The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied.
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You and I know this but people at first glance generally do not. Then you try to explain to them how Federation works and their eyes gloss over
What I'm trying to say is that every social network has it's quirks that you just need to learn. The willingness to learn also depends on how attractive the platform is. With time i see no reason for lemmy to not grow like reddit did.
If you just google "Lemmy" one of the first results is https://join-lemmy.org/ where you are directed to an instance that suits you. Far from perfect but Lemmy is still young.
People probably don't even really need to understand federation. They just need sane defaults to get started and work from there.
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My take is that hosting is no longer expensive, I have a 30€/month fiber link with 700Mb/s up and could theoretically host my videos for hundreds or even thousands of interested people. At 40€ I can have a 10Gb/s up if needed. That's a lot of videos served daily.
Now, I also think that the monymaker needing to serve millions of people can go and do that elsewhere.
So what's missing is a sort of search engine so that when I want to check out fly fishing or knitting I can check out the exquisite videos from the respective community.
Something along those lines.
If people are interested I'll host their videos, and it shouldn't be that hard to make them searchable, but for sure, I can't do it all by myself. What do you think?
Now, I also think that the monymaker needing to serve millions of people can go and do that elsewhere.
That's the issue. If we're gonna get evil tech bros out of our human interactions, we need to build a platform that doesn't reject people who like to eat.
Journalists need to get access to sources, and want to see when events are happening.
Documentary creators want a way to create interesting and useful videos that will earn them a living.
Streamers want a platform that can serve a bunch of users with near-realtime (okay, just fast) interactions.
That's what OP's link is missing: being able to use a platform to do your preferred job is one of the things that makes a platform compelling. Until we have that, we're rejecting a big part of our audience.
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There are a million and one great reasons to be here on Lemmy, but using it to get cash from fellow users wallets is not one of them.
The unix surrealism Lemmite is awesome. They deserve my donations. Saying that people shouldn't be able to use the platform to express themselves rejects a whole bunch of people.
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on taking control of moderating the contents. We can stop fascists posts
.ml tankies and right-wingers: "Wouldn't that be....CeNsOrsHiP"
I know you jest but I will note that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence, if you say something abhorrent enough and I decide that you in fact are a threat that deserves to be gutted then I am in my right to take said action and face said consequences myself.
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What I'm trying to say is that every social network has it's quirks that you just need to learn. The willingness to learn also depends on how attractive the platform is. With time i see no reason for lemmy to not grow like reddit did.
If you just google "Lemmy" one of the first results is https://join-lemmy.org/ where you are directed to an instance that suits you. Far from perfect but Lemmy is still young.
People probably don't even really need to understand federation. They just need sane defaults to get started and work from there.
And what I’m trying to say is that the big dogs don’t have quirks. They are intuitive to the point where 98% of people can figure them out in seconds the moment they look at them. They have spent billions of dollars over decades learning how to create as little friction as possible to get new users onto their platforms.
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The fediverse won’t succeed just because it’s better. It will succeed if and only if people choose it.
Part of that is making it monetizable. Influencers can build huge followings (and make some cash) because existing platforms recommend their content to other users.
Mastodon devs have chosen not to provide recommendations and quote posts. That's reasonable, but it reduces the utility of the platform, and it cedes space to Twitter & co.
To my knowledge, the only creator that's exclusive to Lemmy is the unix surrealism author. Until it's easy to monetize content, we're gonna have a hard time attracting creators, and a hard time attracting users.
I'd rather have one unix surrealism than a thousand influencers with lots of followers. These days, I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way. If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
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Ho does one even use mastadon, it seems to require a login on every instance?
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Ho does one even use mastadon, it seems to require a login on every instance?
You navigate from your local instance. So like you just use hyperlinks, or if you try to do something like follow/reply/boost/etc on another instance, it'll prompt you to connect from your own.
So like here I'm looking at a post on mastodon.social, which I don't have an account on. If I just type in my home instance in the pop-up modal there, then it'll complete the action from my home instance. If you're already signed in on home instance with a cookie then it'll to it automatically.
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Our biggest enemy is actually the bootlicker.
Once that guy flips the regime will have hard time maintaining legitimacy
Americans don't understand the politics of proper opposition and dissent
Voting for the other guy ain't it... And it is a lot more than "politics" it is a life style.
Deny the parasite profit and engagement
Our biggest enemy is actually the bootlicker
I got a small dose of this at work. My coworker has a safety incident, almost fucked up her hand. She got made the safety champion the next day, and was concerned about the optics.
My lead told her "don't worry what they think of you" but brother you are a leader. Public perception is your strongest tool. You absolutely should be worried what we think of you
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I'd rather have one unix surrealism than a thousand influencers with lots of followers. These days, I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way. If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way.
I think online journalism might be a good example of influencers and users interacting as equals. Users provide extra information, ask questions, reify, and help highlight where the journalist can focus. The journalist does the leg work to produce novel news.
If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
To build an interesting, self sustaining network, where people can express themselves fully, and understand each other.
The features I'm suggesting would benefit everyone: a decent view of trending topics/posts/tags; mod-controlled tags; stuff like that. Most users would find them helpful, but a few could use it to build a livelihood that others value.
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I’m mixed on her articles. Is she a journalist or is she just posting fediverse circle jerk on the fediverse? She writes well but feels like pretty much the same article every time
I'm actually a fan, but I get what you mean. I feel like she just writes what's on her mind, when she's writing for her named website. Her writing for The Index is a bit more by the books internet journalism.
And yeah I agree sharing this on here is a bit of a circle jerk, but articles like this get shared around in the mainstream and show people still captured by the big platforms another way. I've definitely emailed a couple of her articles around to friends, and I can't be the only one.
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The only additional step you have on lemmy is choosing an instance and honestly it does not even matter that much which you choose. I'm not saying it's trivial but it is nothing that is inherently more difficult.
Reddit was really strange compared to everything else a few years ago. It only appears easy now because we are familiar with the concept of subreddits now.
Depending on the instance, you might have to put a little more work into it. Not that I'm saying that's a problem - in my eyes that's a feature.
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It would help to change the nomenclature. Joining a Facebook “group” makes sense to anybody. Change insider jargon like “instance” to seeker-friendly verbiage like “village.”
I like that, or something like that. "Server" and "instance" definitely sounds too prickly and technical to a lot of people.
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Yup. I’ll admit, I didn’t foresee AI coming along and finding a way to make the quality of discourse even worse
God I feel so bad for people even just trying to learn stuff online now.
10 to 20 years ago we had a lot less content, but when you did find a hit on your search, you could be much more confident it contained meaningful information. Rather than just the official documentation repackaged across 10 different "articles."
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The problem isn’t that the fediverse isn’t viable. The problem isn’t that it’s “too complicated.” The problem is that the giants of Silicon Valley have spent 20 years convincing us that anything outside their control isn’t worth our time.
And that’s just not bloody true.
Couldn't have said it better myself
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God I feel so bad for people even just trying to learn stuff online now.
10 to 20 years ago we had a lot less content, but when you did find a hit on your search, you could be much more confident it contained meaningful information. Rather than just the official documentation repackaged across 10 different "articles."
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The fediverse won’t succeed just because it’s better. It will succeed if and only if people choose it.
Part of that is making it monetizable. Influencers can build huge followings (and make some cash) because existing platforms recommend their content to other users.
Mastodon devs have chosen not to provide recommendations and quote posts. That's reasonable, but it reduces the utility of the platform, and it cedes space to Twitter & co.
To my knowledge, the only creator that's exclusive to Lemmy is the unix surrealism author. Until it's easy to monetize content, we're gonna have a hard time attracting creators, and a hard time attracting users.
I feel like this is comparing the mall to the park.
They both attract people, but not always the same people, or for the same reasons. And that's OK.
I get what you're saying though, because I've felt this way when trying to come up with reasons for people (sole proprietors) to get with the fedi, but maybe this place is just not for influencers - not like the corp platforms, anyway. I think the fediverse will attract more and more people with its network effects, but probably never all of the people all of the time.
My modest hope is that the fedi bleeds the big platforms just enough to put them in their place and keep from enshittifying to infinity.
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I'd rather have one unix surrealism than a thousand influencers with lots of followers. These days, I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way. If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
Agreed. The only thing I actually miss is geographically local contacts. But as far as just culture and discourse goes - I'm good.
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too true, make it a lifes mission to avoid getting shafted. take pride in once ability, for me: that is repairing electronics, using privacy respecting platforms and having as small a finger print as possible.
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I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way.
I think online journalism might be a good example of influencers and users interacting as equals. Users provide extra information, ask questions, reify, and help highlight where the journalist can focus. The journalist does the leg work to produce novel news.
If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
To build an interesting, self sustaining network, where people can express themselves fully, and understand each other.
The features I'm suggesting would benefit everyone: a decent view of trending topics/posts/tags; mod-controlled tags; stuff like that. Most users would find them helpful, but a few could use it to build a livelihood that others value.
The journalist does the leg work to produce novel news.
Just to add that in addition to novelty, journalists provide valuable services, like
- holding up a mirror to the present culture
- documenting and disseminating happenings
- packaging up events into narratives
Not to say that you weren't including these in "novel news," but just to make it explicit.
