This individual has been popping up periodically on SDF making these unsubstantiated claims about "Steven" Jones (hint: that's not his name), ranting about Soviet perverts or whatever, and claiming they're the rightful owners of SDF now. Yeah, right. Guess they have made it over to the EU box as well.

There is nothing to see here.

s/Probably/Absolutely/

Others have answered your question (which is not stupid; there are no stupid questions) so I will simply say welcome to SDF, and have fun exploring! 🙂

I'm about to step away from this thread because I've made my point (and everyone has probably made up their mind) but I want to go back to one thing I said.

Let’s focus on building affirmatively and consciously the community we want

We have an opportunity here the likes of which we haven't seen for at least a decade, if not longer. For too long now we've built our communities on platforms provided by the likes of Twitter, Reddit, and (yes) Meta. Now, we not only have the tools to "homestead" these places ourselves, we have what is increasingly a critical mass of people interested in exploring alternatives to the corporate social media world. How many of us have said "well, I don't like Twitter but I still have a Twitter account because that's where all my friends are"? (or, if not Twitter, then Facebook, Reddit, etc.)

We're now starting to see people wanting to get out of those silos and into something less geared towards profit and marketing and surveillance. Some people see this as a threat to the carefully-restricted (I will not say "curated" - oops, I guess I just did) communities they have created here. Other people see it as an opportunity to get more people, more voices, into these communities and conversations. It should be clear by now which side I come down on; how about you?

I will admit that Meta is not the ideal vector for people to find us. If I had my choice, they'd stick to developing their proprietary platforms and leave us alone. But I don't have my choice; they see a different opportunity than I do, and they're pursuing it. But it still means there are people potentially joining us that could be really cool, really interesting, really nice to have as part of our circle. Yes, it means there will be bad actors. That's life. There is no good without bad. I suppose some people feel there will be more bad than good to come of this. I don't think that way.

I'm reminded of the discipline of Appreciative Inquiry. Its point is to engage stakeholders in decision-making, but to do so from a position of appreciating good things and building upon them to create more good things, as opposed to seeing bad things and trying to correct them. As the Wikipedia article says, it is a distinction between "a Mystery to be Embraced" and "a Problem to be Solved."

I hope it's clear by now that I fall on the Mystery to be Embraced side of the fence. This is an opportunity, not a crisis. There are ways to make sure our philosophy succeeds; we just need to find them. I don't think we'll find them by considering Meta users as unwelcome. Some of you come down on the Problem to be Solved side, and your proposed solutions clash with mine. That's OK. We have all been heard, as we should be, as we are all stakeholders. I hope some of you will join me in the opportunistic view, but that's not for me to decide.

I am now going to step away and let others have the floor, so to speak. Be well.

EDIT: Removed this comment entirely, as it had the potential to take things off-topic and I acknowledged as much introducing the post. Wanted it out of my head, didn't want to make a further mess here. Sorry.

Thank you, @gortbrown, for expressing what I was trying to say a lot more succintly. 🙂

If clueless people in Washington/Westminster/Brussels/whatever make laws that censor the Internet, they will do so, and they will almost certainly apply, no matter what Meta does. Obviously it's worth fighting these attempts, but I don't think it really has anything to do with Meta.

If Meta filters stuff that they think exposes them to Bad Things For A Corporation To Be Exposed To, that is all the more reason to keep things open to Meta users who seek an alternative.

Sure, they are fiercely anti-competitive and seek to eliminate their competition. Such is the nature of the publicly held corporation, whose literal only purpose is to maximize profit to their shareholders. To the extent that Meta sees their competitors as stealing their potential profit, they will and in fact must fight. It cannot be helped.

I believe this community is strong enough to resist attempts to snuff it out. I believe the technology is well-developed and well-situated to survive such attempts. Those who choose to use it will continue to use it, whatever Meta does. Those who see us as a bunch of misfit losers who just want to be different will continue to hold that view, whatever Meta does. I think the opportunity lies in finding the people who want something different than what's on offer from the "mainstream" Internet, showing them what we can do, and giving them the chance to join us. And I think cutting off Meta, as defensively or strategically well-intended as it might be, hurts that.

I'm an optimist because being a pessimist drives me into dangerous depression. I understand not everyone shares my optimism. There are already plenty of people who have made the decision to cut off Meta from the servers they maintain, and will not reconsider. That is unfortunate, but that too also cannot be helped. I hope SDF won't go that route. If they do, I'll still stay here; the people I want to communicate with are here. But I just hope we don't cut off people simply for being on Meta's app. That's all.

Permanently Deleted

Do you believe people who use Meta tools are complicit in crimes against humanity? If so, I've got some bad news about the Internet.

Give people a chance. Who knows; maybe some of them will drop the Meta tool and pick up the one you prefer.

I did not say Meta, a corporation, is people. I am saying the people who will use this tool, including people we all know, are people and don't deserve to be presumed guilty of Crimes Against The Fediverse for exploring it with any particular tool.

Permanently Deleted

I have created a sub called MetaLemmy in hope that people will use it to discuss matters like these, so that the SDFpubnix sub will be more useful for announcements and such. If you want to discuss the meta-workings of lemmy.sdf.org, please go there (and if you are interested in moderating, please respond to the post there, as I do not want to be the mod of that sub long-term.) Thanks.

Certificate issues are common because SDF requests a lot of certificates and gets rate limited by Let’s Encrypt. Give it a few days (it can take that long sometimes) and email membership@sdf if it’s still broken after that. SDF recently sent out a mail stating that they’re working on this problem, so this shouldn’t be the case forever. Good luck!