The problem isn’t that the fediverse isn’t viable. The problem isn’t that it’s “too complicated.” The problem is that the giants of Silicon Valley have spent 20 years convincing us that anything outside their control isn’t worth our time.
And that’s just not bloody true.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Exactly! That’s how people usually argue against the Fediverse. People have literally been indoctrinated into believing the internet is centralised.
Our biggest enemy is actually the bootlicker.
Once that guy flips the regime will have hard time maintaining legitimacy
Americans don’t understand the politics of proper opposition and dissent
Voting for the other guy ain’t it… And it is a lot more than “politics” it is a life style.
Deny the parasite profit and engagement
Our biggest enemy is actually the bootlicker
I got a small dose of this at work. My coworker has a safety incident, almost fucked up her hand. She got made the safety champion the next day, and was concerned about the optics.
My lead told her “don’t worry what they think of you” but brother you are a leader. Public perception is your strongest tool. You absolutely should be worried what we think of you
Personally, I prefer an intellectual barrier to entry. It’s one of the things that made the internet of the early days so much better than today.
I was speaking more to the early days of the internet. You had to be relatively smart, and determined to get on it.
It would help to change the nomenclature. Joining a Facebook “group” makes sense to anybody. Change insider jargon like “instance” to seeker-friendly verbiage like “village.”
I remember joining reddit when it had the old interface and thinking that it is super unintuitive and complicated compared to all other social media. This didn’t stop reddit from growing and i don’t think lemmy will be restricted by this in the long run. People generally are just not aware of the fediverse and how it works yet but they will get used to it.
“Lemmy is an alternative to Reddit, you can visit https://phtn.app/ to have a look at the content. If you prefer an app, https://vger.app/settings/install has download links.”
Refugee here. Think I’d agree. A subconscious bias / misunderstanding we bought into
Welcome to Lemmy, here are a few pointers to help you settle in
I jumped over here a couple weeks ago at the request of another redditor and it’s like a breath of fresh air.
I still check out reddit for a couple subs that just don’t have enough interaction over here “yet”.
I’ve mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it’s just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots 🤔
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
I’ve mentioned lemmy a couple times over there and got replies like " it’s just too complicated " etc. and now that I think about it they were most likely bots 🤔
Ima go back to the cesspool and investigate
Feel free to join us on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com
I jumped over here a couple weeks ago at the request of another redditor and it’s like a breath of fresh air.
Literally a breath fresh of air is what I can relate to. I also realized how it’s way way smaller in the size of communities and I appreciate it. My other favorite is no advertisement. I am as well trying to introduce a couple of my friends to move over the Lemmy. It is a little bit of a curve to learn, but it’s not as hard.
Seems like a lot of people will be coming from reddit.
Hopefully some of the niche communities get a little more traffic over here. Most of the subs I visited over there weren’t very toxic and i actually referred to reddit over google for info on a variety of subjects. It’s just hard to support the platform at this point it really went downhill since 14 ~16
I’m the type to beat my head against a wall until the wall breaks. Then through that hole, I lead my friends. Fewer and fewer of my friends follow me through such holes. Last time I did such, I brought all my friends to discord (and now I regret it). It is hard as fuck to convince normies to adopt a new platform. If they’re not already invested, it will take a serious investment for them to give half a shit. I was able to get some people on discord by promising them that I was running a dnd campaign (I was at the time, but it fell apart shortly therefafter), and those people haven’t been on discord since.
How do I convince them that lemmy is the future? I don’t think I can. Fundamentally, lemmy is objectively better than reddit (not for features, but because lemmy won’t ban you for mentioning green mario and other similar administrative bullshits). I wasn’t able to convince them to use reddit back when reddit was good!
It’s the social media equivalent of supporting a bunch of Mom and Pop shops (or opening your own!) vs some hyper-sanitized, corporate monstrosity like Wal-Mart.
There are a lot of people who prioritize convenience above all else. Why go shop at a butcher, baker, green grocer, and a liquor store when you can go to one place and get it all? Doesn’t matter that the separate entities are specialized and therefore more knowledgeable about the product vs. Walmart where asking an employee is the most useless thing ever.
Same with social media or things like Google. People are lazy. Why shop around when Facebook gives you everything? Why learn how to use the address bar when Google will do the work for you.
So the fediverse goes against that in that it asks users to actually think for a moment about things and requires them to shop around… which, that’s just too much work for the average person.
Don’t let the grabbing hands grab all they can.
I am a hostage that has been set free from a prison camp. Thank you Fedi.
The fediverse won’t succeed just because it’s better. It will succeed if and only if people choose it.
Part of that is making it monetizable. Influencers can build huge followings (and make some cash) because existing platforms recommend their content to other users.
Mastodon devs have chosen not to provide recommendations and quote posts. That’s reasonable, but it reduces the utility of the platform, and it cedes space to Twitter & co.
To my knowledge, the only creator that’s exclusive to Lemmy is the unix surrealism author. Until it’s easy to monetize content, we’re gonna have a hard time attracting creators, and a hard time attracting users.
There are a million and one great reasons to be here on Lemmy, but using it to get cash from fellow users wallets is not one of them.
I think we should be realistic. Content costs money because it requires a lot of effort. It’s naïve to think that content would just be created because people feel like posting something. If the Fediverse is to compete with companies like meta, this is only possible if there are opportunities for content creators to earn money. That should be self-evident, but it obviously isn’t here.
I’m not saying it’s necessary, but it is if the Fediverse is to have mainstream appeal.
Simply because the absolute majority of people are out and about where everyone is. And that’s where the content is. That’s the point: if you want good content, it costs money. It’s not just corporations that make a living from it.
What I want to say is this: The Fediverse could provide fairer conditions for the people who produce content. That makes sense and is necessary because the Internet lives from that.
I just don’t understand why people here don’t want to realize that work has to be paid for. That’s really strange.
Things need to be paid for, but why does that mechanism need to be baked into the platform?
Imagine I’m the best, most engaging poster and commenter on Lemmy. Everyone loves my posts and comments, shares them, quotes them, and responds to them endlessly. (Maybe in this scenario everyone has brain damage for some reason, and this allowed me to become the top Lemmy user.)
If I’m in that position, what’s stopping me from just putting a little blurb at the bottom of each comment saying, “this post is brought to you by Carls Jr.” or whoever wants to sponsor my comments. If people for some reason loved my posts and comments enough, I could find sponsors and just put those sponsorships right in whatever comment or post I make. Lemmy doesn’t need to be involved. They don’t need to go out of their way to recommend my posts either. If they’re good enough, then they can be spread naturally by people sharing and engaging with them.
It makes sense for platforms to provider revenue to creators, but only if the platform has substantial ad revenue. YouTube pays its creators, but it also brings in billions of ad revenue. I don’t think most Lemmy servers even have ads.
I hate the idea that everything should be monetised, that only gives us loong videos with laughing heads and so on “to keep you engaged”.
We’re here without all that crap and well the fediverse is definitely less active but it’s content made by people because they like it, they believe in it. Not to shake the money tree.
It’s an interesting take though because a lot of good content requires funding too, as well as hosting etc.
So how can we solve that in a reasonable way that doesn’t lead to all the bullshit?
My take is that hosting is no longer expensive, I have a 30€/month fiber link with 700Mb/s up and could theoretically host my videos for hundreds or even thousands of interested people. At 40€ I can have a 10Gb/s up if needed. That’s a lot of videos served daily.
Now, I also think that the monymaker needing to serve millions of people can go and do that elsewhere.
So what’s missing is a sort of search engine so that when I want to check out fly fishing or knitting I can check out the exquisite videos from the respective community.
Something along those lines.
If people are interested I’ll host their videos, and it shouldn’t be that hard to make them searchable, but for sure, I can’t do it all by myself. What do you think?
I’d rather have one unix surrealism than a thousand influencers with lots of followers. These days, I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way. If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
I want to be among people who interact as equals, who share ideas, who cooperate in a genuine way.
I think online journalism might be a good example of influencers and users interacting as equals. Users provide extra information, ask questions, reify, and help highlight where the journalist can focus. The journalist does the leg work to produce novel news.
If we try a shortcut to more users through money, what is the point?
To build an interesting, self sustaining network, where people can express themselves fully, and understand each other.
The features I’m suggesting would benefit everyone: a decent view of trending topics/posts/tags; mod-controlled tags; stuff like that. Most users would find them helpful, but a few could use it to build a livelihood that others value.
The journalist does the leg work to produce novel news.
Just to add that in addition to novelty, journalists provide valuable services, like
- holding up a mirror to the present culture
- documenting and disseminating happenings
- packaging up events into narratives
Not to say that you weren’t including these in “novel news,” but just to make it explicit.
If the money is freely given as a donation, then I’m with you. If lack of money is what is stopping someone from making things that others are willing to pay to see more of, then sure. But if the only way to do it is to have ads or selling our data etc, then I don’t want that.
I feel like this is comparing the mall to the park.
They both attract people, but not always the same people, or for the same reasons. And that’s OK.
I get what you’re saying though, because I’ve felt this way when trying to come up with reasons for people (sole proprietors) to get with the fedi, but maybe this place is just not for influencers - not like the corp platforms, anyway. I think the fediverse will attract more and more people with its network effects, but probably never all of the people all of the time.
My modest hope is that the fedi bleeds the big platforms just enough to put them in their place and keep from enshittifying to infinity.
maybe this place is just not for influencers - not like the corp platforms, anyway
The things people need to build a livelihood on a platform are quality of life features. In a lot of cases, I think it’s small stuff: being able to reward patrons with a tag on a specific community; automatically highlighting popular posts; making it easy to find a user’s monetization page; etc.
I think the fediverse will attract more and more people with its network effects, but probably never all of the people all of the time.
At the moment, Lemmy is an ad-free version of Reddit missing some community and notification features. There are good political reasons to be here, but that hasn’t driven a sustained increase in users.
So we won’t get critical mass for network effects by being a better Reddit.
One to make the platform self-sustaining (or grow) is to give creators a reason to use the platform, which will give people a reason to come and stay.
It’s not just ad-free, it’s actively anti-corporate, anti-advertising, even anti-monetization. I would go so far as to say even anti-content in some ways. That’s a cultural disconnect that goes beyond tooling.
