6.84€ per month. And that’s 6.84€ per user. But I also run a dozen of other services on that VPS.

I don’t see any technical limitations preventing that. And I think it’s a desirable feature. Imagine a world where you don’t have to come up with lots of passwords and sign up on dozens of websites, but instead have one identity that’s saved in your device and you can access any free software service without signing up and it’ll already tell you if your friends are there. It could interconnect content and features…

It’s a bit difficult to get it right, though. The identities need to be secure and reliable. Servers can’t vanish (or data needs to be distributed) or people will lose everything at once. We need pseudonymous handles, sock puppets and access control. And there is a lot of trust involved. We need to mitigate for spam and trolls…

And agree on one standard that gets everything right for any arbitrary use-case.

Ah okay. I don’t have a Fritzbox here. I suppose that does the trick. My idea was to use that to test if incoming IPv6 works. So disregard any services on the Fritzbox itself and just see if you can access it directly. And if yes, configure an IPv6 port forward to the NAS.

Create a nice atmosphere.

Make it simple and remove any technical barriers. They should be able to google “Fediverse” click on the first link. Choose a username and be on their way. Find the app with the same name and install it in 2 minutes.

The network effect is a thing. They need to already find lots of their friends, interesting people and their favorite stars there.

And it has to be easy to discover them, if we don’t have an “algorithm” that suggests content.

Isn’t myfritz plain old IPv6 directly to the router without any proxying or tunneling? If yes, communication would mean IPv6 packets make their way through the ISP to the router.

If you google it, you’ll find lots of similar questions for O2. I think you have to contact their customer support and get that activated once.

And have a look at your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Sometimes you can do it via IPv6 already, just not over IPv4 because there is some translation in the way. (In case they want too much money to give you a real IPv4 address.)

Maybe you can try if you can open your FritzBox UI from the outside with your my.fritz address. I think that has IPv6 and a port forward in place (if activated).

And btw: It’s perfectly fine to do it. People need storage and online collaboration. Access to their data while away.

Maybe you can find some more discussion and the reasoning in their documentation or Github issues or pull requests. I bet this has been discussed before someone implemented it. Maybe there’s also a way to restore the old behaviour.

I agree. I must admit my title was a bit clickbaity. Growth - meaning growing in user count - wasn’t my intention. I think it’ll be a result, sure. But I agree with you (and the Lemmy developers) in that growing (above all) isn’t what Lemmy is about. And it’s not healty anyways. And I think I didn’t include any reasoning or suggestions in my text that’d propose doing it.

What we’d need is the communities be at a healty (and useful) engagement level to allow having a conversation in the first place. Well, and I occasionally keep an eye at such metrics, because for example seeing something stagnate or decline could mean there is an issue, somewhere. I think I mentioned that in the post. But it doesn’t necessarily mean we have to push that metric. It’s tackling the underlying issue (if there’s any) that’s the important thing to do (in my opinion).

What’s your bubble of interests? I mean I’ve seen Github projects where that description fits very VERY well. Usually when I’m attending to some very niche hobbies. Or try to get some exotic electronics from 20 years ago running again… With the everyday tools it’s most of the times some active community and I copy and paste the 3 commands and I have it installed successfully.

We also had expensive engineering software at university. Oftentimes it’s a major PITA for everyone. The PhD students have to get their work done and are met by the software refusing to start because all licenses are taken. Sometimes someone forgot to log off or the computer crashed and the software takes most of the day to recover that license. Or some people do like 5 simulations in parallel. Or lock the computer, go home and block a license. The IT department will get lots of calls and have to deal with it. Especially when the pool of licenses is small. And it takes additinal effort to coordinate practical courses and excercises where you teach a group of 24 people which then need half the license pool available at a fixed time each week, despite the daily routine of everyone else.

And I’m not even sure if the people responsible, care too much for pirated software. But they’re liable. Of course they write strongly worded mails when talking to everyone. It’s their IT infrastructure and they can’t have people do illegal things with it. Especially not while having an expensive contract with some supplyer. They can’t have anyone leak a mail where they endorse piracy. Or post screenshots or turn in assignments or papers with screenshots that say “unregistered copy” in the bottom corner. And once students do silly things and the piracy is on display publicly, they’ll have to do something. Usually that’s writing a strongly worded email first. Because that takes next to no effort. I think the usual IT department doesn’t care as long as things go smoothly, people do their various things and no one complains. They usually have other stuff to do. That makes me think in this story something must have happened that warranted some form of public reaction or at least show they addressed it and they have it in writing.

And I think the rest of the mail fits such IT people. They said why they do it and that they can’t have piracy connected to the institutes name. They say they need some incoming complaints to justify buying more licenses. And the punishment fits the crime. They just disconnect the computer from their network and it’s not their problem anymore. I think that’s fair.

That’s a good idea. I think it’s a bit problematic under these circumstances since OP wants to host game files which are probably some larger binaries. And that’s going to show a different usage pattern and more traffic than the usual code. I don’t know if they monitor things like that and remove these repos. But I have to remember that idea.

And an idea regarding the links: I’ve tried some emulators and do some retrogaming every now and the. Usually these projects take some care to not list the sites with the ROM collections on their official pages. As a user you usually go to archive.org and download things from there or scroll through their forum or subreddit and that kind of info pops up pretty quickly. So once they have an active community it spreads via word of mouth. Maybe you can also post a sticky you’re not affiliated with websites like X and Y, but you’d have to ask a lawyer if that’s alright.

I guess some people just don’t care and do it anyways. And I’m not sure how much the copyright industry and courts care about people chatting about copyright infringement and not actually doing it at that place. Could be protected by free spech in some jurisdictions. You can obviously live in a place that doesn’t care about copyright. But I guess people don’t move across the world just for that.

You could find bulletproof hosting pay anonymously and take care to never mention any personal information about you. But given what you said, that’s not what you want. I’d split responsibility between several people and let someone else do the copyright infringement. Someone who lives someplace else and doesn’t engage themselves on the website. And focus on the development and the legal aspect of it. Or just do the illegal part and not do the software. But I imaging it’s really complicated to do both sides of that coin in one person… And I suppose running an illegal website costs more money than running a regular one.

I’ve always wanted to ask such a person what their deal is. I mean they could be miserable, or one of the people who always complain about everything. Or it’s supposed to be some form of trolling that no one gets… Maybe I shouldn’t ask because it’s not gonna be a healthy discussion… And I don’t care if that happens in an argument. But I really wonder why someone downvotes something like an innocent computer question. Or some comment with correct and uncontroversial advise. Or other people during a healty conversation. It doesn’t happen often to me, but I had all of that happen. And maybe thoughts like this lead to the current situation. And some people think about exposing such people and some think it should be protected.

And i think weighing the votes is a realistic idea. We could also not count votes of people with bad attitude at all.

Thanks for inviting me. I’ll see if I have something meaningful to contribute. As of now I’m not really involved in growing communities. Well, at least not as a moderator. Maybe I should try it.

Fair enough. From the other perspective, I think it’s a good thing. When the Reddit API thing happened, people were complaining, too. And focused to hold things together. So there wasn’t any time to purpusefully take a step back and guide things. Everyone was busy with admin stuff. That makes me believe when a wave hits us, also isn’t a good time to actively shape this place.

poVoq and anon6789 pointed out similar things with the growth happening in waves. I’m not sure if it’s healthy, though. It puts additional strain on the platform, devs and mods and everyone. And there are (long) dry spells in between. I’d rather have it grow constantly and slowly. And I believe quite some other Free Software projects do. It’s a bit of a different story with social media platforms as we have some unique circumstances like the network effect…

And I think the correct way to do it is to provide something to the people, so they want to join. Idk… be useful to them, a delight to spend time here. And offer something distinct or unique. That’d make the platform attractive all around the year. If we don’t have a superior product, we just rely on the other platforms becoming worse and that’s where our new users come from. Kind of accepting the role to be (and stay) an inferior Reddit clone. But that’s not how I see Lemmy or the Fediverse. I want to attract people who’ve never used Reddit before. Tech enthusiasts, … join because it’s a great platform to discuss their matters. Linux forums switch to Lemmy because it offers them interoperability. And sure, also Reddit users. But not just because they’re pushed out, but because they’re positively motivated to join this place.

The software is one thing. I think we’ve come a long way and both Lemmy and the network feel pretty stable now. It’s part of the equation. But I think the thing that really makes a difference is the community and the atmosphere. That’s why people would want to join. I’ve started this discussion now, because i think after the Reddit exodus, things had to settle down for a bit. And as other people pointed out it seems we’ve reached a plateau now. I think that’s a comfortable position to take a step back and think about the way forward. I’d like to take this as an opportunity to not just wait for incoming waves shape us, but now decide where we want to go and actively steer in that direction.

I think we have to actively provide something to the people to attract them. Something better than other platforms so they’ll want to be here. Not just because the other places become worse and this is the only alternative… But both is part of the equation.

I don’t think the timing is quite right.

What makes you think that? Because I think it’s a good time now, but I’d like to hear different perspectives.

[…] as the fediverse became just another online space instead of something new and distinct

You’re hitting the nail on the head with saying that. I mean the Fediverse is what it is. But I envision it to be something distinct, with added value and not just an average online space. If i didn’t care, I could just use Facebook/Reddit/Discord. But I do and I’d like this to be the nice alternative to that. Maybe way smaller and with its own problems, but at least more friendly and enjoyable…

With the emoji reactions: I agree with what nutomic pointed out. It’d also be difficult for the users to understand and use properly. And it’s a bit vague how that translates to a simple score for the ranking. I don’t think there is any technological issue, though. And we have platforms that use emoji reactions successfully. Notably Github and Discord. It works well for linear conversations.

Why do you downvote all the stuff anyways?

They collapse as well. But PieFed is pretty open to new ideas. If someone likes it differently and decides to address it, it can probably be changed.