AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

You could make that argument about any tool Wikipedia editors use. Why should they need spellcheck? They were typing words just fine before.

…except it just makes it easier to spot errors or get little suggestions on how you could reword something, and thus makes the whole process a little smoother.

It’s not strictly necessary, but this could definitely be helpful to people for translation and proofreading. Doesn’t have to be something people are wholly reliant on to still be beneficial to their ability to edit Wikipedia.

I thought the main draw of the Fediverse was the idea of finding a community where you feel like you belong, that fits your interests, but the structure seems to work against that

The main draw is the federated core principles. The specialized community part is sort of a secondary effect.

If Reddit doesn’t like your community, your comments, or your account in general, you’re gone.

If Reddit wants to make more money off you by forcing ads into their pages and app, most users who don’t know how to use an alternate frontend are screwed.

And if Reddit decides they get a legal right to use all your content for AI training, sell your data to advertisers, and add a subscription fee on top, you don’t get a choice.

If a federated instance decides they want to cram ads in, the entire federated network of Lemmy/PieFed instances doesn’t get affected, and the content from that instance can still be viewed without ads.

Reddit is a monopoly, and thus carries monopoly power over how the platform and its communities operate. The fediverse is distributed, and no instance carries monopoly power over the others. This resists enshittification.

Now, it’s true there’s less activity here, but that’s not always a bad thing, nor is it unexpected. It makes moderation easier, karma farming isn’t really a thing, and a smaller platform is just naturally going to have less people engaging with it. But you’re here now, and there’s now 4 posts and 1 comment that otherwise would not exist had you not joined.

Every new user makes the fediverse more valuable for others. If there’s a community you want to exist, start it, and eventually other people will find it too if people who are interested in it join the fediverse.

I’m not here to tell you that this is perfect, or that it’s always better to have less people. Having more people means more opinions, niche communities, etc. But you don’t get there in a day, and the fediverse is only growing.

We have thematic instances, but as soon as you look at the “All” feed, it just flattens everything back into one generic Reddit clone. If you only look at your local instance to avoid that, you’re just isolating yourself, and at that point, you might as well just use a multireddit on Reddit without needing to make a new account.

Remember that you can follow communities outside your instance, and that is your algorithm. Reddit figures out what you like, and shows you more of it. Lemmy/PieFed asks you what you like, and you have to tell it what to show you more of. I particularly enjoy PieFed because it has “feeds” that combine multiple communities into a larger bundle so it’s easy to follow many of them.

If you rely on the “All” feed, that’s no different than going to the homepage of Reddit and saying “show me the top posts for today”. If you follow communities you like, that’s like going to Reddit and saying “show me my personalized feed.” The only difference is that you are responsible for personalizing your feed, because there is no algorithm. It’s not the most user-friendly, but it also resists algorithmically-optimized retention, which I think we all know isn’t great for our attention spans.

The benefit you get from using the fediverse is not being reliant on a corporation’s algorithm to determine what you should see, and being on a network that inherently resists enshittification and routes around censorship. The goal is that it becomes large enough for these more niche communities to find an audience larger than just the few who started them.

“More secure” is a minefield of marketing and intentionally misleading the populace.

Here is the popular phone cracking company Cellebrite’s leaked slides showing them telling the people they’re selling their tools to that they can’t as easily (if at all, depending on device state) crack GrapheneOS as they can stock Android:

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112462758257739953 (This is just a well-summarized and explained post from GrapheneOS themselves, but the original leak was independent of them, and the slides and final interpretation are no different from what GrapheneOS is showing, thus I wouldn’t consider this just “marketing”)

Objectively, if you have a GrapheneOS phone, and you plug it into a Cellebrite machine, it will not have its data extracted if it’s before first unlock, or after first unlock but on the lock screen. (as long as you’ve updated your security patches since like 2022, which most GrapheneOS phones will be) A stock Android phone, or even many iPhones were not as resistant to brute forces or even full file system extractions as a Pixel with GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS also has additional features that can make the cracking process even more difficult, such as disabling USB even after first unlock when on the lock screen, automatically rebooting after set period to return the phone to BFU state, or setting a duress PIN that wipes the phone, which could be triggered via a brute force before the real PIN is guessed.

Also, in case you want to look at the diagrams in the post more since they don’t really explain all the acronyms, here’s a key:

• BFU (Before first unlock - essentially when you’ve restarted the phone but not put in the PIN/password yet. When fingerprint unlock will not work)
• AFU (After first unlock - after you’ve put in your PIN/Password, fingerprint gets enabled at this point. Using the “Lockdown” button from the power menu on GrapheneOS disables fingerprint and appears to be BFU, but isn’t fully in BFU state and should still be considered AFU just in case)
• FFS (Full Filesystem extraction, essentially dumping literally every single possible file, app data, etc)
• BF (Brute Force, basically just spamming the PIN/Password to try and crack it. GrapheneOS is essentially never vulnerable to this due to the Pixel’s secure element, and it’s the same for newer Pixels with stock Android too, though those tend to still be vulnerable to FFS)
• “Up to late 2022 SPL” (“Secondary Program Loader” version, which most GrapheneOS phones will have updated by now as long as they’re running a GrapheneOS version released after 2022. As you can probably tell, 2022 is referencing the (late part of the) year that version was from. It’s essentially what helps to load programs on the device)

I forget which country it was, but Graphene was specifically listed as being used by criminals/drug dealers.

You might be referring to Catalonia, Spain?

In their case, it was more about Pixel phones in general being used by criminals, and GrapheneOS being their OS of choice which made cracking them harder, rather than GrapheneOS itself being considered criminal or suspicious, but I get where you’re coming from.

You could also be referring to the UK, but that was regarding a journalist with GrapheneOS, but the charge was refusing to unlock his phones. And yes, I said phones, because he was also carrying an iPhone, and they wanted that password too. So in this case the charge wasn’t GrapheneOS-specific.

There’s also France, who was going after GrapheneOS because they wanted an encryption backdoor, but GrapheneOS just said no, so they told police to consider any Pixel with GrapheneOS “suspicious”, but not to consider it a crime in itself. (nor did they have the legal authority to do so) GrapheneOS actually migrated all their server infrastructure out of France as a result of this.

The point is that now, using Graphene, counts against you for the purposes of pressing charges or taking you to a black site.

Generally speaking, even in those areas, this (fortunately) just isn’t true. You are more likely to be considered suspicious in Catalonia if you have… a Pixel, GrapheneOS or not. You’re likely to be criminally charged in the UK… if you don’t give up your password, GrapheneOS or not. And you’re likely to be considered “suspicious” in France… but can’t be charged with anything for it, and the only way they’ll know if you have GrapheneOS installed is if you were already arrested for something else and had your phone seized.

Practically speaking, it’s better to support an OS that protects your data, but could increase the risk of you getting in trouble for protecting your data, than an OS that doesn’t protect your data, and gives it all to the authorities, making whether or not you’re considered criminal pointless. After all, you could voluntarily unlock your GrapheneOS phone in any of these jurisdictions and stop facing any of these possible consequences, and it would carry the same implication as a non-GrapheneOS phone that does it whether you provide your PIN/password or not.

So this:

That is an extra charge.

Just isn’t (at least currently) the case, since no regions currently doing anything against GrapheneOS have made the act of having GrapheneOS installed in itself a crime.

Not to say this couldn’t change, and you’re totally valid in assuming that governments will try to push this, but at least currently, using GrapheneOS will not in itself increase the chance of you going to a black site.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that precedent. Stuff would be incredibly hard to navigate without it and you’d essentially just end up with a bunch of high schoolers technically committing a crime.

Certainly one way to speed up the school-to-prison pipeline 💀

But isn’t the age of consent 18 in the US? How does that work?

Common misconception, but nope! The U.S. decided to leave that one up to the states, since apparently whether or not it’s okay to screw children depends on… what geographical coordinates within the U.S. you’re located in. It’s also separate from whether or not you can marry btw.

It also depends on a number of different factors in some jurisdictions. For example, the age of consent might be 18, but with exemptions for someone who’s 16 or older with someone who is within 2 years of their age. (e.g. a 16yo & 18yo, 17yo & 19yo)

It can also vary based on larger age gaps. For example, Washington has the age of consent at 16, but it can go up to 18 if the other person is more than 5 years older and other conditions are met.

Or, you could be like Iowa, who sets it at 16… but allows people 14-15yo to do it with someone up to 18 or 19yo respectively.

For marriage, sometimes it lines up with age of consent and sometimes it doesn’t.

For example, California sets the age of consent at 18, and any sexual activity with someone 18 regardless of your age (even if you are also under 18, or even the same age) is a crime… unless you’re married, which can be done at any age in the state, so long as there is parental consent and a judge says yes.

To be very transparent… I’m basically just paraphrasing from these two Wikipedia pages 😅

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States

Don’t forget Kagi! (though it isn’t technically comparable to the others since it’s a paid, but without ads one)

My apologies, it was late and I didn’t consider that I probably should have used terms for sex characteristics instead of social ones. I was simply going off the wording used in the meme, because that’s what prompted it for me.

If you really think about it, skirts can actually be more comfortable for males to wear than for females considering the shape of their body.