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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)C
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6 mo. ago

  • I also use an email alias service and have dealt with this a handful of times. Here's how I've been able to address most of them, in order of what I tried which worked, meaning that items lower on the list were more rarely required but also more likely to work than items higher on the list:

    1. Instead of using the free-tier alias domain names (like freealiasservice.com), I used the paid-tier ones (like paidaliasservice.com).
    2. Instead of the common domain names shared by everyone (like aliasservice.com), I used a custom subdomain, (like cricket.aliasservice.com).
    3. Instead of either of the above, I used a custom domain name.

    So the above is the answer to your first question. The answer to your second is that in my experience the majority of sites that block certain email domains are using a deny-list instead of an allow-list. The answer to your third is that custom domains should work for the vast majority of sites. I think it would be silly for sites to use allow-lists for this, but I've heard of some doing it.

    One other thing to keep in mind about my list is that it's also more or less in order of most private/anonymous to least private/anonymous. Item 1 hides you in the crowd, while 2 and 3 can be more easy to associate with you if you have enough of them for someone interested in finding this out to do some matching to determine if you use services a, b, and c, for example.

    I hope this helps.

  • True! I didn't even think about that. Great movie.

  • I can understand that. I didn't realize that Reddit had that feature. I totally hear you that defaults stay defaults.

    I may not have been very clear, but what I meant was that users would be able to create and share their own structures without approval or interaction from admins or mods, then admins would be able to pick and choose from those structures that users created and shared, and then the admins would have the option to make those structures the defaults for their instances if they wished.

    However, I can see that having this kind of sharing structure could get pretty messy with tons of different structures around. I can also see that the structures could get outdated quickly. I also agree with you that it would probably be better for community creators/mods to self-organize with other communities to structure this.

    I think you're probably right in your approach, but like I said before, it would benefit from being as simple as possible. Perhaps it would be the best to break down your ideas into smaller sets of features so they can be implemented in phases, or maybe even eliminate some features?

    Like, for instance, why have permissions, hiding, or cross-community moderation? Why not simplify it to its most basic level: allow two communities to be linked with each other (at the request of either and agreement from the other for them to be in a specific hierarchy) and allow either community to rescind that linkage at any time? This link would make it so that users who subscribe to the "supercommunity" would also get all posts from any "subcommunities" (unless the same user has blocked any particular "subcommunity", in which case they would still not see that sub's posts). I think that just these two features would implement most of what I think we would both like to see, while being straight-forward. This could even be thought of as similar to a type of inter-community federation.

    I'm thinking out loud too. :)

  • Those are all good questions. I'm inclined to think that keeping this as simple as possible and following similar principles to the existing moderation environment would help make this useful while not creating too much extra work for moderators or admins, as both groups already seem overworked. I think this will already be complicated enough to begin with (for instance, how will communities in other instances be handled?) and fraught with potential for conflicts (for instance, include or not include communities of certain political slants?), so care should be taken to keep this somewhat minimalistic.

    With that in mind, here are some possible concepts to consider:

    Moderation: following the principle that Lemmy/Piefed allows moderation by users (through blocking users, communities, and instances), community mods (through removing posts and banning users), and instance admins (through overseeing mods and defederating or default blocking other instances), in that order, how about if the users themselves were the first (and perhaps only) ones to decide and control which lower-level communities they want to see structured in their feed and how? It seems to me that community mods should only be able to moderate their own community at each level, and not be able to moderate posts from levels below.

    Creation and use of taxonomies: should the creation of the taxonomy be the job of users, community mods, or instance admins? I'm inclined to think that this should also ultimately be left to users to determine, but there could be a mechanism that allows anyone to share/publish a taxonomy that they find useful (or perhaps branches of a taxonomy, like Gaming), and allow other users to either import or subscribe the taxonomy or branches that they like, from a list of different available ones that have been shared/published. Admins could then have the option of setting entire taxonomies or a group of branches as defaults for users of their instances. This would allow users the freedom to create the structure that they would like to see while also allowing others to benefit from that work and not have to duplicate it, and finally also allowing for different competing structures to exist. Community mods could informally ask creators/maintainers of taxonomies or branches to include their communities in that structure. To add communities to a structure, there could be a simple button in each community that said something like "add to structure".

    I think that doing things this way would allow the most freedom, flexibility, and utility, while also minimizing additional work for mods and admins, as well as any potential for conflicts. Another factor to consider would be how much impact would this kind of thing have on resource utilization of instances?

    I hope this all makes sense and helps provide some ideas for how this could work.

  • I've heard that too! I also remember cartoons where a character would hit the ground with a pick axe and oil would come gushing out.

  • Interesting, thanks!

  • Oh, haha, FR? I had no idea!

  • Ha, I hadn't heard of any of this. What happened with the Reddit meetup?

  • I think this is an awesome idea! It would allow people to have the freedom to create any community they wanted, but still keep posts concentrated enough for visitors to see activity they can participate in. Excellent, maybe you could propose this to the developers of Lemmy and Piefed? Is Mbin still being actively developed?

  • Yes, thank you! This is a big mistake that I've seen new online communities make since at least the beginning of the internet. I first saw it with the old forums. Start a forum site for subject X, create sub-forums x1 through x57 for every possible subtopic, no matter how minor or niche. Go into most of those subforums, you only hear crickets. To encourage activity, most subjects should be concentrated in few forums at first, until those forums become too busy. Only at that time is it a good idea to split into subforums.

    Some Lemmy sites have had the correct idea, where they don't allow users to create communities. There should be a process where admins manage whether it makes sense to create communities after evaluating requests. Unfortunately, the decentralized nature of Lemmy makes this difficult to control, because as soon as one instance does this, someone wanting to create a new community will just move to another instance that allows it. I'm not sure if there is a solution to this.

  • Well said. Plutocracy / oligarchy.

  • Exactly! 30 to 46 people apparently decided unanimously that he deserved it.

  • Later, I calculated that you’d experience 15g at the tip of a typical one.

    Sounds like a fun ride to me! /s

  • I'm with you in thinking that this is not impossible. I think geology is something that can do funny things in some places.

    By the way, in some places oil seems to be pretty close to the surface. If you visit the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles sometime, there's essentially an open lake of oil (tar) that you can visit, and as you walk the grounds around it you'll see some spots where the tar is seeping out from the ground and you have to watch out not to step on it.

  • There's even a museum dedicated to this, including a "replica" of the boat!

  • Wild. That reminds me of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy

    It's an amazing story (emphasis mine):

    Kenneth Rex McElroy (June 16, 1934 – July 10, 1981) was an American criminal and convicted attempted murderer who resided in Skidmore, Missouri. He was known as "the town bully",[3] and his unsolved killing became the focus of international attention. Over the course of his life, McElroy was accused of dozens of felonies, including assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, animal cruelty, hog and cattle rustling, and burglary.[4]

    In all, he was indicted 21 times but escaped conviction each time, except for the last.[4][5] In 1981, McElroy was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting of the town's 70-year-old grocer Ernest "Bo" Bowenkamp.[3] McElroy was released on bond pending an appeal, after which he engaged in an ongoing harassment campaign against Bowenkamp and others who were sympathetic to Bowenkamp, including the town's Church of Christ minister.

    On June 30, 1981, he appeared in a local bar, the D&G Tavern, armed with an M1 Garand rifle and bayonet, and later threatened to kill Bowenkamp.[3][6] The next week, McElroy was shot and killed in broad daylight as he sat with his wife Trena in his pickup truck on Skidmore's main street.[4] He was struck by bullets from at least two different firearms, in front of a crowd of people estimated as numbering between 30 and 46.[3] Despite the many witnesses, nobody came forward to say who shot him. As of 2025, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy's death.[3]

  • Are Canadian politics dominated by money like American politics are? If they are, that could explain at least some of what you've noticed. In a system where money wasn't such a huge factor needed to win elections, I think we would see a lot more people who genuinely wanted to help people run for office and win. The problem when you introduce money as such a major factor to win is that unless the candidate is already independently wealthy, they will have to kowtow to wealthy people and money interests in order to win. A system like that will select for people who are willing to compromise their principles for money, even if they deep down would genuinely like to help people.

    I've thought about this occasionally, and feel that it's a tragedy that there are probably many politicians who get into it for the right reasons but at some point (maybe from the start) compromise that by justifying that they can keep helping people even if in some minor fashion if they go along with this.

  • I’m guessing he’s probably caused a death or two in his life by now, either directly or indirectly.

    Or been killed himself in retribution.

  • I wonder if he was himself sexually abused as a child, since I think I've heard that being a victim of pedophilia makes one much more likely to become a pedophile themselves.

  • Fediverse @lemmy.ml

    How does resource utilization compare between Piefed and Lemmy?

  • Linux @lemmy.ml

    Valve's new Steam Machine and Steam Frame and implications for Linux

  • Linux @lemmy.ml

    Linux has over 6% of the desktop market? Yes, you read that right - here's how

    www.zdnet.com /article/linux-has-over-6-of-the-desktop-market-yes-you-read-that-right-heres-how/