The Unofficial Minds Newsletter Issue #3
Well. You people were boring this month. But that’s not entirely a bad thing. Sometimes boring is good. After all, it gave us some breathing room to prepare for the insanity that happened outside of Minds! Oh yes, you all know what I’m talking about, and we’ll get to that. Let’s get to our April recap, shall we?
The Goings-On of Yestermonth
Tokens Nosedive Again
After crawling their way back up from last month’s decline, Minds Tokens took another dump. For a long time tokens were stable around $2 and rarely ever fell much lower than $1.50, but as of the time of writing, they sit at a sad $0.90 value. Whether they climb back up is anyone’s guess (they probably will), especially now with almost constant talk about crypto regulation dribbling out of the government’s pie hole.
The Devs Float a Couple Terrible Ideas Around
I’ve talked about it at length before, but spam is a problem here on the Mindscape. The devs have been working for over a year on solutions, and new ideas continue to float around. But hot damn did some terrible ones come to light this month.
First, let me be clear, these were ideas, not things that are for sure going into effect. Don’t panic.
The first wasn’t quite so much about spam as it was Minds’ marketing… or lack thereof. Well, someone thought, why not have the users market for us? In fact, let’s FORCE them to by requiring proof of shilling before they’re allowed to make monetary withdrawals! Brilliant! Or… not so brilliant, because that’s an absurd way of spreading the word of Minds. For one, some people don’t use other social media sites on which to shill. But even then, some of us are just here to post and have fun while making some cash off of it on the side. Why force them to vomit half hearted ads on other platforms in order to receive the payment they already earned? Makes no sense, y’all.
Then there was the… other… idea. The one that Jack was tossing around for feedback. Maybe you saw it, and luckily it seems our response shot it right in the keister. A $100 deposit to participate in the rewards program. The logic being that having their own money held over their heads would make people behave themselves, so spammers and rings would think twice about gaming the system because they now stand to lose money. But let’s not kid ourselves, there would be quite a chill in Hell’s atmosphere before spammers are deterred by slapping a paywall in front of them.
We saw this before when Minds+ was required for your engagement to count towards token rewards. All this did was push the spammers into plus and ultimately caused more harm to the system than good, since now plus is nearly unusable with the amount of stolen content garbage posts swirling around. The only people who would be driven off by this are the normal users, who would more likely feel like they’re being held ransom, and that is not a good relationship for admins to be fostering with their users.
I suppose the silver lining here is that the devs are looking for things to try in order to make that fabled trust system more effective at weeding out the bad actors.
(hashtag hire Decken)
The Return of Wire Notifs
Did you know these were broken? Well, they were. Last year when the Minds team changed up the notification UI, token wire notifs just… disappeared, never to be heard from again. This was something of a disappointment for a lot of users, since it had become a common practice to post screenshots of these notifications and publicly thank the sender. A lot of us simply assumed they had been done away with, but it would seem that they were just not working this whole time. Here’s hoping for a glorious return of that old bit of Minds culture!
Elon Musk Buys Twitter. Hijinks Ensue.
And here it is. The moment you’ve all been rubbing your rhubarb for. It was hard to believe that Elon would actually succeed when it was announced that he planned on buying twitter. But here we are. Conservatives are flocking back in droves, the libtards are in full meltdown mode, and the salty tears have been a marvel to behold as we sit back and munch our popcorn, watching as the house of cards the leftists built comes tumbling down around their ears.. But what does this mean for our little corner of the internet?
Well… it’s not entirely clear yet. A number of people have already gone back to their old accounts, or made new ones, while others have stated their intentions to never return. There’s a possibility that this would mean a dwindling userbase, or it might end up having no effect at all. One thing is for sure, this is a vital moment for the Minds Team to build and keep morale. Look, I know this is starting to sound like “Let’s Crap All Over the Devs Happy Hour”, but there is an unfortunate, yet prevalent truth about this whole situation: as big a garbage fire as Twitter is, it functions. Minds makes free speech its biggest selling point, which is all fine and good, but now that birdsite is beginning to show the possibility of free speech returning, even if to a lesser degree, function and ease of use are going to steal people away. The admins need to address this and give people reason to want to stick around, and that reason is your website bloody works.
I know the Minds team loves their encryption and whatnot, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how secure the platform is if no one wants to use it. That’s like parking your oldsmobile with the mismatched paneling and the family of possums living in the engine in a vault at Fort Knox. like... yeah, it's real safe and secure in there... but… why tho?
What’s Coming Our Way
Multi-Image Posts?
There have been some very subtle hints floating around that might indicate multi-image posting is on the way. This is easily one of, if not the most requested feature for the site and has been for well over a year. Possibly longer. The reason for the delay seems to be that it would require quite a bit of tinkering with the site’s code to get it to work. And yes, we had seen @smugwolf somehow perform magic and do this, but evidently it isn’t a very viable solution as a full fledged feature. But good news! Rumor has it (from a very reliable source, btw) the subject might be coming up for review in the near future. Let’s all cross our fingers, but in the meantime, a petition has been started in order to show the dev team exactly how many people want this feature, so go sign it if you wanna add another body onto the dogpile: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1367209614755500033
Upgrades to Reporting
Yeah, Minds has a pretty clunky reporting system, but that’s gonna change! The devs intend to put in some quality of life improvements to make the system less ambiguous and give it a smoother flow. Additions include: definitions for report categories, a text box allowing the user to elaborate on why they’re reporting an account, and actually providing a link in the email notification to the content that got the ban hammer.
There’s also some other interesting ideas on the table as well. When a user reports an account, it’s a possibility that they would then be provided with updates on that report to see if action was taken. This isn’t a terrible idea, since a big frustration for many is reporting a clear case of spamming and seeing no action being taken. It can also be speculated that this could be used in tandem with a bounty system. We’ll see where it goes.
Then there’s the idea of sending notifications to the user when they are reported. This does beg the question, would the notification be for all reports, even ones that are overturned? Or just for reports that receive the wrath of the admins? Currently, there’s a page in the settings menu that tells if there’s any reported content or strikes on their channel, but it’s a bit out of the way and sorta buried, so being notified would make for better easy of access. And let’s not kid ourselves… if we all end up getting notified every time someone hits the report button on us, this holds a great deal of comedic potential… but also promises quite a few headaches.
PayPal Option!!
I dunno about y’all, but the lack of a paypal option was a huge factor in why I hesitated to get involved in Minds+. It’s a little nerve wracking having to input bank details, and PayPal has always acted as something of a buffer. Well, it looks like that option is coming! Perhaps not this month, but with any luck, within the year! And yes, I know, a year in Minds time is more akin to five years in normal human time, but hey, at the very least, this feature is on the devs’ radar.
Community Happenings
Hear My Story Contest Round 2
Last month @talexratcliffe held a contest for writers that would see the winning submission narrated on his YouTube channel. Well, he’s doing it all over again this month! Submissions are due May 8th, so get in while the gettin is good!
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1361079152551137296
Tomas Sinks His First Victim
The wholesome tale of Tomas the Kraken continues, and Tomas has sunk his first victim! Our boi sure is growing fast and learning how to kraken with the best of em! If you haven’t already, the adventures of Tomas can be found on @neutronboar’s page. Highly recommended content. Highly.
Babbi Ottman Jr.
The number of Minds babies continues to grow as our very own Bill Ottman reveals sonograms of his first son. Congrats to him, and to all the other users who recently announced an incoming tiny human! But be warned, Bill... baby boys have appetites that would put a horse to shame!
https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1362233556679528461
The PC from Hell
Some might know, but I've been dealing with the PC from Satan's tech support office for years now, but I'm glad to finally announce that it's been FIXED thanks to the big brain efforts of @enytixua, whom I have bestowed the title of PC Wizard Man. The infamous neon blue wire squid PSU was replaced and fired out of a canon, Windows 10's interesting decision to spread itself across two hard drives has been unretardeded, and the video card has also been replaced. The AMD drivers still want to crash every so often because this computer hates me, but I'll take that over what it WAS doing for all that time.
All hail PC Wizard Man!