this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
540 points (96.6% liked)

Technology

60062 readers
3662 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

ARTICLE of Techwireasia

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 207 points 1 year ago (29 children)

Why does everyone keep thinking fedi needs to be the next "big thing."

It's great as it is. It doesn't need to be easier, or more widely adopted.

The internet used to be difficult to use and that acted as a filter to keep the brainless masses away. It's fine. It was BETTER back then.

[–] [email protected] 174 points 1 year ago (5 children)

People want the Fediverse to grow because we can see how much damage corporate walled gardens have done to our society, and we care about others who are still trapped in a cycle of corporate abuse. We dream of a better world and see the massive potential benefits a decentralized global communications protocol hold for humanities future.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Does anyone have a home remedy for the darkness within that is slowly overcoming your will to live?

I tried apple cider vinegar

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Have you tried "Barbie", only in theaters July 21st?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Drink chicken soup and watch Groundhog Day

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I need the ability to save comments in Memmy for well written comments just like this

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Yeah I get that but any big tech company can just buy the entire fediverse if they want to. They can offer instance owners money to sell their instance. They can put Lemmy developers on the payroll with 500k salaries, or replace them. They can add things like allowing people to make money by posting stuff. Suddenly we have influencers, and while they may not appeal to you, they will appeal to the millions of people who like them on Instagram.

I may not be right about the details but I'm just painting a picture here. You are letting your dreams about a better world totally cloud your judgment here. Corporations can take this place over easily and they will be really interested in that if the active user count becomes big.

People say "then we just move to another platform". Yeah, like the one we have now? And try to get it big? So we can end up again having to move away from it...

The only way to win is to stay smallish and under the radar. Be a fringe interest for a couple of million active users.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

You're 100% wrong on the details.

A few things:

  1. Lemmy runs on an open protocol which cannot be "bought", known as ActivityPub. All platforms that use ActivityPub can theoretically interact and federate with Lemmy. This means that if something like lemmy.world was bought, we don't have to "move away from it", we just spin up another instance and then federate with it while the other instance doesn't have to deal with corporate things like ads.
  2. Lemmy is Free and Open Source Software licensed under a version of the GPL. This means that it can never be fully restricted, and if corporate interests were to theoretically "buy" the current maintainers, it can be forked to a version without corporate meddling, which can then federate and interact with all the current instances anyway, due to how ActivityPub works.
  3. There's a lot of instances. You can't buy the entire fediverse as you will have people with principles.

Now don't get me wrong, they can absolutely meddle, but not purely through money or hostile takeovers, due to the decentralised nature of the Fediverse. No matter what, the Fediverse will always exist as it is, all the huge platforms can do is try to make it so people don't want to use the Fediverse and move to their platforms instead.

To try and give an analogy, it would be like a company trying to "buy the web" - they literally cannot. Of course, we do have some huge players who control a lot of the web and attempt to dictate standards for everyone else, but there is no one iron fist that rules over everything, and there's many small players and communities all over the place.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

"any big tech company can just buy the entire fediverse if they want to"

They literally can't.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah I get that but any big tech company can just buy the entire fediverse if they want to. They can offer instance owners money to sell their instance.

...and they can turn around and create another instance

They can put Lemmy developers on the payroll with 500k salaries, or replace them.

Lemmy devs don't really "own" the code, since it is free software. It can be forked at any time by anyone.

They can add things like allowing people to make money by posting stuff.

...and existing fediverse instances can just not federate with instances that push that bullshit

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm sick of people acting like they're superior and only they deserve the Internet because they think they're intelligent. The "brainless masses" have just as much right to use the internet as you do. Stop trying to gatekeep the Internet.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

More mildly put, people are diverse, which is a great resource.

I want to follow communities about a wide variety of topics. Some appeal to intellectual, tech-savvy people, others don't.

If the platform is deterring to the later group, my experience suffers because I lack content in these areas.

People can use their brains in many more ways than understanding technology. Just because a person is not good in navigating technology does not mean they have no brain.

For example, I'd love to see more going on in communities about performative arts, philosophy, activism, regional cultural events. Occasionally, I like to peek into bubbles which are completely different from my own.

With power comes responsibility. I see it as the responsibility of people who understand technology to make it accessible to those who don't.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

id rather not use a platform loaded with greasy snobs saying "brainless masses" too

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I would even go further and say that I also want to interact with people who just want to be silly or want to share their bizarre views about things. Variety is the spice of life. As long as these communities can remain separate (like how the fediverse has communities), then the more the merrier.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I honestly don't think something having a higher barrier to entry is gatekeeping. Ofcourse you shouldn't try to make things actively more difficult but I don't think lemmy is doing that anyways.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I'm starting to lose the meaning of gatekeeping more and more. Its used so often and loosely

load more comments (10 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I do not fully agree with this. Simply because by having a lack of users, there will not be answers to questions that require expertise

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Exactly. We need people here. The strength of Reddit at this point is that, for any interest you might have, no matter how niche, there will be a sizeable community on Reddit that knows a lot about it and is yearning to talk about it. Outside of tech and science adjacent topics, that's simply not really the case here.

Sure, sometimes I want to talk about new developments in tech. And other times, I want to talk about Carly Rae Jepsen's upcoming album, The Loveliest Time, and how I'm fucking stoked to see her in less than a month.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because I want there to be shit to do on here

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Send in the clowns!

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (9 children)

The bigger a social platform gets, the more synergy it spawns. That's what adds utility to a social platform.

I don't think anyone here wants it to be 'the next big thing', but I do think a lot of people (myself included) want to see it become 'one of the next big things'. As in...we want it to become big enough to be a viable alternative to the proprietary walled-garden corporate establishments that have become the current standard.

More choice = better, and for as long as this platform remains small and elitist (referring back to your 3rd sentence), it will never truly be a viable choice. There's still a lot of engagement I'm required to use Reddit for - and I hate that - and the only reason for it is we just don't have the community size needed (yes, it's getting closer every day) to be that viable alternative.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

You are young it sounds like. If Lemmy becomes that size, all good things about it goes away, and we get ads and corporations moving in to profit from it. That turns the entire thing into the same shit as everything else.

It happens over and over and over again in tech. It's a pattern that all older people knows about because we have lived it.

So I hope Lemmy stays small. Bigger than now, sure, but not big enough to attract corporations.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not the people that got dumber, the tech did. Everyone has the capacity to become more knowledgeable of computers and the internet as a whole, but large corporations dumbed it down so they can take control of everything.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The internet used to be difficult to use and that acted as a filter to keep the brainless masses away. It’s fine. It was BETTER back then.

yeah, that September never ends

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, a lot of the "before" users were just out right assholes to us kids trying to figure out how to use the internet. There was definitely a culture of superiority from the early adopters.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

Which is clearly very much present here lol, looking at these comments.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The internet is fit ME and OTHER SMART PEOPLE that I LIKE and not DOODOOHEADS.

Son, you gotta share your toys - or no ice cream after dinner.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

I just want big tech social media to fail. It gives too much power to Musk, Zuck, Spez, et al.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I really don't like this superiority complex of calling anyone who has other priorities in life a member of the "brainless masses".

I get that it's nice to have in-depth conversations with smart people about things you find interesting. I'm here precisely for that reason myself, but I'd much prefer to do so in a community of people that doesn't derive its sense of identity from how superior they feel to everyone else. I agree that the Fediverse doesn't need to be the next big thing, but that doesn't mean we have to actively be asses to everyone we think is beneath us because they're not worthy of the truly great privilege that is speaking to us.

I'd much rather the platform itself simply be deeply robust, very accessible and easy to use, and most importantly, extremely conducive to allowing individual communities to form and enforce their own rules and norms. There is no reason at all why one community can't have extremely strict standards and require all comments to be made by credentialed users who cite all sources while having discussions about, say, physics, while another might be devoted to the Kardashians or logistics for the Taylor Swift Eras Tour or whatever else pop culture has decided is the topic du jour. These are not necessarily in contradiction, and particularly with different instances, nothing stops you from primarily participating in an instance that focuses more on nerdy things and bans memes and pop culture, or that has any other focus that suits you. If you find yourself getting content from more general interest instances that you're not liking, you can block them. This level of flexibility is the exact point of the Fediverse in the first place. There's no need to gatekeep the entire Fediverse because you want your own fun nerd space; the Fediverse already easily facilitates that level of independent community creation.

Lest you think I be one of the brainless rabble, rest assured I'm speaking as someone who studied computer science at Harvard, works in cybersecurity, and knows Latin, Greek, French, and Arabic - since apparently people aren't worthy of speaking to you unless they pass some kind of intelligence test.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This post has the energy of a treehouse with a "no girls allowed sign" on the door.

The gatekeeping just makes some people feel like they're special because they are the ones doing the gatekeeping rather than the ones being excluded by it. And it usually involves defending flaws in the community that drive most people away because they serve the same purpose.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right? We aren't enlightened sages just because the platform we use is a little bit harder to understand. We need more than just people with technical skills, and if there's this many people agreeing with calling others the "brainless masses", seems like people skills are on short supply.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Speaking personally, I'm trying to replace that "Frontpage of the internet" that Reddit used to be. Lemmy is great. I'm actually really liking the communities here. But there aren't enough posts because there aren't enough users yet, IMO. Maybe what I actually need is to stop using a single place for all of my news/pop culture watching, but... that's where I'm at.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

It feels like September is finally ending. Somebody wake up Billie Joe Armstrong.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Indeed. The masses would ruin this place, 100%.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Because social media exists to connect people. This is not a forum for a single niche topic, why would we ever just call it enough and be done with it? There are many communities that I'd like to follow that are still struggling to get off the ground.

I don't know what you are here for, but to me the Fediverse is not great as it is. It has potential to be but it's still largely tiny and niche, I can't find a fraction of what I'd like to. That may make it more manageable so far, but it's also pretty empty.

Let me be real, one thing that definitely won't help this place no matter the size is this sense of superiority that we are better without the "brainless masses". Over the years it has become very clear that whether people are technologically adept and whether they are good contributors and members of a community are two completely unrelated things. It's just unfounded elitism.

What we do need to watch out for is for corporate control, advertiser influence and algorithms which prioritize profit or clickthrough at any costs. A lot of internet media has devolved not because of "the masses", but because they prefer the eyeballs that outrage bring over cultivating a harmonious community.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

brainless masses

You sound like a lovely, humble person who never screams at their loved ones

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Finally, an actual controversial post!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Many people -- and especially the media -- are trained at this point to follow "the next big thing". It's the promise of being out ahead of your peers somehow, without actually having to do much of anything.

load more comments (10 replies)