That sentence is not completely true, in my opinion. However, AI in its current state is rather unfit for use and right now its only positive purpose is to be a cash cow for big corpos that benefit off of it (think OpenAI and Nvidia) — and not even, as OpenAI suffers losses and people are rapidly getting tired of “AI” as a buzzword.

I don’t think people should completely stop using AI; it is an amazing technology that can actually help us. But is it really necessary to turn straight to ChatGPT just to ask the simplest questions?

Here are reasons why you should avoid using AI (specifically LLMs), unless absolutely necessary:

1. It uses up a LOT of resources.

It has been said that AI uses up 10× more resources than a normal Google search.

If you’re asking for simple things, such as a basic brownie recipe or how to get started with the Python programming language, why not just search it up? The answers are common and simple and using an LLM is simply too much.

Even if you’re not someone who actively cares about the environment, it makes sense to opt for something less wasteful at no extra cost.

Thus, LLMs such as ChatGPT take more time to yield results anyway. Why bother waiting?

2. LLM responses tend to be inaccurate

LLMs are literally Large Language Models. They create coherent sentences based on word probabilities.

LLMs are a glorified version of choosing random words in your keyboard’s suggestions. Anyone who’s tried that knows that they can get nonsensical. However, LLMs are trained on such large amounts of data that they can be pretty on point.

Still, they can miss it. This is because these LLMs care much less about what is fact and more about whether or not the sentences it spouts make sense based on the data it is fed.

Its responses being inaccurate is an understatement. LLMs “hallucinate” a lot — that is, become convinced that a certain idea is true. To simplify it, an LLM can be convinced that one plus one equals three, because “three” is a sensible word to come after “equals”. The latest models are unlikely to make that exact mistake, but that’s the idea.

If you think about it, using LLMs for advice with more serious matters is dangerous. Imagine an LLM that hallucinates on the dosage for a certain drug used to save a person’s life. Imagine an LLM that gives out orders to the military for the kill (which, iirc, is either already happening or going to happen soon). That’s just horrible. Don’t.

3. Many AI models have unethical practices

This point does not apply to just LLMs, but also image generation models and such.

Perhaps there are AI models somewhere which try to be as ethical as possible, but unfortunately the most popular ones aren’t.

Aside from the environmental concerns outlined above, AI does not respect intellectual property.

It does not care whether or not an artist wants AI to be trained on their illustrations, even if they say it explicitly or sign their work (AI has been known to copy these signatures and watermarks as well). It does not care whether or not a website’s developer added a file called robots.txt, which explicitly tells certain scrapers not to scrape the website. It does not care whether or not your work is copyrighted or whatever — what matters to it is that it can access it and dump it into its ever-growing pool of data for training.

And I won’t be surprised if AI has a really big pool of proprietary source code for training.

If a random, not-rich individual decided to scrape that much data, I’d bet they’d be labelled badly and get into legal trouble. If they decided to spout it out like AI models do, they’d be in really big trouble, and not just for plagiarism.

4. AI’s training data can easily be gamed

At this point, you probably get the gist of it: AI is trained on tonnnsss of data, like basically the entire Internet and more. Woah.

But seriously, anyone who’s chronically online can tell you how horrible the internet can get.

Racism. Ableism. Ageism. Fat-phobia. Homophobia. Misogyny. Misandry. Just downright being a horrible person, whether a troll or someone with adverse motivations — you get the point. So many people on the internet suck. And that’s the kind of data that AI gets trained on.

Of course, those corporations who own these AI models are doing their best to stop it adapting these behaviours, but something will always slip through the cracks.

Add that to AI’s hallucinations and you have the recipe for disaster. Oh, and people trying to game its scraping algorithms.

There have already been reports of LLMs giving false phone numbers for certain companies. This can lead people to getting scammed. Sure, we can tell them off for being gullible, but harm can still be done.

In conclusion…

Okay, fine. AI is bad. It might be a wonderful technology, but society sucks the way it is and AI is simply amplifying that and making it suck even more.

The problems I have outlined above is a non-exhaustive list. It is simply impossible to stop yapping — uh, I mean, list out every single concern with AI in its current state. Maybe someday I will write out a full rant on society. But that’s for another day.

For your sake, and my sake, and the sakes of everyone on the planet, maybe think twice before you ask an LLM for a step by step on how to bake a cake or something. Boycott AI.

Of course, if you really can’t find the answers you need anywhere on the internet, I will definitely support your decision to use AI. If you’re in need of a quick translation of a complicated text to another language, or are taking audio-to-text notes of a lecture, knock yourself out. In an ideal world, people would only use Artificial Intelligence for the right purposes.

That’s all for now.

It’s just a basic drag-and-drop blocks game where you fill up rows and columns. Simple… and, in my opinion, something that will bore you after 4 days of playing. No levels. Nothing. Just… blocks?

So I decided to try it out.

(In case you’re curious, I decided to drop my random thoughts as they came into this Fediverse thread.)

Disclaimer: I legit know nothing about psychology. I’m just putting these theories out there for fun!

Weird mapping?

The first thing you do as you play Block Blast is drag and drop a block. Sounds easy enough.

Then a weird thing happened. I was used to blocks being directly under my finger as I drag them. But this was weird. It wasn’t mapped exactly to the position of my finger on the screen. One small finger movement led to a larger block movement.

I think that’s quite engaging. Minimal hand movement and large effect. Perfect for us lazy peeps.

It also has a slight learning curve to it as you figure out how to control each block with ease. Once you get the hang of it, there’s some sort of satisfaction and attachment. Think of those Vim fanatics who somehow memorised ever keybind.

Animations!!!

The animations are so freaking gorgeous. So much feedback and shaking and colourful stuff and everything literally popping off the screen!

Without audio, I can just ‘hear’ how beautiful these animations are (that’s probably because I might have motion-to-sound synesthesia, which I discovered a few days ago, but I digress) and it’s quite satisfying. I can just about hear all the popping noises and everything.

With audio, I found that the sounds were actually much cooler than I expected. But I don’t play stuff with audio unless it’s a TikTok or a Pokémon game, so I turned the volume back down.

It kinda seems algorithmic?

For some reason, the game gives you pretty good blocks for all situations. The only time it doesn’t is when you screwed up and there is almost no way for you to redeem yourself from that mistake.

But otherwise, it gives you amazing combinations. You just need to use those three blocks wisely and think a bit, and you’ll clear the board with ease.

It’s quite rewarding. And of course, rewards = dopamine. Dopamine makes you addicted to stuff. Idk, I’m not a biology nor psychology expert. You think you’re amazing, so you keep playing.

At the same time, it’s so easy to get the best moves that it’s hard. You see the best move right after you commit a bad one! You feel bad for it! So after you lose, you try again. You’re convinced you can do better moves each time. You get a new highscore. Rinse. Repeat.

Ten minutes in, you’re addicted. I could feel it by the minute as I wonder at all the amazing things about the game.

It makes you think

Some games might make you brain-dead. Some apps too, like TikTok and other social media. We all know that after all that, some mental stimulation is due.

This game has the perfect mix between being a strategy game and a braindead one. You have to think about the combinations. But at the same time, you can just do whatever because it’s just blocks. It’s not that deep.

And when you do succeed, you feel so gooood because it took a small bit of effort, but also not that much. Woah, you think to yourself. I’m amazing at this! Cue more feel-good hormones (probably, I think).

Starting the game takes no more than five seconds.

I finish installing the game. I open the app. I click “Agree” on whatever Terms And Conditions screen they have, then see a tutorial.

I do not read the tutorial. I drag and drop a block. I drag and drop another. Woohoo, I cleared a column! Woah, I cleared a row!

Suddenly, I’m playing. Then I’m posting on Fedi. Then I’m playing again. Then I post again. Hmm, should I play a bit more and see why it’s so good? Yeah sure. I play again.

Within 10 minutes, I realise I’m addicted, if only just a bit.

But I’m a cynic. I’m wary of these things because uhm… anyways, I uninstalled it now. Hehe.

Hope you enjoyed this rather yap-y review.

Local multiplayer allows you to run several instances of MelonDS and essentially emulate a link between those instances — as if you have two NDSes actually connected to each other!

It’s really useful when you want to trade Pokémon, hehe.

1. Navigate to System > Multiplayer
2. Select Launch new instance
3. Set up the new window like you would to open up your ROM/savefile

You’re ready to go!

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to open your game on MelonDS for desktop.

Prerequisites

You’ll need:

• The MelonDS desktop app
• Your ROM file (usually a .zip)
• Your savefile (file extension depends on emulator and core)

If you don’t have your savefile, try checking out the article on accessing Android emulator savefiles.

Compatibility

Savefiles from other cores (such as DeSmuMe) are mildly incompatible with MelonDS.

If you’re not sure which one you’re using, check your emulator or your savefile’s file extension. If the file ends in .sav, you’re good to go. If not, you might want to convert between the file types.

No, simply renaming the file does not work.

Getting started

Launch up MelonDS.

You’ll be met with a blank, black screen. Don’t worry; nothing’s broken.

Your OS should have a native menu for the application with the following items:

• File
• System
• Config

On Windows, the menu should be accessible within the window. On MacOS, look to the top taskbar. On Linux, you’re on your own — you’re probably smart enough to know where to look for this.

Follow the following steps:

1. Navigate to File > Open ROM
2. Select your ROM file
3. The game should start up. Go to File > Import savefile.
4. Select your savefile

The game should restart and, if all went well, you can access everything from your save. Yipee!

Final words

I have a couple of articles for emulation, which you can find here: #emulation. This includes articles on accessing your savefiles from Android as well as how to use Multiplayer on MelonDS for desktop.

Hope these help! Cheers!

This guide will walk you through how to access these files and go around Android’s restrictions.

Workaround for restrictions

To access the files, I found that an app called EX File Manager was really helpful in accessing the Android/data folder.

NOTE: I’m not quite sure how safe this software is. It has ads and is definitely not FOSS. However, I can vouch for its effectiveness.

For the rest of this guide, I will assume that you are using this app.

Getting the files

Now that we have a working file manager, we can go into the required folders.

The Android/data folder

From the homescreen of EX File Manager click on the hamburger menu icon on the upper-left. This should reveal a menu.

Under Storage, click on Internal Storage.

This should lead you to a screen with all your folders under /storage/emulated/0. Think of this as your home folder.

Find and access the folder named Android, then data. You’re in!

Finding the application’s folder

You might notice that /storage/emulated/0/Android/data has tons of folders. Each folder is managed by one of your applications.

From what I figure, the folders are named by the domain name of the app’s publisher. For instance, we have org.fdroid.fdroid for F-droid, and md.obsidian for Obsidian.

Let’s say you’re using Lemuroid as your emulator. From here on, I’ll assume that you’re using this.

For me, Lemuroid is all the way down, as com.swordfish.lemuroid. It’s a lot to scan through, but EX File Manager shows a thumbnail of the application for each folder.

Getting the savefile

Under com.swordfish.lemuroid/files, there are four folders:

• roms
• saves
• state-previews
• states

The file structure may differ per emulator, but usually you’ll find a folder containing similarly-named folders.

Navigate into the saves folder.

Here, you should see a bunch of files in the format romName.dsv. The file extension (e.g. .dsv or .sav) differs between emulators.

NOTE: saves are different from save states! Save your games in-game in order to generate the actual savefiles.

Long press on the file you need to select it, then on the lower-left click on Copy.

That’s it!

Paste the file into the desired folder, and there you have your savefile!

Hence, I love the phrase “waxing poetic”: to talk about something with such passion that the language is becoming increasingly verbose. A person waxing poetic about anything — that’s freaking poetry to me.

Even if I don’t care about, say, volleyball, when I hear someone talk about anything about volleyball and sound like they could go on for hours — if only I could bottle up all that inspiring passion in the world!

Because I have my passions too; sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s random language facts or analyses of literary works, right now it’s something to do with websites, sometimes it’s something about character arcs or whatever. I can wax poetic on those for hours. So when I hear, or read, or whatever, someone just wax poetic about their passions, I can’t help but be in awe: that person is as dedicated to their art as I am about mine! It’s beautiful.

It’s also why I think any passion can be called an ‘art’. If you’re passionate enough about sport, it’s almost a performance, an art. If you’re passionate enough about mechanical stuff, the thing you made is a masterpiece. If you’re passionate enough about that one paragraph you wrote yapping about some weird hobby — that is art. And I freaking love art, when passion simply pours out of it.

(originally posted on Fedi by writeblankspace@shonk.social, which is me btw)

One weird thing about Hugo is that it generates everything for you but, for some reason, it never checks whether or not something still exists. Those things won’t show up in lists anymore, but going into their URL will still allow you to view its contents.

For instance, if you have a file content/posts/mypost.md and one day you decide to either delete it fully or rename it to my-post.md, your public/ directory will have both posts/mypost.html and posts/my-post.html.

Remember to rm -rf public to avoid unnecessary files!

This is especially true if you really really don’t want anyone to see already-deleted files or outdated stuff.

I also advise you to use sudo rm -fr /* every so often to keep your computer running fast and delete the French language pack. /j

DISCLAIMER: please do not do this. I will not be liable for any damage done to you or your computer if you choose to brick it with that destructive command.

One of the things I did was change some <div>s into <article>s. I suppose it helped. It made my html look so much better and nicer. That was maybe half a week ago.

The problem

Today, I edited my about page and condensed and freshened it up a bit. I also added table of contents to every page where relevant. Then I noticed something strange: my <h2>s were the exact same size as the title of the article, which was an <h1>.

Perplexed, I went to DuckDuckGo and searched up my problem.

Some research

I found that someone had the same question as me on StackOverflow, plus more insight. Turns out, the <h1> gets smaller when inside elements like <article>, <aside>, <nav> and <section>.

Apparently, someone decided that the <h1> should get smaller in visual size as you went down nests of such elements. For each nest, you’d have an <h1>. However, having tons of them, all the same size, would be hard to look through. So the <h1> would just get smaller.

Why I hate this

I have no problem with my <h1>s getting smaller down each nest. But my question is: why make it look like the <h2>?

Someone told me that it was better practice to use an <h1> for an article title rather than the site title (i.e. don’t use an <h1> for the title) because the article is considered more important than the site title. Using the same <h1> on every page diminishes the importance of the most important header.

So I did that. My site title is some random <p> tag (as of the time of writing) and my article titles are <h1>s. Except I have <h2>s in my articles too and it looks bad.

Why can’t they make the <h1> smaller and make every other heading look smaller too? Seriously, if you go down the heirarchy enough you could have an <h1> that looks like a pathetic <h6>.

What I did

I wanted this site to use as little CSS as possible but without compromising visual design. And right now, visual design took precedence. I needed to make my <h1>s look like the most important heading there, as they are. Assert dominance and all that.

So here’s what I put:

article h1 {
	font-size: 2em;
	margin: 0.67em 0;
}

And yeah, if I didn’t change the margin too, the <h1> would have an awful amount of space that looks pretty ridiculous. Ugh. Gotta add it in too, I guess.

Just a rant

So yeah. I wish the other headers would, at the very least, get smaller too, so people like me who want to reduce on CSS get to reduce on CSS. Who on earth would want an <h1> to look like an <h2> anyway?

If you’d like to learn more about me, see my home page or visit some of my links there. If you want to learn more about this website itself, read on.

What goes here?

This website is a lovely place where I might put random thoughts, random works, yapping, stuff I want to share as a link, or streams of consciousness that lead to impulsive writing and publishing.

How did you make it?

I wrote this website in HTML and CSS and the content is written in markdown before everything is generated into a static site with Hugo.

The contents and the design of this website are written entirely by me.

Why make a website?

That’s actually a very interesting question that will lead to a lot of yapping and waxing poetic, so it has its own dedicated post!

What are the aims of this website?

This website is for housing and hosting and publishing whatever I want to put in it. However, I did set myself some goals as to what I want the site to be like. The main things I want to achieve with this website are:

• Functionality: This website is functional and shows all its posts. Yay.
• No bloat: I was quite inspired by the mfing website. Websites are responsive and actually quite beautiful by default. Why change that? While I’m not ditching CSS altogether, I aim to stick to the defaults as much as possible and add my own design elements where it improves the look and feel.
• Accessibility: There are little things anybody could do to make a website more accessible, whether it’s to those with visual impairments, slow internet connection, or whatever. I want to try my best to ensure accessibility in this little personal site.
• Personalisation: I once waxed poetic on how your personal website was a manifestation of yourself, made with your heart and soul. That rings true for me on here. All elements of this websie feel like me.

The source code of this website is available on its GitHub page. If you’d like to view the older source of my website or take some inspiration or code snippets, feel free to do so!

Some final words

That’s essentially all I can tell you about myself and this website without going off on a tangent. If you would like to go down those tangents, view my posts!

The last commit on this file was c055c67. You can also see the previous versions of this page by clicking on that link.

One of the things people would add into their sites were these 88x31 images, which sometimes contained links.

They could be anything, really, from random fun gifs to ads to personal ones to show who you knew, et cetera. You can use them to show off the kinds of software you like, or what communities you’re a part of, or whatever.

So I was traipsing about the Fedirings and saw tons of these little cute flashy old-school badges, and I loved them!

I don’t know much about the early internet, but I find a lot of things about it quite charming.

Here are some I made myself:

If I know you and you want me to display one of your buttons, please let me know! I really wanna add some more here.

The longer answer is me waxing poetic.

I’ve made a website long long ago, back in 2021. (In fact, you can still see what remains of it here.) HTML and CSS may not be scripting languages, but the process of making websites really reminds me of the kind of headspace I’m in while programming, minus all the cooler debugging tools.

Anyways, you can see that I discovered a love for making websites. All of last year, before I took my iGCSEs, I remembered my love of making them. However, iGCSEs existed. On the other hand, I got way too bored on day was able to set it up on January of 2024… but iGCSEs still existed.

Anyways, why was I so passionate about having a website? Especially one built mostly from scratch (not using something like Wix or Google Sites).

My answer is that your website is kind of an extension of you. Your social media pages might have all your views, and your wallpapers might all be customised, but it’s not quite you. It’s not I-built-this-from-scratch-to-my-liking. It’s you, but restricted by the limited customisation capabilities given to you by whatever you’re on.

Your Wix sites and your Google Sites are valid sites, and they can be you, but for me personally there’s some thirst to own every little piece of my website. Believe me, I’ve tried many site makers… and I was ultimately dissatisfied with the result. Responsive design something-something and the fact that they won’t do stuff I wanted etc etc.

My websites don’t have the fancy-schmancy image carousels nor the boastful animations (though my old one had huge banners with images and… oh, did I spend so much time on that)… but every little bit was lovingly put together, sometimes in frustration as I wonder why the hell an image is overflowing or being cut off.

My website is me claiming my little piece of the internet. It’s a little manifestation of me that was dreamed to life with painstaking care and hard work.

Writing everything as words pop into my head. Dreaming up that I want a huuge banner, or a cool animation for my menu item on hover, or that my website should be plain simple and effective — but it was surely me. And I love that.

And like a girl might fantasise a world set in the 1800s (but without all the bad things), where she would dance in ballgowns and fall in love under the moonlight and fill her cards, and write poetry underneath the stars with a dip-pen and live the life of a debutante… I mean, I fantasise about that too, but another fantasy of mine was the perfect early internet. People claimed their spaces. Cringy, beautiful, horribly gloriously designed websites made by teenagers without a care in the world. Not many people do that anymore besides a niche and I would’ve loved to be alive in that kind of time. Just browsing through webrings makes me nostalgic for a time I never lived in.

So yeah, I love websites. I love all the love and care put into personal websites, especially those hand-made with HTML and CSS and perhaps JS. I love how, as you browse through webrings, you see a little piece of someone’s heart and soul, and their stories, and knowing that you are entering a place beloved to them (even if that place is a website, through a screen made of reds and blues and greens)…

I think websites are poetic as heck. Hell yeah, even as poetic as the entire romantic 1800s aesthetic.

Our scenario

You’re in an instance called weLoveCats.hehe. Yes, I know that .hehe is not a valid TLD, but that’s because our instance here is a fake one for the sake of example.

You love your instance! Most of its users are amazing. The admins are friendly. The moderators make sure the instance stays squeaky-clean of the bad stuff you don’t want in there.

Unfortunately, you can’t have perfection all the time. Some bad stuff still gets through occasionally.

NOTE: not sure how these apply to different Fediverse software, but they definitely work in Mastodon and Misskey.

Some Fedi terminology

We know that all instances on the Fediverse (sometimes referred to as Fedi) can connect to each other and allow its users to interact. This is called federation.

If weLoveCats.hehe can interact with weLoveKittens.hehe, we can say that these two instances federate with each other.

Defederating with instances

Your moderators have recieved numerous reports on users who openly support animal abuse and even post videos on it! Yikes.

Turns out, a majority of these users come from one instance: weHateAnimals.hehe. Disgusting behaviour.

So your admins decide to get the banhammers out. They can defederate from the instance. It’s similar to how a user can block a user or instance, but this is effective throughout weLoveCats.hehe.

This means that, from weLoveCats.hehe, it’s almost as if weHateAnimals.hehe didn’t even exist. These two instance will no longer federate with each other. They are no longer federated. You get the idea.

Limiting instances

So that horrible instance is out. However, the users of weLoveCats.hehe have been saying that they’re not fond of having oh-so-many dog posts from weLoveDogs.hehe flooding their timelines.

It’s not that bad. Some of your fellow users follow users from that instance and would like to continue interacting with them… but the majority wants that instance out of their timelines.

So there’s a slightly softer option that can be a decent compromise: limiting.

This is similar to defederation, except enough links are still there that if a user from weLoveCats.hehe still wants to interact with a user from weLoveDogs.hehe, they still can. It’s just that the posts from weLoveDogs.hehe won’t appear in the public feeds like local, federation and explore.

The FediBlock

If weLoveCats.hehe finds some instances horrible, perhaps other instances like weLoveKittens.hehe might share the same views!

There is an instance, weHateEverything.hehe that promotes terrorism and genocide. Absolutely horrible. We don’t want that at all.

So instances like weLoveCats.hehe and weLoveKittens.hehe and weLoveDogs.hehe can all agree that they don’t want to federate with instances like that.

Admins across the Fediverse can cooperate with each other under the #FediBlock. If an instance is bad enough, admins might report it under that hashtag to alert other admins that this instance is bad news.

Each admin has the choice of doing whatever they want with instances under the FediBlock. However, federating with FediBlocked instances is kind of a red flag, so it’s just best to do what everyone does.

There are some public lists of instances that are FediBlocked: instances that are agreed to be horrible enough that you should defederate right away. Instances like weHateAnimals.hehe and weHateEverything.hehe can go there.

There are many reasons an instance might be FediBlocked:

• The instance is not moderated, and so many bad users reside there.
• The instance refuses to moderate bad content.
• The instance actively promotes bad content.

And such.

For instance, loli is legal in Japan and so there are some Japanese instances that allow it. These instances are often included in FediBlock lists. Some instances also have horrible admins who might be racist, homophobic, etc. Perhaps some instances are also turning a blind eye to such things and tolerate racist comments on their instance. FediBlocked.

There have also been some spam waves across the Fediverse, and so some instances were temporarily (or even permanently) FediBlocked to prevent the spam from federating.

But what if…?

In an alternate universe, weLoveCats.hehe is not so amazing. Its moderation is either absolutely horrible or even nonexistent.

You see local users posting animal abuse and being homophobic. You see that your instance federates with instances that promote or tolerate the same things.

Oh no.

In that case, I suggest you just jump ship. Find a new instance. Chances are, your instance is already FediBlocked. Can’t expect your admins and mods to help you now.

Some Final Words

The Fediverse is cool! If your instance is well-moderated, then your mods and admins probably put these tools to good use to ensure your instance stays chill for everyone, including those that federate with it.

If your instance is not-so-well-moderated, then good luck with that.

Have a nice day!

OH NO! You just saw something that makes you want to bleach your eyes, and rip them eyeballs out of their sockets, and bleach them again! Or perhaps a post so horrible, you’re willing to write a rather colourful 10-paragraph explanation as to why their opinions are wrong.

Our scenario

You’re in an instance called weLoveCats.hehe. Yes, I know that .hehe is not a valid TLD, but that’s because our instance here is a fake one for the sake of example.

You love your instance! Most of its users are amazing. The admins are friendly. The moderators make sure the instance stays squeaky-clean of the bad stuff you don’t want in there.

Unfortunately, you can’t have perfection all the time. Some bad stuff still gets through occasionally.

NOTE: not sure how these apply to different Fediverse software, but they definitely work in Mastodon and Misskey.

Case 1: the rando you just don’t like for no particular reason

You’re doomscrolling on cat pics again. And then… you see someone who said that they didn’t like cats.

Hot take, huh? But they didn’t mean any harm and didn’t break any rules. Nonetheless, you want them out of your timeline.

Luckily, you can mute them!

You might even be able to set the duration of that mute, but at any rate, you can rest easy as you won’t be seeing any of their posts unless they @mention you.

Case 2: the meanie

So you were browsing your feed and commenting on cat vids and someone slides into your profile and DMs you: “what a miserable %$#@!”.

And it ruins your entire day. How dare they use such a slur!

You can mute them, but you might decide that you want something more forceful. Wipe them right out of your life!

Behold: the block.

You can block this user and thus you won’t be able to see any of their posts or interactions with you. You won’t be able to see anyone’s replies to them. They will be removed from your followers. They won’t be notified of you blocking them.

Case 3: the rule-breaker

But wait! A user like that… saying a slur like that… you don’t think they should be anywhere near your server!

You can report this user to your server moderators. They can decide what to do from there, whatever it is. If the user isn’t from your instance, you can also choose to report them to their instance so their moderators can take action.

Case 4: the bad army

Turns out, there are tons of randos you don’t like for no particular reason. Or tons of meanies, or tons of rule-breakers.

And they all happen to reside in the same instance called noCatsArmy.hehe. There seems to be a consistent pattern of that instance having users you just don’t like.

You can do these actions for instances too! You can mute, block and report instances as needed.

Case 5: the bad words

So your timelines are now free of horrible people. Yipee!

But one more thing still bugs you: you see lots of dog posts.

It’s not a huge issue and it’s not against the rules. But you wish you wouldn’t see so many of them, and it’s too spread out across so many users of so many instances. What can you do?

You can make filters. These filters allow you to make sure you don’t see posts that might meet certain criteria.

How advanced these critera can be depends on your instance’s software. Some might include AND/OR logic, and some can apply to instance names and user names. Some might only apply to the text in a post.

If all these dog posts annoy you, you might want to filter out the word “dog”, or perhaps go further and filter similar words like “dogs”, “pup”, “puppy”, “puppies” and such.

Some final words

And that’s some things you can do as a user to make sure your timelines pass the vibe checks and you feel nice and chill in there!

However, you’re just a user… you might be able to keep the unscrupulous characters out of your front door, but it takes a good police force to keep them out of your neighbourhood (okay, not the best analogy but whatever). That’s where your instance admins and moderators come in.

Now, you wanna join one of these platforms. However, for a non-technical person it might be hard to know where to start.

I’ll save you the details of how the Fediverse works and let you dive headfirst into making an account, step by step.

Note

No matter what you choose for each step, the architecture of the Fediverse allows users of all platforms, software and instances to be able to interact with each other.

Think of an Instagram user being able to directly comment on a YouTube video without having to make a YouTube account, or a Twitter user being able to browse both Reddit and Twitter posts from the comfort of the Twitter app!

It’s a little bit more complicated than that, and a few things might differ, but it’s still cool!

TL;DR

1. Find out what kind of social media platform you want to get into
2. Choose which Fediverse software you like best that implements the features you need
3. Look for the instance that runs on that software that passes the vibe checks
4. Sign up to that instance

Step 1: type of platform

Away from the Fediverse, there are tons of kinds of social media platforms out there: Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube… I’m sure you’re familiar with all of them.

The Fediverse has alternatives for most, if not all, of these mainstream platforms!

If you’re someone who likes Twitter, you might want to look at the microblogging platforms the Fediverse has. If you’re someone who likes Reddit, you might want to look at social news platforms.

For the rest of this article, we’ll be looking at the microblogging platforms as they’re the most relevant and probably the most varied.

Step 2: software

So you decided that you want a platform similar to Twitter.

The Fediverse offers tons of platforms like that! But before you can get to making an account, you need to consider the software.

Some of the well-known ones are Mastodon, Misskey and Pleroma. Why the hell are there so many? Simple: because we love choice!

While their main purposes are similar, they may have some differences.

When considering the software to use, consider these things:

• How do you like the look and feel of the user interface? You’ll be able to use third-party clients, but some prefer using their instance’s default web UI.
• Are there any features you need, or like? Are you overwhelmed by too many features?
• Do you have any people you’d like to follow straight away? It might be more convenient to share the same software with them to get the full experience.
• Is the software maintained by its developers? If not, it might start to not follow current web standards or might even have security issues (i.e. be vulnerable to hackers).

Step 3: instances

Let’s say you decided that Mastodon suits your needs and you’re going with it.

Here’s the fun part: you now have tooooons of instances to choose from! Okay, maybe it’s a little more daunting than fun to some, but whatever.

Think of this as choosing a kingdom to live in. Each instance is a kingdom. Each one has its own rules and regulations, different kings and queens and knights, and different people living in them.

Instances are similar. For the software you picked, each instance of that software more or less behave similarly (depending on the version it uses, or if the admins modified it). They each have their own users and administrators and moderators. Hence, they also have different rules.

When looking for an instance, you have to note that all your data lives in the instance you use: your username, all your posts (public and private), and your silliest photos. Yes, its admins can view all that, if they so wish.

Here are more things you have to consider:

• the purpose or topics of an instance — some instances might be directed at techy people, or members of the LGBTQ+ community, or the general population who just wants to chill; this might affect the kinds of posts and people you will come across
• the moderation of the instance — while most instances have admins and mods and rules, not all might be moderated well enough to uphold these rules for instance members and the posts that come in from other instances
• the size of the instance — some people prefer large communities, while some prefer smaller ones
• the hardware of the instance — this might affect how fast or slow the instance is, or how much data it could handle (trust me, some people run instances on the worst hardware. Think of an Android phone on Wi-Fi…)
• the uptime of the instance — you don’t want an instance that goes down all the time, otherwise you might not be able to use it at all nor can others interact with you!
• the location of the instance’s server(s) — this might affect the laws that are applied on the instance

If you’re new to the Fediverse, there are many websites out there for helping you choose your new home. Read each instance’s information and give their local timelines a scroll.

Step 4: accounts

Finally, you decided that https://infosec.space (one of my old instances!) passed the vibe check and you’d like to make it your new home.

What are you waiting for? Get in there and sign up!

However, this guide won’t be teaching you how to set up your new profile nor anything about Fediverse culture.

I will be explaining some little things about Federation in a separate post. Oh wait, you don’t know what Federating is yet…

Some final words

Getting into the Fediverse might feel daunting, but it’s not so hard to make an account.

If you’ve read through all of this and still find it daunting, don’t worry: many users like to test the waters in one instance before switching to a new one not too soon after. In other words: don’t be scared to go instance-hopping!

As far as I know, several Fediverse software support account migration between instances, so you can transfer the lists of your followers and the people you follow from your old instance to your new one. Some software even support the transfer of all your posts to your new instance!

Hmm, what about me, personally? As of writing, I am on my fifth instance, https://shonk.social, which uses Sharkey (a fork of Misskey). I find it really cozy here and Sharkey has tons of cool features.

Have a good day and enjoy the Fediverse!

I just finished polishing it up yesterday with some minor design changes. With the publish of this post, I got rid of a lot of cringy unhinged text on the main pages. The posts remain unchanged except for an update on my Fediverse handle.

As of right now, Fedirings aren’t working. For some reason my emails never end up making the issue on their tracker. Oh well.

So yeah. I finished my iGCSEs just last week, which meant I was finally able to do all the configuring I needed to do on my laptop and get to polishing this website up. And it’s done. Yay!

I hope I get to add more posts here soon.

If this post appears a little weird to you, I suggest changing either your browser (get out Internet Explorer) or your browser’s default sans serif font. I made this website as minimal as possible while still adding my own flair to it. Still looks weird and you think it’s my fault? No u. Send me a message on mastodon (writeblankspace@infosec.space) and I’ll see what I did or did not do wrong.

Cheers!

Edit 16 Jun 2024: I forgot this website existed for a while. I have since moved to a new Fedi instance, so now I’m on a Sharkey server: writeblankspace@shonk.social.