#indieweb 2021-04-15

2021-04-15 UTC
[tw2113_Slack_], deltab, [tantek], Kaja, saptaks, enpo, shoesNsocks, koddsson and jjuran joined the channel
#
[tantek] Has anyone had the weird experience of people randomly using your email to signup for various services? (Like food delivery, shopping discounts etc)
#
[tantek] This has been happening (via my 6 letter gmail) for a while now and I finally had it and decided to see if I could make it stop by deleting the account
#
[tantek] Long story short, after a password reset and two requests to support, I’m getting at least one such rando account I didn’t create deleted in 3 days
#
[tantek] Assuming this works I may write it up as a special “how to” on the delete your account page
#
[tantek] What is delete your account
#
Loqi delete your account is an encouragement to delete your (silo) account, e.g https://indieweb.org/delete_your_account
#
[tantek] Might make a good “Spring Cleaning” blog post too
#
[tantek] Anyway, curious if anyone else has that “I didn’t sign up for this” experience, and then used password reset to gain control of the new account to be able to delete it
#
jjuran I did that in the past year or so with Call of Duty, I think
KempfCreative and [snarfed] joined the channel
#
[snarfed] [tantek] definitely a common problem for people with short common name or word @gmail addrs. eg i have heaven@, which has had this problem forever
#
[snarfed] kenton varda has temporal@, which means “temporary” in spanish, he has some great threads about this. let’s see…
#
jjuran I suspect that it was a user acquisition scheme more than someone entering the wrong address
#
aaronpk i've had this happen with phone numbers too
#
[snarfed] https://twitter.com/KentonVarda/status/1261386443940868096
#
@KentonVarda Jesus Christ @zoom_us, you've apparently let a whole school in Chile sign up for a paid account using my e-mail address, because you never verified it. I went to create my own account, it said I had one, so I "forgot password", and now I own this school's admin account. (twitter.com/_/status/1261386443940868096)
#
[snarfed] (read full thread)
#
[snarfed] maybe #indieweb-chat
Seirdy, jjuran, __minoru__shirae, KartikPrabhu, koddsson, jeremy, markopasha and [KevinMarks] joined the channel
#
[KevinMarks] I got divorce papers for one of the other Kevin Mark's once.
#
[KevinMarks] When I emailed back pointing this out the first reaction was "you would say that"
KartikPrabhu, [tantek], schmudde and supercoven joined the channel
#
doosboox I had a very common surname before I got married, and my email was surname.firstname@gmail.com. I still check that email now and then, and I've had invites to parent/school conferences, kid's birthday parties, reminders to pay bills, tracking info for shipped packages... All meant for someone else
#
doosboox not even for *one* other person, but for several
[KevinMarks] joined the channel
#
[KevinMarks] https://twitter.com/ow/status/1382113854126231556?s=20
#
@ow my hottest take is the rise of newsletters is because we've failed to make blogging/having a website anything other than hard and annoying (twitter.com/_/status/1382113854126231556)
__minoru__shirae joined the channel
#
petermolnar re email: never had this issue, though having it on my own domain probably helps.
deathrow1, schmudde1, kensp, anotheryou, kensp1, hs0ucy, kaun_, [schmarty], [KevinMarks], [tw2113_Slack_], JankyDoodle, __minoru__shirae, tomlarkworthy, [Ana_Rodrigues], ShadowKyogre, [manton], koddsson, shoesNsocks1, shoesNsocks, sumner and [chrisaldrich] joined the channel; ShadowKyogre and kaun_ left the channel
#
[chrisaldrich] Given Google's history of killing Reader in a possible attempt to help empower their G+ product, does anyone else see their getting rid of email subscriptions from feedburner as a play at an upcoming Newsletter service/app/feature?
JankyDoodle and [jgmac1106] joined the channel
#
[jgmac1106] lie singed up for a newsletter yesterday bc the idea of getting out my phone, finding the link again, adding to the reader...The UX for a newsletter is way easier than RSS
#
[chrisaldrich] [jgmac1106] There's a nice little SubToMe bookmarklet that might help ease some of that friction for you https://www.subtome.com/#/settings. May not work as well for mobile, but you're right that RSS needs an improved UX for making subscribing easier.
#
[chrisaldrich] I really want to create a bookmarklet for WordPress' link manager to import all the basic, name, avatar, feed, etc. data into my own website to make subscribing easier. Do any of the social readers have bookmarklets for quickly adding subscriptions there?
neshpion joined the channel
#
GWG [chrisaldrich]: I put off solving my bookmark problem because of too many other problems
kensp, [tantek], hs0ucy, KartikPrabhu, tru-is, ShadowKyogre, [schmarty] and neshpion joined the channel; ShadowKyogre left the channel
#
[chrisaldrich] GWG++ for project maintenance
#
Loqi GWG has 33 karma in this channel over the last year (130 in all channels)
#
[chrisaldrich] I keep coming back and thinking how I might better sync the data and OPML file on my site with a microsub format...
#
[chrisaldrich] realizes we're dangerously close to Loqi's #indieweb-dev trigger threshold.
[pfefferle], seekr, [jeremycherfas], marinin[t], __minoru__shirae, [tantek] and ShadowKyogre joined the channel; ShadowKyogre left the channel
#
[tantek] we're back to the follow + read problem/roadblock then aren't we
#
[tantek] I still think a key advancement here is to switch the model (and thus UI) from following feeds to following people (or organizations / publications).
#
[tantek] like don't make people think about "feeds" or a feed as a distinct thing from the thing they want to follow
[KevinMarks] joined the channel
#
JankyDoodle [tantek], is there anything out there like that right now?
#
[tantek] JankyDoodle, yes, social media silos. They all have "Follow" as something you do on people, organizations.
#
[KevinMarks] I'm not sure you want that for everyone. There are people you want photos from but not tweets and vice versa etc
#
[tantek] This is my point, this is the dominant UX that has "won" already, and designing UX around "feeds" is a dev-centric anachronism
#
[tantek] KevinMarks, you're using a 1% problem to argue against a massively better UX
#
[tantek] that's a pretty flawed methodology
#
jacky this is very true tho https://chat.indieweb.org/2021-04-15#t1618502975553100 and part of the reason why people also are so annoyed when newsletters get spammy
#
Loqi [[jgmac1106]] lie singed up for a newsletter yesterday bc the idea of getting out my phone, finding the link again, adding to the reader...The UX for a newsletter is way easier than RSS
#
[tantek] and frankly, that concern is also not reflected in real-world UXes. if that was truly a "big" problem, then Facebook would have "mute" by post type. but they don't
#
jacky re: [tantek]'s thoughts here, I think we spoke about this once in Portland
#
[KevinMarks] the deeper problem, which is how we end up with algorithmic feeds, is the goldilocks problem of following, where you start with too few to have any pdates, and so follow more, and end up with too many
#
[tantek] newsletters are a one-way deadend. their appeal is ease of sign-up and the fact that you read them in a reader (email) without a lot of UX distractions. they're read-only though and a throwback at best.
#
[KevinMarks] also substack does have feeds os you can add people that way
#
[tantek] KevinMarks, no that "too many" problem has existing solutions such as clustering by author, clustering by post type etc. etc.
#
jacky yeah and tbh a microsub server/client could be smart by resolving post-type feeds for people (or moving items into particular channels?) so you can do a "photos" stream and only look at that
#
[tantek] yes. and at least start with existing features like /mute
#
[tantek] and add obvious expansions: /mute with a timeout (you could literally call the feature a "timeout", so you can put specific people/orgs/tags/topics in a "time out")
#
[tantek] or /mute someone's sleep posts
#
[KevinMarks] coalescing is an algorithm too - if you look at the evolution of social feeds they went through those kinds of things, then noticed that most people don't want to do that much config and ended in automation
#
[tantek] or the "show me less of this" UX / copy, also a great way to do specific muting
#
jacky yeah okay here's an example of this (kinda) https://algorithmicalexpansion.tumblr.com/archive
#
jacky _might_ have some NSFW stuff in there
#
jacky [KevinMarks]: I'm more inclined that hiding that control was needed to properly feed/place content in people's faces
#
jacky I need to get a link for this but more control over feeds is what most parties _want_
#
jacky from jump
#
[tantek] yes there's lots of potential knobs/dials to help folks with that
#
[KevinMarks] they want control but it becomes a chore too
#
[tantek] e.g. how frequently / quickly do you want to see content per person?
#
jacky https://algorithmicalexpansion.tumblr.com/post/180806758340
#
[tantek] e.g. most silos have a "notify" option to literally get a notification every time a particular person posts
#
jacky lol wrong place for that link but it's so real
#
[tantek] the opposite also makes sense "show me weekly summaries of this person"
#
jacky then some sort of 'autopilot' mode can be provided as well for those who don't want to do it (or having a chronological feed)
#
[tantek] lol jacky that caption is too real.
#
[tantek] jacky, agreed. a reader could dial-up / down the frequency/latency that it shows you posts from someone based on how often (or not) you respond to their posts. if it's extra clever it could detect which *kinds* of posts from which people you respond to more and dial up those more, clustering the others
#
[tantek] it would learn whose posts you care more about, and show you those more often, and others would fade into weekly summaries
#
jacky I do wonder how / where to store that information so people could understand what some decisions are made (we've noticed that you've reacted happily to a lot of photos recently from two people in your 'Close Friends' channel so we're showing more of those due to your "More Like This" toggle) or something
#
[tantek] since all your responses are posts on your own website, presumably that could be something your website summarizes back to you
#
[tantek] who do I respond the most? (ranked list by frequency)
#
[tantek] who do I respond to the most quickly (after their post)? (ranked list by latency)
#
[tantek] similarly for what kinds of posts do I respond ****, and the combination of who and kinds
#
[tantek] if your responses on your site are all public (as most of ours are presumably), a separate service that follows all your posts could aggregate this information and display it back to you
KempfCreative joined the channel
#
[tantek] similarly for: who do you mention the most? and of course the tag cloud of which hashtags do you use the most?
#
[tantek] and combinations thereof
#
jacky hmmm that service _could_ truly be a part of something like Superfeeder (or a general social reader's extra functionality)
#
jacky that's kinda what Superfeedr provides now (but in a very raw format)
#
[tantek] which hashtags do you respond to the most? (ranked list, of all the posts you respond to, based on the hashtags in those posts)
#
[tantek] which hashtags do you respond to the quickest?
#
[tantek] all of this would indicate your apparent/actual interests rather than having to do any kind of "manual" config
#
jacky heh that's probably how Twitter discerns "topics" for people now
#
jacky this is a lot of good stuff to think on though
#
jacky "own your recommendation model" literally lol
#
[KevinMarks] that does create a feedback loop though - if it shows you more of people you react to, then you react to them more and now you're building the youtube radicalisation feedback loop
#
aaronpk nobody said the result of the analysis was to show you more of those people
#
aaronpk in fact it could be the opposite. once the system knows who you interact with the most, it could prioritize showing people you interact with less often
#
jacky ^
[chrisaldrich] joined the channel
#
[chrisaldrich] or it could nag you to respond to your mother more often too, because everyone should call and check in on their mom. 😉
#
jacky and if it's clever enough / enough numbers are available, it could work to 'balance' a feed
#
jacky [chrisaldrich]: lol true
ShadowKyogre joined the channel
#
[chrisaldrich] But *until* all this fabulous work is done, you can still pick and choose from my various feeds, because truly no one wants to read my site when it's got 50+ posts in a single day...
#
[chrisaldrich] The indiewebification of one's content definitely pose this problem. Once you aggregate all the content you've got across all platforms and put it in one place, it does become rather a lot to attempt to consume.
#
[KevinMarks] lol https://twitter.com/marshallk/status/1382800446645936128?s=20
#
@marshallk @benberkowitz totally. I used to get push notifications from the RSS feed of a competing journalist's likes. Broke a bunch of stories first that way, in fact :) (twitter.com/_/status/1382800446645936128)
[aciccarello] joined the channel
#
[aciccarello] [chrisaldrich] I've been trying to think about that as I consider adding more post types to my website. Is there a wiki page discussing that? I'm considering splitting my feed up into long-form (blogs/recipes), short-form (notes/photos), and reactions (likes/bookmarks)
#
[aciccarello] I guess there's this https://indieweb.org/posts#Differentiation_in_feeds.3F
shoesNsocks and schmudde1 joined the channel
#
[schmarty] i remember doing filtering out certain items in RSS feeds with Yahoo! Pipes way in the way back. did any service or project step in to fill that gap?
#
[schmarty] (i realize that's a very plumbing-centric way to approach these things but it also feels like something that should have demos all over the place in a time of hype about serverless functions)
#
Loqi [schmarty]: it seems like this conversation is more appropriate for #indieweb-dev
#
[schmarty] you first loqi
#
jacky lmfao
kensp joined the channel
#
[aciccarello] [schmarty] Just reading about that
#
[aciccarello] https://inessential.com/2013/03/18/brians_stupid_feed_tricks
#
[aciccarello] > Providing valid, but limited interest feeds. eg, search feeds (couches for sale in Portland on Craigslist!). Also lots of custom things like combinations from Yahoo Pipes (or whatever equivalent people come up with), bookmark/favorite feeds, etc. Can lead to lots of duplicate (or near duplicate) posts, and lots of feed retrievals that very few people care about.
#
jacky wow that's a really good edge case post for feeds
#
jacky RSS << "Edgecases to consider with RSS/ATOM feeds" https://inessential.com/2013/03/18/brians_stupid_feed_tricks
#
Loqi ok, I added ""Edgecases to consider with RSS/ATOM feeds" https://inessential.com/2013/03/18/brians_stupid_feed_tricks" to the "See Also" section of /RSS https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=75302&oldid=75030
#
jacky the bit about the limited interest feeds is a business-objective-goal pushed in here
#
jacky like it makes sense for a business to maybe have less feeds ('all paying' and 'global') or something
#
jacky but between person to person, the content shared isn't necessarily the same
marinin[t] joined the channel
#
[KevinMarks] that's all very familiar from technorati
#
[KevinMarks] also pinging our ping server on every update, then complaining when we crawl them
[Rose] joined the channel
#
[KevinMarks] have 3 entirely different formats for the firehose feed for different products from the same company
#
jacky was there a way to differentiate from a full site crawl versus just capturing a page?
#
jacky we have that with WebSub now
#
[KevinMarks] only with ETag
#
[KevinMarks] some were smart enough to only send new entries since the ETag/last modified date
#
[KevinMarks] most weren't
marinin[t], sebbu and [tantek] joined the channel