• The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldEnglish
    154·
    7 months ago

    I think it’s much less intimidating to new users now compared to when I joined last year. The barrier to entry has been reduced significantly.

    There are tons of active communities now, mobile apps that work great (this is a big one), and many more tools to block content that you don’t want to see.

    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
      57·
      7 months ago

      there is also more diverse content than the crap that was on here six months ago.

      when 50% of the frontpage is linux memes… you’re not going to gain the interest of most new users. now it seems to be down to about 20%

    • Got_Bent@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      7 months ago

      I still have no clue how instances work but whatever I’m doing has been working fine for nearly a year

      • Stovetop@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24·
        7 months ago

        From an end user perspective there’s not that much to think about, thankfully.

        Basically, it’s like having two websites that mirror each other’s content. You can sign up for Forum A and be able to read and write posts that users on Forum B can also see. People’s names are tagged with the name of the forum they are registered at, but otherwise everything you do and see happens on your own site of choice and there’s no difference where it comes from.

        If Forum A doesn’t like Forum C, but Forum B doesn’t mind, Forum A can choose to disconnect from Forum C and hide their users and posts, while Forum B can still see both. It only gets tricky when someone from Forum B makes a post that people from both Forums A and C are in, but all of the posts from C users are invisible to A users.

      • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        7 months ago

        It’s like how there’s loads of different email providers but they can all still email each other.

        Just like Gmail can send mail to Outlook and any other @EmailProvider.com, lemmy.world can populate it’s feed/comments from lemm.ee and any other @LemmyInstance.com

      • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        Most often I’ve seen instances use as super communities. Largely revolving around a bigger topic. KDE runs their own with their own subcommunities for instance. They are far from the only ones. Just the one I use the most and a came to mind first. Having your own instance slap server allows you far more control over your communities then just hosting on someone else’s server. But from an end user perspective very largely transparent. not even being noticeable oftentimes.

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        I still have no clue how instances work but whatever I’m doing has been working fine for nearly a year

        You have a user account “Got_Bent”, on an instance (you can think of this as a “server”), lemmy.world. That’s your home instance. Thus, you are @Got_Bent@lemmy.world.

        You can view communities on that instance. This post, in fact, is on a community on the lemmy.world instance, !fediverse@lemmy.world.

        You can also view communities on any other other instances that lemmy.world is federated with (which is most of them). For example, !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk. By-and-large, you can use them the same way you can communities on your home instance.

        Reddit is pretty similar, just that with Reddit, there’s only one “instance”, Reddit.

        Instances might go down (so users with that instance as their home instance can’t log in and communities on that instance aren’t accessible. Some have certain rules about what users who use that instance as their home instance can do. Others have certain rules about what communities on their instance are allowed to do. For example, my home instance, lemmy.today, wants to avoid defederating with other instances (which means that people with that home instance can see all other content). Some instances, like beehaw.org, want to keep some content that might be objectionable to their users out, and will tend to defederate with other instances if they consider them to be problematic. Some instances allow hosting communities that have pornography (like lemmynsfw.com) and some do not (like sh.itjust.works). Same thing for communities dealing with religion or extreme political views, and so on.

        In general, it’s helpful to have a home instance in the same rough part of the world as you, as it’ll make things more-responsive.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      New user here…what? Easy to use? I’ve gotten to the point where I know how to do things, but, it’s still needlessly complicated. Yes there are many active communities, but there are also not very many of them. The ironic thing is, you need to be discussing mainstream topics on the non-mainstream platform. If I wanted to talk about my favorite band? Nobody is here to do that. And if I do find a niche community here, but it’s on another instance? NOW I know what to do. But when I first got here, I was ONLY subscribing to sublemmys on .world because it’s the only way I knew how.

      For this platform to grow, we’re going to have to make it easy. Like, braindead easy.

      Make it so you just click “join”. Make it so you’re logged in across ALL of Lemmy. Your posts may originate from Lemmy.World, but a non-techie wouldn’t know or care about any of that. I see Lemmy making a big deal about the seperate instances. Like it’s a selling point. It’s only a selling point for people smart enough to understand it.

      But imagine Britney. Now Britney is a fictional person I just made up to represent your bottom of the barrel intelligence level of people these days. Britney is just some pretty valley girl. She doesn’t know what RSS is. She’s never heard of Linux, despite having an android phone. Britney is who you cater the site to. Because Britney is America. She wants sublemmys about “The Voice” and “The Masked Singer”. She wants a sublemmy for Taylor Swift. I think you’re starting to get the type of person I’m talking about.

      You can still operate Lemmy almost exactly how it is now. Just make it so even if you know NONE of that stuff, you can still operate it freely. I will use MySpace as an example (for the brief 4 years it was the top social media). There was a default MySpace look. If all you did was sign up, and do nothing else, you still had a myspace account, and you could still customize it to an extent. It’s the basic profile everyone thinks of when you think of a myspace profile. The colors, the layout, the look. It was still usable. Then you had people using CSS and HTML and I think Javascript was available. Now suddenly you have 50 different profiles, all looking completely different. All functioning exactly the same, but you could go as deep or as shallow as you wanted.

      THATS what this site needs. Don’t take away the stuff for the techie people. Let them go nuts. Let them do crazy things with this platform. But also, to increase userbase, make it as shallow as possible unless the user changes things. America wants shallow and not challenging. America doesn’t want to think. Britney just wants a place to type “I LOVE TAYLOR! I LOVE TAYLOR! I LOVE TAYLOR!” over and over. You can keep her happy, and keep yourselves happy. And I’m somewhere in the middle. It needs to be a platform that conforms to the user. Because if the user needs to conform to the platform, they will not join that platform.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      48·
      7 months ago

      They have bots roaming the site, banning people, seemingly at random. I went from never having been banned on reddit on a 10 year account, to banned for 3 days twice, and then permanently banned all in the span of a month.

      And when did this happen? The week after the IPO went public.

      And what kind of messages got me banned? Well one of them was in /r/Cleveland where a guy posted a security camera picture of the guy who stole his bike. I made the comment that the theif looks like a guy who stole MY bike in the early 90s, and that maybe this was his son. Keeping it in the family business.

      I was banned for that comment for “Harassment and abuse of reddit users”. The action was performed by an AI bot. If I wanted an appeal I could appeal. So I did. It SAID the appeal was handled by a real human. They still sided with the bots decision, which tells me that it wasn’t handled by a real person.

      So now I’m here. Just don’t steal my bike, ok guys?

      • ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24·
        7 months ago

        Hey dude, I’ve been looking for you for so long, since my Dad stole your bike and that was a turning point in my life, since I made a point of stealing your son’s bike.

        It is said that this will continue for generations until the seventh son of a seventh son, who’ll transform into an upside down toothless vampire who likes garlic.

        In order for this prophecy to come true, please ensure all your progeny keeps buying bikes.

        PS Welcome to Lemmy!

      • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        20·
        7 months ago

        I made the comment that the theif looks like a guy who stole MY bike in the early 90s, and that maybe this was his son. Keeping it in the family business.

        That’s hilarious. They don’t deserve you.

      • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        Just don’t steal my bike, ok guys?

        I won’t!

        …but what kind of bike and where is it, just so I know what I’m not stealing and where I should avoid stealing it from

    • mesamune@lemmy.worldEnglish
      30·
      7 months ago

      reddit is about the same in my opintion, but I do see a lot more activity on the lemmy side. I think its a combination of:

      1. Less rules around communities. The barrier of entry is much lower here to post, and things dont get auto-removed because of trigger happy mods.
      2. 2% of users post 90% of content. And a lot of them moved over to lemmy.
      3. Servers can be brought into existence and removed at will. This may seem like a bad thing, but what it means is that the best lemmy servers can evolve and be successful in a way reddit cant. Some have different modifications to make them more user friendly, some have excellent uptime, etc…etc…
      4. People from mastodon/misskey/other fediverse instances can comment/post. Even if that is not what a vast majority of us do, it does help the numbers and will continue to help engagement.

      Also to @Blaze@reddthat.com Do you know if the sats above take into account the generally banned instances of lemmy? I know that a lot of instances earlier this year decided to become de-federated from the general fediverse. Do you happen to know if the website take into account those servers?

      • Blaze@reddthat.comOPEnglish
        9·
        7 months ago

        Also to @Blaze@reddthat.com Do you know if the sats above take into account the generally banned instances of lemmy? I know that a lot of instances earlier this year decided to become de-federated from the general fediverse. Do you happen to know if the website take into account those servers?

        Not sure about this unfortunately

    • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      19·
      7 months ago

      The cracked apps using personal API keys stopped working a few days ago. Already fixed now I think.

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          8·
          7 months ago

          Have you heard of ReVanced? Most commonly known for patching youtube to allow more features, mainly adblocking. Well they have patches for a ton of apps now so if you have a reddit account and say you’re a developer you get your own API key they can be injected into some apps. It didn’t work for me for a while but I eventually got it to work for the random search result from reddit.

        • Remorhaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          Not all of them, Dystopia for example was allowed to stay as is because of accessibility features that the native app lacks. It was even working just fine during the recent outage.

        • Klaymore@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          I use Geddit occasionally, I don’t know if it supports voting or commenting though since I just browse.

  • Lexam@lemmy.caEnglish
    101·
    7 months ago

    I think more people are coming here for my comments and delusions of grandeur.

  • Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.mlEnglish
    89·
    7 months ago

    Hi I’m new here. My friend has been trying to get me in for ages. The reason I am here is because my Reddit account of 10 years and one of 3 years got permabanned. And it was really for no reason. I tried to make a new account and that also got instantly permabanned. That’s when I found out that my 10year account also got banned. So yeah fuck what happened on Reddit.

    I’m really liking lemmy and my iOS app (mlem) and enjoying the community. The only thing I miss from Reddit is the video integration.

    • PlantJam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      38·
      7 months ago

      What I don’t miss from reddit is the bot comments. Not the novelty bots that reply if your comment is in alphabetical order or something like that, but actual chat gpt responses to regular posts or comments.

      I have no idea what the point of them is, but they’re awful.

      • uhN0id@programming.devEnglish
        34·
        7 months ago

        Those were getting so out of hand.

        u/OP: “What’s a good mouse for a mix of productivity and gaming”

        u/DefinitelyNotABot: “A good mouse for a mix of productivity and gaming is something you should be looking for if you need a mouse that is good for work and play. A good mouse for productivity and gaming will have a good balance of performance and features. Fortunately, finding a good mouse for a mix of productivity and gaming is not difficult due there being plenty of mouse options available to you[…]”

        • PlantJam@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          7 months ago

          What’s the point of those types of bots, though? I guess they’re just trying to have vaguely genuine looking accounts to use for some future purpose, maybe political or advertising related.

          • uhN0id@programming.devEnglish
            18·
            7 months ago

            My best guess is karma farming so they can sell them off. Probably create hundreds of accounts they can sell off. If some brand buys an account that looks reputable for $20-$100 to use it for astroturfing then that’s a pretty good deal for both sides. Shitty deal for everyone else.

            • SeattleRain@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              7 months ago

              That and building convincing personas for propaganda and PR. An account agreeing with pro corporate policies is more convincing if it has a long post history.

      • SomeGuy69@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        7 months ago

        They’ll sooner or later appear here too, that’s sadly a reality all social media will suffer from now on. No filter can detect AI replies for long.

        • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Do you think users, moderators, and admins on Lemmy could be more equipped (or at least more incentivized) to combat malicious bots compared to Reddit?

      • mm_maybe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        Running such a bot with an intentionally underpowered language model that has been trained to mimic a specific Reddit subculture is good clean absurdist parody comedy fun if done up-front and in the open on a sub that allows it, such as r/subsimgpt2interactive, the version of r/subsimulatorgpt2 that is open to user participation.

        But yeah, fuck those ChatGPT bots. I recently posted on r/AITAH and the only response I got was obviously from a large language model… it was infuriating.

      • Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.mlEnglish
        7·
        7 months ago

        What I said wasn’t zesty at all. The only thing I can think of is someone went to all my comments and reported me. I’ve been temp banned from communities before but never banned from Reddit and would never expect to get permanently banned from Reddit the site along with my other Reddit accounts.

        • demizerone@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          I got suspended for a Boeing joke, but deleted my account after that. I hope the same does not happen to Lemmy bcz the Internet needs a place to discuss links on the Internet.

  • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
    72·
    7 months ago

    I think we are now in a positive cycle:

    • More and more useful comments are posted,
    • Which means more people get interested,
    • which attracts more and more people to the platform
    • That increases the quality and quantity of posts/comments/etc.
    • etc.
    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      26·
      7 months ago

      Hey, ya get what ya pay for. Pay a little money, get a little quality. Pay a LOT of money, get a LOT of quality.

      Well, I didn’t get paid ANYTHING to be here, so you can imagine the quality of MY posts!

      Hey, why did the poop walk into the poop?

      To poop to the other poop! :D

      See? Just zero quality…

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    64·
    7 months ago

    I’ll never stop complaining about Y axis that don’t start at zero.

    If that means the change isn’t noticable, then the change isn’t noticable.

    • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      7 months ago

      Yeah when I showed the cop the graph of my speed before getting in my car to be 67000mph (speed of the earth around the sun) to 67080mphwhen I was driving it he couldn’t see the difference so I didn’t get the ticket.

      Or sometimes choosing a common-sense reference makes sense.

      Which isn’t to say THIS one does, it doesn’t, but the absolutism of “it’s nerf or nothing” is a tad extreme.

      • aasatru@kbin.earth
        16·
        7 months ago

        Well, it does make sense, doesn’t it?

        What we’re interested in is not the number of users, but the trends: whether the number is increasing or decreasing over time. Starting the axis at 0 would not be useful in this regard, as the trend would be almost completely obscured.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          For something like that, you need a special graph, and I forget the name because no one uses it.

          Y axis is “percent growth” and the X axis isn’t at the bottom, it’s in the middle.

          Like, the only way I can describe it is a line graph because it technically is, but there’s some name done it.

          Capitalism doesn’t like it tho, because there’s “red numbers” and red numbers scare investors

          • aasatru@kbin.earth
            1·
            7 months ago

            At some point recognisability is also worth something. I can immediately read this graph, I understand it, it’s good.

            Occasionally it’s used in a confusing way where people assume it starts at zero despite it not being the case, and sometimes intentionally so. But that’s just the case here.

        • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          If the goal is to visualize growth trends, I don’t think raw user counts are the correct value to track on the Y-axis at all. That’s where my head was at when I said it doesn’t make sense. Abusing the Y-axis to try and coax data out in this case is just a symptom of having the wrong measure.

          Daily new users. Percent user growth.

          • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
            4·
            7 months ago

            There is visible growth in posts and comments, which is good. However, I’ve also started seeing spam posts.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
      18·
      7 months ago

      I’ll never stop complaining about Y axis that don’t start at zero.

      If that means the change isn’t noticable, then the change isn’t noticable.

  • dumblederp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    50·
    7 months ago

    Reddit is getting worse.

    Anyone noticed they’ve added tracking into the url?

    They’re AI banning more and more people for nonsense.

    My perma-banned account still works well enough, I just can’t comment or up/downvote. I can still subscribe and use RES.

    • juice702@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      7 months ago

      Been a long time user and my 13 year old account banned because i said something bad about Putin. Deleted all reddit apps, my account’s posts and whatnot, and now I’m here. Already digging this site.

          • sarmale@lemmy.zipEnglish
            7·
            7 months ago

            I would want some federated more traditional forums instead of a reddit approach, that would have so many advantages, like threads not dying this often and just being easier to navigate

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.worldEnglish
            7·
            7 months ago

            I can’t envision a federated service dying. Even if it’s me pedaling a bike to run a raspberry pi hosting an instance that’s just me posting it’ll exist.

            • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              10·
              7 months ago

              I can’t envision a federated service dying

              The only way Lemmy could “die” would be if it is surpassed by a similar project (like Sublinks, Piefed, Mbin). If that project is also part of the fediverse, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

              Edit: I suppose another way Lemmy could die would be if one of the larger instances somehow makes a closed-source fork of the software and improves it to the point where the majority of users flock to it. My hope is that Lemmy is already decentralized enough that this couldn’t happen, and that Lemmy users would be savvy enough to oppose this if it did.

          • mesamune@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            7 months ago

            Lemmy instances are designed to be born and die. So it’s a good thing in my opinion.

      • Pacattack57@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        7 months ago

        I got banned because a mod found one of my comments distasteful and I accidentally commented on one of my alts. It’s ludicrous what those mods get away with.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        apparently you can still edit your comments with a banned account. some day when i’m really bored i’ll go through and start editing all my comments on my 10+ yr old permabanned accts to be 10,000 characters of n̸̢̡̡̟̣̝̖͉̺̟̫̜̱̬̗̜̗̋̇ớ̷̢̧̡̦͍̝̖̣̪͉͕͕̙̖̭͔̯̪͚̯̳͇̻̬̺̲͓̞̫̦̝̮͉̞̣͖̻̮͔͍̤̺͕̦̓͑͗̀̂͋̍̆͛̂̏̽͐͘̕͠͠͝n̸̨̞͖̫̭̱̯̬̩̲͎̫̟͇͚̪̜̤̟͓͕̜̟̖̻̗͙̭̣̼͂͌͆̿̏̐͑́͘͝s̴̢̢̧̧̰̼̳̼̳̞̠̯̙̗̏̽̓̿̏̈́̀͑͂̀͊̏̆̎͑̚͜ȩ̴̛̪̻͍͙̰̥͖̱̘͚̦̻̎̏͑̊͂̈́̿̇̃̌̍́̽̌̒̊̃́͌̀̿̉̔́̑̕̕͘̚͠͝n̸̛̦͌͌̔͆͛͐̄̃͊̓̾͂͂s̷̛̼͙̞̬͙̠͉̖͙͎͇͓̫͓̺̯͈̣͍̮͑̃̐̑̌̃̔̇̚̚͝͝͠e̴̢̛͎̣̱͚͈̝̮̥͇̭͈̐̎̄̔̾͆̉̓́̂́̋̉̋̀̔̄̂̍͋̒̄̈́͐͂͐͘͘͜͝͠

    • SomeGuy69@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      One used to be able to disable the outbound click on Reddit, in the account settings, but default they track everything.

  • TIN@feddit.ukEnglish
    47·
    7 months ago

    I’ve been here since the API changes at Reddit and the sub blackouts that followed, and I think it’s becoming more interesting all the time. Back in the early days there was no point in refreshing the /all feed more than once every 4 hours as it just wouldn’t have changed, now it’s much more than that. The number of posts with actual discussions are increasing, and other than a few blocked users, communities and one instance, I like the people I’m sharing space with.

    • barsquid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      7 months ago

      I also greatly prefer the people on Lemmy and I hope that continues even as more and more redditors show up. Without a spez calling the shots, perhaps instances will tend to ban and defederate from far-right radicalization chambers instead of promoting them to the front page.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        Pretty much all of the far-right instances are defederated from the major servers, except lemm.ee, which intentionally lets users block instances they don’t like.

    • uhN0id@programming.devEnglish
      14·
      7 months ago

      My friends seem to prefer tolerating the official Reddit app because “there is more on Reddit”. I’d rather have less for the time being and not lose my mind with that POS app not to mention fuck Reddit for what they did to 3rd party devs and users alike with that API change.

      I refused to install the Reddit app out of principle other than just to check it out one time out of morbid curiosity. Without the 3rd party app creators that made apps long before Reddit did, back when Reddit wouldn’t, Reddit probably wouldn’t be anywhere as big as they are today. They brought new users in that likely wouldn’t have used Reddit anywhere except on a mobile device and certainly not in a browser when even retail stores had their own apps.

      When my 3rd party app (Boost) officially stopped working the other day I officially stopped being a Reddit user in the process. Not doing another hacky workaround to make the app work again. Time to make Lemmy my new social/forum and ditch Reddit except for when I need to do a Google search because Reddit is still a great archive of knowledge.

      • Nightwatch Admin@feddit.nlEnglish
        3·
        7 months ago

        You’re not wrong. I do have the app because the mobile site shits on my browser (I have anti tracking, cookie blocking, ad wiping defences), and there are a few niche communities I find important that stick around (and r/sysadmin, while not exactly niche, is really useful for me)

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      7 months ago

      Activity seems to be up, not just users. It’s also active users, not just accounts

    • Donut@leminal.spaceEnglish
      9·
      7 months ago

      Lol I was thinking of this one when I saw the thread title. Still, I don’t see a way to filter those out

  • yrmp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    33·
    7 months ago

    Fuck reddit.

    Feeding user data to an LLM. Jacking up API costs. Being generally unusable on mobile. Usurping old.reddit.com to try and force me to the official app on “unmoderated” and NSFW threads.

    Now with their IPO and a need to deliver ever increasing subscriber numbers and improved metrics for shareholders every quarter, the writing is on the wall.

    I hope it goes to zero. The only sad thing is all the knowledge that will be lost due to the sky high API pricing when the site eventually does sunset. I’m guilty myself of trying to de-enshittify google somewhat by adding reddit to just about every search. Hopefully people smarter than me have ways to archive that info.

    • Wiz@midwest.socialEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      Yes, but glue is the surprisingly tasty ingredient on pizza too keep your toppings from falling off.

      Just be sure to use non-toxic glue, because the other kind tastes terrible.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Feeding user data to an LLM.

      I mean, somewhere, even if not now, if the Threadiverse becomes large enough, someone is gonna be using comments here to train an LLM too. That’s just gonna be a given unless you want to use non-public forums, and that kills the searchability and accessbility to everyone that makes most forums valuable. It’s even easier to access here than on Reddit – just set up an instance and federate with and subscribe to everything.

      I guarantee you that people are going back and training LLMs on archives of old Usenet discussions too.

      The rest of it, yeah, I get.

  • dzanno@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    32·
    7 months ago

    I was word of mouthed here yesterday. As someone interested in self hosting and open source i might be the target audience sure, but I am here due to recent news and such

  • Skepticpunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    7 months ago

    I’ve been spending my time both here and on Reddit recently, and I’ve honestly been enjoying it more here. Though I mostly lurk.

  • set_secret@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    7 months ago

    I’ve found I’ve been blocked on world news for posting comments againts fascist ideas. I’ve been shadow banned from world news for posting comprehensive evidence of china’s crimes against humans aka their concentration camps. It wasn’t opinion i linked to studies, and it wasn’t inflammatory. My comments were removed and now i can’t like or comment.

    It’s really disturbing ngl. I mean reddit was trash too but i expected some freedom of information here.