The front end is a work in progress but making significant headway. The lemmy frontend it has on the demo instance is just a placeholder, but the work has been progressing rapidly. I've thankfully been able to be there for it and provide input as I can.
gabe
The only thing I really have to add is on the topic of toxicity. Like you, I’m an instance admin and have a bird’s eye view of a lot of behavior patterns. I’ve recently started wondering how many people are here because they’re too toxic for regular social media rather than because they want to be here. I won’t guess an actual number, but I would say it’s not insignificant.
That's unfortunately a big issue with alternative social media platforms and without tools to combat them it goes bad really bad. I agree completely.
Reading, discord, mastodon, crocheting are my main things at this point. Lemmy occasionally.
For context, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to lemmy admin stuff especially in the matrix channels. There is a significant frustration and lack of confidence in the lemmy developers at this point. Even those who try to contribute to the project get eventually feeling pushed out.
Welcome to the hell of being a lemmy admin. There's a reason why lemmy admins are fed up with the developers.
Haven't gotten around to reading that much, been busy unfortunately.
Yeah, unfortunately took a rapid shift away and my optimism is gone. A hard fork is being made from scratch in a new programming language, that I am actively involved in whatever way I can be.
Just a bunch of Japanese script kiddies targetting the fediverse and its network for some reason. There's active measures being taken and thankfully many instances are monitoring it pretty well.
A big aspect of it is likely nostalgia and the influence it had on many people who were learning to solidify their literacy. I think that's also why it is so hard for people to break from it as well today.
To be honest, I don't really engage in this community because of the discomfort Harry Potter generally brings me now. I was honestly a bit relieved when it died as I knew when it was created it would eventually spell trouble. I want to preface this as I say all of this as a queer Jewish man.
I was a big fan of Harry Potter as a kid. It was the one of the big book series' I enjoyed and it connected me with my mother. I had difficulty picking up reading and Harry Potter was a pathway to solidifying my literacy. I understand why people enjoy it, and in many ways the memories I have of it with connecting to my mother is something I will never forget. But at the same time... there's a big difference between consuming public domain work made by awful people who no longer receive profit whilst consuming work by a woman who is actively engaging in political campaigns to make trans peoples lives worse with the profit she still receives.
I am not trans and I cannot speak from that perspective, but what I can speak on is that I don't really talk about Harry Potter amongst my friends who are as a sign of general respect. It's hard to really emphasize just how much pain JK Rowling has brought people. It's horrendous. There is obvious nuance here and I get that and whenever people talk about Harry Potter I try my hardest not to to pass judgement in spite of the fact I cannot help but think of all the awful shit that's happened. It is extremely difficult for people to break from the cultural hold that Harry Potter has held. It is one of the most iconic media franchises of the early 2000s for a reason.
When it comes to the antisemitism aspect of it, it brings me frustration as it is often an after thought in the discussion of her stuff. TERF shit and antisemitism tends to be best of friends for some reason. Most likely since TERFs are often embraced by fascists who are already antisemitic and they pick their talking points up, but I digress. Antisemitism is a big thing across most media in general and that did leak heavily into Harry Potter at first, but her antisemitism in her work is more jarring knowing that she is now openly associated with public antisemites as well.
I don't know. The whole thing just upsets me honestly. Seeing the conflict it creates is painful.
Honestly coming here and starting my own instance and providing help for other instances and stuff has reignited my long lost love of computers and open source stuff. The passion for it is thankfully coming back.