Big Tech Wants You Trapped. The Open Web Sets You Free
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Just being here has felt freeing in and of itself. No ads omg. It's beautiful. I like the slower pace here too, it doesn't bother me to see the same post on the main page from a few days ago. I think it's a nice break for my senses actually.
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anyone got tips for finding quality memes on mastodon? i love the philosophy of the service, but i have 0 interest in reading political takes from strangers all day, and right now it feels like all i see on the “trending” page is people complaining about politics. i just want to escape the bad news and laugh a little, not get mad at my phone anytime i open the app
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It is interesting that forums had less people but felt very active and didn't need the millions of people that places like modern day social media do.
And I think big part of it is the presentation of material with threads that get bumped up when people comment and can keep going on for years.
In reddit type social media a thread is considered dead after like a day or less, so needing a new one even if it is the same topic to start up conversation again. Even more the case for one off comment type social media like mastodon.
Oh yeah forums are pretty cool. It's like a massive treasure chest you can sort through. I still enjoy using a few forums like Gamerfaqs and XDA developers.
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Another thing is google results. When I want a recommendation for anything I will add “Reddit” to my query. This is because I know it will return great recommendations and conversations that help me decide. Hopefully I will eventually be able to just use Lemmy for this.
In case you didn't know, You can get lemmy posts by adding the following to a search query -
site:lemmy.worldYou can replace "lemmy.world" with the lemmy instance url of your choosing (or any url for that matter).
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Niche communities are awesome ! Sadly reddit is still the king in this aspect.
Maybe in a few years lemmy will reach that level or even surpass it... One can dream.
I used to spend tons of time on forums 20 or so years ago. Social media killed many of those off, but there’s no reason that something else can’t do the same thing - be it Lemmy communities or something else.
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Less bots, more genuine conversations, it’s also not as fast-paced as other social medias.
It’s great. It feels like a forum from back in late 2000s / early 2010 and I like it
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I’m not a fan of mastodon because it really does feel a lot like other social media sites, I don’t really like any form of advertising, whether it’s intentional or unintentional. People post too much bullshit trying to gain followers. I never cared much for twitter/facebook/instagram anyway.
Lemmy however is a better replacement for Reddit, so far. I remember when Reddit was the replacement and now look at it, a big steaming pile of ads and bots, power tripping admin and moderators, killed 3rd party apps that made the site useable. Hopefully lemmy can remain the same as it is now.
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And even when it gets heated, people still seem to listen and not just performatively push agendas. Seen more "fair enough"s than in years of Reddit.
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I’m not a fan of mastodon because it really does feel a lot like other social media sites, I don’t really like any form of advertising, whether it’s intentional or unintentional. People post too much bullshit trying to gain followers. I never cared much for twitter/facebook/instagram anyway.
Lemmy however is a better replacement for Reddit, so far. I remember when Reddit was the replacement and now look at it, a big steaming pile of ads and bots, power tripping admin and moderators, killed 3rd party apps that made the site useable. Hopefully lemmy can remain the same as it is now.
My fear is that, if lemmy gets too successful, that regarding bots the same fate may occur.
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Just being here has felt freeing in and of itself. No ads omg. It's beautiful. I like the slower pace here too, it doesn't bother me to see the same post on the main page from a few days ago. I think it's a nice break for my senses actually.
Yeah though I think it's a little bit too political at times. I get it, Trump and Musk is destroying the USA from within, but I don't need to read about it in every second post...
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My fear is that, if lemmy gets too successful, that regarding bots the same fate may occur.
Typically if you're gonna deploy a bunch of bots on lemmy, it's easiest to do via your own instance, which is fairly easy to filter out.
Luckily the federated aspect will help with this a little bit.
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Typically if you're gonna deploy a bunch of bots on lemmy, it's easiest to do via your own instance, which is fairly easy to filter out.
Luckily the federated aspect will help with this a little bit.
Right, but you can also create accounts on different instances, so not really protected. Actually I think it's very difficult to really filter bots when they're done right, especially in times where LLMs start to be increasingly more popular.
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anyone got tips for finding quality memes on mastodon? i love the philosophy of the service, but i have 0 interest in reading political takes from strangers all day, and right now it feels like all i see on the “trending” page is people complaining about politics. i just want to escape the bad news and laugh a little, not get mad at my phone anytime i open the app
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Just being here has felt freeing in and of itself. No ads omg. It's beautiful. I like the slower pace here too, it doesn't bother me to see the same post on the main page from a few days ago. I think it's a nice break for my senses actually.
I wouldn't mind a little faster paced fwiw, the conversation can stagnate a bit sometimes, but it is what it is.
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Does selfhosting movement include using non-commercial instances of apps like mastodon/lemmy/matrix etc?
Self hosting movement is hosting stuff yourself, so kinda, assuming you're not putting some kind of advertising on your own services, but most commonly I'd see things like jellyfin, nextcloud, navidrome, immich and then a bunch of other stuff, there's foss alternatives to most commercial offerings.
Is a great place to start.
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The major platforms are convenient.
But the open web offers something better: genuine ownership, community governance, and independence.
This has a kind of underlying connotation that the open web can't be convenient. This is not true.
It is true that lots of platforms on the fediverse (Lemmy included) don't have the best user experience and user journey flow. But that's not how it has to be. We don't have to accept that as a given.
It's the same problem that Linux faces, where UX issues aren't prioritised because the user base is technical enough to deal with the bullshit. We can't let the same thing occur to the fediverse.
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anyone got tips for finding quality memes on mastodon? i love the philosophy of the service, but i have 0 interest in reading political takes from strangers all day, and right now it feels like all i see on the “trending” page is people complaining about politics. i just want to escape the bad news and laugh a little, not get mad at my phone anytime i open the app
You gotta make them.
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I’m not a fan of mastodon because it really does feel a lot like other social media sites, I don’t really like any form of advertising, whether it’s intentional or unintentional. People post too much bullshit trying to gain followers. I never cared much for twitter/facebook/instagram anyway.
Lemmy however is a better replacement for Reddit, so far. I remember when Reddit was the replacement and now look at it, a big steaming pile of ads and bots, power tripping admin and moderators, killed 3rd party apps that made the site useable. Hopefully lemmy can remain the same as it is now.
Totally agree. These platforms have no discussion culture. They are only designed to gain followers. This means only polarizing content of a very small group of users gets attention and all the rest is not even visible to other people.
Reddit or Lemmy is very different in that sense. Even a new user can start a rich discussion because of subs/communities and without the need of followers. Thus the quality of the whole network is overall better. -
Self hosting movement is hosting stuff yourself, so kinda, assuming you're not putting some kind of advertising on your own services, but most commonly I'd see things like jellyfin, nextcloud, navidrome, immich and then a bunch of other stuff, there's foss alternatives to most commercial offerings.
Is a great place to start.
I should probably have put quotes around "selfhosting movement", because I meant the term itself. Reason for asking is that if it doesn't include shared instances, then it's not a very big movement and most people will not really be able to join it.
That said I'm not trying to start a discussion on whether it's good or bad, IMO it's good and I self-host a lot of things for personal use myself. Just a thought I guess.
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The major platforms are convenient.
But the open web offers something better: genuine ownership, community governance, and independence.
This has a kind of underlying connotation that the open web can't be convenient. This is not true.
It is true that lots of platforms on the fediverse (Lemmy included) don't have the best user experience and user journey flow. But that's not how it has to be. We don't have to accept that as a given.
It's the same problem that Linux faces, where UX issues aren't prioritised because the user base is technical enough to deal with the bullshit. We can't let the same thing occur to the fediverse.
But that's the problem though, devs are notoriously bad at UX, and people good at UX don't seem to care as much about FOSS and the open web. At least that's my experience.
So we need people to speak out so devs can fix these little paper cuts in UX
