Public opinion seems to be souring on all the big corporate social media sites, and I truly think if we’re able to get the word out about federated social media platforms, people will jump ship.
Also, it’s hard to dislike a platform that isn’t showing ads, selling user data, or generally making decisions for the enrichment of shareholders.
It’s so weird, I don’t even notice the lack of ads most of the time (pihole, never leave home, so it’s roughly the same experience I’m used to)
But when I go out? Oh man fediverse is the only site I’ll use because I know it’s safe from ads. The other privacy/user-focus stuff is just a bonus.
(I don’t have any friends around here, so just sort of go out to be out, and usually for food)
Inevitably there will be a fediverse instance with ads, but whether or not people want to use it will be up to the individual.
As long as the ads don’t federate in an un-blockable way, they can do as they like. I wouldn’t make an account there, I’d rather donate actual money than have a degraded experience (which for sure works out better for everyone), but I get the drive to monetize.
And they should absolutely -not- be allowed to federate ads, for any reason, since it goes against the vibe. But inevitably there will be “sponsored posts” (probably already are), and I think those instances/users will see themselves fade to oblivion, as long as new users are brought to understand that they could just chip in $2 and never see an ad.
I use Boost and it has ads. But they’re ignorable as a banner here and there, not constantly. I can live with that.
Is Boost really that much better than Eternity or Voyager that you put up with ads?
I like it.
Fair enough :)
Misskey has support for ads. Its mostly used for shitposting by admins.
What you can do is install wireguard server at home and then set your phone to use that wireguard connection always. That’s what I do and then my pihole at home filters all my mobile traffic as well.
I usually have a private vpn. It’s just isn’t always up. And I can’t be bothered to have it maintained most times because I’m not in control.
I’m considering setting it up through my router which has a built in option, so I don’t have to rely on my third party, but honestly I almost never leave pihole protected networks. So not a priority.
I honestly don’t think we’re there yet.
Remember, something like more than half of all people still don’t use an ad-blocker - some people want ads, or at least want that they provide money to keep the service going, and similarly with selling user data (to the extent that people bother to think about it at all).
Never underestimate the level of entitlement thinking on behalf of new users - like, “Which instance do I join? Wait, I have to choose!? Nvm, I’m out already.” (and for Mastodon, this has much greater implications than for Lemmy)
Also, one single reply to a comment in chapotraphouse on hexbear.net, followed by a second reply somewhere on Lemmy.ml, almost made me turn away from social media entirely, thinking that this place was fast becoming not really all that different than Reddit after all - I mean, these are leftists, aka liberals, these are/must be my people, right, R-R-RIGHT!?
The Fediverse is not for the uninitiated, and requires significant setup work to even be pleasant much less enjoyable, depending on where you go and the users’ innate level of insensitivity.
Though you and many others are working tirelessly to make it better by offering great content - thanks!:-)
As someone who is much more centrist/liberal, I had to block a whole bunch of leftist communities recently just so that I could keep enjoying the Fediverse. I would have greatly prefered not to, but so much of leftist content on here is far too cynical to any other position.
”Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. " - Karl Popper
The only reason u see them constantly dunking on everyone is because all the truthfull factual backed up with evidence replies they get get censored if it has a single thing to do the hexbear or .ml. Idk how they do it but a replete to .ml on a .world community can be censored by .ml but replete to that censored comment still work fine. .ml selectively federates the modlog as well to hide admin abuse. They will ban u from every .ml community for 1 comment disagreeing politically especially if u have evidance proving them wrong.
We have tried countering them by rational argument and public opinion but that is failing. We canot tolerate the intolerance of tankies ob lemmy.
I have stopped recommending Lemmy to people, bc I would be embarrassed for a new user to come here, get bullied as I have been (far more than happened on Reddit), and blame me like “you recommended me to talk to that crowd!?”). Kbin.social was different bc those communities were blocked from the start - at an instance level even - though that server has been down for days, and now I see it’s back up and full of advertisement posts as usual, bc many mods abandoned their communities due to all the technical problems with the service.
But there is hope for change in the future, in terms of perhaps making getting dunked on an opt-in rather than as it currently is an opt-out feature delivered to members of the Fediverse with little to no warning. e.g. here is a discussion I had with an instance admin. Progress, since so many of us joined the Fediverse since the Rexodus, has been (understandably) slow, but can happen, if we work at it!
For the lowest common denominator social media user, the bar is even lower. As long as everyone else they follow and care about is on the platform, they will happily move. They won’t even care that they will be free from ads and tracking because they never cared in the first place.
You might inspire some of us to create a Facebook, Instagram, X account just to spread the word of the Fediverse.
Fediverse is the future of the internet
Doin’ muh best to shitpost.
You’re all welcome, citizens!
Heroic Trumpet Music
Farting sounds
I’m doing my part too!
I’m doing my
partfart too!deleted by creator
You are now our king.
deleted by creator
Edit: Doesn’t exist. Someone needs to start this.
laugh tracks
I have many, many sovereign citizens to keep us alive.
Okay, now I am imagining that you are imprisoning sovcits in your basement and farming them for insanepeoplewhatever content.
Bet those sovcits would be cits real quick in that situation ;)
Nah I’d post videos of them if that was the case.
That’s just what someone keeping sovcits in their basement would say.
And I’m doing my best to keep it spam-free and ad-free.
Gonna be honest, a lot of times I feel like I don’t belong here, I’m still figuring things out. I’m not a “techy” type person (that seems to be some kind of prerequisite) and I barely know how to explain the fediverse to the layman, but I left reddit when they fucked over Joey (my preferred reddit app) and read enough to give reddit the middle finger and never look back. It’s been nice, really. I spend more time outside of the internet now. But I believe in the fediverse, I think it’s the right thing to do. I still check up on lemmy daily, but I get much more value and human connection and only spend the time that is appropriate on lemmy instead of endlessly scrolling. Most days I end up in some Wikipedia rabbit hole. Just like the good ol’ days. Learning new things, meeting new people. That’s what I love about the internet.
It’s what we all loved about the internet I think, before the web become… “that” (looking at the pile of shit the web has become).
But actually it’s not the web, not really. It’s the big tech platforms that most people seem to think is the internet now. It’s sad to watch how people log on to “Facebook” and not the general web anymore. And then Google in front of everything, like a big cancer growth.
Lemmy is not the new internet either I believe. But it’s here to show people that something else can exist. As soon as we let advertising in here though, it’s over.
The beautiful thing about decentralisation is that if an instance tries to as ads, then you can go to a different instance and see the same content.
If an instance creates as posts, your instance admin can block the whole instance.
Interestingly, the big instances seem to easily get enough donations to cover costs. I think that’s the great thing about this model, people are willing to donate when they know it’s not some big corporate making profit for shareholders.
I think the answer is not to gatekeep against advertising actively, but to have a platform that is resilient to that kind of thing. Like, if there were advertising on an instance people would fucking BOUNCE I think. And if it got somehow baked into the platform itself there would be a new fork with the advertising excised before the sun went down.
I’m not sure about that. What if advertising were used to cover server costs, just like donations right now? Then the community may be fine with it.
But I think it’s very dangerous to go down that route. Because it’s going to become about higher profits, not just covering costs, in the long run.
adding to the old internet thing, using mojeek reminds me of the old search results! searched for something mildly obscure, actually got good results and also a porn site lmfao.
there’s a safe mode if it’s of use: nested in the settings gear menu but also on /preferences (to turn it on for all searches)
thanks peakjeek
It’s easy to feel that way even if you are a techy. It seems like being minimally neurodivergent is the abnormal here.
That being said, I’ve been introduced to many different ways of thinking that I wouldn’t have gained otherwise. Think of it like you’re different, but that’s ok because everyone here is different - and that makes them (and you) all the more beautiful for it (especially in the context of idea exchange). In fact, being the different one here will give you the perspective that many of the people who use Lemmy experience simply by existing which, in and of itself, is a valuable thing.
Everyone being nd would explain a lot of why this place feels way better than Reddit for me lol
Honestly this is great, non-techy people making the transition is a good sign and something the system needs to gain mainstream appeal.
Also, people who aren’t techy are less likely to accept hacky workaround BS and complain until it’s fixed on a system-wide level, and that’s needed to mature the platform to something anyone can use. It’s getting there but it’s still got a lot of rough edges.
I enjoyed reading this. I came over from reddit when they started banning people for protesting. That showed me that reddit was not what I thought it is.
I‘m a techy person. I run servers for friends and customers, partly with fediverse services on them. Lemmy being one of them. I donate both time and money to lemmy and other services I enjoy and use.
The fediverse is a great thing imo. I hope it succeeds.
Gonna be honest, a lot of times I feel like I don’t belong here, I’m still figuring things out.
I left reddit when they fucked over Joey (my preferred reddit app)
Are you me? I thought I was relatively tech-savvy, and then I moved to Lemmy. Also, Joey was the best.
A way I have found to explain federated social media to people, that seems to work is this: Imagine reddit, but instead of one company, with one administration, owning the whole site, it is a bunch of different reddits, that are independently run, that choose which other reddits they wish to associate themselves with. When you log into one instance, you automatically can see, and interact with, all the other ones that one chooses to associate with. You can have accounts on as many instances as you would like, even having accounts on instances that do no associate with each other.
Admins. Thank you. Users. Thank you.
Mods?
Too busy abusing their mod powers to enforce their political views in most communities.
I still haven’t been able to give up reddit but I have always been a lurker there. Here I’m trying to make a conscious effort to participate in conversations. I’m trying to be positive, kind, and thoughtful because that’s what I want lemmy to be.
I started to think of Reddit as just an occasional Google search result necessary evil and have successfully ignored it ever since. Log off DKC, there’s a better world out there.
In all seriousness I think eventually conventional social media will start to feel very siloed like AOL did as more people join the fediverse. I can’t imagine using a site that I couldn’t look at everything from anymore, save for stupid ass Facebook which I do solely for sovcit material. Why would I want to look at crap ads and AI when I can be here?
I started to think of Reddit as just an occasional Google search result necessary evil and have successfully ignored it ever since.
This is my experience. I try to search elsewhere, but consistently still find good info there. Only when I exhaust other options I go crawling back.
Oh it’s no biggie if you use it to deshittify Google. It is there, after all. Just treat it like ghetto Wikipedia and don’t hang around. Haha.
Thank you!
im taking a shit
Same
This is what Lemmy is all about, right here. Just a good, honest nutsack taking a simple shit.
Just trying to take it easy for all those sinners.
Im just here for the memes
I know that you will
The thing that I love most about Lemmy and the wider Fediverse is the sense of actual community. Many of the users feel like actual people I could meet in real life. It’s essentially a digital cafe. Sure as hell not going back to Reddit or those other shit Big Tech sites.
Every day I am thankful for the work that has been done. It is life changing.
Ehh. What’s the average age around here? I’m guessing it wasn’t the youth that migrated from Reddit.
Im interested in this as well
Some sorta survey/census for the fediverse might be cool
Just out of curiosity, how much does it cost per month to run a Lemmy instance? Not that I’d want to do that myself, I’m just grateful for our admins that keep Lemmy up and running.
You can rent an instance for like 10 dollars per month and grow from there. Then expand if you get users and things get slow. Lemmy runs ok on 4 GB of memory but it’s better with 8 GB. Postgres use the most.
It depends. I run an instance with a whole two users and it costs me about $25 a month.
But if I let 200 users join, I would need beefier hardware and a higher bandwidth limit.
However running an instance like Beehaw is probably on the order of hundreds, not thousands of dollars a month.
feddit.uk clocks in at under £40/month. That’s hosting, and backups. lemmy.zip is similar.
Plus our time, but we’re obviously doing it as a labour of love.
I’d certainly be interested to know for the sake of donations. I would gladly donate to keep the fediverse alive.
It varies greatly depending on your setup.
Lemmy.world’s monthly expenses are around €1,200. Though that includes hosting more services that just Lemmy.
https://blog.mastodon.world/For comparison, it looks like £30 per month for lemmy.zip:
https://lemmy.zip/post/7766703And lemmy.ca is around CAD$30 per month:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/39134At one point Reddthat.com was considering moving to a bigger server that would cost A$150-200 per month:
https://reddthat.com/post/8840079Ayy Lemmy.zip :)
Thank You, BotM! I migrated here from the corporate social medias as soon as I was aware. I’m still transferring my OC over from IG (not an easy task) to Pixelfed. And I use similar talking points to inform people, often about the very existence of a non-comercial social media. Very few people, maybe 2, since July '23 have even heard of the Fediverse. We shall persist!
I’m just learning about Pixelfed from your comment. Any suggestions on where to start or instances to subscribe to?
I truly believe the fediverse is the future. People will tire of the AI and all that nonsense and fade away from all the big sites.
considering that this is a bsd user, yeah makes sense.
Coming from a self hoster, shits up when it’s up. Otherwise it’s down.
I charge nothing and you expect no guarantees of service :)
I’m here to argue! It’s my passtime 😎
Someone’s gotta make toxic sludge!
I’m here to argue!
No you aren’t! :)
It’s my passtime
Also, it’s spelled “pastime”.
For Lemmy.world a donation would help keep it alive without all the crap. Servers are cheaper then they were, but still not cheap.
OMG! Thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️
It’s not easy keeping things up sometimes, but we’re always looking for ways to deliver more for less, while still keeping things snappy.
It’s hard, but without the community, we would just be some nerds with too much time on our hands 😅
Much love for y’all!!!
Yeah but on the other hand Lemmy world sucks and it would be good for the overall health of the Fediverse if they ran out of money and had to shut down. Give that donation to a smaller instance who actually needs it. World is already the biggest and they don’t need to get bigger.
I don’t think we should be wishing for the demise of the largest Lemmy instance. However, I definitely agree that focusing resources towards growing small and medium sized instances is good for the fediverse.
They’re made too many bad decisions. The only reason people use them is they’re the biggest, not because they have a good admin team or even a good gimmick.
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Yeah, but we’ve been on this stressful ride before, and we know where it ends.
There were lots of attempts at a closed source proprietary Internet protocol. They have all resoundly failed, after looking unbeatable. Some folks still fondly remember the closed Internet protocols like OLE COM, ActiveX, Flash, Cold Fusion, and SilverLight, but few of us miss them. Okay, I do miss Flash games.
Good touchscreen phone operating systems were a “will this ever be matched?” trade secret at Blackberry and Apple. Now the vast majority of phones run open source Android.
Much earlier, most good-enough C compilers were expensive proprietary closed source products. Now I see very little being compiled on anything other than the free and open source GCC. Even most other programming languages and tools are now FOSS, as well. I can’t think of much for development that cracks the top 20 that isn’t FOSS. JetBrains IDEs stand out as a lone closed source hold-out.
Open standards always win, in the end.
The desktop computing default is honestly way overdue to switch to FOSS. That’s why it’s the year of the Linux desktop.
The Fediverse is here to stay, and is all that’ll be left in a couple decades. But in the meantime, it’s cozy!
Now the vast majority of phones run open source Android.
to be fair, this was almost certainly a reaction to the iphone. Still open, so there’s that.
Seems like the cycle is either:
- someone has a good idea, it’s open source.
- someone has a good idea, it’s closed source, someone else makes something similar, but open source.
Yep. It often takes quite awhile. And I honestly don’t mind supporting innovators who want to sell something closed but really good.
But as I get older, and watch the pattern over and over, I’m starting to appreciate skipping the cycle by directly adopting the open thing as early as I can.
yeah, the general rule of thumb seems to be that if it’s universal, it needs to be open. The farther niche it goes, the less open it has to be, on principle of utility. Open standards are only good people it’s so easy for them to get accepted. That’s why closed standards often just don’t go very far.
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From experience, Lemmy/Mastadon is a lot easier to pitch to potential users than Linux lol
Hard to tell imo. Big tech has a lot of big advantages and disadvantages over us.
Being centralized and heavily funded, it’s a lot easier for them to rapidly create/change new things, for better or for worse. It also means they do a lot of the testing for us. Mastodon/Lemmy formats are figured out from what we liked from proprietary platforms, then we kept the core that made it good. We also don’t need to make a worse user experience by worrying about monetization.
We also have a lot less development, and I won’t even pretend that Mastodon or Lemmy are anywhere near well developed as Reddit/Twitter backends and other software. We simply don’t have the attention and funding to be anywhere near that level.
I don’t think we’ll ever replace big tech, but I just hope we stay on a healthy trajectory where we are alongside them in popularity.
Thank you, u/cum, for your thoughtful insight.
