VAAK: 37 Days Later

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In continuing work on VAAK, which has been progressing each day, every day. Sort of, kind of going over a lot of the same issues until the wrinkles are flattened out, while others spring up for the first time, or once again (the fediverse being tons and tons of different software is a huge blessing and a horrible curse), I’ve come pretty much to the point where it’s generally usable and not hugely and entirely a glitch-fest that was originally designed as a page where I could view incoming federation from behind this website’s admin panel. VAAK, while in the face of the federated masses, with mostly either stoic neutrality, or silent simmering hatred, is, as mentioned over and over, an AI assisted project, just so that nobody gets it twisted, and no wannabe 38 year old high school bullies decide to pretend I’m trying to hide that fact.

But, what does it do in its entirety, at this current point in development, that’s any different from Mastodon?

… EVERYTHING.

VAAK was pretty much a Mastodon re-skin in the first couple of weeks, but then I remembered that Twitter has a public repo, that you can just … read, and also use an AI to take samples from.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest problems on the Fediverse, and by extension, Bluesky, is that extremely online leftist circles love to bully. They feed on hatred, and toxicity, and seething, tooth-gnashing anger … and then on the flipside of the spectrum, there are a metric fuckton of misogynist dickwads buried deep within the fediverse, waiting for their opportunity to POUNCE (and reply-guy)!

These apps that rely on regular normal people with no community management experience to accurately moderate communities with integrity and honesty, has always been kind of a problem. I know this best myself, because I’ve been booted from about five different instances since 2017, because many admins actually suck at their jobs, or are outwardly hostile with no pushback or visibility to their malignant inability to see things clearly.

And I’m allowed to say this, and make this observation, because I have direct experience in management, and community management, and that experience goes back years and years.

But, because VAAK is using algorithmic ranking and machine learning to both (optionally) serve you content on the Home timeline (based on your likes, boosts, bookmarks, and so on), and simultaneously autonomously downranking and hiding people who frequently use abusive words and phrases, this becomes less of a problem. If you spend less time blocking and muting people, you spend more time browsing and talking.

This is also something that shits in the pants of the “Back in my day, we only used our bare hands to chisel code into stone” types who are both 67 and 22 at the same time, and I’ve reinforced about 85 times now that I do not care about these people’s opinions.

“Back in MY day we didn’t OUTSOURCE our work to A CALCULATOR” ass, mfers, talking some dumb garbage.

But, how does it work?

Take Eugen, the original creator of Mastodon, having a take about how “AI is failed technology” and “slop” … (this is also working against users like Nixcraft who’ve spent the past couple weeks drowning in their own anti-AI induced psychosis)

<img src=”/img/posts/vaak2/eugen.webp” alt=”slop’(6 inc quotes?) Actually “‘slop”>

Basically, the downranker has categories like “abusive speech”, “discriminatory slurs”, and “ai_slogan”, which is just short for, any slogan an anti-AI poster uses on a regular basis, up to and including countless repeated use of “slop” (a phrase literally derived and coined by modern day Nazis). And, as a downranked user continues to do so, they’re buried out of visibility in the timeline for longer and longer periods of time, each time the machine finds them repeating this behavior.

Does this keep them out of the Federated timeline? No. I’m treating the Federated timeline as a protected legacy Fediverse viewer that lets you see the Fediverse in its raw form, where only your personal mutes and blocks are stopping you from seeing annoying or bad people.

Now, what bugs is VAAK currently enjoying:

• I’m still working on the timelines in-general, wherein non-admin users are currently maybe seeing my local posts first before they start seeing federated content, but, this is mostly due to the fact that I have … federated and local content being streamed into your Home feed, and this would obviously expand with more local users that aren’t just my two bots, and a few people I know who aren’t very active.
• Phyrian Strains, the Fediverse’s very first social Facebook-ish game only has like, a couple of features, and it can only currently be “played” among local users (but! if you’ve signed up on my Clearance page via the main website, you can create an OpenSim account on my grid, and sync PS with the HUD that you can grab at the landing zone).
• The Bluesky account import to VAAK’s PDS is largely untested. I have done it exactly one time, and it worked! But … that was only one time, and it was 3 weeks ago.
• The trending modules in the right sidebar have been a source of constant tweaking because they’re constantly trying to steal resources from everything else. I may just get rid of this feature entirely, I don’t know yet.
• Cache warming speeds things up greatly, but … not all of the time? For reasons? Still working on this.
• Many more I’m too brain-blasted to currently list.

What features does VAAK enjoy:

• An algorithmic timeline
• Profile badges and labels
• 2000 characters
• A Second Life account connector
• A World of Warcraft character connector
• Phyrian Strains, which syncs with my OpenSim grid, and your avatar upon it
• Bookmarks, and bookmark folders
• Collections/Starter Packs
• Lists
• A blog post composer
• Wafrn style Asks
• Pluraldawn functionality
• Mobile app connectivity (with varying results)
• 2FA
• Follow hashtags for expanded content
• Input RSS feeds and have RSS items fed into your Home timeline
• Suffer no fools, ever again
• Private accounts, local-only posts!
• A small, local-only user forum for non-timeline based community engagement!
• Lots more!

While VAAK is in a repo on Github, will it ever have an easy way to install it elsewhere?

I don’t know, maybe? If I feel like it? I also wouldn’t just copy the repo and attempt to use it yourself just yet, and that reason being: It is still in Alpha.

But VAAK is designed to become a place where a community can build and live, free from the tyranny of Elon Musk’s whims, or, alternatively, a shitty Fediverse admin who has no idea what he’s doing.

Suffice to say, registration is now open (with approvals required by myself).

Things to know when you join:

• Most everything works in queues, and your posts will not show immediately, so don’t double-post! It’s in the queue!
• You can connect any Bluesky account, regardless of what PDS it’s on. While you can create an account on the VAAK PDS, it’s not necessary!
• Please use the “Discuss” area to report bug findings, issues, and suggestions.