It’s rough right now politically in the US. A lot of people around me seem like they’re ready to give up hope. It makes me incredibly angry seeing Zuck up there with all the other billionaires, and Elon is a parasite that has infected the government.
I often find myself wondering how I can make a difference. How can we regain control of our world?
Idk if I’m being dramatic, but the Fediverse really seems like it could be our response to these fuckers controlling the narrative on social media. It could be more than just an interesting decentralized social media platform. I really think this could be a key step in reclaiming our democracy.
Am I being dramatic lol? Do you all feel the same way? I was kinda getting emotional even. Like we could bring real change. That gives me hope, which is something we are desperately lacking right now.
It’s not just Lemmy. It makes me happy to see all the Fediverse platforms (specifically activity pub based) blowing up.
Friendly reminder if you have the financial means, donate to your instance, donate to the Lemmy devs, donate to Pixelfed or any other social media app fighting big social media. And better than a one-time donation, set up a monthly contribution even if it’s just $2/month. It really helps open-source developers when they have a steady income.
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I’m not in the US (thinking of you guys everyday), but when I found myself feeling depressed by the direction of big tech, I realized that open-source and the Fediverse was the healthy and exciting way forwards. It was the one thing that felt like I remember the internet feeling like in the late 90s. I think you are spot on. It is the only way that democracy can survive in tech.
Hope in what sense? Hope that it’s generally possible to connect online without corporate social media? Sure …
Hope that it’ll become a replacement social media at a large scale? Probably not … I think the way push-federation is implemented makes it inconvenient and hard to grasp, and generally people seem to prefer centralized platforms for the sheer convenience of use, which is hard to beat.
So I guess it’ll remain stable in it’s own little niche … which isn’t bad I suppose …
Frankly, it’s stressing me out. The non-stop barrage of Trump, Musk and other bullshit is just a bit too much on here. I get how the platform generally is very left leaning, but it really does feel like the sky is falling every five minutes, you know?
@FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
@moseschrute@lemmy.world sometimes it takes letting it play out for people to remember the leason that history could have thaught them. Do your best now to prepare for some tough times. If you own your home outright, get that basement ready for a renter. If you’ve already leveraged 80% of your home, get out from under that NOW and look for a basement to rent.
Read some Steinbeck. Watch Idocracy. Strike up a conversation with the oldest people you cross paths with about what they remember their parents telling them about the great depression. It’s going to suck, but when someone can convince this many Americans to vote against their own interests their is a more fundamental problem.
I personally take a little joy from the interveiws with people laid off who didn’t realize the company they worked for was producing products for federally subsidized clean energy initiatives.
No.
Yeah, there’s nothing to be hopeful for. The little blips of okayness won’t change that.
Yes. But I’m worried about Big Tech hijacking ActuvityPub and that they enforce the end of net neutrality. EU regulations and investments is our only hope right now.
IMHO there’s still hope in p2p mesh networking. It can’t support high-bandwidth applications, but all the absolutely critical correspondence would work.
Lemmy, the Fediverse, and open source in general too. Every time bullshit happens I find myself more and more replacing closed systems with community-developed and community-run systems. It’s not only the giving back/contributing/being part, and the openness, it’s also that this cannot be taken away so easily. Taken by buying the company, a software update, agreement change or the fact that someday you may not be able to pay your monthly fee and loose access to all your stuff.
It gives me confidence. I know that now that I host my own lemmy, I cannot be randomly banned because I triggered some automatic spam filter with my scripts (happened in reddit), or banned because I talked back to the wrong mod. I know that our internationally distributed nature makes it harder to control top-down, so takeovers like Musk-Xitter are not possible. We can still be affected by disinfo campaigns and troll farms, and we unfortunately have weakened defenses against that, but I’m confident that a lot of smart admins and tooling providers will bunch together to figure out the countermeasures that will work.
oh snap, db0 the person! Love your instance.
How expensive is it to host your own instance? Assuming you aren’t doing it in house.
About 5-20 eur/month should be enough for most instance admins, depending on their provider.
Which do you use?
My setup is quite complex and I have 1000+ MAU so we’re not a small instance anymore. That said we use hetzner, ovh, and mailgun. Our hosting hosts are more than 100 per month but I could probably be running a bit cheaper if I wanted, but this way we have easy growing space.
That’s much more expensive than I would imagine! Hope you are fully funded. You’re the best instance.
I’m curious about this too
Yeah, being banned because a mod didn’t like you was the worst thing on Reddit. Especially if they modded multiple subs and banned you from a subreddit you never even came close to breaking the rules on. Some Reddit mods were just assholes.
i like it here and have no desire to switch over to big tech or any algorithm.
Using the Fediverse feels like a small step in the right direction. Big changes are built on lots of small steps. I would say move in the direction of using the Fediverse more, the old alternatives less, and think of more small steps in the right direction you can do. I don’t think just using the Fediverse is enough, but it is an important step to take. Keep going.
Corporations might accidentally help if they try to make their own instancss, like if you sign up with google to join the fediverse, realize most instances block googles because its corporate, then they make an account at non corporate version.
I think the best way for it to grow would be making it easy to self host, yunohost maes it pretty easy, but more managed hosting options competing or more of the big ones offering it would go a long way.
I agree! Another small step - though I do enjoy the like-minded crowd - would be to get some different perspectives here. Even if I don’t necessarily agree with all those ideas, I don’t think it’s healthy for my own ideas to be trapped in an echo chamber.
No, it’s continued relative unpopularity in the face of universal hated-but-contined-use of the mainstream networks continues to be depressing.
Although the onboarding process for most of the major fediverse platforms is a bit scary for normies.
Lemmy is very harsh to most people. People that think liberal means the Democrats.
It’s not just Lemmy. I was thinking more like Mastodon. Tbh I haven’t tried frendica, but I haven’t heard of anyone actually using it.
At least pixelfed defaults you to the main instance so you don’t have to think about it if you don’t want to. Although the official android app hasn’t worked for me in ages.
the Fediverse really seems like it could be our response to these fuckers controlling the narrative on social media. It could be more than just an interesting decentralized social media platform. I really think this could be a key step in reclaiming our democracy.
Agreed, and I would add that finding ways to get nonprofit news organizations (e.g. ProPublica) and public media (e.g. NPR, PBS, etc.) to host and administer their own instances and to start directing their readers/listeners to those services would be a great way to advance this goal
Yes. The fediverse is a pretty difficult thing to be controlled by a single group: that’s sorta the idea. I see it as almost a refuge from all the bullshit. The lack of ads, tracking, content farming, censorship and control etc is refreshing. Here’s to hoping the fediverse continues to spread.
There’s plenty of censorship here though. Some instances are worse than others but even on a community basis, your average moderator is just some random dude who is free to remove your posts/comments and ban you just because they don’t like something you said and there’s not really anything you can do about it.
Not all moderation = censorship 🙄 You play by the rules or you face the consequences. Nowhere on the planet are the consequence-free zones - at least not forever.
If you really want fediverse instance where absolutely everything is permitted, make it. I bet you after the first CP post you’ll rethink your stand on “all moderation = censorship”.
Yeah but there are a few notorious large instances that censor things that aren’t stated in their rules at all.
Like criticising china or russia will get you banned from the ML instances but their rules don’t mention that.
Oh yeah, for sure(I blocked the lemmy.ml and lemmygrad instance). But there is a difference between censorship and moderation.
But the point is, you have freedom to choose whatever instance and thus whatever level of moderation you want. I’m not saying censorship is impossible here, that’s just not the argument. The thing is, you aren’t locked in to the control of a specific group/owner/company. If you don’t like the way things are being run, skip to somewhere else, or alternatively make your own instance.
For people who value freedom the most, you can choose a platform with less moderation, and thereby accepting the risks that come with it. For people who value a more safe, stable and curated platform, choose one with more/stricter moderation.
You only have the freedom to choose if you have the freedom to be fully informed. If the instance you are on has “unofficial” rules they enforce, and they remove any comments of anyone discussing those “unofficial” rules. Then it is not moderation — but censorship.
Yeah, I can totally see how that could be an issue. You’re right, my bad. Just wondering if there is any way to truly beat censorship if this is the case?
The decentralisation of the fediverse works well.
Ie. taking my previous example of lemmy.ml censoring any criticism of Russian and Chinese imperialism, under instance rule 1 which is basically “no bigotry”.
Well I’m not on lemmy.ml, and if I talk about it in non-lemmy.ml communities, lemmy.ml admins probably won’t bother banning me — that would be too much effort, so if a lemmy.ml user ventures to communities on other instances, they can learn about this censorship.
(sidenote: I wonder if !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is blocked by ML admins, afaik it isn’t)
That’s quite the number of assumptions you made there
Not all moderation = censorship
It is, by definition.
Let’s not argue semantics and argue realistic uses of moderation.
If you don’t want to argue about it then don’t bring it up.
Lmao are you censoring me, telling me not to bring it up? Weak.
I told you not to bring it up because you said you didn’t want to argue about it. Censorship would be if I removed your comment.
Do paste the definitions and sources here.
Help yourself.
No thank you. I’m not going to waste my time to try and find your made up definition of censorship.
Yeah I didn’t think so. God forbid you actually learn something. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
It does give me hope, but I also worry it may be a double edged sword and opening pandora’s box. There are way too many ideologies here that aren’t democracy. Given how easy the public was brain washed by Trump, I fear this may be an avenue to expose those people to things that probably shouldn’t even be crossing their minds.
I like Fediverse because I get much better engagement with people here than anything else
I made a post about a blender project I am working on from my Mastodon and tagged the Lemmy community. This project is pretty dear to my heart, and I wanted it to be seen by many people, so I made the same post on Reddit.
I got 35 stars on Mastodon + 80 upvotes on Lemmy + many cool comments.
I got literally no upvotes on Reddit. maybe skill issue on my side but the Fediverse is, in my general experience, so much better when it comes to engagement.
It’s cause no one on Reddit goes past r/hot on their sorts. If it isn’t found by people in New and given an initial boost, it dies there. Plenty of stuff has died with 3 up votes while a repost that has a bot farm behind it hits r/all every other week. Reddit now is a feed people scroll with no interaction; bots with an agenda and a select few users interact with stuff.
It feels much more social being here not despite the smaller audience, but because of it.
People have time to respond to me if I have a question, and I have time to give really good and complete responses to anyone that asks me about something I post.
It’s nice, but it doesn’t really give me hope. Lemmy is good because it’s not mainstream. Once it got relevant, it would turn into today’s reddit. And if it, by chance, evolved into relevant opposition, I believe it would be easy for billionaires to destroy, despite the decenzralized character. It could also be used for curbing the opposition by gathering information about it. There’s no way to hide from people with enough money.
What’s wrong with being the next Reddit
In my opinion reddit was bad because of the closing of the source, and centralization and administration by a single corporation interested in profits, which results in the cesspool we know reddit as today. it wasn’t bad because of the format that lemmy replicates as a link aggregator, so I agree with you on this point.
