Greetings, and apologies anons. THIS IS NOT A PERMANENT SITE REPLACEMENT! THIS
IS JUST A TEMPORARY LANDING PAGE WHILE WE DEAL WITH EXTENDED DOWNTIME! If you’ve
been witnessing the struggles with our cheapo server, you might have sensed this
was coming. TLDR: Our older server failed, we purchased an identical (old)
server, and that has now failed as well. A newer, better server has been
purchased with RAID 1 NVME drives and a recent processor, so after ANOTHER
transition, we should be much more failure proof. Please be patient and do not
panic. I will periodically update this post as we make progress towards moving
to our new server. In the meantime, while this bunker does not accept posts, you
might want to check out other NSFW lemmy communities like
https://lemmynsfw.com/c/aigen [https://lemmynsfw.com/c/aigen] Do not bother with
registering a Lemmy account if you only intended to post here.
It’s a shame too because about 1/4 of the subs on lewd loli were from there (I think that’s how it works).
Hmm, I see what you’re saying - call me optimistic but I still think the fediverse will keep growing from here. I started writing a point-by-point rebuttal but it started feeling kind of silly with how theoretical this all is, so I’d just like to clarify my perspective:
Traditional social media, being led by a single body whose goal is not to make the best experience for the user, will eventually do something some group of people don’t like. It might be years until we see issues at the level of recent Twitter or Reddit stuff, but the combination of one-size-fits-all rules and aim of profit over people are a poor fit for a universal platform and make problems inevitable. If the fediverse can be a viable alternative for the average user, which I don’t think it’s a stretch to say is likely to happen after a few more years of development, mistakes made by big social media companies will send users over.
Federation means there isn’t a single point of failure; issues that would affect an entire platform are confined to an instance. If a user has a problem with their instance’s management, they only need to go to another one rather than a whole new platform with different UI, none of the same people, none of the same content. Though, tbf this is much less relevant on isolated instances like Burggit.
It’s also worth mentioning that in my personal experience, younger people in particular are slowly moving back towards a more personal and deliberately curated internet experience. Teen mental health especially is at an all time low, and while there are a multitude of contributing factors, we’re realizing that the typical doomscrolling social media experience constantly trying to feed itself to us certainly isn’t helping. I do believe we’re seeing the very beginnings of a larger cultural shift towards the small web and its philosophy - so applying this to the topic at hand, the things people value in a platform can change over time, and my impression is that the direction things are going is one that lines up with the fediverse.
I think there will always be reddit users who use it because they don’t know different, like facebook now. In my eyes Lemmy is already successful in providing cozy places to talk with like-minded folk, though in terms of pure popularity my prediction is that Lemmy and/or Kbin will be at least known by the average recreational internet user within five years, and have an active userbase, say, 25% the size of reddit’s within ten.
But who knows - maybe it’s a fad just for technical people that’ll slowly die out over the next few years, and traditional social media sites will clean up their act and bring everyone back. Only one way to find out haha. It’d be fun to look back on this a decade from now and see how close we were.
I do believe we’re seeing the very beginnings of a larger cultural shift towards the small web and its philosophy
I think that’s the crux of our different perspectives. I do agree that for federation and such to reach the mainstream it’s going to have to start with a cultural shift; I just can’t see that appreciably happening any time soon. I’ll be really happy to be wrong though.
If a user has a problem with their instance’s management, they only need to go to another one rather than a whole new platform with different UI, none of the same people, none of the same content.
But the old content and old users still live on the original instance: if you continue to participate has anything particularly changed? And if you don’t, is that really all that different from forum hopping?
edit: I suppose you also mean participating in communities spread across instances. That’s fair, but I do want to point to Lemmy’s current top-heaviness as to why I think that’s still a tad unrealistic. Also, as it stands instance hopping is definitely not painless. These are definitely tractable problems, but I do think it’ll be a couple years before I can reconsider my stance.
What makes me a little less hopeful is Mastodon’s greater maturity with the same instance top-heaviness and block list sharing from the top. I get why it’s necessary, but the net result is that peoples’ content is still decided from on-high with arguably even less public accountability. I just seriously don’t see the value-add from Joe Schmo’s perspective in exchange for grappling with extra complexity and I think that’s evidenced by Mastodon’s slump past the initial Twitter acquisition outrage.
Nonetheless, things are arguably still in the early stages so the only real answer is “wait and see” of course.
If you’re talking about an exodus on a community level, we’ve had plenty of intra-Reddit examples of splinter communities forming in opposition to moderation incidents on the main subreddit. They tend to not gain traction - most users are extremely apathetic. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, it just means most people still have the perspective to (at least unconsciously) realize that the specifics of this social media stuff barely matters at the end of the day. But it does mean they tend to take the dumbest, least effort option when it comes to these matters, which I’d say played a big part at how we arrived at the current social media landscape in the first place.
and traditional social media sites will clean up their act and bring everyone back
To clarify, I don’t quite hold this expectation. I fully expect Reddit to become irrelevant over the next few years. I just expect whatever to replace it will be another Reddit in the same way Reddit ended up becoming another Digg.
So it’s less “clean up” so much as I expect new companies with new platforms to do the same dog & pony show as usual. Maybe it was just my neck of the woods, but by far the most linked alternative in subreddit blackout messages was to sister Discord communities, even though that’s ideologically empty in the long run.
It’d be fun to look back on this a decade from now
Much agreed.
One facet that I’ll concede makes me a lot less confident in my own expectations is the geopolitical one. While I’m sure every country would like to maximize its ability to spy on its citizens and beyond, curbing US hegemony in online communications might be a win unto itself. But then the Fourteen Eyes alliance exists, so I really have no clue what the net pull of the situation is. I just hope something spicy leaks at some point.
Hmm, I see what you’re saying - call me optimistic but I still think the fediverse will keep growing from here. I started writing a point-by-point rebuttal but it started feeling kind of silly with how theoretical this all is, so I’d just like to clarify my perspective:
Traditional social media, being led by a single body whose goal is not to make the best experience for the user, will eventually do something some group of people don’t like. It might be years until we see issues at the level of recent Twitter or Reddit stuff, but the combination of one-size-fits-all rules and aim of profit over people are a poor fit for a universal platform and make problems inevitable. If the fediverse can be a viable alternative for the average user, which I don’t think it’s a stretch to say is likely to happen after a few more years of development, mistakes made by big social media companies will send users over.
Federation means there isn’t a single point of failure; issues that would affect an entire platform are confined to an instance. If a user has a problem with their instance’s management, they only need to go to another one rather than a whole new platform with different UI, none of the same people, none of the same content. Though, tbf this is much less relevant on isolated instances like Burggit.
It’s also worth mentioning that in my personal experience, younger people in particular are slowly moving back towards a more personal and deliberately curated internet experience. Teen mental health especially is at an all time low, and while there are a multitude of contributing factors, we’re realizing that the typical doomscrolling social media experience constantly trying to feed itself to us certainly isn’t helping. I do believe we’re seeing the very beginnings of a larger cultural shift towards the small web and its philosophy - so applying this to the topic at hand, the things people value in a platform can change over time, and my impression is that the direction things are going is one that lines up with the fediverse.
I think there will always be reddit users who use it because they don’t know different, like facebook now. In my eyes Lemmy is already successful in providing cozy places to talk with like-minded folk, though in terms of pure popularity my prediction is that Lemmy and/or Kbin will be at least known by the average recreational internet user within five years, and have an active userbase, say, 25% the size of reddit’s within ten.
But who knows - maybe it’s a fad just for technical people that’ll slowly die out over the next few years, and traditional social media sites will clean up their act and bring everyone back. Only one way to find out haha. It’d be fun to look back on this a decade from now and see how close we were.
I think that’s the crux of our different perspectives. I do agree that for federation and such to reach the mainstream it’s going to have to start with a cultural shift; I just can’t see that appreciably happening any time soon. I’ll be really happy to be wrong though.
But the old content and old users still live on the original instance: if you continue to participate has anything particularly changed? And if you don’t, is that really all that different from forum hopping?
edit: I suppose you also mean participating in communities spread across instances. That’s fair, but I do want to point to Lemmy’s current top-heaviness as to why I think that’s still a tad unrealistic. Also, as it stands instance hopping is definitely not painless. These are definitely tractable problems, but I do think it’ll be a couple years before I can reconsider my stance.
What makes me a little less hopeful is Mastodon’s greater maturity with the same instance top-heaviness and block list sharing from the top. I get why it’s necessary, but the net result is that peoples’ content is still decided from on-high with arguably even less public accountability. I just seriously don’t see the value-add from Joe Schmo’s perspective in exchange for grappling with extra complexity and I think that’s evidenced by Mastodon’s slump past the initial Twitter acquisition outrage.
Nonetheless, things are arguably still in the early stages so the only real answer is “wait and see” of course.
If you’re talking about an exodus on a community level, we’ve had plenty of intra-Reddit examples of splinter communities forming in opposition to moderation incidents on the main subreddit. They tend to not gain traction - most users are extremely apathetic. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, it just means most people still have the perspective to (at least unconsciously) realize that the specifics of this social media stuff barely matters at the end of the day. But it does mean they tend to take the dumbest, least effort option when it comes to these matters, which I’d say played a big part at how we arrived at the current social media landscape in the first place.
To clarify, I don’t quite hold this expectation. I fully expect Reddit to become irrelevant over the next few years. I just expect whatever to replace it will be another Reddit in the same way Reddit ended up becoming another Digg.
So it’s less “clean up” so much as I expect new companies with new platforms to do the same dog & pony show as usual. Maybe it was just my neck of the woods, but by far the most linked alternative in subreddit blackout messages was to sister Discord communities, even though that’s ideologically empty in the long run.
Much agreed.
One facet that I’ll concede makes me a lot less confident in my own expectations is the geopolitical one. While I’m sure every country would like to maximize its ability to spy on its citizens and beyond, curbing US hegemony in online communications might be a win unto itself. But then the Fourteen Eyes alliance exists, so I really have no clue what the net pull of the situation is. I just hope something spicy leaks at some point.