Okay, I was just about to really start using my Pixelfed account, but I'm not liking the trend in the creator's behavior.

Mystery Babylon

I don't know of other good federated ways to share photos. Are there any?

squinky

@erosdiscordia what's the TL;DR on that? I heard there was some drama and apologies but everywhere I look it's been subtoots all the way down

Mystery Babylon

@squinky
What I've seen with my own eyes and will try to re-find in my bookmarks, is Dansup going hard about defending his use of AAVE, in an exchange with the creator of GoToSocial, who had brought attention to it coming across as inappropriate (which I agreed with, it was getting a bit cringe of him). This led to Dansup doubling down and becoming Extremely Online about it for some hours/days, with a fairly extreme siege mentality.

And, this is the thread and sub-thread I'm referring to today: Dansup apparently making crass jokes referring to putting down the postal strike.
https://nyan.lol/@zicklepop/113896651809346961
https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/113899788522843413

I would love more information about either of these, or anything else he's done.

squinky

@erosdiscordia I ask because these days I have pretty complicated feelings about this sort of stuff. Here in the fedi we hold folks to pretty high standards, meanwhile the people in charge of other social networks are horrible sociopathic fascists.

I'm not saying he did nothing wrong, because I don't know, but I see constant "the left eating itself" behavior over here, over stuff that elsewhere would get a shrug and someone going "yep, that guy's a dick" and that's it.

Again, not trying to diminish bad behavior but I sometimes wish the fediverse had a better sense of scale.

Mystery Babylon

@squinky I hear you, and don't disagree.

In no way do I wanna cancel Dansup, or encourage anybody to not enjoy Pixelfed.

I'm only thinking about my own personal comfort limits, and trying to put out feelers for something I might like better as an alternative. Especially since I haven't invested a ton of effort into Pixelfed yet, despite having had accounts in two servers for a long time.

squinky

@erosdiscordia yeah I don't mean to sound like I'm directing all of this at you. I guess you were just standing in front of me when the rant fell out of my mouth.

weird herm

@squinky @erosdiscordia the biggest issues I have with him are his janky ToS for Loops, which he used “a service” to write & doesn’t see any problems with the jankiness, and the fact that he moderates the entire pixelfed instance by himself, which is like asking for everything to crash and burn. His hubris and inability to take criticism don’t leave me with any faith that he’ll make good decisions for users now or in the future.

https://cyberplace.social/@WiteWulf/113888919138231086
https://goblin.technology/@tobi/statuses/01JJKNASGQYXDBBEGEPT2GBPZ5
https://d-shoot.net/@kib/statuses/01JJKWZE4X5K7WNJAMTPW1Y2RG

https://sfba.social/@Adventurer/113852998325998976
https://toot.cat/@woozle/113852429282462616

squinky

@weirdofhermiston @erosdiscordia a couple of those links 404'd for me. I do have to chuckle about how users never read the terms of service, but here the person providing those terms didn't either.

I think there's no doubt that Pixelfed, Loops, that whole ecosystem, seems to operate with somewhat shifted principles from a lot of the rest of the fediverse.

Also I think that based on what Loops is meant to do, namely acting like TikTok or Reels, algorithmic recommendation is practically a required feature for broad adoption. I doubt "you permit us to use your data" was included by mistake, but could have been more specific as to intent, assuming that's what it's about.

I'm not against that sort of thing in principle-- I spend a lot of time on "big" social networks that do a lot of that stuff on less generous terms. I also think it's perfectly okay to have a distaste for that sort of thing, which seems to be a pretty broadly agreed on sentiment around here.

I haven't dug up his bad responses to criticism out of the threads I could see so I don't know firsthand what they are

Mystery Babylon

@squinky @weirdofhermiston His responses to criticism just seem to take a really heavy rah-rah startup-bro "with us or against us" kind of manipulative vibe. It raises my hackles, I've learned the hard way not to trust it. Because it's fine when you agree with him, but once a person has a problem, suddenly they're the one 100% in the wrong.

Obviously it's his project, he can do whatever he wants.

I just feel like the tech and app world is already saturated with that attitude. Sure, it may not be a Zuckerberg level of sociopathy. It still isn't comfortable to support, IMHO.

weird herm

@squinky @erosdiscordia exactly. I’m not telling anyone what decision to make, just providing links as requested. The way he reacts to anything potentially critical is not cool.

squinky

@weirdofhermiston I felt bad about hijacking this thread for my own rant so I started one here: https://teh.entar.net/@squinky/113901771464833836

Turns out I just fragmented the thread instead, oops.

My TL;DR personal conclusion is that this is probation-level behavior and not ostracism-level but that's not my decision to make