this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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I’m old enough to have witnessed the early beginnings of the Internet in the 90s - and what’s happening now with the fediverse feels like coming back to its roots.
We may well find that the implosion of Twitter and Reddit - within 6 months of each other - is the beginning of the end for “big tech”. It’s unlikely that it will go away entirely but I do feel a seismic shift happening. I seriously hope that it’s not a false dawn.
Not the end of big tech. You're likely posting from MacOS or Windows and using services like AWS, Azure, or GCP on the sites you use and abuse.
The end of centralized social media though? I hope so.
I'm commenting from Arch Linux. I made the switch two months ago because I'm fed up with M$. What held me back for years was that I like gaming but thanks to Valve/Steam gaming gets better on Linux on a daily basis.
I love Linux, but in reality it still doesn't support enough of the software people use. I own a bunch of audio software, and don't feel like running it on wine or something like that.
Also, even the easiest Linux distros will eventually have an issue that forces you into to using a shell of some sort.. I know a lot of people who would not be able to handle that. Also it can be a massive time commitment for troubleshooting.
Sadly Windows and macOS are (more) reliable
Getting a bit of a downvoting there, @datavoid. I'm a Linux dev that works for a Linux shop that runs Linux on all his machines at home; I personally love the fact that I can send my test team and any customers having problems a list of shell commands to fix it all. (Quite a lot of our customers are more adept than I am, will send me back an improved version.) Much easier than a list of which buttons you have to push and a hundred screenshots, much more flexible when you've dozens of remote servers to deal with. But yeah, if you expect a GUI all the time, it takes a mindset change.
Linux has made enormous improvements in game compatibility recently, to the point that I don't much bother checking ProtonDB any more for most things I'm interested in buying off Steam. But there's still problem areas - funky DRM, very specific performance requirements, and reasonably small target audience - where some games just don't work right, and that's basically the problem checklist for most high-end audio stuff as well. Can probably add a driver requirement for specialist kit, too. Might be a struggle to fix that; requires manufacturer support, and they've not much interest in supporting a small market.
MacOS is built on BSD, which is like Linux but more arcane (sort of). (Edit: also the Android kernel is a Linux kernel). If you don't find yourself using the shell in MacOS (or Android), it's because they've done the work to make it unnecessary. The command line is still there, and can still be used to fix (or cause) problems.
The companies developing your audio software release it for Windows or Mac because that's what the users are running. If the majority of their users were running Linux, they would be releasing Linux binaries.
As for being more reliable... it depends on your use case. Around 79% of all publicly accessible servers on the internet run something Unix-like, with about 38% of the total being Linux. Windows is used for about 21%. In my sysadmin work, I use Windows when it's mandated by the software (again, because the developers chose to release for Windows only, not because the software is fundamentally tied to it), and Linux everywhere else. Reliability is a big part of that decision.
Potentially a large stumble for “big social” I don’t think that the msft/goog/amzns of the world are going to feel this as long as they’re service oriented.. but anyone platform oriented is likely watching this closely. That said I don’t think that twitter is going to “end” anytime soon. But their one company domination over the microblogging space will certainly not be quite so absolute
Someone will try to monetize the fediverse. They may not be successful, but they'll try.
Oh 100%. The beauty is if they try in a way that is harmful to the fediverse at large they will get defederated in a heartbeat.
When I moved to Lemmy and learned about how federated sites like this work I realized how utterly impossible for something like what's happening to Reddit to happen. The biggest obstacle to Reddit users migrating right now is the fact that there's no equivalently sized community to move to.
That would never be the case here. In addition to defederating like you mentioned, users not in the instance in question could easily set up an alternative community, as easy as it would be to open a new sub. Users in the instance in question could easily migrate to another instance. No need to find an alternative platform, no need to make a new account (in most cases), and no need to worry about a new community being active and well established.
While I see downsides to the fediverse, I see some major upsides, especially in the wake of Reddit's implosion.
As long as 1 server doesn't become too dominant. At least, that's how I understand it.
There are probably plenty of ways to do it...but most of the ones I can think of involve catering services to users directly, which is fine with me.
capitalism world we live in
Not necessarily the end, but they're almost certainly going to be diminished for it, probably because the money is beginning to dry up, and the silicon Valley rush seems to be ending.
Everyone these days seems to be trying to invest in AI, rather than just blanket throwing money at new tech companies with the hope of them turning a profit later on.
Reddit and Twitter will probably still be around in some shape or form some years down the line, but they might just be relegated to the background in the same way that Digg is.
Can't wait for the AI and Metaverse bubbles to pop.
Turns out people like working with other people and enjoying reality. I'm darkly amused that "touch grass" has quickly become both an insult and sincere life advice.
I wish I was as optimistic as you. I fear the robot overlords will displace so many jobs civil unrest will be inevitable.
Civil unrest is inevitable. The current system is not sustainable.
Agreed. Big tech platforms make it easy for everyone to participate. But while we gained simplicity, we lost control and independence and creativity. Every website isn't supposed to look the same. And our expression and activity isn't supposed to just be grist for the data mill.
I remember fondly the days of early broadband, when tons of people would run a server on an old laptop for an IRC bot or a shoutcast stream or whatever. We need that back. I hear about people doing that with Lemmy instances and Matrix homeservers and the like and it makes my heart sing.
Twitter and reddit won't implode. But hopefully they keep all the users who just want to mindlessly scroll through low effort content and the smarter ones join the fediverse.
And desire to participate! Commenting on most websites is shouting into the wind. I feel like general engagement has the potential to be better in a decentralised environment.
Agreed. Not just shout into the wind bit really engage and LISTEN as well as talking. Reddit used to have that. It's largely gone away in the last 5ish years :(
Between Lemmy and Blue sky we might get back to a more decentralized social media again. Reddit and Twitter going the way of digg for these two would be a good thing.
On the path to become synonymous with AOL