The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied.
The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied.
For years, the internet has been shrinking. Not in size, not in data, but in ownership. A vast, decentralized network of personal blogs, forums, and independent communities has been corralled into a handful of paved prison yards controlled by a few massive corporations. Every post, every “friend,” e...
This reads like an angry old man complaining how the internet was better back in my day. It may have been better, but it didn't have every human being plus armies of bots. It was not user friendly. It was hard. So hard most people didn't bother with much more than email. Neither is the fediverse easy. Facebook, xitter, reddit, Instagram etc... they are as easy as passively watching television or listening to radio. They require no thought, or even much interaction. There are so many trackers across the web that they already know you and what bullshit you'll eat. That's both their greatest secret to success and their greatest danger to society.
I grew up in the age of Internet forums, in the ancient days of the late '90s-early-00's before the (Eternal September) Smartphone dumped every human being onto the landscape.
Having small communities is so much better. I often hear people complain that Lemmy isn't big because there are not communities with 3 million people like there are some subreddits. Much of the reason that Reddit is shit is because of how big it is.
On the old Internet, you could know the people who were part of the community. I have old friends, that I've known for 20+ years, that I met playing MUDs on BBSs. Now, I couldn't tell you the name of a single person that I've ever interacted with on social media in the past year.
Digg and Reddit came on the scene and pulled a huge crowd because we didn't have The Algorithm to recommend content and these link aggregation sites were the first time people got a taste of that kind of 'See all of the newest things from every corner of the Internet in a single place, curated by a process that produces good quality results' that we now just expect from recommendation algorithms.
The old communities were essentially starved of population. Nobody wants to take the social effort required to become part of a community when they can just scroll Reddit mindlessly.
There's very few people that even had a chance to experience the magic of spontaneous communities full of people working together.
If you still want a taste, check out the Something Awful forums.
The barrier to entry is higher: you have to learn the rules (read the rules), the social norms and there is a $10 one-time fee (so getting banned has some sting to it, read the rules).
In exchange you get an actual community of people. Many of the people posting there (or, in the various Discords now because that's a thing) have been on SA since they were edgy teenagers and are now professionals with careers. That isn't to say that there are not trolls and assholes, those exist in any community, but there's a much higher ratio of good to bad posters.
One of the interesting decisions that they do is that rulebreaking posts are rarely ever deleted. If a person is probated (temp ban) or banned, their comment stays up with a "(User was Probated/Banned for this post)" edited into the post so you can see, and hopefully learn, from the bad behavior. In addition, there's a 'Wall of Shame' section where you can see everyone who's been actioned against, who the moderator was and the moderation reason.
I've always hated the fact that comments on Reddit just disappear. You can never see what a mod removed and there is no reason why it is removed. This allows all kinds of bad and manipulative behaviors to be done by people with moderation access.
I'm also from that era of the Internet and you're so right about smaller communities being better. One great example was Wil Wheaton's phpBB forum. Probably a hundred active users including Wil and we all got along and more or less policed ourselves.
(Plus I helped him out with some car trouble. Let me repeat that: I helped Wesley Crusher with an engineering problem. One of my proudest moments.)
One of the interesting decisions that they do is that rulebreaking posts are rarely ever deleted. If a person is probated (temp ban) or banned, their comment stays up with a “(User was Probated/Banned for this post)” edited into the post so you can see, and hopefully learn, from the bad behavior. In addition, there’s a ‘Wall of Shame’ section where you can see everyone who’s been actioned against, who the moderator was and the moderation reason.
That's a really great feature.
I avoided forums growing up because from what I've witnessed there was a lot of verbal abuse and so on, but I was into "communities" (basically closed social network long before I heard of myspace or facebook).
For example, I listened to a lot of hip-hop as a teenager. there was no meta algorithm feeding me garbage, but there was a hip hop community website :) It felt more intimate or homegrown if you will.
I also grew up with forums, but I always hated them tbh. Small communities aren't inherently better, back in the day there were so many horrible forums for smaller stuff. Every forum had a different culture and most of them were frankly disgusting. Absolutely rampant racism, sexism and homophobia that would put even the worst subreddits (or even fucking 4chan) to shame. Also mods and admins who wouldn't allow any views opposing their own, to a degree much, much worse than on reddit seen today.
Smaller subforums on one big platform are the solution imo. A sub with millions of people is gonna suck, an isolated forum with ten thousand people is also gonna suck, while a sub with that number could be an amazing place on a website with millions of users. That's how it is on reddit right now. There are plenty, they're just drowned out by all the garbage.
Personally, I also don't want that "community" feel you speak so highly of. I just want to be informed about the things I like and discuss it openly while remaining anonymous. I have communities irl if I want to connect with people, I don't need or want that online.
Listen, I am a Lemmy supporter at the highest level. I believe that the Fediverse model for social media is the next step in evolution for the industry. But Lemmy itself, in terms of the front end, is a near exact copy of Reddit. And was created, at least in part, with the idea that from the beginning, it couldn't be heavily monetized and become a profit-driven and publicly traded company. That it wouldn't sacrifice the quality of the product and lead to the enshittification of the service like so many other digital offerings.
But currently, if you were to compare Reddit and Lemmy. Reddit's digital content offerings are significantly better than Lemmy's. Which makes sense. Reddit has been around for much longer than Lemmy and is much more known by the general public. It has a much larger user base as a result. Which for a user generated content platform is everything when it comes to the pool of individuals that can generate and submit interesting content.
Lemmy was the first Fediverse that actually worked for me, because I don’t like Twitter and don’t care to follow randos I’ve never heard of. I like anonymous forums.
Having more people does help, but only to a certain extent. At some point, it just becomes difficult to moderate and having a higher number of casual users that don’t give a shit about the rules.
The thing that I am still struggling to wrap my smooth brain around, is that I have an account on a widely federated lemmy instance. Allegedly, I should also see content from mastadon and other federated services. How do I do that? How would I even phrase the question so that a search engine could provide useful results?
actually, imma ask chat gpt. if it spits out anything usefull, i'll report back.
You'll only see posts from Mastodon on Lemmy if they get posted on a Lemmy community I think
Where moving from one service to another doesn’t mean losing everything you’ve built and everything you’ve ever said.
I generally agree with this post, but this isn't true. It would require portable identities.
This is the most often cited reason that celebrities, reporters etc. say that keeps them from using Mastodon.
People ignore the needs of the vast majority of the userbase to the peril of us all. Mastodon could have worked to reach out to those content creators to give them what they demanded as a deal breaker, but instead now we've lost them to Bluesky and will in all likelihood have to wait for enshittification of that platform to ever have another chance at that.
Likewise the Threadiverse works for us who use
ArchLinux btw, and to have conversations with internet randos (we are downright kind here, or at least we can be, although that's virtually gone over on Reddit, outside of tiny niche subs with barely any content, much as we have here:-), but I don't know how we can attract the content creators, especially when the audience for their content is not enough for them to bother with (AND it's "too complex to use" - I mean it's not, except... isn't it though? Like where's the modmail? or a notification if your comment gets removed/locked? why does viewing it from different instances show different sets of comments, and also different upvotes/downvotes?!? why does join-lemmy website want to send me to Lemmy.ml, and why oh why didn't someone tell me that I can't criticize Russia, China, or North Korea there!? It would have been nice if that had been WRITTEN DOWN SOMEWHERE!?!? maybe the side-bar would have been a good place to put it, like the "Rules" section?!?).The experience on Lemmy (unlike Linux, no /s here) is objectively terrible, it's just that we here prioritize different factors and are willing to put up with its many (Many MANY) inconveniences in order to use a FOSS platform. But others have their own priorities, and that's okay - everyone should be free to use what they want. The downside to that is that outside of Linux and generic content like memes and news, there is very little content available here, especially for niche interests. Hence why the content creators remain on Reddit bc that's where their audience is (except the ones who simply unplugged from social media entirely). i.e. fuck spez, but... also, he was right. He really can treat his users poorly, and enough of them will remain to keep it afloat, rather than come here where it's "difficult to use", and Lemmy moves very slowly to address those needs (e.g. to allow for account migration, where e.g. messages sent to the old place will be forwarded to the new).
"Portable identities" is a major feature of Mastodon and ActivityPub platforms in general. It'll be on Lemmy one day too.
Honestly lemmy specifically is good enough to scratch my Reddit itch. We may not be able to post our way out of fascism, but we can certainly post our way out of the centralized, enshittified platforms like Reddit where we came from.
I think it's more difficult in applications where you want or have to bring a lot of friends to make the apps useful, but in the case of lemmy specifically if there's a baseline level of activity that's enough to fulfill 90% of what i used Reddit for (i.e. snarky memes and random back and forths with relative strangers).
The infrastructure is there, and most of the features are there, but the content comes from content creators and they're not here yet.
For example, we have grimdank, but we don't have vezimira and emmawatnot. We have users who repost their content, but they're not posting here directly.
You can be a content creator. It's not that difficult to post a meme. Content creators aren't another species.
That's the spirit. Reddit and all other social media died for me during the exodus 1 1/2 years ago. Since then i go to lemmy and I'm fine. Tbh I'm not really sure if more user will not also pull commercial interests into the fediverse and if that is something I'm looking forward to, but for now, everything seems like reddit around 2010, not too big but big enough to not being out of content after scrolling for 10 mins.
Yep, dont really use mastodon or even bluesky, my twitter groupchat is still my hs friends and I like it when they arent talking about sports. I do post there more than I do on X, I miss twitter I used to tweet so much, before the changes. (Stopped seing friends likes on my feed, I followed funny ppl and without that it was over)
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
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!
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 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.
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 [email protected]
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
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 don’t think it’s too complicated, but it is noticeably more complicated than joining traditional social media. People often get immediately freaked out by the whole concept of instances. I know everybody keeps trying to use the email comparison, but that just is not working. People cannot connect the dots between email and something like Instagram.
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."
I lately have a saying:
"If it's not FOSS, it's not worth your time"Well said indeed
I would argue it is closer to 60 years.
I hated forums. I was part of one which got take over by right wing mods since the owner was pro religion+nationalism. All the good people left and it is dead now. I love reddit because it is not personal, I don't know anyone unlike in a forum with 50 active users, you become a regular and before you know it, people make it their personal agenda to attack you because you are a libtard as they used to call me.
I have to disagree with you there, small niche communities for your interests free of outside influences are always nice as a safe harbor. Sure occasionally it gets taken over by assholes, but you can always find another. Reddit being a central area for communication leaves it way to open for abuse by power hungry people or people pushing a political / social agenda no matter what side of the spectrum they're on.
Obligatory [email protected]
Not one mention to moderation. The strength and focus of our "small isles" is on taking control of moderating the contents. We can stop fascists posts, and we can share alternative narratives (e.g. solarpunk) to Sillicon Valley. Plus, spoiler alerts as content warnings, etc. I think mastodon with their covenant is the greatest example of this ethos.
I love the user level control. block urls, instances, communities, users. I really would love like trust cafe where you can rank things from 0-100 where 0 is block and 100 is subscribe and your feed will prioritize posts from things you rank higher for the in between values.
The closest I've seen to that is PieFed, which offers something like multi-Reddits (categories of communities aka Topic areas), and word filtering where you can limit posts with the likes of "Trump" or "Musk" by either a little bit or all/none. So if you feel like avoiding news and politics (for ten fucking minutes!:-P) then you can go to e.g. Arts & Crafts, or for longer set one of those filters, yet return to seeing them later anytime you want.
Mind you, in some small ways PieFed is not as polished as Lemmy - e.g. there's a preview feature for posts but not for comments - while in other ways it's already more advanced, and being written in Python rather than Rust, will continue to move forward with new features much more quickly.:-)
on taking control of moderating the contents. We can stop fascists posts
.ml tankies and right-wingers: "Wouldn't that be....CeNsOrsHiP"
Can we stop it with the low effort dunks?
I know you jest but I will note that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence, if you say something abhorrent enough and I decide that you in fact are a threat that deserves to be gutted then I am in my right to take said action and face said consequences myself.
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.
It's more like supporting "open to all" maker spaces. Many contribute to what's there and its existence itself.
I’m mixed on her articles. Is she a journalist or is she just posting fediverse circle jerk on the fediverse? She writes well but feels like pretty much the same article every time
I'm actually a fan, but I get what you mean. I feel like she just writes what's on her mind, when she's writing for her named website. Her writing for The Index is a bit more by the books internet journalism.
And yeah I agree sharing this on here is a bit of a circle jerk, but articles like this get shared around in the mainstream and show people still captured by the big platforms another way. I've definitely emailed a couple of her articles around to friends, and I can't be the only one.
I liked her enough to follow on Mastodon so I’m with you there. Thanks for explaining that. I didn’t realize she had her own site and her own publication.
I didn’t mean just sharing here but she frequently writes on exactly this topic then shares to mastodon then here. Almost like all the HN posts sharing their own blogs about why blogging is good, lol. Which I still enjoy.
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.
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.
We wanna grow too and hopefully be a place with more authentic conversations (better anti-bot defenses) - hyperbolic to say “future’s at stake”?
I think truly delightfully UX would be very yuge. I should learn and contribute :)
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.
The unix surrealism Lemmite is awesome. They deserve my donations. Saying that people shouldn't be able to use the platform to express themselves rejects a whole bunch of people.
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.
Agreed. The only thing I actually miss is geographically local contacts. But as far as just culture and discourse goes - I'm good.
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.
I am a hostage that has been set free from a prison camp. Thank you Fedi.
That's just like, your opinion man.
Don't let the grabbing hands grab all they can.
Ho does one even use mastadon, it seems to require a login on every instance?
You navigate from your local instance. So like you just use hyperlinks (like here on lemmy, I'm clicking around, but my URL still shows
slrpnk.net/...- yours probably showssh.itjust.works/...), or if you try to do something like follow/reply/boost/etc on another instance, it'll prompt you to connect from your own.
So like here I'm looking at a post on mastodon.social, which I don't have an account on. If I just type in my home instance in the pop-up modal there, then it'll complete the action from my home instance. If you're already signed in on home instance with a cookie then it'll to it automatically.