People like to think that they’ve made some far-reaching change with what little actually happened. The painful truth is: they didn’t. There wasn’t a big hit to the userbase, most people on Reddit already hated moderators and didn’t give a shit if they got removed, and overall people caved far too quickly (how many people folded instantly when their internet moderator position was threatened? (I say this as someone who was one of those moderators that flat out quit everything and nuked my account rather than continuing to toil for free for a corporation that hates me)).

The actually important thing that was accomplished by the protesting was platforms like Lemmy getting enough of a userbase boost to become stable - in the future, Lemmy and others may be able to act as viable alternatives to Reddit, because there’s already a community here (however small). Reddit will continue to enshittify, and people will continue to leave in small numbers that may escalate to big numbers if they commit a truly massive fuckup. The more heavy Reddit users (read: more invested, not necessarily more active) are small in number compared to the vast majority who lurk, don’t give a shit about any ongoing meta-drama, and don’t particularly care about any changes to the UI or browsing experience as long as they can still get an endless feed of memes.

Even if it hurts to realize this, it’s important to make sure people get this message beat into their skulls so that we aren’t stuck with a bunch of Redditors (derogatory) with over-inflated egos that think Reddit will bend over backward to appease them, then cave as soon as they receive literally any pushback from the corporation running the site.

Appears to no longer be free, so I’m gonna take this down for now. If it was an error and it becomes free again, feel free to repost!

the smell of heavily chlorinated water. i used to spend a heck of a lot of time at the pool when i was a kid, and where i live now there aren’t nearly as many pools, so it’s not something encountered often anymore.

Any PR statement that includes the words “we hear you” can be safely ignored

The only one I have found was !hades@lemmy.zip, but it isn’t very active.

Too late, I already own all the Stellaris DLC, my bad choices have been made long ago

Not sure yet! I’ve not bought a lot of games recently, but I do enjoy large swathes of the strategy genre. Stellaris, Civ 5 and 6, Terra Invicta, Frostpunk, etc.

Differences in instance-level topical focus and moderation philosophy, for one. Also physical location and “vibe”.

There are a certain set of bigoted and/or extremist instances that I would judge an instance for not defederating from. There’s a reason I’ve stuck with .world even through some turbulence. Some heinous shit shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone.

As an aside, check out !specialized_instances@kbin.social if you haven’t already.

Can you see the word “bitch”?

I have heard lemmy.ml blocks curse words. My account is on lemmy.world and I see no removeds.

Wouldn’t be the weirdest rebrand recently, honestly

Curate.

Block liberally. Especially block any community that is focused around hating something - even if it’s a thing that deserves scorn, the vibe will grind you down, over time, especially if there are many communities like it. Block users who are assholes, after reporting them if it’s bad enough.

Subscribe/follow/equivalent-action things you are genuinely interested in; cut out the really general categories unless you actively enjoy browsing that topic. Smaller communities are usually better, if they have enough content to be alive.

If you have any sort of hobby, try joining a space about it. If it’s too toxic, block it, but if not, it is a good place to destress and perhaps even make friends.

Curate, it can’t be overstated enough. A lot of sites don’t let you sufficiently curate your feed, and if they don’t, you should leave em.

I am subscribed to over 100 channels, ranging from daily uploads to 1 video every few months. Frankly I don’t need more stuff to watch. When I do want to find something new, it’s either a recommendation from a friend, something I saw on a different social media, or something I searched for myself deliberately.

This change isn’t a good thing, it’s Google trying to pressure more people into giving up more data, but the “threat” of them removing their algorithmically recommended content from my feed is not a threat at all, it’s a bonus if anything.

If someone’s email domain is @ihateminorities.com, I’d say that’s pretty fair grounds for blocking it.

There are some instances that actively promote hateful or extremist content, and exist for the purpose of hosting it. There are others that do not actively support that content but do allow it, anywhere, making blocking one community not enough. Defederation is an important tool and should be used wisely.

Tried posting the video this time instead of a link to the news page.

Some welcome changes to the Lithoid species pack - tweaks to their unique origin, tweaks to Terravore to make it less fiddly. A new advanced space racism civic! (This is one of the weirder parts of talking about Stellaris.) Personally I’m a bit underwhelmed by the new portrait; It’s good art, but I really prefer more out there non-humanoid designs, which is the opposite of what they’re going for here. The quality of life changes to ascension perks and gestalt nodes are welcome as well. This kind of tidying up is why I like the whole concept of the custodian team.

Only real negative thing here is the increase on price for some older DLCs. It’s only two dollars, and they are tweaking them to be better, but I still feel like it’s gonna cause unnecessary backlash for little gain.

For the future, !outoftheloop@lemmy.world

I generally agree as well. This buff to bandages will also indirectly buff ammo boxes even more, and medics will still have their niche in being able to heal others without even using up their bandage supply.

Meaty update here. I’m not one to comment on weapon balance too much, but I do wonder: Do you think that all classes being able to self-heal a bit with the bandage will significantly shake up the game?

(Screenshots taken from the Interface in Game site, here: https://interfaceingame.com/games/team-fortress-2/)

I wanna talk about the game I’m currently absorbed with, Team Fortress 2. TF2, being rather old, allows total customization of the UI, from the HUD to the menus. The default UI is clear, but also dated in places; you can really see where they slapped on new elements that clash a bit with existing ones, like the medals on the scoreboard compared to other elements, or the loading screen for a map, which has the very old Source infobox in the bottom right, a stylized background and panel taking up most of the screen, and a well integrated but still a bit off info bar at the top that was added more recently. The most glaring example is probably the community server browser compared to the newer slide-out tabs and menus for navigating play options. If Valve was still doing major work on this game, I’d say they need a good UI unification art pass.

When browsing TF2 custom HUDs on a site like this, there’s quite a few different styles to choose from, ranging from those that attempt to refine the vanilla HUD to those that make it something entirely different. Many competitive players prefer minimalistic HUDs that put pertinent information like health and ammo count closer to the center of the screen, so that one doesn’t need to divide their attention while fighting. Still others will pick a HUD that is a different style but still “complete” and fleshed out; even others still will fill their UI with memes (which I never understood, but to each their own).

Sometimes you just have to appreciate the little touches, though, like the animations and presentation on a map’s video tutorial and the class select screen. It oozes a particular aesthetic that the game has deviated from, over time.