For the people by the people, no big corporations at the helm. No advertisements, no trackers, no weird algorithms, just organic community discussions. That’s what Lemmy and the fediverse is about.

Forward for Lemmy

It’s similar to Reddit but it’s open source and I’ve hosted it in Toronto so we retain data sovereignty. Not sure if you’ve been following what Trump is doing down south but we need to pivot away from American tech, Zuckerberg and the like have bent the knee and kissed the ring

I want to get local public places like wilmot family resource center, libraries and things to be the gatekeepers. I want to try and keep foreign actors out of our online discourse and algorithms to be more organic so our feeds can give a better idea of reality as it pertains to those in our community.

More info on Lemmy can be found here https://join-lemmy.org/docs/index.html

These are things I want to see Implemented in Lemmy.

  • I think it needs end to end encryption for DMs.

  • it needs a built in automated moderator that can be configured per community baked into the product

  • and I’ve not looked in depth yet but should have image fingerprints (hash, md5).

    • also keep redundant uploads from sitting around.

  • should have some public audit for access to the backend database.

    • It should be transparent.

  • meta image should be shown when getting data from some sites like YouTube

  • web URL should prompt to install app on home screen of users don’t want to use their iOS/android apps

Lemmy Instance TODO

  • setup DR (Disaster Recovery)
    • cloud/local
    • files and Postgres SQL
  • Fix email not coming from waterloolemmy.ca domain
  • validate images are going to attached volume
  • install better theme for web UI and find better apps
  • implement automod for keyword flagging
  • implement locally hosted AI rig to moderate image content

Bugs

TODO: look up in repo

  • going back in history when editing a post a prompt appears repeatedly (web)
  • floating “+” in Android app to add new post obfuscates the ellipses in for the bottom post (Jerboa Android)
  • writing on a post leaves keyboard over text input (Jerboa Android)

Additional notes of Lemmy

There is a feature called Modlog https://waterloolemmy.ca/modlog that records all moderated content so it’s transparent. This means some unsafe content could be seen, I’ll have to understand if this can be pre-filtered based on account as some content could be triggering as this instance grows and people use it organically as they would any other social media platforms.

I’ll expand this with other content and musings as they come to me.

  • IsaacOPMEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    This instance was setup using a devops as a service (devops is automating deployment) using resources here: https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy

    Deploying a webserver is half the issue, it requires setting up domains using DNS and other OpSec information (SSH is on by default for all IPs). The console of elestio is great like better than most most cloud providers even “enterprise grade”.

    As the todos grow it will be indicative of what needs to occur and steps others will need to setup to ensure things go smoothly and this Lemmy instance has reliable uptime.

    There are are also scaling issues that could need to be addressed if this becomes a popular instance. There’s a few things i’d like to add to the scripts used to setup the Lemmy instance or maybe make some changes to the code but that’s more long term.

    I think it to be important that we form an online community that is open and transparent and works for our community.

    • IsaacOPMEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      For the people by the people, no big corporations at the helm. No advertisements, no trackers, no weird algorithms, just organic community discussions. That’s what Lemmy and the fediverse is about.