Why YSK: If we want to keep the Fediverse in the hands of its users and prevent “enshittification” (search it), it’s good to know how corporations kill grassroots projects like this.
I saw this in another thread on /c/Showerthoughts. I think it’s important for this to be circulated widely so that the broader Fediverse community is aligned. We don’t want admins second-guessing their decisions when users start infighting. We should be united in our thinking and ready to protect our platform.
Remember that Reddit also started off small, then grew, then got bought, then turned into shit (*). However, I think that Lemmy has a greater chance of surviving as long as people keep everything truly decentralized. We shouldn’t all flock to “lemmy.world” or any other one Lemmy instance. Because if we do, that specific Lemmy instance will also be sold (along with the userbase) and turned into a corporate money-making machine.
(*) Some would argue that Reddit has always been shit, but that’s besides the point…
Super interesting read. Points out that the main strategy for gobbling up open source protocols is to adopt the standard, then expand on it, creating a “better” version for those using their ecosystem (and driving out those who aren’t)
I just wonder, hope, that this ecosystem stays innovative and big enough to always be better than corporate alternatives. We’ve sorta hit the point in my mind where the major players in social media have made all their products… Awful. Just terrible to be on. The tracking, the ridiculous amounts and types of ads, the constant censorship and rule > changes, all in pursuit of monetization. I just hope they continue to shoot themselves in the foot too much to draw people back in even if they’re federated. Reddit sucks now, Twitter is failing, everything of Meta has sucked for a long time. Hopefully people agree moving forward that open source replacements are good enough and being enough benefits to push these turds out. I’m sick of the internet being controlled by massive corporations.
Well that was disheartening to read. Money and greed ruining everything.
Great read!
I remember me using software called trillian that supported logins to all chat networks, so I could use ICQ, Google, MSN and AOL all at the same time
I also remember when XMPP wa still the cool kid on the block. Gtalk and other chat networks supported it and allowed federation. I tan my own XMPP server and could talk to users on other servers and even networks. But then Google cut the federation and eventually all external access.
It could have been the next email, but big corporations were already in the chat space and they all walked in their user base.
I’m fairly certain that if email (SMTP) hadn’t been the dominant protocol, we would have walled gardens there as well.
the internet without the existance of email as a de-facto proof of identity and account recovery protocol would certainly be interesting.
almost every single site these days requires you to have an email to sign up. it would be interesting to know what system we would have used instead if email wasn’t an option.
Oh man, I remember Trillian, too. That was great. Must have been a nightmare to build, though
It was “just” a bunch of clients in one though, AFAIK it couldn’t connect people from different protocols.
Pidgin still exists; I used it probably 20 years back on Linux.
This was a great article… thanks OP.
