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mundane ,

That is crazy. He really did seem knowledgeable, and apart from the upload of a sensitive image, he really did what he could.

SpaceNoodle ,

What did we miss?

db2 ,

https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2024/03/04/lemmy-fediverse-gdpr/

RaoulDook ,

All those feature requests seem like good stuff.

ABCDE ,

And legally mandatory. Lemmy instances will get fined and shut down because of this if they do not sit up and pay attention.

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ,

And thankfully the Lemmy devs are racing to fix the problem!

ABCDE ,

Did you read the article?

TheTetrapod ,

Psst, I think they're being sarcastic

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

They're absolutely being sarcastic, the Devs' response was rude and dismissive.

bdonvr ,

At least in the EU

db2 ,

So what have they been doing to nuke the csam images, editing the database directly?

candyman337 ,
@candyman337@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yes

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Often just nuking all image uploads made during a certain time period. Which is why old image threads in Lemmy have time periods littered with broken images.

QuaternionsRock ,

I don’t understand why Lemmy needs to have a built-in image server at all. Reddit didn’t have one for the longest time and it was fine. Sure, I don’t think anyone would be particularly happy with going back to Imgur etc., but it doesn’t seem worth the trouble.

MBM ,

Some instances do just disable the image server part (I think lemm.ee used to and still only allows small images?)

GreatAlbatross ,
@GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk avatar

It's a trade off for us.

You risk CSAM, and have to shoulder the storage costs.

But you also help to reduce link rot, as the images are kept on the site, rather than an external image host that might explode/go VC one day.

Album ,
@Album@lemmy.ca avatar

I mean I don't know why we need images at all, this stuff worked fine when it was just a BBS

db2 ,

Uphill both ways.

maltfield ,

They definitely should remove it, at least until moderation tools are available.

bdonvr , (edited )

Admins can purge posts manually which actually deletes them. Or use tools like db0's lemmy-safety that tries to automatically search for CSAM and wipe it.

I think the problem here is the user didn't finish their post which means the photo was uploaded but not associated with a post and therefore not purgeable that way.

Serinus ,

That last problem was fixed in an older version of the software. If you upload, but don't post, it will now be deleted after a time.

You can test this pretty easily by just leaving your browser open with an image uploaded and trying to post it later.

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

Often they delete all images during the time frame of a CSAM attack, as that has been the only real feasible way to ensure images weren't left behind. Though I think a few images have started using AI detection methods to remove images like that automatically (read up on that here and here), also Pict-rs now has a Log linking uploaded images to the user, so now images can be purged with the users.

Shady_Shiroe ,
@Shady_Shiroe@lemmy.world avatar

This got me curious on how many images are on all Lemmy instances combined and how much storage it all takes up.

Shadow ,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

I can tell you that for lemmy.ca we use 778gb

Fudoshin ,
@Fudoshin@feddit.uk avatar

Holy fucking shit balls. I contemplated seeing up an instance on a £5 VPS. Hmmmm, I think my scale is a bit off.

Shadow ,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

If it's just a private instance, your storage needs will be way less. We use object storage, so it's actually pretty cheap (like $5-10 a month iirc). We're not storing that all on the server disk.

null ,
@null@slrpnk.net avatar

I've been considering a private instance myself so that's good to know.

If you're federating with everything by default, would that not also federate all the images and take up space that way? Or are images always just referenced from their origin instance?

Shadow ,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

Images come from their origin, but I think thumbnails are cached on your instance.

jivandabeast ,

This is correct, i have seen in the past images that 404 when clicked but the thumbnails show up fine on my instance

bdonvr ,

I'm running a quite small instance and currently the full media storage is 234GB. That being said I pay $3 per month for the storage on Cloudflare R2 so that's fine. You could get more for cheaper probably with a service like Backblaze B2.

The main database (non-media) currently takes up 36GB.

key ,

I'm on a private instance. My lemmy volume as a whole is currently 72G.

5 is probably a bit undersized and liable to cause pool timeouts. But like 15 should give you enough room depending on your provider's affordability. You can always delete old data periodically.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

You can configure the maximum size of image you will federate. You could set it to essentially 0 and you will store like no images. Downside is you will have to fetch images from other instances, whose servers may not be close to you.

For reference, Feddit.dk has a 5MB image limit. My storage is only about ~60 GB

MamboGator ,
@MamboGator@lemmy.world avatar

I was wondering about this very thing recently and how bad I should feel every time I upload an image.

At least object storage is an option.

Player2 ,

Huh, less than I expected.

SorteKanin , (edited )
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

You can't delete any text in comments or posts either - or at least not reliably, as any federated instance could choose to ignore deletions.

You should basically consider what you write or post here public, and probably public for good. But here's the thing - same goes for the entire rest of the Internet as well, basically.

Enkers ,

You should generally think similarly about anything you post anywhere on the internet that has open access. If it's viewable anonymously, anyone could save and mirror it.

The only difference is it's almost guaranteed on a federated platform.

deweydecibel ,

I feel like, after over a decade of smartphones and snapchat and such, a younger generation needs to be thought better what putting content on the Internet means on a fundamental level, and those of us old enough to remember the more open web need to be reminded.

If you don't want everyone to see it, and I mean everyone, then you shouldn't put it online. For all intents and purposes, once you hit send, it's now a part of the internet. You might get lucky and be able to remove it, but that's the exception, not the rule.

SynonymousStoat ,

Sometimes views on things change and maybe some picture or other content you posted now makes you a target in some way that it didn't before. You don't always know how things will change in the future and adding such a highly expected piece of functionality like deleting something you uploaded should probably be more highly prioritized.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

adding such a highly expected piece of functionality like deleting something you uploaded should probably be more highly prioritized.

Let's be clear that this problem has nothing to do with Lemmy or the Lemmy devs. This is not a problem of prioritisation and it is not something that can just be fixed.

This is a problem of ActivityPub and the nature of federated services. There is just no way you force a federated server to delete something. So while most servers are well behaved, others might not be. Such servers could be defederated but you need to detect such bad behaviour first.

The problem is not with Lemmy, it's the whole Fediverse and ultimately also the Internet that works like this.

(the problem of a user uploading a photo and never posting it anywhere and wanting that to be deleted should be fixable though)

SynonymousStoat ,

Yeah, that makes sense. I didn't really have the full scope of the issue in my mind when I wrote my comment. Thanks for giving some extra perspective.

conciselyverbose ,

I agree with your core concept.

But this is a pretty wild flaw. The fact that even an admin can't reliably delete photos from their own instance? That's begging to be exploited by bad actors. What happens when it's porn (whether kids or unconsenting adults)? It's core functionality that you have to have.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Admins can definitely delete photos from their own instance. The problem is deleting it from all instances; that is hard.

conciselyverbose ,

This post provides a fairly detailed claim of the opposite. Federation isn't part of the issue he's referring to at all. It's that deleting the image post doesn't delete the direct link to the file, and that doing so as an admin is really convoluted. He goes through the issue and his effort with an admin trying to help in a decent bit of detail.

I can't actually test myself because I don't have a server, but as far as I'm concerned the issue he's claiming is a complete showstopper.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

doing so as an admin is really convoluted

It's not super straight forward, that's true. But it's not that hard I would say. But I'm a professional software engineer, I dunno if all admins find it as easy.

maltfield ,

It's also hard for admins to delete it from their own instance:

SorteKanin , (edited )
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

This is just a feature request to do it via the web interface, you can still do it manually on the server without too much effort.

ooli OP ,

I didnt know about that. This is a bit scary to be honest, and the first time I feel a bit taken aback with lemmy

Spotlight7573 ,

You also know that all votes are technically public and can be viewed by any instance admin that's federated with the server a community is on, right? There's no way to see that in the Lemmy UI at the moment but the data is there on the server.

CubitOom ,

What type of metadata is on a server attached to posts, comments, votes and such?

JohnEdwa ,
@JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz avatar

The votes are directly visible from Kbin for users as well.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Only upvoting Lemmy users are visible on Kbin, downvoting Lemmy users are not listed.

deweydecibel ,

There's no way to see that in the Lemmy UI at the moment but the data is there on the server.

Actually, they're adding it into the UI for admins. And they're letting mods see to.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2320

Rather than do anything to try and protect this data or obfuscate it in any way, they just decided "fuck it".

And that's frankly worrying. I truly don't think people understand why Reddit didn't let mods see that information. The avenues for abuse here are innumerable.

SorteKanin , (edited )
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

If there is abuse from a mod or an admin, you go somewhere else - either join another similar community or server or make your own.

Or in the case of abuse from mods, report them to admins (assuming admins are reasonable).

Remember, this isn't reddit. You don't have to live with the mods or admins, you can just stop going to that instance/community and find somewhere else.

Also ultimately being able to view votes is a way to combat abuse, as you can spot people who just down vote someone else constantly.

EDIT: Honestly confused about the down votes, someone would care to elaborate? :)

kogasa ,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Obfuscation is meaningless. It's public info or it's not. In this case it's necessarily public

MBM ,

It's not really possible to have an upvote counter without storing who voted, so your instance admin would always know

anlumo ,

There are cryptographic methods to do this, but it’s probably not worth it to implement them for this.

Zorsith ,
@Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Honestly, not implementing anonymous voting probably helps with preventing brigading, too. Reddit worldnews (around the api debacle began) became a nightmare of downvote bots towards anything that wasn't "Israel = good" in any way, and so many spam articles upvoted to the surface from random, unverified sources.

Edit to add: threat of defederation towards communities allowing or encouraging this behavior would probably be better, though.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

I mean you could say the same thing about reddit - anyone could scrape reddit and save comments and stuff, even if you later delete them.

If someone can see something on their computer, they can save it and you won't be able to take it away. I mean... it's just how the internet works.

grue ,

The difference is that things on Reddit were public because Reddit chose to make them available, while things on Lemmy are public because they have to be in order for the federated protocol to work.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

I mean any social media is public - what do you mean reddit chose to make it public? It's not like they could make it private, then you won't see any comments or posts from anyone else or what? Not sure what that even would mean.

grue ,

Let's use voting on comments as an example:

When a Reddit user votes on a comment, the user's client sends Reddit a message containing the information "User X upvoted Comment Y." That information gets stored in Reddit's database and is used to do things like increment the total number of upvotes (which everybody sees) and color the upvote arrow button orange (which only User X sees). Reddit knows the identities of everybody who upvoted the comment, but the public is only allowed to see the total sum.

When a Lemmy user votes on a comment, the user's client sends their home Lemmy instance a message containing the information "User X upvoted Comment Y," which that instance then forwards to the rest of the Fediverse so that all instances can get updated with the new information. Anybody who subscribes to the protocol (i.e., registers an instance) can read the message. The user's Lemmy client may only expose the total sum of upvotes in its interface, but the whole list of users who upvoted the comment is available to the public as long as they have the right software to read it.

Serinus ,

Ask the MPAA about that.

wahming ,

That's pretty much how everything on the Internet works, FYI. Lemmy is just upfront about it

bdonvr ,

The deletion should federate across almost all instances, but there's no guarantee and also someone will almost certainly one day set up an archive server that just listens to all activity on Lemmy like uneddit used to be for reddit.

Zak ,
@Zak@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy and other services built on ActivityPub work by sending content to every server that hosts a user who has subscribed to a community or another user. Those servers could be anything from vanilla Lemmy hosted in a datacenter to an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of ActivityPub running on a jailbroken smart light bulb. Most of them will be online to receive a delete request and will handle it correctly most of the time, but that cannot be guaranteed.

Anything you share to the world that way is out in the world and cannot be reliably rescinded. Discussion groups implemented as email lists used to be popular, and the same was true there, but more so since there isn't a mechanism intended to edit or delete an email message after it is sent. Something similar is true of anything that functions as a public website; a great many things published to the web are available from sites like archive.org, like old forum posts.

Serinus ,

People can also screenshot what you post to Facebook. There are no controls for that.

LillyPip ,

an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of ActivityPub running on a jailbroken smart light bulb.

!subscribe

LillyPip , (edited )

I don’t know if this works on Lemmy, but Reddit used to be like this and a solution was to edit your comment to different text first (something like ‘I like turtles’), wait about a week to allow the new text to be archived, and then delete it.

‘I like turtles’ wasn’t special, but makes it easy to scroll through your comments later when deleting things.

In Lemmy, your username will still show up with deleted comments, but in theory the edited text will replace the original comment you want to delete in archived views. This method doesn’t work with post images, though.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong here, please.

e: I’ve edited this comment thrice in 2 hours. Can anyone tell, and can you differentiate my 3 edits?

tigeruppercut ,
@tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip avatar

On the front end this still theoretically works, but it's unclear when (if ever) reddit respected it on the back end. They might have an archive of all the text ever put on the site.

LillyPip , (edited )

I don’t know how their backend works, but as a former db admin, it seems wasteful to maintain that many layers of change for every user. I would certainly do that in a mission-critical system, but for millions of pseudo-anonymous users, many of whom are shitposters, that would be an insane waste of server space.

That may be true, but I would be a bit surprised if there were a change-log like that.

e: keep in mind, systems like this don’t just work like that – you’d have to do extra work to build it that way on purpose. And you’d be doing that extra work, maintenance, and hosting for a user base who aren’t paying you, in a system you’re giving away for free, in Lemmy’s case.

Turun ,

Knowing how comments get changed is immensely interesting data. And if you design a system from the ground up, adding the functionality to save edits in the backend does not take much effort at all.

LillyPip ,

Sure, and I can see keeping the last edit (which it obviously does), but every edit? That seems ridiculous if only for the hosting costs.

Turun ,

Really? What do you expect is the edit rate on sites like Lemmy and reddit? One in ten comments? I think more like one in 30 or something. That would increase the storage costs by 3% and a small amount of processing power.

Hosting costs are dwarfed by media storage anyway.

LillyPip ,

If you’re building a system to allow change-log levels of editing, you have to allow for a significant portion of your user base using it, whether or not they do.

That will add fail points and hosting that’s wholly unnecessary to code and maintain, regardless of what percentage you think will use those features.

Have you ever been in charge of distributed large-scale systems like that with millions of users? I have. That would be bonkers.

Turun ,

Hold up, I think we have a discrepancy regarding what we are talking about.

I'm not thinking of anything user facing. The ux would be exactly identical to what is publicly observable on reddit already. I'm talking about the possibility to dump any change to comments or posts into a cold data store for later analysis. We don't have to question or think how many users would make use of it, we can count the fraction of comments with an "edited" label on reddit.

maltfield , (edited )

Under GDPR you can just send a request for them to send you all of the data that they’ve stored about you on their backend.

Blackmist ,

Just assume anything you post here will be scraped by Facebook, Google, Amazon, the CIA and the CCP, regardless of what the Lemmy devs and admins let you do with your data.

It's a public forum. Once you post something there's no guarantee it will ever be gone.

Socsa ,

Lemmy in general is filled with potential security and privacy holes. The threat surface is just too massive.

Not to mention it has a bunch of vulnerabilities in terms of just basic forum functionality. A rogue instance can very easily just hijack all sorts of federated content and force it into a certain state as desired. Especially if that content is old. There is not really any mechanism for tracking source authority for federated updates, and there are definitely already signs that this is getting exploited to promote certain content and fuck with vote totals IMO.

None of this really matters at this point because Lemmy is insignificant, but it kind of places a limit on how much Lemmy can be scaled before it just becomes even more of a cringe propaganda wasteland than it already is.

SorteKanin , (edited )
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

A rogue instance can very easily just hijack all sorts of federated content and force it into a certain state as desired.

I'm really not sure what you mean by this, can you elaborate?

There is not really any mechanism for tracking source authority for federated updates, and there are definitely already signs that this is getting exploited to promote certain content and fuck with vote totals IMO.

I'm not sure what you mean by "not any mechanism for tracking source authority". Admins on their own instance are in control of what happens to the content and they'll know if another site edits content or whatever as that is sent as requests in ActivityPub.

What are the signs you're referring to?

Turun ,

Are updates authenticated? Or can I send an update to lemmy.world from 123.123.123.123 (which is not the IP address of feddit.de) that you have edited your comment to say "I don't like pizza"?

If updates are not authenticated this really could be a big problem.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

You cannot do that, no. Edits are authenticated in the sense that the request must come from the instance of the user.

Your admin could in principle send such a request for you. But then you're talking about a malicious admin and then all bets are off. Obviously admins are in full control of everything on their own instance, including being able to edit their own users stuff. Not that any reasonable admin would do that.

JohnEdwa ,
@JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz avatar

And seemingly nothing is actually deleted, just hidden.
Boost for Lemmy currently has an interesting bug where any comment, deleted or removed, can still be seen by simply selecting "copy post text" from the menu, as the API will return what was previously there.

PSA, if you want to delete a comment or post, be absolutely sure you first edit it to be blank.

Fisch ,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

This seems like a server-side issue from Lemmy tho and one that should be pretty easy to fix. I mean, what's the point of keeping a deleted post on the server anyway?

NineMileTower ,

If that’s the case then I need to say this: “Penis ass butt cock fart”

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

- @NineMileTower, 2024

Never forget

SeekPie ,

Backed up on 3 cloud servers and 2 computers locally.

MenacingPerson ,

Not enough. We need a new voyager disc.

morrowind ,
@morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

It's a different level of can't delete though, because if you upload a photo but never even post it, it will still be up forever. And at least a working delete protocol exists for text

StopSpazzing ,
@StopSpazzing@lemmy.world avatar

So... theoretically someone can use lemmy as their own image repository?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Those images are likely to be cleaned up in a future update though.

Thunderbird4 ,

Unless, of course, you expect to rely on that permanence for archival purposes, in which case the internet is a fleeting, ephemeral fart in the wind.

scarabic ,

Is this not illegal under GDPR? The right to retrieve and delete all data is a fundamental part of that legislation. Maybe only European hosted instances are in jurisdiction?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

To be clear, all major instances are well behaved and things are deleted once requested. But there's no guarantee that there is not some malicious instance out there that intentionally keeps stuff. Also sometimes communication between instances just goes wrong.

Hubi ,

If you upload an image from your browser, there's a little popup in the corner for a few seconds that allows you to delete it again. No such thing exists in the apps though and if you miss the popup, that's it.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

I hate to use it, but this is why I still find imgur useful. It works.

Some stuff on Lemmy just doesn’t have a robust feature set yet. Especially around content moderation.

towerful ,

Image previews will still be cached, i believe.
Not sure what quality lemmy would cache them at, i presume its configurable

The_wild_card ,

Yea i remember coming across this issue on git the devs were being angry at the poor lad.

Stety ,

How dare you make us follow the rules!

The_wild_card ,

What ?

Stety ,

He was telling the devs to follow the gdpr and they said "nah it's not a priority".

The_wild_card ,

Oh yeah i remember that too in the end the devs seem to be bullying him and just assigned him on the project and i don't think the guy even knows tge language he needs to write (forgot which one ruby or rust is my guess).

infeeeee ,

What exactly is a KYC selfie? Is it a photo of an ID card? I figured out WUI is WebUI. The author uses some strange acronyms I never heard before.

It's very American that they can steal your identity with just one photo. My European state issued ID has data on both sides, so if someone would take a photo of it won't be enough for anything. Also if you loose it you just get a new one and noone can use the old one for anything.

Periodicchair ,

Probably "know your customer" selfie. Might be a picture of their ID, a picture of themselves, or a picture with both them and ID.

Rentlar ,

KYC is Business/Finance lingo - "Know Your Client".

Yeah the fact that exposing one number/piece of information puts you at risk to a significant amount of other information about you being exposed is peak USA.

lone_faerie ,

KYC is "Know Your Customer" aka identity verification. Usually it would be something like a selfie of you holding your ID, proving you are the person on the card. If you think getting your identity stolen from one picture is bad, wait until you learn about social security numbers. It's a 9 digit number based on publicly available information about you that is incredibly easy to figure out, and are used as like the defacto way of verifying your identity in the US, when that was never its intended purpose.

MelodiousFunk ,
@MelodiousFunk@startrek.website avatar

Relevant CGP Grey

jqubed ,
@jqubed@lemmy.world avatar

KYC = Know Your Customer, a team I just learned recently. It’s primarily related to financial transactions, to make crimes like money laundering or terrorism financing harder. Up until relatively recently this was something that primarily happened face-to-face, and it doesn’t seem like good controls have been developed for online use.

I think some ID cards are single-sided, some are double-sided. One of the big problems is most Americans only have a state-issued ID, not a federal one, and the standards vary from state to state. They’ve tried to address this some with minimum standards for state IDs (mainly driver’s licenses) under a program called Real ID (enacted after 9/11 hijackers got state-issued IDs for false identities), but it was still optional for certain purposes, at least until recently. In my state for a long time when renewing your driver’s license it was optional to do the extra paperwork for a Real ID, but then there would be a note on the top that it was not valid for federal identification purposes, such as accessing certain government facilities or boarding an airplane. Since I have a passport I’ve never bothered with it, but it looks like this year getting a Real ID is mandatory when getting or renewing a driver’s license in my state.

peopleproblems ,

Minnesota just extended it to 2025 again. I can't get into federally secure buildings, but I can board a plane.

And until I can't, I'm not going to. Part of me likes to think they haven't mandated it yet because I'm holding out.

Which is really because of pure laziness than actual protest

Serinus ,

It's mostly a religious thing. The "left behind" Christians believe a federal ID is the "Mark of the Beast".

maltfield ,

Author here. A "KYC Selfie" is a selfie photo where you hold-up a State-issued photo-identity document next to your face. This is not a US-specific thing; it's also used in the EU.

I used to work for a bank in Europe where we used KYC seflies for authentication of customers opening new accounts (or recovering accounts from lost credentials), including European customers. Most KYC Selfies are taken with a passport (where all the information is on one-side), but if your ID has data on both sides then the entity asking you for the KYC seflie may require you to take two photos: showing both sides.

Some countries in the EU have cryptographic authentication with eIDs. The example I linked-to in the article is Estonia, who has made auth-by-State-issued-private-key mandatory for over a decade. Currently MEPs are deciding on an eID standard, which is targeting making eIDs a requirement for all EU Member States by 2016.

I recommend the Please Identify Yourself! talk at 37c3 about the state of eID legislation as of Dec 2023 (and how to learn from India, who did eID horribly wrong):

Rentlar ,

You can consider almost anything publicly posted to Lemmy as permanent. As I keep saying, please be careful.

I do think a way to automatically store the uploaded image urls and associated delete keys under your user is a necessary feature.

For personal image hosting I use postimage, but any external host that lets you modify/remove images under your account will do.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

You can consider almost anything publicly posted to Lemmy the internet as permanent

FTFY

Rentlar ,

Excuse me, there was an internet beyond Lemmy?!? /s

robocall ,
@robocall@lemmy.world avatar

That's scary. I must be certain to not mix up my dick pics with my memes.

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I've posted a selfie and cat pics.

I am unimportant and have little to steal. Though if someone starts shooting at me for paraphrasing far left theory, I'll know I hit a nerve.

lemmyingly ,

It's not about if you're important or not, it's about if you become important to someone.

Draconic_NEO ,
@Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world avatar

Don't underestimate your own worth, everyone has something of at least little importance, because even someone "worthless" can be worth a lot to the right people.

That's why it's very important to be careful what you share.

nexussapphire ,

Are you asking?😉😉

nexusband ,
@nexusband@lemmy.world avatar

maybe we all are? 😵

gabe ,
@gabe@literature.cafe avatar

Welcome to the hell of being a lemmy admin. There's a reason why lemmy admins are fed up with the developers.

gabe ,
@gabe@literature.cafe avatar

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.

HobbitFoot ,

Based on what I've seen on the public facing part of the developer side, I get the feeling this isn't the kind of group that can build the kind of organization required to make this sustainable in the long run.

I'm just waiting for when Beehaw releases that they've given up on Lemmy and have created a new tech stack.

Ategon ,
@Ategon@programming.dev avatar

In terms of new tech stack currently theres sublinks being made by devs/admins of a bunch of instances (discuss.online, lemmy.world, programming.dev, etc.)

grue ,

There's also Kbin, I suppose.

BedSharkPal ,

Do they have an API yet?

BarbecueCowboy ,

Not in production.

There's not a lot of dev time to go around at kbin.

Deebster ,
@Deebster@programming.dev avatar

It's a somewhat similar story there, although the devs aren't as difficult. Mbin is a fork and seems to be the codebase with the brightest future.

Kushia ,
@Kushia@lemmy.ml avatar

Anything public yet and are they sticking to Rust?

Ategon ,
@Ategon@programming.dev avatar

Java spring for backend, Go for federation, Next.js for frontend

demo.sublinks.org has the backend with the lemmy-ui frontend to show api compatibility

Task list and progress is public on the github org https://github.com/orgs/sublinks/projects/1

Matrix space where all the devs talk is also public and you can see progress talked about in them

kogasa ,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Not really a substantial opinion, but I have little hope that replacing a fairly well established Rust codebase with a brand new Java one will do much in terms of increasing contribution.

morhp ,

Who knows. Java is a much bigger programming language than Rust. Might be easier to find developers. But obviously it depends on interest. Who knows.

Ategon ,
@Ategon@programming.dev avatar

Theres been a bunch of activity and people joining in in the dev matrix already

Backend pretty much already has parity and the frontend is currently the main thing that an updated demo is waiting on but should be ready really soon

I've been designing an updated home page recently for it that I'll be pushing out this week that looks miles better than lemmy-ui since I could do everything from scratch and thus quickly

thundermoose ,

I wouldn't shortchange how much making the barrier to entry lower can help. You have to fight Rust a lot to build anything complex, and that can have a chilling effect on contributions. This is not a dig at Rust; it has to force you to build things in a particular way because it has to guarantee memory safety at compile time. That isn't to say that Rust's approach is the only way to be sure your code is safe, mind you, just that Rust's insistence on memory safety at compile time is constraining.

To be frank, this isn't necessary most of the time, and Rust will force you to spend ages worrying about problems that may not apply to your project. Java gets a bad rap but it's second only to Python in ease-of-use. When you're working on an API-driven webapp, you really don't need Rust's efficiency as much as you need a well-defined architecture that people can easily contribute to.

I doubt it'll magically fix everything on its own, but a combo of good contribution policies and a more approachable codebase might.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

You have to fight Rust a lot to build anything complex

nutomic, one of the main Lemmy devs, didn't know Rust before he started working on Lemmy. He just started working on Lemmy and learned Rust in the process. The difficulty of Rust is exaggerated.

thundermoose ,

Hyperfixating on producing performant code by using Rust (when you code in a very particular way) makes applications worse. Good API and system design are a lot easier when you aren't constantly having to think about memory allocations and reference counting. Rust puts that dead-center of the developer experience with pointers/ownership/Arcs/Mutexes/etc and for most webapps it just doesn't matter how memory is allocated. It's cognitive load for no reason.

The actual code running for the majority of webapps (including Lemmy) is not that complicated, you're just applying some business logic and doing CRUD operations with datastores. It's a lot more important to consider how your app interacts with your dependencies than how to get your business logic to be hyper-efficient. Your code is going to be waiting on network I/O and DB operations most of the time anyway.

Hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not faulting anyone for not thinking through a personal project, but I don't think Rust did Lemmy any favors. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how performant your code is if you make bad design and dependency choices. Rust makes it harder to see these bad choices because you have to spend so much time in the weeds.

To be clear, I'm not shitting on Rust. I've used it for a few projects and great for apps where processing performance is important. It's just not a good choice for most webapps, you'd be far better off in a higher-level language.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

I really disagree, I think Rust's excellent error handling and reliability is paramount to any software project and it's very useful for web apps as well. Besides, for a web app you rarely need to go for any of those things you mentioned (i.e. Arcs and mutexes and such).

Serinus ,

It's open source. We don't have to depend on the original developers.

If it gets too bad, someone can just make a fork.

Afaik people are just impatient with the developers and have different short term goals.

HobbitFoot ,

I mention a new tech stack because Beehaw brought it up as an option and a lot of people have commented on the difficulty of development in this environment.

Serinus ,

That'd be disappointing. Rust seems like a great foundation.

rob_t_firefly ,
@rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world avatar

Rust seems like a great foundation.

The fact that I know you're referring to the programming language called "Rust" doesn't make this sentence any less funny.

kogasa ,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

It could still be rust. Code is always the easy part. Design and organization and funding are hard

maltfield ,

We already have Sublinks

moon ,

What about kbin, isn't that entirely different software that can be developed to phase out Lemmy?

MBM ,

From what I heard Kbin's developer is very inactive, so people started a fork called Mbin. Mbin might be alright?

aeharding ,
@aeharding@lemmy.world avatar

That sucks. As a 3rd party Lemmy app developer, I've only had positive interactions with the Lemmy devs. They're even being proactive in communications.

cheese_greater ,

Are they open to these discussions?

tool ,
@tool@lemmy.world avatar

Try submitting a pull request for something in one of the core repos.

They behave as if every line of code in your commit is a sentence proclaiming "Why yes, your wife is a whore, your dog doesn't love you, AND your baby is ugly."

I'm not kidding, there's no hyperbole in that statement. Go read some of their declined pull requests threads for some entertainment.

stackPeek ,
@stackPeek@lemmy.world avatar

Perhaps there's starting to be a Lemmy clone/alternative? I think it's named Sublinks

ipkpjersi ,

That's kind of the impression I got but thought maybe I was just mistaken because I haven't actually been hands-on with this project. That's unfortunate to hear.

tool ,
@tool@lemmy.world avatar

Even those who try to contribute to the project get eventually feeling pushed out.

Submitting a pull request to one of their repos on Github was really an experience, and I can tell you that I will never submit another one to the Lemmy project while they're still the lead devs based on that experience.

maltfield ,

Better to publish such issues on a public website than let it get buried in matrix. People other than devs & instance admins need to be aware of the risks that they’re taking when using Lemmy.

kogasa ,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Not sure I understand. How could there possibly be a solution? Isn't this an inherent problem with federation? You can't un-share information

paholg ,

But you can delete your copy, ask others nicely to delete theirs, and refuse to accept more copies of the same thing.

I'm not sure if Lemmy supports any of this, but it seems pretty important for e.g. child porn.

Honytawk ,

How can you refuse to accept more copies of the same thing, when you deleted all the version it can compare itself to?

asdfasdfasdf ,

When you get a deletion request, hash the bytes and store the hash.

Antergo ,

There could be a legally binding contract stating that any deletion request must be forwarded to all parties it was send to, and that upon receiving such a request the data must be deleted.
I do not think this would be unreasonable to ask to servers, especially as this deletion receipt could be fully automated.

Quacksalber ,

Or there could be a delay of one minute before posts get federated, giving the user the option to quickly delete a comment or post.

maltfield ,

That’s a great idea :) Maybe you can submit a feature request for this on GitHub?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

legally binding contract

Maybe, but consider that federated servers may be located in entirely different legal jurisdictions, so this might be hard to create, let alone enforce.

perviouslyiner ,

When writing a contract you can just specify which legal system the parties agree to use - this is quite common.

Antergo ,

I don't think it will ever come to a lawsuit, nobody would ever want that.
Under the GDPR you must be able to delete content, and the server must communicate this to all federated servers. So in effect, there is already a legally binding agreement between all servers that this deletion request must be honored (for people physically in the eu), it's just not.

lemmy servers are already breaking the GDPR if they don't follow forwarded deletion requests from people in the eu. This would just effectively be an extension of this to data from all people.

Blackmist ,

The images aren't federated afaik. They live on your home instance. If somebody else views them, they're loaded directly from there.

However there's no link between the images and your account. You can't delete them yourself because Lemmy doesn't store the "delete token". They're effectively orphaned.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Not true, images are federated. Sometimes they are not copied if your instance has a lower image size limit than the instance the image came from (if the image is too large), but generally images are copied between instances.

Blackmist ,

I did check a few embedded images, and they still seemed to be served from the original. So I dunno. Maybe they're copied and still served from the original, which would be an odd thing to do.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Aah the embedded ones in comments? Yes to my knowledge those aren't federated. But pictures posted as posts will be federated.

SharkMommy ,
@SharkMommy@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Oh really I thought it would be the other way around where private companies always keep a copy and fediverses don't 😅

PatFussy ,

I can't upload any image so I'm way ahead of you

maltfield ,

How? I want to block my app from being able to upload images.

PatFussy ,

Join lemm.ee and you would be golden

maltfield ,

oh, I got too excited. The instance sidebar says image uploads are available 4 weeks after account creation, though :(

PatFussy ,

Let me try sending you something

Edit: I got error 413 that I don't have that functionality. Don't you see it can never be.

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