Or: maybe we can just keep paid influencer scams off the fediverse entirely? IMHO we don’t need or want paid content creators here. As soon as someone can make a buck from it, the entire network will be flooded with clickbait, AI generated posts, and worse.

Thanks, the Backwards compatibility is huge for us! We have a bunch of users who depend on mlem or thunder, so I was assuming I’d have to wait until updated versions of both of those apps was released to upgrade rblind.

Same. Although sometimes I set up a public instance, because I’m setting one up for myself anyway, right? And then I have regrets LOL

Not OP, but I use miniflux on desktop, synced with Lire on IOS.

How is this different from cosmos-cloud.io? The feature list looks identical.

Sarcasm: Yup. The black people who were lynched should have just participated in local communities and confronted the KKK! That’ll fix everything!

Anyway, online isn’t the place to take up space and confront people. You do that in person. Online is where you come to get support, encouragement, and resources for the in-person fight. And that doesn’t work if your online profile is also local. For many people, there online participation cannot, and should not, be geographically local. Remember the “good old days” of the local BBS that you had to dial into? Isn’t it interesting that every single documentary full of sepia toned reminiscences about how wonderful those local communities were is entirely created by and featuring old middle-class white dudes? No women, no homosexuals or transsexuals, no people with disabilities, and no ethnic minorities? I wonder why!

Again, speaking from personal experience: blind people had NFBNet, but it wasn’t local. And the local BBS’s had so much ASCII art and other accessibility issues that we couldn’t participate.

And now, on local Reddits and Facebook groups, nobody uses alt text. I guess that’s my fault for not participating in a space that is completely inaccessible to me. I’m the problem with democracy!

If we look at how toxic and racist the local city groups are on Reddit or Facebook, I’m not sure this is a good model. If I’m a black trans woman living in a small town in Mississippi, my local instance might not even be a safe place, for me.

Similarly, I would encourage blind folks to join us at rblind.com rather than a local instance, because a local instance might not take our needs into account: many have captchas, some use inaccessible themes, etc. At rblind.com you can be sure that we won’t deploy an update or configuration change that will break accessibility, because the server admins and moderators are all blind ourselves. But the beauty of federation means that you can talk to everyone else on other instances, so being part of a particular identity group doesn’t limit you to just talking to other members of that group.

If your response to discussion is curses and insults, please also consider shutting down your instance while your at it.

This is exactly my point, though. Yes, all of these changes are easy and possible. But you have to know about them, first. This is not a drop-in “protect everything without side effects” tool like your initial post seems to say. For every app you put behind it, you need to take time to think over exactly what access is required by whom, when, and how. Does it use Oauth, RSS, .well-known, xmlrpc/pingbacks, RDF/sparql endpoints, etc? Do some robots need to be allowed (for federation, discoverability, automated healthchecks, etc)? Are there consumers of API’s provided by the app? Will file downloads occur from downloaders that resume downloads/chunking for multiple connections at once? What is the profile of the humans you expect to be accessing the service: are they using terminal browsers like lynx, do they disable JavaScript and/or cookies for privacy, are they on a VPN, are they using low profile devices like raspberry pi’s or low-end android tablets, etc? What bots are you intending to block and how do they behave: they may just be running headless chrome and pass all your checks, they may be on zombie consumer machines part of a botnet, etc. As with anything in life, there are no magical shortcuts, and no way to say “block all the bad people I don’t like and allow the good people in” without first defining who the good people are and what you don’t like.

In your case, all you’ve effectively done is said “good people run JavaScript and allow cookies, bad people do not”. Without really thinking through the implications of that. I suspect what you really mean is “I don’t need or want anyone but me accessing my personal lemmy instance”. So why not block lemmy-ui from every country but your own, or even restrict it to subnets belonging to the ISPs you use? That would seem to be a lot easier in the case of a personal instance. In the case of a public instance like mine, though, the problem is much harder.

Good to know. But most RSS readers already pretend to be browsers, because otherwise many publications with misconfigured reverse proxies will block them from accessing the RSS feed. cbc.ca is a good example of this. Because deploying a web firewall is neither easy or trivial, unless you know exactly who needs to access what, when, and why. Most people, in my experience, do not.

In brief testing I get challenges before trying to load robots.txt on hosts running Anubis. I also see reports of it blocking OAuth flows and access to stuff like .well-known

And what about RSS? Favicons? OAuth? robots.txt? There are lots and lots of things that need to be accessed by automated programs without user intervention. It is not trivial to determine what these things might be. For your personal instance, go nuts. But no public instance should be doing this.

What about folks on low spec Android phones? Or folks who browse with JavaScript off? Every solution to block AI will block some percentage of humans.

Because Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, etc. are so cheap or free that it’s not worth the trouble of setting one up for the people who have the resources to do it. Sure, download what you want to keep. But for Discovery? The streaming services are fine. And the people who can’t access/afford them also don’t have the resources to set something like this up.

Perfect! Thanks for the info!

How do those of us who loathe the horrific and proven bad idea of quote posts, and also refuse to use Mastodon, opt out of this terrible misfeature? Will blocking anyone who quote posts me and defederating from their instance remove the quote?

These days I can do it all myself. Press control+windows+enter when Windows first boots, and the basic built-in screen reader that’s part of Windows 11 comes on. It’s good enough to get through set-up and install a better screen reader. Sadly, if I were on Linux, that wouldn’t at all be the case. Though I do run multiple Linux servers via SSH, including all of the infrastructure for rblind.com.

I did manage to assemble my DIY Framework 16 laptop, and I’ll upgrade the mainboard in it later this year, but that’s pretty much hitting my limits when it comes to hardware. Soldering is right out, and Oh My God do I hate those damn ipex connectors.

I will also include Grok for comparison. It’s the model I use for images that I think might contain adult content (pornography, violence, whatever) because it won’t refuse anything. Sadly, because I’m boring, I’m using it more for moderation than pleasure. Unfortunately, I have a prompt for it designed to limit refusals, and I forgot to change it. As you can see, that…strongly effected the description. Suddenly there are tits in this picture.

This image appears to be a digitally rendered or CGI artwork depicting a whimsical, fantastical scene in a natural outdoor setting. It does not contain any adult content, including pornography, pedophilia, violence, nudity, blood, death, dead bodies, self-harm, harm to children, or other X-rated elements. There is no visible text in the image, so no racism, doxing, hateful or insulting material, or otherwise objectionable words are present. The overall tone is serene, magical, and family-friendly, evoking themes of nature and fantasy (similar to something from a fairy tale or children’s storybook).

Detailed Visual Breakdown:

• Main Subject: The central focus is a large, realistic-looking giant tortoise (resembling a Galápagos tortoise) slowly walking through a lush, grassy meadow. The tortoise’s shell has been creatively modified in the artwork to serve as the foundation for a small, rustic wooden house. The house is built directly onto the shell, appearing old and weathered, with a shingled roof covered in moss, vines, and small plants growing on it, giving it a dilapidated, abandoned cabin vibe. The house has a small porch with railings, a door, and windows, and there’s a faint plume of smoke rising from a chimney, suggesting it’s inhabited or recently used. The tortoise’s shell itself is textured with moss, dirt, and grass, blending seamlessly with the house, as if the creature is a living, mobile home. The tortoise’s head is extended forward, with its mouth slightly open, and it has a gentle, neutral expression. Its legs are sturdy and visible as it moves through the grass.

• Foreground and Environment: The scene is set in a vibrant, green field filled with tall grass, wildflowers (mostly white and yellow daisies or similar blooms), and scattered dandelions. The ground is dotted with small plants and dew-like sparkles, adding a magical glow. The lighting suggests a soft, diffused sunlight, possibly early morning or late afternoon, with a misty or foggy atmosphere in the background.

• Secondary Elements: To the right of the tortoise, there’s a small blue tit perched on a moss-covered tree stump. The tit has blue and yellow feathers, with a white underbelly, and it’s facing toward the tortoise, as if curiously observing it. The stump is overgrown with moss and a small pinecone-like object on top. In the distant background, there’s a blurred view of a dense, green forest with trees and foliage, enhancing the sense of a peaceful, enchanted wilderness.

• Composition and Style: The image is in a wide, horizontal format (like a landscape photo or artwork). It’s highly detailed and photorealistic, with a focus on textures like wood grain, moss, and animal skin, suggesting it could be from digital art software, a video game concept, or an illustration. There are subtle particle effects, like floating specks or sparkles in the air, adding to the dreamy quality. No human figures, vehicles, or modern elements are present—it’s purely nature and fantasy-based.

Thanks! It’s a bit wordy, but I suspect that could be improved with prompting and some examples.

For comparison, here’s the full google 2.5 pro in the cloud:

This is an enchanting and highly detailed, photorealistic fantasy image set in a lush, green meadow. The overall feeling is one of peace, magic, and ancient wonder.

The central and most prominent figure is a colossal tortoise who takes up the left and center of the frame. Its scale is immense, as it carries a small, rustic wooden house on its back, where its shell would be. The tortoise’s skin is ancient and leathery, with brown and gray tones, and detailed with wrinkles and folds. Patches of bright green moss grow on its shell and legs, suggesting it has been wandering for a very long time. Its head is extended forward and turned slightly to the right, as if observing something. In its mouth, it gently holds a small white daisy with a yellow center, a charming and tender detail.

The house on its back is old and weathered, made of dark wooden planks. It has a multi-gabled roof with moss-covered wooden shingles. A small brick chimney pokes out from the roof, with a faint wisp of white smoke rising from it, indicating someone might be home. The house features a small covered porch with a railing and tiny lanterns hanging from the eaves. Vines and other small plants creep up the walls, integrating the structure with the living creature beneath it.

The tortoise is wading through tall, vibrant green grass that is dotted with small wildflowers, mostly white daisies and yellow buttercups. Several small, orange and black butterflies, similar to monarchs, flutter around the tortoise’s legs and in the surrounding grass.

To the right of the tortoise, there is an old, dark tree stump. Like the tortoise, the stump is covered in patches of green moss and a cluster of light-brown mushrooms growing on its side. Perched majestically on top of this stump is a small bird, facing the tortoise. The bird has a brilliant blue-gray back and head, a warm, orangey-yellow breast, and a sharp, dark beak. It appears to be a kingfisher, and its posture suggests it is in a quiet standoff or conversation with the giant tortoise.

The entire scene is bathed in soft, natural sunlight that filters through the air, illuminating tiny specks of dust or pollen, which adds to the magical atmosphere. The background is a soft-focus blur of deep green, suggesting a dense forest or rolling hills far away, which makes the tortoise, house, and bird stand out as the clear subjects of this peaceful, fairytale-like world.

It really depends. For images that are graphs and infographics I use gpt5 or Gemini 2.5 pro. For anything with adult content I have to use grok because it’s the only model that won’t refuse. For stuff that’s just text in an image the cheap models from Microsoft are fine. Also, sometimes openrouter has limited time deals where some models are free. I’d say overall I spend between 2 and 5 dollars a month on it. But I do allow open router to train on the data so I get a discount of a few percent as well.