Some Lemmy instances (e.g. Beehaw) do not support down votes. When an instance does support down-votes, authors often get zero feedback with the down votes which ultimately supports obtuse expression, shenanigans and haters. The status quo suffers from these problems:

• down voters do not need to read the comment they are down voting
• down votes empower non-moderators to suppress comments and posts
• some communities struggle to get content because of some malicious down voters who down vote every post to discourage activity and effectively sabotage the community; voting privacy shields malicious down-voters from discovery and supports their attack
• silent down votes are non-constructive
• some people make heavy use of down votes to suppress civil comments purely because of disagreement; other (more civil) users only use down votes to suppress uncivil dialog. This inequality ultimately manifests to reduce civility.
• transparency: kids and adults are accessing the same forums and adults are blind as to whether down votes are coming from kids (the rationale can reveal this)

The fix:

An instance admin should be able to flip a switch that requires every down vote to collect a 1-line rationale from the voter. These one-liners should be visible to everyone on a separate page. Upvotes do not need rationale. So instance owners should have 3 configuration options:

• down votes disabled (beehaw)
• down votes require rationale (proposed)
• down votes out of control (the most common status quo)

Perhaps overkill, but it might be useful if a moderator can cancel or suppress uncivil down votes.

BTW, the reason this enhancement request is not in the official bug trackers:

• Lemmy’s bug tracker is in MS Github (#deleteGithub)
• Kbin’s bug tracker is on codeberg, who silently deleted my account without warning or reason, and #Codeberg reg forces a graphical CAPTCHA (which fails on my non-graphical browser).

#lemmyBug #KbinBug

/cc @nutomic@lemmy.ml @ernest@kbin.social

It would be useful to have more refined control over participation in a group. Someone should be able to create a group that gives permissions to specific individuals. A variety of permissions would be useful:

• permission to see that a community/mag exists (some groups may or may not want to be listed in searchable a public directory)
• permission to read the posts in a community/mag
• permission to vote in the community/mag
• permission to start a new thread in the community/mag
• permission to comment on an existing thread in the community/mag

A forum creator should be able to set the above perms on:

• individual accounts
• all users on an instance (e.g. users on an instance @weH8privacy.com might be unfit for voting and writing comments in the community “fightForPrivacy”)
• all users not on an instance (e.g. local users only for example)
• instance IP-based (e.g. users from Cloudflared instances might be unfit to participate in a group called “decentralizationAdvocacy”)

Settings for individuals should override instance-specific settings. So e.g. a “fightForPrivacy” forum might allow all forms of participation from an instance stop1984.org, but if antiprivacyMallory@stop1984.org is uncivil, a mod should be able to block all inputs from that user yet perhaps still allow antiprivacyMallory to just read the posts on the off chance of influencing the user to be more civil through exposure to civil chatter.

Workaround 1 (Lemmy only):

Make an announcement community and make all participants a moderator. Bit crazy unless you really trust everyone involved.

Workaround 2 (Lemmy):

One community per instance using instance-specific registration control. Still too blunt, cumbersome, excludes mods who don’t have their own instance.

Question

Sometimes I click to subscribe to a community which then goes into a “subscription pending” state. What does that mean? As a moderator of some groups I never receive a signal that someone is requesting to subscribe.

BTW, the reason this enhancement request is not in the official bug trackers:

• Lemmy’s bug tracker is in MS Github (#deleteGithub)
• Kbin’s bug tracker is on codeberg, who silently deleted my account without warning or reason, and #Codeberg reg forces a graphical CAPTCHA (which fails on my non-graphical browser).

#lemmyBug #KbinBug

/cc @nutomic@lemmy.ml @ernest@kbin.social

Some of you might be interested in this Mastodon thread. It’s a bit of bashing PDFs for having poor accessibility, and some guidance on improving PDFs for accessibility.

Some people are saying they prefer MS Word over PDF for accessibility reasons. Of course the elephant in the room is that “accessibility” is an over-loaded word. It usually refers to usability by impaired people, but in the case of being generally usable to all people on a broad range of platforms, MS Word is obviously inaccessible due to being encumbered by proprietary tech by a protectionist corporation.

There’s a widespread nuisance of shared e-scooters (which do not need to be locked) taking up bicycle stalls that cyclists need to lock their bikes. Are e-scooter platforms instructing users to use bicycle racks? Or are people doing that against policy?

I’m not blind but I browse with images disabled. This means I can no longer login to Protonmail because they push CAPTCHAs. I know some CAPTCHAs have an audio option but I just get a blank box from Protonmail’s CAPTCHA. So I was wondering how blind people deal with that, or if they are simply excluded from using #Protonmail.

If you try to download video lU4vv7qCQvg on a variety of #Invidious instances, some (most?) redirect you to a realtime player instead of serving up the file. Those instances that cause the wrong action work correctly for other videos.

works → https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

broken → https://iv.ggtyler.dev/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/307315

Considering Sam Bankman-Fried claimed to practice #effectiveAltruism, and the fact that he makes substantial political donations, I thought we can validate to some extent whether his effective altruism is bogus or genuine. I thought this would be easily settled. If he favors democrats, he’s putting humanity above wealth & tyranny. If republicans, the altruistic claim can be easily dismissed.

It turns out #SamBankmanFried donated to democrats and republicans both. It’s unclear if the donations were equally effective for both parties, but interesting that he donated to dems in-the-clear while hiding donations to republicans. One of the notable donations went to a congressman who was most critical of cryptocurrency. So naturally he had to bribe that politician.

Dems were surprised to find that he also donated to republicans (and by his own admission!). Had he donated to both parties in transparency, recipients could see their opponent is also being fed and disregard the donation (i.e. give no preferential treatment). Seeing all the recipients would reveal if there were at least a consistent ideology or philosophy in play.

I have to conclude the political donations were likely all just to promote his own success. It does not completely nix the claim of effective altruism because he would argue it was purely a wealth accumulation endeavor as a precursor to effective altruism. But I have to say someone who is fully engaged in the idea of effective altruism would be irresistibly selective in who receives political contributions even at the cost of reduced wealth. A humanitarian would not be able to stomach the idea of financing a republican war chest.

You also have to figure that since he chose to make dem financing transparent and repub financing in the dark, he inherently gave republican recipients full view of it. That’s only viable if he donates much more to republicans who would see that he donates mere peanuts to the opponent for optics.

Considering Sam Bankman-Fried claimed to practice #effectiveAltruism, and the fact that he makes substantial political donations, I thought we can validate to some extent whether his effective altruism is bogus or genuine. I thought this would be easily settled. If he favors democrats, he’s putting humanity above wealth & tyranny. If republicans, the altruistic claim can be easily dismissed.

It turns out #SamBankmanFried donated to democrats and republicans both. It’s unclear if the donations were equally effective for both parties, but interesting that he donated to dems in-the-clear while hiding donations to republicans. One of the notable donations went to a congressman who was most critical of cryptocurrency. So naturally he had to bribe that politician.

Dems were surprised to find that he also donated to republicans (and by his own admission!). Had he donated to both parties in transparency, recipients could see their opponent is also being fed and disregard the donation (i.e. give no preferential treatment). Seeing all the recipients would reveal if there were at least a consistent ideology or philosophy in play.

I have to conclude the political donations were likely all just to promote his own success. It does not completely nix the claim of effective altruism because he would argue it was purely a wealth accumulation endeavor as a precursor to effective altruism. But I have to say someone who is fully engaged in the idea of effective altruism would be irresistibly selective in who receives political contributions even at the cost of reduced wealth. A humanitarian would not be able to stomach the idea of financing a republican war chest.

You also have to figure that since he chose to make dem financing transparent and repub financing in the dark, he inherently gave republican recipients full view of it. That’s only viable if he donates much more to republicans who would see that he donates mere peanuts to the opponent for optics.

After living in regions that were (foolishly¹) designed exclusively for cars, I moved to a proper city: a city with public transport and a cycling infrastructure. Started using public transport and felt liberated. No more insurance burden, no maintenance burden, no vehicle registration, no traffic fines, parking fees & fines, no more financing unethical right-wing oil companies that are burning up the planet, etc. It was a weight off my shoulders to live cheaper and more ethical.

public transport also unethical

Then a colleague convinced me that using public transport needlessly is also unethical.. that the huge amount of energy required to power that infrastructure is still harmful & wasteful. Public transport needs to exist for various reasons like serving disabled people, but when able-bodied people flood onto it more vehicles must be dispatched more frequently. I was adding to that burden.

the answer: cycling

So after years on public transport I switched to a bicycle. It’s even cheaper than public transport. And it came with another upgrade to liberties:

• privacy— my realtime whereabouts is no longer surveilled & tracked (no license plate readers, no public transport card readers w/DBs, no insurance records which can then intermingle with other insurance & credit records & cause harm in other ways).

• independence— it’s easy to maintain one’s own bicycle. So I’m free of dependency on mechanics & free of dependency on public transport schedules (which can be unreliable). Dirt cheap and you only need to depend on yourself.

After evolving into a cyclist, I cannot stomach the thought of living again in a non-cyclable region. Those regions are encumbered by stupidity and addicts: people addicted to their perception of convenience (despite sitting in traffic that bicycles are immune to and despite looking for parking)… and people addicted to energy (from oil or power plants) because they think peddling their bike will be a notable effort.

Intelligence of car drivers

It’s been said jokingly (by Douglas Adams IIRC) that dolphins are smarter than humans because they’ve figured out how to get their needs met without investing crazy amounts of cost and labor to create things that work against them to some extent. Cyclists are like dolphins in this regard, as they see people work their asses off to be able to afford the car that takes them to work, where they earn the money to finance their car ownership so they can work more. At the same time they work to finance the oil politicians who work against them.

2023 research suggests cycling makes you smarter and apparently 2014 research suggests cyclists are more intelligent² (I suspect there’s the factor that people with naturally higher IQs favor cycling anecdotally. E.g. many profs cycle to universities).

self imprisonment

We all live in a prison of some kind. My new prison is being self-excluded from a big chunk of the car-dependent world and living in all those regions. But I prefer my new prison better than that of car dependency and being forced to finance companies that finance politicians who work against humanity.

footnotes

¹: it would be unfair to fault pre-climate aware municipal designs as foolish, but foolish that decades thereafter these shitty designs are still being maintained (unlike Utrecht who were wise enough to realize their mistake & fix it) while people continue rewarding the shit designs with their residency and tax.

²: I’ve not read the 2014 study myself. Some articles claim the research shows cyclists are perceived as more intelligent while other reports claim cyclists are more intelligent.

update: bonus paragraph. Due to popular demand, I’m giving you folks a bonus paragraph:

car → bicycle upgrade If we go back to the last year I drove a car, and someone were to say: ditch your car and get a bicycle, my answer would probably be hell no, I'm not going to peddle my ass around. I might rather drive over animals like in this pic (j/k). Having the public transport middle-step seems important. It’s easy to go from car to effectively being chauffered around. Then to transition to cycling has the upgrade of not waiting, no tracking, etc.. door-to-door about the same as public transport.

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/213918

I’m increasingly encountering situations where people are forced to go through various kinds of technical hoops in order to exercise their legal rights.

Five examples:

① You have a right to reserve streetside public parking in front of your house (e.g. for a week-long construction project). Historically you can go to city hall or the like, give your schedule, and pay a fee. But then they decided to put the reservation system exclusively online. Cash payers are excluded. Offline people are excluded. People who are online but do not want to share their email address with an office that uses Microsoft for their email are also excluded.

② You have a right to unemployment benefits. But the unemployment office goes online and forces you to solve a Google reCAPTCHA. Google’s reCAPTCHA often refuses to serve the puzzles to Tor users. People who are on clearnet may be unable to solve the CAPTCHA. Some people /can/ solve it but object to feeding a system that helps Google profit because they boycott Google.

③ You have a right to vote. But the voter registration process exposes your sensitive information to the tech giant Cloudflare and Amazon. Even if you register on paper, the data entry workers will expose your data to Cloudflare and Amazon anyway.

④ You have a right to energy access. But the energy company refuses cash payments so you are forced to open a bank account. All banks force you into a situation that goes against your beliefs. E.g. forcing you to obtain from Google a closed-source app to run on a smartphone (which you may not even have), or the bank’s website is Cloudflared and you will not share your sensitive financial info with CF. And the banks either have no analog/offline means of service, or the offline services are costly.

⑤ A public school excludes students who are unwilling to use Facebook, Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft products & services. Anyone can attend but those who refuse to feed the corporate surveillance capitalists are put at a great disadvantage perhaps to the extent that they cannot pass their classes.

Not all those examples are real. E.g. in the real life scenario of case ② I think there is an offline option (but not sure during a pandemic). So my question is hypothetical— assume there is no pathway to service except for satisfying the barriers to entry.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 21:

“2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”

Some nuances can be extracted from the examples:

A) You are incapable of exercising your right yourself. E.g. blind and the CAPTCHA requires vision, or you are not tech literate enough to follow the tech process. But you can hire someone to do the work for you.

B) You are capable of exercising your rights but unwilling to accept the conditions. Hiring someone may or may not be possible depending on whether your personal conditions can be accommodated.

So the big question is, for groups A and B: are rights being violated?

Group B is the more interesting one. A common attitude is: those people have “preferences” and their rights are not violated when their preference is not respected. I find that quite harsh. When a right becomes conditional by the institutions who are supposed to support the right, IMO the conditions (which are not written in law) are inherently excluding people. If a right is going to be made conditional, isn’t there some kind of legal principle that the conditions be codified into law and not some arbitrary condition that a systems administrator decided was a good idea?

#rightToBeOffline #rightToBeAnalog

I’m increasingly encountering situations where people are forced to go through various kinds of technical hoops in order to exercise their legal rights.

Five examples:

① You have a right to reserve streetside public parking in front of your house (e.g. for a week-long construction project). Historically you can go to city hall or the like, give your schedule, and pay a fee. But then they decided to put the reservation system exclusively online. Cash payers are excluded. Offline people are excluded. People who are online but do not want to share their email address with an office that uses Microsoft for their email are also excluded.

② You have a right to unemployment benefits. But the unemployment office goes online and forces you to solve a Google reCAPTCHA. Google’s reCAPTCHA often refuses to serve the puzzles to Tor users. People who are on clearnet may be unable to solve the CAPTCHA. Some people /can/ solve it but object to feeding a system that helps Google profit because they boycott Google.

③ You have a right to vote. But the voter registration process exposes your sensitive information to the tech giant Cloudflare and Amazon. Even if you register on paper, the data entry workers will expose your data to Cloudflare and Amazon anyway.

④ You have a right to energy access. But the energy company refuses cash payments so you are forced to open a bank account. All banks force you into a situation that goes against your beliefs. E.g. forcing you to obtain from Google a closed-source app to run on a smartphone (which you may not even have), or the bank’s website is Cloudflared and you will not share your sensitive financial info with CF. And the banks either have no analog/offline means of service, or the offline services are costly.

⑤ A public school excludes students who are unwilling to use Facebook, Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft products & services. Anyone can attend but those who refuse to feed the corporate surveillance capitalists are put at a great disadvantage perhaps to the extent that they cannot pass their classes.

Not all those examples are real. E.g. in the real life scenario of case ② I think there is an offline option (but not sure during a pandemic). So my question is hypothetical— assume there is no pathway to service except for satisfying the barriers to entry.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 21:

“2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”

Some nuances can be extracted from the examples:

A) You are incapable of exercising your right yourself. E.g. blind and the CAPTCHA requires vision, or you are not tech literate enough to follow the tech process. But you can hire someone to do the work for you.

B) You are capable of exercising your rights but unwilling to accept the conditions. Hiring someone may or may not be possible depending on whether your personal conditions can be accommodated.

So the big question is, for groups A and B: are rights being violated?

Group B is the more interesting one. A common attitude is: those people have “preferences” and their rights are not violated when their preference is not respected. I find that quite harsh. When a right becomes conditional by the institutions who are supposed to support the right, IMO the conditions (which are not written in law) are inherently excluding people. If a right is going to be made conditional, isn’t there some kind of legal principle that the conditions be codified into law and not some arbitrary condition that a systems administrator decided was a good idea?

#rightToBeOffline #rightToBeAnalog

UPDATE

This question was answered in !philosophy@mander.xyz.

A common objection to boycotts is based on sympathy for the workers. If you call for a boycott on Amazon, for example, a substantial portion of the population will argue “good people work for bad companies”.

This rationale essentially attempts to take the boycott option off the table entirely for all mid-size companies and larger. So I wonder to what extent this widespread way of thinking damages activist movements to correct harmful companies.

Recently in Belgium there was a boycott on the grocery chain Delhaize for their employment practices. So I can’t help but notice this boycott is purely out of sympathy for the employees, effectively a 180° contradiction to the mentality that boycotts harm employees.