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[-] CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org 175 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Void_Sloth@lemmy.world 98 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] notsofunnycomment@mander.xyz 20 points 1 year ago
[-] mr_sparkle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

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

I tried apple cider vinegar

[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] mrmanager@lemmy.today 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 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. 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.

[-] matt@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] EricHill78@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I really appreciate this explanation. I was a bit worried about corporations (Meta) taking over myself and now I know it wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve been online since the mid 90s but never learned the ins and outs of how it all works especially when it comes to FOSS.

[-] Iteria@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

I mean there is still the very real threat of niche irrelevance. If enough instances are aligned with corporations, the embrace, extend, extinguish can happen. You really want Independent instances to have at least a 1/3 of the population. Threads is gonna make that extremely tricky when it federates.

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[-] leraje@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

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

They literally can't.

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[-] demonsword@lemmy.world 6 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

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[-] couragethebravedog@lemmy.ml 84 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Spzi@lemm.ee 36 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] atyaz@reddthat.com 9 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.

[-] TwanHE@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] jmanjones@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

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

[-] _spiffy@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

Let's go further! Computers should not come with an operating system installed.

[-] 33KK 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, they shouldn't, unironically

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

careful, there's a lot of Linux users here. you thought you made a good point but you only just gave them erections

better run before they tell you to start using Linux!!

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[-] Ghostc1212@sopuli.xyz 44 points 1 year ago

Because I want there to be shit to do on here

[-] Cabrio@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Send in the clowns!

[-] taanegl@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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

[-] ThinlySlicedGlizzy@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] samokosik@lemmynsfw.com 25 points 1 year ago

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

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 12 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.

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[-] demonsword@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago

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

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

brainless masses

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

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[-] trachemys@iusearchlinux.fyi 12 points 1 year ago

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

[-] krayj@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] mrmanager@lemmy.today 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

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

[-] xkforce@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] mrmanager@lemmy.today 8 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] jiberish@lemmy.world 115 points 1 year ago

Oh no! Not concerns! If only there was an open source, decentralized platform that had an active community that could address said concerns if they become an issue.

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Weird, it's like you only read the title. The article names several things. Data breaches. Unremovable content. And then some stuff that's sort of solved by defederation but still kind of an issue, like moderation.

[-] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is the internet. Data breaches, and unremovable content have been here from the start, including with big tech companies. Also, how is moderation more of a problem here then on dumpster fires like Reddit and Twitter? I don't buy these criticisms of the Fediverse, sorry.

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[-] sturmblast@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Whatever shall we do without our corporate overlords?

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[-] lucidwielder@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Tbh I would rather browse flickr or dpreview when that was a thing than to jump on instagram. Never been on it - but seeing the stuff an ex would post and others I always found it offputting. I am sure it had good pictures on it at one point, but that was so long ago I never had an opportunity to experience it. I assume it was good before facebook bought them.

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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
417 points (100.0% liked)

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