I very deliberately avoid politics. If I fail let me know.

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: May 22nd, 2025

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  • I swiped almost everything right

    Don’t do this, if this is an input into your app’s algorithm at all it’ll assume you’re ugly and desperate and not show you to anyone. Only swipe on people you’d be at least potentially excited to meet and that could actually work out (e.g. don’t swipe right on someone who’s profile says “I want a man of god” if you’re a hardcore atheist). I shifted to this strategy on hinge and it made a noticeable difference in the number and quality of matches.

    Think about it - if you only swipe right on good matches (for both of you), they’ll see you and be more likely to swipe right on you, improving your match rate. And don’t worry about how their level of attractiveness plays into this, because it’ll be weighted for that.


  • As a massive introvert it’s pretty much the only way I meet anybody. I could write a multi-volume treatise on why people hate online dating and how it points to them doing it wrong in some way. But I’ll spare you other than to say remember that you’re asking a computer to match you with someone. It has no feelings for you and will just do what makes sense for the system as a whole, not for you in particular.

    Just have low expectations - a lot of people treat those they meet on the app as relatively disposable compared to someone they met in real life. So if someone ghosts you or just disappears from the app without a word, it’s definitely impolite but not uncommon. Don’t take it personally (even though my friends tend to take it personally when it happens to them).



  • A lot of people are saying cut them off, but I have a family member who was into the anti-vax conspiracy theories and kinda still is, but it’s much less of a focus now and is pretty obviously just being carried forward by cognitive dissonance at this point. There will never be total victory, but there can be a reasonable truce.

    What I’d suggest is the most counter-intuitive strategy - show genuine interest. Say “Ok, I want to know more, but I need you to be specific. Tell me what your theory is and what the evidence is, I’ll take my time looking at it, and respond in detail.”

    Keep in mind, they probably won’t pay attention to whatever your respond with. That’s ok. The response isn’t the point, pinning them down on what they think is. So often these things are purely emotional, and forcing them into a logical framework will make them do the work for you. As for the response, odds are it’s some combination of cherry-picked data and spurious correlations, if not outright made up facts. Think of alternate explanations for what they’re showing you that are more plausible than a vaccine killing people. And remember that if the vaccine really was killing people, it would be really obvious, not something we need look deep into the matrix to find.


  • The problem then is that by responding, you’re engaging with it which typically helps it spread in the algorithms*. Ideally there should be multiple downvote options - maybe separate it out as “misinformation” vs “bad opinion” or something. Removing downvotes and banning users who disagree is the typical cult strategy (recall the classic cult sub, r/thedonald, was notorious for this). If you’re worried about downvotes being used to silence people, maybe another way to mitigate that would be a “sort by downvoted” option so that being downvoted a lot could actually put you at the top of at least that feed.

    *On Lemmy, notice the following:

    Active (default): Calculates a rank based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time


  • Do you think vote sould be private ? Public ? And why ?

    Public. Lots of downvotes is information that could indicate that the commenter is lying, or just saying something unpopular. But either way, it’s information. Before youtube started hiding downvotes, it was easy to tell that a video had a misleading title based on downvotes. Now clickbait dominates the platform.

    Are you sastified with the current voting system ? And why ?

    No. I agree that the slashdot method with more than just upvote/downvote is better. In a perfect world I imagine we could have every emoji be a reaction option, and then you could sort by putting an emoji in a bar at the top. In reality I imagine this would be a challenge from a backend perspective, but maybe like the top 5 or 10 emoji reactions could be an option for selection.

    What other interesting software/website that tried something different do you know ?

    I’ll do the opposite and say - please do not remove downvotes like Twitter/Bluesky/mastodon etc. Downvotes are super important. People need to be able to boo, the only place people aren’t allowed to boo are in church or at cult rallies. And that’s why those platforms are especially bad for misinformation, hyperbole, and overall depravity.

    What way do you imagine to highlight content and improve search, discoverability ?

    Remove all as a forced/default option on the main page. Back in the day before reddit had r/all, communities were much more diverse and niche, and this helped separate communities flourish in their own way. When r/all was added, the content started to resemble twitter, if not just becoming screenshots of twitter, on just about every sub. This actually improves discoverability because it would force users to branch out and look at subs instead of just looking at what’s on all.


  • For me WFH has helped me have a community. The office was never a real community, and the fact that we all worked together got in the way of being actual friends. Instead with the added time from WFH I was able to prioritize my social life and go to more events and meet people I actually have stuff in common with. Additionally my in-office job forced me to live in a dead suburb, WFH allowed me to move to a city with a lot more social opportunities.

    Of course probably not everyone prioritized that. The office might be good for some people, but for people like me who don’t necessarily socialize at the office very easily WFH is much better for community.




  • I just want to point out something that I’ve not seen others mention - sometimes girls are just way too paranoid about what their families will think. I know one girl who keeps insisting that her parents wouldn’t let her date a black guy, but then she also admits that she dated a hispanic guy before and thought the same thing but her parents loved him. Honestly I think like 70% of girls imagine that their parents wouldn’t accept some huge swath of men due to some superficial characteristic, but probably in reality only maybe 20% of parents would actually be against their daughter dating a guy who treats her well, even if he’s of a type they dislike.











  • In most cases, it’s wrong to violate the social contract, especially while benefiting from it. However: the harm done by violating the social contract should be weighed against the harm of not violating it.

    In this case, the harm of violating the social contract is pretty minimal, as copyright law is not a fundamental part of the fabric of society. One can even argue it’s kind of dubious, as something that moneyed interests favor very heavily with no similar moneyed interests favoring a strong public domain.

    The harm of not violating it is not only do you give money to a holocaust denier, you’re giving it to him for denying the holocaust. Even worse, you’re giving him money for being wrong, and so effective at deception that you are compelled to spend money disproving him.

    The whole point of copyright is to encourage useful works and spreading of knowledge and art. In this case the work is not spreading knowledge, but un-knowledge. Irving is exploiting a loophole in copyright law that allows him to work against its very purpose.

    Thus I’d say violating the law is ethical as the benefits far outweigh the costs.