True Blue

I’m going off memory. Pretty glad that never took off, even if what we were left with was Javascript…

I forgot where I heard this, but at one point around the same time, Microsoft was trying to get BASIC embedded into webpages for Internet Explorer as a competitor to JavaScript.

Would the internet really be better with BASIC?

The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone make that false equivalence demonstrates pretty well the problem that comes when a small number of instances have the majority of Lemmy’s total users. I chose a small instance myself, partially to do my part in avoiding this issue, but the consolidation will likely continue to be a big problem until a good solution can be thought up and implemented.

The fact that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone make that false equivalence demonstrates pretty well the problem that comes when a small number of instances have the majority of Lemmy’s total users. I chose a small instance myself, partially to do my part in avoiding this issue, but the consolidation will likely continue to be a big problem until a good solution can be thought up and implemented.

He said brave search. It has an independent index, so that’s a pretty notable difference from something like Duckduckgo which IIRC uses Bing under the hood. The googles features is also a really cool idea! I just wish there was a way to make private googles for just yourself.

As far as your instance is concerned, no one can downvote, even outside of your instance, because downvotes are rejected by your instance. This means that downvotes from other instances aren’t visible to any users of your instance or any other instance that has downvotes disabled, and they don’t affect the sorting of posts.

In my experience, downvotes do little but encourage dog-piling and echo chambers. I have a few accounts on instances that disabled downvotes, and few that enabled them. The difference is very clear. The instances that disabled them have noticeably more rich and diverse discussion, with users being less afraid to disagree with each other and have proper debates.

The instances that have them enabled vary a bit, but I noticed a pattern that certainly reminds me of The Hard R: Most comments on a popular and highly upvoted post are basically people agreeing with the post over and over again with different words, and then there a few comments that actually disagree, but you’ll have a hard time seeing them because they were downvoted into oblivion. This isn’t always the case, certainly not as much as the other place (at least not yet) but I have already noticed it happen.

And if they’re disagreeing in a respectable or kind way, then that’s good! It encourages discussion and debate, instead of simply clicking downvote and leaving the poster no way to know why you disagree at all.

If they’re being rude or inflammatory, then that’s breaking the rules anyway, so instead of being downvoted, it should be reported.