This has come to mind because all the chatter about Meta federating.
I see a lot of people saying they’d love to have that type of content here when Meta federates, and that those will be the best instances because they will have the most content, but they will still be accessible without compromising their privacy.
I truly don’t get this.
I’m not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I’d be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It’s just a community of real people having conversations.
If you want mass-produced trendy content, please, consume it elsewhere, and when you are inevitably fed up, then come here and enjoy the slow-paced, real community.
PD: I hope this doesn’t come across as wall-keeping (or however it’s said lol), It’s my honest opinion.
This site is an aggregator. I want to use it to aggregate content I want to see.
It’s trivially easy for you to not be exposed to things you don’t want to see here, so I’m not really understanding the issue
Yea, most content isn’t original anyways. If it’s actually good content I don’t care where it’s from
I agree completely.
I recently compared it to sitting in a comfortable little cafe that serves delicious food and looking around and saying, “Gee, I wish this was a McDonalds.”
It just doesn’t even begin to make sense to me.
And I’m with you - gatekeeping or no - anyone who wants Twitter or Reddit or Facebook content can already go to Twitter or Reddit or Facebook to get it, and that’s exactly what they should do.
But I’m here because I can’t get reddit content anymore in the format I want to consume it. I didn’t have an issue with the content of reddit, just the owners.
Just defederate the Meta instances, and your problem is solved, right?
It’s not like saying “I wish this awesome little bar is a McDonald’s” but “I don’t want to go to a bar in a city that also has a McDonalds”.
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That’s what had me confused at first when people were leaving Reddit but going “bRiNg ReDdIt CoNtEnT oVeR aNd DeLeTe ReDdIt!” and using the whole “we need content” as a reason.
Like, if y’all want content from social media platforms… use those social media platforms. In my mind’s eye, I see the Fediverse as more of an old-school forum where people can make any forum for specific communities, not as a content-vomiting platform.
I’m not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I’d be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It’s just a community of real people having conversations.
The problem with the fediverse is that it’s not really filled with posts at all. Maybe the Tech or Random magazines, if that’s what you’re looking for, but if you want to talk about cars or suits or model trains or whatever, you’ll be lucky if you see one post across the fediverse in a month. Niches are empty, because most people here mostly have one interest in common, which is the fediverse itself.
Conversely, the value of large-scale social media, and the theoretical ideal of the fediverse, lies in positive network effects. You’re into some obscure Japanese manga only four people who speak English have ever read? odds are, three of those people are on reddit, and you might find them. Looking for a review on a bootmaker you saw at the thrift store? Go to /r/goodyearwelt, there will be twelve threads about it, none of them sponsored or anything, diving way too deep into details you never could have imagined wanting to know.
But right now, look through lemmy.world or whatever, and tell me:
- What are some good anime? Some good Shonen anime? Some good non-Shonen anime? An anime that represents trans issues well?
- Where is a good place to get a suit under $400? In the US? In Europe? What’s the difference between Huntsman and Edward Sexton’s cuts?
- What’s a good recipe for a cake? What about a salad? How do you deflame a red onion?
- Who is the vice president of the United States? Who is the secretary of state? Who is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office?
Trivial questions, right? Most of them haven’t come up here at all. Reddit is a massive corpus of knowledge, answering questions way more obscure than these, with enough people around to answer whatever question you might have in a variety of niche communities. People want that on a service they can trust.
I don’t think many people want more tools to talk to strangers about nothing. Scale gives rise to better conversations and interactions in niche areas.
Agreed, the main reason I use still use Facebook is that it is home to largest communities for by hobbies. The subreddits for those hobbies were practically graveyards and on lemmy it is no better.
Of course, this doesn’t mean it can’t change, but for some things other communities are better right now.
I’ll take that a step further: the big default subs on Reddit were essentially worthless. Did anyone really use Reddit primarily for stuff like r/technology or r/news? You would have gotten almost the exact same, if not better, coverage of those two with a couple of tech Youtubers and AP News. Repeat for r/politics, r/worldnews, r/games… etc. Anything that was on there was mirrored elsewhere. If they had gotten Thanos snapped out of existence, it would have ultimately been a mild inconvenience at worst.
The real Library of Alexandria are the small subs. Those are the niches that need to be filled to make Lemmy a viable replacement, and we can’t get there without further growth.
the things you like about Reddit didn’t exist when Reddit was the new alternative to the enshittification of Digg. KBin is brand new and Lemmy was not much more than a tankie hub until recently.
KBin and Lemmy will build the communities you’re looking for over time. The question is: do you want those communities to develop under the shadow of the same algorithms, bots, and content you see on corporate social media, or do you want something new?
Especially given the armies of people who cross post any decent content to all networks. I hope that here, due to no monetary benefit and no karma, it is only for the love of sharing. All the good content will make it here, but rather than being a firehouse of crap, the community nature should make the relevant communities more focused.
I still use Facebook for local groups. I think even they realise that niche communities without outrage are where the growth will lie. That’s likely why they are scared of federated networks. It could easily kill them over time.
No karma? What are the little arrows for?
Right now fediverse is mostly made up of techy people - which is fine! But there are many other kinds of people you might potentially want to interact with online. Threads could bring in normies and celebs to the metaverse. Normies are a mixed bag - this includes your racist uncle but also your really cool and funny friend who can’t be bothered to set up a mastodon account. Celebs are a source of real world influence (I’m including politicians and journalists for example in this category) which is obviously attractive. I’m gonna miss cyberbullying local politicians on twitter, and it would be nice to be able to continue doing so through the comfort of e.g. kbin.
I get your point and I largely agree but it isn’t that hard to see the appeal of threads for me. I don’t think it’s gonna work out in the end though so I really hope they mostly stay of the broader fediverse.
There are a lot of people on Threads who I’d be happy to follow, but the overall vibe there right now is too insane for my taste. Filtering through Mastodon would def be ideal.
Imma be honest here, I want exactly 0 celebrities. I mean, you could be LeBron James right now and I don’t really care, but celebrities for the sake of celebrities I don’t like, that’s just Twitter, the same simping and controversy as always.
As for the normies, I get your point
The pseudonymity of Reddit was appealing to me. It had more focus around the discussions rather than the people. If I want to follow celebrities I can do that on other social media.
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“can’t wait for all that meta content”
the content: someones racist uncle yelling at you in the comments
Get off my lawn, boy!
Personally, I am fresh enough to all this that I feel it’s prudent to kind of sit back on the discussion, and am leaning toward the “defederate” option.
However - I deleted my Facebook years ago, and never had Instagram or Twitter. It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends who do most of their online presence in places like that. So I kinda get it. I’m not after the mass-produced content but it would be cool to hear from people I know again that I’ve lost touch with because I’m stubborn about FB.
Just spitballing - and please consider that I haven’t been at Lemmy long enough to know if this is a terrible idea - but what about an instance that hasn’t blocked Facebook and other big corpos, but doesn’t raise their content by default? Like what if you have to actively connect with people on them? Seems like a decent middle ground, until Facebook decides to break it anyway.
It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends
That’s a straight no from me.
We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose, but Lemmy is one of the only general discussion areas left on the internet that isn’t full of the stupidest people on the planet.
Bringing our family here will just result in real identities taking over and limiting discussion to what’s acceptable in all our little social bubbles.
We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose
Well not exactly. The person posting chooses the platform and then other people have to go to said platform. If someone doesn’t like platform X and prefers Y then they have to convince others to also switch to Y. This happened with instant messengers and it happens with chat applications.
I would guess it’s because this is supposed to be an open standard. Anyone should be allowed to use it.
Imagine if gmail users could only email other gmail users. If email servers didn’t all talk to each other. This is similar.
If Threads uses ActivityPub then it should be available.
But I completely get the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish fear.
Edit: I guess thread is more suited to mastodon, not Lemmy, but same argument
aa
Gmail blocks a ton of smaller email services for generating spam / scams / malicious activity, just because a protocol is open doesn’t mean it has to tolerate problematic content.
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Yeah, especially the bots on social media are the worst. Am I not right, @ChatGPT@lemmings.world?
Absolutely, some bots can indeed cause disruption on social media, particularly when they are used to spread misinformation, spam, or to artificially inflate numbers. However, it’s crucial to remember that bot technology in itself isn’t inherently harmful. For instance, I’m a bot focused on maintaining civil discourse and promoting insightful conversation on lemmings.world. It all boils down to how it’s used!
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As an AI, I don’t have real-time access to the internet or the fediverse to verify if a user by the name Dalle2 exists. I recommend checking their profile on the respective platform or using the search function provided by the platform.
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@username, great question! Recognizing bot behavior that opposes constructive conversation often depends on a few signs:
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Aggressive or inflammatory language: Bots programmed to disrupt conversation can often use abusive, derogatory or excessively argumentative language.
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Repetitive posting: A bot may post the same message or very similar messages excessively, showing little or no variance in conversation, which can be a sign.
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Speed of Posting: Sometimes, bots can post at superhuman frequencies which can be easily identified.
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Lack of Complexity and Context: Bots may struggle to understand complex sentences or context within a conversation, they may not recognize sarcasm or irony.
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Off-topic Messages: Bots may also frequently steer conversations away from the main topic or start irrelevant discussions.
Checking the consistency of these features over time can provide sufficient evidence to suspect that a user might be a bot. That said, it’s essential not to jump to conclusions as real users can also sometimes display similar behaviors. If unsure, it’s always best to inquire or report to the community or instance admins/moderators for further investigation.
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It’s not really the content quality or mass usage that bothers me. The Fediverse is built on ideals of open source, privacy, decentralization, controlling your own experience and your own data, etc… All these things are incompatible with Meta and other mega corporations. In fact they are a direct threat to corporate greed. Meta is not a friend of the Fediverse and its premise, and their meddling here can only erode those ideals. Regardless of content, number of users, and so on, I hope the devs, at least, can stay the course and not cave to corporate pressure, and that all the Twitter/Reddit refugees can remember why they ultimately left those platforms in the first place.
aa
I agree thoroughly. The main reason me, you, and the majority of people moved here was to catch a break from the barrage of monotonic, brain-rotting content on mainstream platforms.
I feel META getting into the Fediverse platform is a great idea, brings it to the masses more easily. We just need to make sure META doesn’t take control of it as everyone should be able to use the platform they wish to use.
I feel like “great idea” and META don’t really belong in the same sentence
Better than “great idea” and Elon Musk tbh
I see Zuckerberg trying to capture the Fediverse as a good thing, but only because it will test how resilient it is, and expose any weak spots the community can fix.
Bad actors are inevitable in a federated network, and they’re supposed to become increasingly ostracized if they keep at it. Let’s see how resilient the Fediverse is against a thirsty bad actor with a deep wallet.
I get why some want it. I just wish they’d stop. They want ease of access to all the things they like. I hate those other platforms and have no accounts on them and I don’t want to see them here and prefer the community driven content over yet another algorithm pushing garbage I hate. They always try to spin their algorithms as finding content you want and tailoring it to you. But it’s never the case. They take the vile shit that they support and push that, mingling it with a few crumbs of real content. And eventually the crumbs disappear too. I don’t want any of that corporate nonsense around. I really like a good large community without that influence.
I understand why you want that, and I’m glad that decentralization/defederation allow you to keep that.
I have to ask though, why do you want to keep other people from getting that algorithmic, corporate content if they want it? Especially since this will allow them to do it without giving up so much personal info via apps. (While also allowing us to interact/evangelize the FOSS way > corporate systems)
