigate further (or, as you point out, to recognize that the Fediverse being discussed extends beyond Lemmy).

Additionally, some of the reactions here are themselves examples of anti-Blackness (e.g. accusations of so-called “reverse racism” and the like, as well as the ‘knee-jerk’ downvotes you describe). Which makes me less inclined to think of Lemmy as any kind of bastion of anti-racism!

Is there a reason you seem to be upset by this piece? This is a forum for discussion about the Fediverse. Seems entirely appropriate to me.

This may be true of your own experience on Lemmy, but on microblogging software such as Mastodon it is most definitely not the case.

more controls for enterprise customers to manage and govern Recall data

ahh ok so this is employee monitoring software

Low bandwidth mode - what a great idea, thanks for pointing it out!

Thanks! Yeah tbh the gemlog is really just a mirror of the blog, but for the record it’s gemini://gemini.patatas.ca

I hear you on this - Akkoma does this by default, but the issue there is, let’s say someone on a tiny server posts an image, even a relatively small one - if it gets boosted by an account with 10k followers, that small server will effectively get DDOSed, assuming enough of those clients are online.

That’s a good question. The best answer is, I don’t know!

But if I had to guess, based on the small amount I’ve learned:

larger servers most likely benefit from economies of scale. They’ll be using CDNs, and will often have several people on their server following any given remote account, rather than just one. So the per-client energy use is almost certainly lower than for small servers.

But it’s still tough to know whether it’s the client or server using more energy. IIRC with video streaming, the end user’s device was a big factor in overall consumption - but it’s not like the server is chugging away 24/7 fetching media for you like a Fediverse server is.

For single-user servers, or servers with only a few accounts, I expect the server (and all the network infrastructure in between two servers) is doing a lot more work than the client(s) - unless it’s like, the server is on a raspberry Pi and the client is running on a powerful desktop for a lot of the day, or something. Again, many factors at play.

Really though, the question I start to ask in all this is more about, which parts of the system are the most difficult to justify?___

Nice. Yeah Gemini is pretty cool, and that actually reminds me, I have to publish this piece on my gemlog as well ;)

Haven’t tried tootik either but thanks for pointing me to it, will check it out!