I’m pretty sure it used to be easier to get people to move to new things like new forums, Xfire, Ventrillo

In some respects it was somewhat easier to get them to be on multiple platforms instead of moving. Think of the original messenger proliferation, where sometimes people would be on IRC, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, or etc. so much so that you had software like Pidgin and Trillian to help consolidate server/chat rooms and friends lists to more easily chat with all your contacts.

Even with Ventrilo, I remember being open to also switching to Mumble or vice versa if there was some hiccup with either.

Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn’t old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.

I get where this article’s coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn’t last long enough to do much in that regard.

Better than my memory though, here’s an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.

Brings to mind this NSFW ('cause light horror) short film “Circles”

when you get cc’d on an email and wait till the right moment to send the CharCoal image you’ve had waiting for this moment

At a glance this sounds even more intrusive than it’s been with Win10 (and maybe 11?), and sadly it’s no surprise as even without AI junk, I think the defaults with Win10 (and maybe 11) are to track your PC use to try to provide some “convenience” features, e.g. display of recently used programs/accessed files when you go to open a new desktop (Win key + Tab).

If they would be more transparent about this and indicate whether and how much of that info, “anonymized/depersonalized” or not, is being taken by them, I think people would still be understandably annoyed but more understanding; at least with an easy opt out or better still, the default being that you must opt in for any of it.

But compare with GOG then. They sell games, you download them with no DRM so you own the download essentially.

This is the model digital media should take, frankly. Anything less may as well be misleading marketing, as far as I’m concerned.

i’ll tell ya how to undo this, but it’ll involve going over their heads, and you won’t believe this but then you’ll be…

this is too perfect

When other’s, be it corporations or people start to decide which information a person can and cannot access, is a damn slippery slope we better level out before AI starts to roll out en masse.

You highlight the bigger issue here than AI alone tbh. This is why another critical element is becoming literate and teaching each other methods of independent research, using multiple sources to develop an understanding, and not relying on any singular source, especially without careful review.

All the technology in the world can’t help a person learn and understand, who hasn’t yet learned how to learn, much less understand.

I would feel better if stories like this gave us background on the people involved. Who is Mike Macgirvin? I don’t want the person to dox themselves but I do want to know where he came from, what work he’s done before, what companies he’s worked for and what kind of people, organizations or groups he has worked with in the past. What school, university or program did he come out of? How old is he? What nationality? Where does he live and work now?

Did you miss the interview linked in the article? They interviewed Mike Macgirvin a few years back, and it goes into some of the background you’re wondering about.

“lemmy?”
“lemmy show u more memes”

Sorry, I’m afraid Google only knows how to minus

For some reason I thought The Verge was better about having transcripts for their podcasts. I was kinda interested but not around 28 minutes of audio interested. 😞

I’d argue, oddly, that it’s easier to hold a single corporate entity accountable for data breaches than mastodon instance owners.

It’s likely the case that both of are bad from a data security point of view, but at least with the corporations you know who to shout at.

I’m inclined to agree, albeit I’m of two minds about it. On one hand, singular entity is technically easier, but being corporate means it’s likely to have more wealth/resources to make it untenable for people to hold accountable. Whereas on the other hand, if you put in the effort to pin down a Mastodon instance admin or even a few admins, chances are they won’t have those kinds of resources to really defend themselves, so you may be more likely to hold them accountable.

That is, compared to a corporate entity which may drag things out for a slap on the wrist settlement/fine or the like. I can see the different angles to where you’re coming from though.

Depends on the location and timing I think. Find a restaurant or a bar that’s okay with you lounging with your drink of choice and you might find yourself eavesdropping on some strange chatter

Because bluesky and threads started with corporate interests and Mastodon has serious privacy concerns due to the amount of data that instance owners have access to.

Don’t Bluesky and Threads have similar serious privacy concerns? Those running them would, I think, have similar if not even more access to people’s information, depending on how much their respective apps request. Mastodon and its apps on the other hand, generally don’t request as much access to one’s information, meaning instance owners arguably have much less to snoop through.

I must’ve been more tired than I realized and didn’t catch that properly, sorry about that! I was also more focused on the other person’s question and taking it more literally as in the pseudo-guest feature of Discord, which enables you to pop in and ask without a full account.

Forums seem to end up being hostile to newcomers, with all this “did you search the forum first you fucking noob?” mentality. Having a living place for real-time questions and discussion just feels better, same way email exchanges feel terrible after using Slack for so long. You can still have incredibly toxic people in real-time chat servers, obviously, but there just seems to be less overall stress to keep the posts in the forum “pristine” or… whatever that was.

Tbh you can find similar hostility to newcomers in Discord servers, simply swap some words about for a, “Did you read the pins you fucking noob?” mentality. It’s very much the old forum kneejerk response of, “Did you read the rules/stickied posts?” simply in a different context. As you note though, you’ll find assholes in any communication medium.

Also, to your point about a place for real-time questions & discussion, that’s also to its detriment for anyone out of sync with a server’s more active hours, which I think is kind of an understated argument against it among the usual criticism found in these threads. Sure search is one thing, but the asynchronous nature of a forum is imo one of its greatest strengths, especially considering how flaky and/or inundated Discord’s inbox/mentions can be.

Some speculation on my part:

1. There are other higher priority items for the developers.
2. It’s open to abuse, even with restrictions, and a restricted guest account may create a bad impression if the restrictions are poorly communicated (and considering some basic features of Lemmy as-is struggle with being communicated, this is a high probability).
3. Larger/more active servers/communities (depending on implementation) may simply disable the feature altogether or further limit it due to 2.

Despite what @[email protected] says, 3 (or variations on it) has become more common across some larger/more active Discord servers simply because communities understandably don’t want to deal with drop-in trolls or raids, meaning some of them go so far as to temporarily limit or add small hurdles for people even with accounts.

You can of course still find many Discord servers that don’t, which is among the reasons it remains so popular, but it’s not as sure of a thing as it was in the past.

we’re working on interuniversal contact here, one of these has to resonate!