In the beginning, it was just me. When I joined Lemmy what I really missed about reddit was the ‘curated twitter’ subs where every post was just a nice little thought someone had had. There were meme communities already but nothing quite right, it was mostly deep-fried shitposting. I think this was even before the new WhitePeopleTwitter started on sh.itjust.works but I’m not sure.
I didn’t want to start a new WhitePeopleTwitter, for three reasons - it wasn’t my sub on reddit so it didn’t feel appropriate to stage a “take over” of that name here; I didn’t want to specify “white people” in the title, and I also didn’t want to reference “twitter” because microblogging is bigger than twitter now and I didn’t want to contribute at all (even if a little bit) to the idea that twitter is the default option for microblogging.
So MicroblogMemes was born! In the early days it was just me posting a bunch of screenshots every day and we didn’t need any rules. I didn’t want to act like this was some big formal endevour and add a ton of detailed rules for everyone to follow, and since then I’ve only added rules when I’ve had to moderate something and someone complained.
The reason I’m making this post is because we have a new rule - no advertising. I personally am not interested in seeing posts from brands pretending to be people. The likes of Wendy’s, KFC, Microsoft, etc have advertising budgets that run collectively into the billions and I just don’t want adverts disguised as content here.
Yesterday someone posted this:
To me this is pretty much just advertising. A member of the community reported it, and I removed the post with the comment ‘hail corporate’.
For fully transparency this exchange then occured (read from the bottom):
I’ve basically explained my reasoning for this approach already but, in short, I have tiny, tiny amount of power on the internet to create a space with fewer adverts and that’s what I’m going to do. Be the change and all that.
I often think about this quote from Banksy:
Not really sure why I felt the need to post all this but there you go. If anyone disagrees with any of this please let me know in the comments and we can work it out :)
Just to say, I massively prefer the name ‘microblogmemes’ over ‘whitepeopletwitter’. That was always a weird one - posts didn’t always involve white people, didn’t always come from Twitter (which - technically - doesn’t even exist anymore) and seemed based on a petty misunderstanding of what Black People Twitter was.
FWIW, I agree with you about the Denny’s post. I’m also the moderator of a community that Stamets has quit, so I know that losing him is a blow, because he posts a lot of content. But I also know that he’s a complicated human.
That Banksy quote really is just utterly and thoroughly fantastic.
I was hoping to find it as a microblog post somewhere and actually post it to the community but couldn’t. This will do!
There should be no small number of people here who escaped Reddit because they didn’t want ads in their face. I appreciate the blanket statement calling them out and banning them.
We did a bunch of research into alternative toilet paper when we leaned about how it’s usually cut from old-growth trees. Looked at a bunch of brands, compared recycled benefits to bamboo, and price compared to find one that was actually cheaper than the Charmin at Walmart if bought in bulk.
I posted my resulting find in TIL on Lemmy.world, and it was deleted as an ad. I only ask you be careful with this one.
Which brand?
I use a bidet, so I use a roll a month (2 person house), but every bit helps.
I’m legitimately interested. Some time ago my wife started buying Plant Paper (I think that’s the name), and like… it’s whatever. I think it’s a bit scratchy, but our water is too cold to install an unheated bidet, and our house is too old to make doing electrical work worth it.
An alternative would be rad.
Cloud Paper. Feels a lot like Charmin Extra Strong but a bit more stretchy and durable. When bought in counts of 80 it came out cheaper.
Unfortunately I put all the content directly into a post instead of an MD like an idiot, so I don’t have all the details with me.
I don’t think you did anything wrong, and I probably would have done the same thing, but in retrospect (of reading those DMs), it might have been better to let that one post naturally fade away and apply the rule to future posts after publically setting the rule.
I dunno, maybe not… I’m pretty against seeing ads on here too. I’m more of a commenter than a poster, so maybe it’s nothing to do with me.
Appreciate your taking the time to do all this work out in the open! I don’t think you’re running a fiefdom.