The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.
Techy people are a lot more likely to jump through a couple of hoops for something better, compared to your average Joe who isn’t even aware of the problem
Techy people are a lot more likely to jump through hoops because that knowledge/experience makes it easier for them, they understand it’s worthwhile or because it’s fun.
If software can be made easier for non-techy people and there’s no downsides then of course that aught to be done.
10th largest instance being like 10k users… we’re talking about the need for a solution to help pull the literal billions of users from mainstream social media
There isn’t a solution. People don’t want to pay for something that costs huge resources. So their attention becoming the product that’s sold is inevitable. They also want to doomscroll slop; it’s mindless and mildly entertaining. The same way tabloid newspapers were massively popular before the internet and gossip mags exist despite being utter horseshite. It’s what people want. Truly fighting it would requires huge benevolent resources, a group willing to finance a manipulative and compelling experience and then not exploit it for ad dollars, push educational things instead or something. Facebook, twitter etc are enshitified but they still cost huge amounts to run. And for all their faults at least they’re a single point where illegal material can be tackled. There isn’t a proper corollary for this in decentralised solutions once things scale up. It’s better that free, decentralised services stay small so they can stay under the radar of bots and bad actors. When things do get bigger then gated communities probably are the way to go. Perhaps until there’s a social media not-for-profit that’s trusted to manage identity, that people don’t mind contributing costs to. But that’s a huge undertaking. One day hopefully…
We also need a solution to fucking despot mods and admins deleting comments and posts left-and-right because it doesn’t align with their personal views.
I’ve seen it happen to me personally across multiple Lemmy domains (I’m a moron and don’t care much to have empathy in my writing, and it sets these limp-wrist morbidly obese mods/admins to delete my shit and ban me), and it happens to many people as well.
Instances that don’t vet users sufficiently get defederated for spam. Users then leave for instances that don’t get blocked. If instances are too heavy handed in their moderation then users leave those instances for more open ones and the market of the fediverse will balance itself out to what the users want.
The sad truth is that when Reddit blocked 3rd party apps, and the mods revolted, Reddit was able to drive away the most nerdy users and the disloyal moderators. And this made Reddit a more mainstream place that even my sister and her friends know about now.
Agreed. But we need a solution against bots just as much. There’s no way the majority of comments in the near future won’t just be LLMs.
Closed instances with vetted members, there’s no other way.
Too high of a barrier to entry is doomed to fail.
Programming.dev does this and is the tenth largest instance.
Techy people are a lot more likely to jump through a couple of hoops for something better, compared to your average Joe who isn’t even aware of the problem
Techy people are a lot more likely to jump through hoops because that knowledge/experience makes it easier for them, they understand it’s worthwhile or because it’s fun. If software can be made easier for non-techy people and there’s no downsides then of course that aught to be done.
Ok, now tell the linux people this.
Yeah that was kinda my point
10th largest instance being like 10k users… we’re talking about the need for a solution to help pull the literal billions of users from mainstream social media
There isn’t a solution. People don’t want to pay for something that costs huge resources. So their attention becoming the product that’s sold is inevitable. They also want to doomscroll slop; it’s mindless and mildly entertaining. The same way tabloid newspapers were massively popular before the internet and gossip mags exist despite being utter horseshite. It’s what people want. Truly fighting it would requires huge benevolent resources, a group willing to finance a manipulative and compelling experience and then not exploit it for ad dollars, push educational things instead or something. Facebook, twitter etc are enshitified but they still cost huge amounts to run. And for all their faults at least they’re a single point where illegal material can be tackled. There isn’t a proper corollary for this in decentralised solutions once things scale up. It’s better that free, decentralised services stay small so they can stay under the radar of bots and bad actors. When things do get bigger then gated communities probably are the way to go. Perhaps until there’s a social media not-for-profit that’s trusted to manage identity, that people don’t mind contributing costs to. But that’s a huge undertaking. One day hopefully…
How is it going to be as big as reddit if EVERYONE is vetted?
Why do you want it to be as big as Reddit?
We also need a solution to fucking despot mods and admins deleting comments and posts left-and-right because it doesn’t align with their personal views.
I’ve seen it happen to me personally across multiple Lemmy domains (I’m a moron and don’t care much to have empathy in my writing, and it sets these limp-wrist morbidly obese mods/admins to delete my shit and ban me), and it happens to many people as well.
Yeah you can go fuck yourself for pinning your flavor of bullshit on ADHD. Take some accountability for your actions.
Instances that don’t vet users sufficiently get defederated for spam. Users then leave for instances that don’t get blocked. If instances are too heavy handed in their moderation then users leave those instances for more open ones and the market of the fediverse will balance itself out to what the users want.
I wish this was the case but the average user is uninformed and can’t be bothered leaving.
Otherwise the bigger service would be lemmy, not reddit.
Just like classical macroeconomics, you make the deadly (false) assumption that users are rational and will make the choice that’s best for them.
The sad truth is that when Reddit blocked 3rd party apps, and the mods revolted, Reddit was able to drive away the most nerdy users and the disloyal moderators. And this made Reddit a more mainstream place that even my sister and her friends know about now.