The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied.
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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.
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Because the advertising business is highly centralized. Getting sponsorships is not as easy as you think.
An example: YouTube pays content producers per click, so to speak, a ridiculously small amount, but in total, with billions of clicks, a crazy amount. The money to finance this comes largely from advertising revenue (also Google's main business model). They are the Gatekeepers so to speak.
But the content producers can't live off this because Google keeps most of it for itself. They do give people the opportunity to find sponsors themselves tho - and that's how people actually make the most money. But you have to find them for yourself or through intermediaries (that's an industry in itself). This is only realistic if you have sufficient reach (subscribers in the example). And that, in turn, is only possible if you have already invested hundreds of hours in the production of content (you can't make a living if you don't get paid for that).
So I think it would be best if the platforms themselves were powerful enough in terms of reach to be able to negotiate well with advertisers. But not as powerful as Google, for example, who can afford to pay content producers a pittance because - unlike small platforms - they are not dependent on them.
I get what you're saying. This stuff hinges on essentially finding small businesses to run, for example, a commercial PeerTube instance. And then leave it up to the rest of the fediverse if they want to federate with them.
I don't think any of us, or the current devs, would be the ones to add this commercial functionality just because we're not the sort to chase those types of incentives. But who knows, maybe some business will develop a plugin or peertube wrapper, or hell just a whole new thing, and see if anyone federates.
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Yeah, no kidding! Plus, in addition to shitty results, the likely inaccurate AI summary to further confuse you.
God yeah, I'll be like half way through an article before realising it's just padding out some very surface level details about what I'm looking up. Like the top 3 interesting things about the topic, but never an actual novel, like, human take.
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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.
Absolutely - I wanted to list interactions between regular users and someone who makes money with a platform.
After a bunch of Twitter users (including journalists) bounced off Mastodon when Elon bought it, the fediverse needs to understand why, and think about what it means to be a viable platform.
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God yeah, I'll be like half way through an article before realising it's just padding out some very surface level details about what I'm looking up. Like the top 3 interesting things about the topic, but never an actual novel, like, human take.
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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.
maybe this place is just not for influencers - not like the corp platforms, anyway
The things people need to build a livelihood on a platform are quality of life features. In a lot of cases, I think it's small stuff: being able to reward patrons with a tag on a specific community; automatically highlighting popular posts; making it easy to find a user's monetization page; etc.
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.
At the moment, Lemmy is an ad-free version of Reddit missing some community and notification features. There are good political reasons to be here, but that hasn't driven a sustained increase in users.
So we won't get critical mass for network effects by being a better Reddit.
One to make the platform self-sustaining (or grow) is to give creators a reason to use the platform, which will give people a reason to come and stay.
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I am a hostage that has been set free from a prison camp. Thank you Fedi.
That's just like, your opinion man.
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I don’t think it’s too complicated, but it is noticeably more complicated than joining traditional social media. People often get immediately freaked out by the whole concept of instances. I know everybody keeps trying to use the email comparison, but that just is not working. People cannot connect the dots between email and something like Instagram.
"Lemmy is an alternative to Reddit, you can visit https://phtn.app/ to have a look at the content. If you prefer an app, https://vger.app/settings/install has download links."
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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.
I liked her enough to follow on Mastodon so I’m with you there. Thanks for explaining that. I didn’t realize she had her own site and her own publication.
I didn’t mean just sharing here but she frequently writes on exactly this topic then shares to mastodon then here. Almost like all the HN posts sharing their own blogs about why blogging is good, lol. Which I still enjoy.
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"Lemmy is an alternative to Reddit, you can visit https://phtn.app/ to have a look at the content. If you prefer an app, https://vger.app/settings/install has download links."
Here’s how you get on Instagram or Reddit or whatever:
- Go to whatever app store you use
- download
- enter email, username, and password
- verification email
You’re done. Your voyager link is not the whole process.
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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
I jumped over here a couple weeks ago at the request of another redditor and it's like a breath of fresh air.
I still check out reddit for a couple subs that just don't have enough interaction over here "yet".
I've mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it's just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
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I’m down to have a serious conversation but please don’t be patronizing with that “bud” crap
I don't want to have any kind of conversation with you just here to speak my mind and make you reas it
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Where moving from one service to another doesn’t mean losing everything you’ve built and everything you’ve ever said.
I generally agree with this post, but this isn't true. It would require portable identities.
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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.
You are right of course, I just think it might be easier to start small. Starting small means we already have the bandwidth to do so, we just need the software.
I'm working on the tenfingers sharing protocol which could be used to kickstart a more anonymous decentralised web.
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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
Honest question but why would the fediverse even want billions of users signing up and using the platform? I enjoy it here because it's a step away from that sort of thing and covers niche topics because it's mostly nerds using this.
Keep in mind a ton of people still don't even have a clue what reddit is. They're all attracted to the massive ones
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Where moving from one service to another doesn’t mean losing everything you’ve built and everything you’ve ever said.
I generally agree with this post, but this isn't true. It would require portable identities.
Your past comments are still available even if you switch to a new account
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I jumped over here a couple weeks ago at the request of another redditor and it's like a breath of fresh air.
I still check out reddit for a couple subs that just don't have enough interaction over here "yet".
I've mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it's just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
I’ve mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it’s just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
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