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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3658 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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I dislike discord. Not just because of the discord -> degeneracy meme, but because so much tech specific knowledge is now hidden in a generally unsearchable archive where the only way to find it is BY joining and searching various discords. At least forums have a single post buried in the google archives from 15 years ago. With discord suddenly a huge amount of information is gated, and short of 'joining the community' it's impossible to locate the information now.

A problem that took me two days to iron out could have been done in 15 minutes if I simply remembered that Discord = information. However, my general use of discord means that connection in my mind doesn't take place.

I don't dislike the way Discord works; we really needed a replacement for IRC, as not everyone had the chops to run a bouncer and keeping a record was a big issue. Discord has the nice effect of mixing multiple types of communications people could want to have together in a semi-coherent structure.

I am a disappointed though that the solution we ended up going with was a centralized private company, instead of an open protocol. But Matrix is a mess.

But Matrix is a mess.

It was broken by design.

People think federation is a feature for some reason, but the only people it helps are not people you should ever empower, because it allows them to bully you across instances for the crime of not sharing the same killfile.

"Federation" as far as the client sees it is just managing multiple accounts, which doesn't tilt the playing field in favor of the bullies.

Oh yeah, and the server needing 2GB of RAM to run is absurd. We accept that from clients, but when it's the server it's an entirely different story and makes it even more difficult to run.

You have this exactly backwards. Centralized services force a singular moral sensibility on everyone in the world. The cure is federation, or some equivalent of self-hosting or associating with like-minded people.

Edit: Zuckerberg, Musk, and Pichai are the people I should never empower.

Federation has already failed. A common protocol is important, but we only have that by inertia too.

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