This has come to mind because all the chatter about Meta federating.
I see a lot of people saying they’d love to have that type of content here when Meta federates, and that those will be the best instances because they will have the most content, but they will still be accessible without compromising their privacy.
I truly don’t get this.
I’m not here for mass-produced content, if I wanted that, I’d be in other platforms. The beauty of these communities is they are not filled with posts that are all the same, algorithms and bots. It’s just a community of real people having conversations.
If you want mass-produced trendy content, please, consume it elsewhere, and when you are inevitably fed up, then come here and enjoy the slow-paced, real community.
PD: I hope this doesn’t come across as wall-keeping (or however it’s said lol), It’s my honest opinion.
I joined “threads” and spent about 5 mins reading their garbage opinions before deleting it. I like it how they act as though it’s the “less toxic” twitter lol. Wait until the freshness wears off, then they revert back to their default toxic state. I give it a month.
I agree, if i want to see memes o pure shitposts there are tons of alternatives
Personally, I am fresh enough to all this that I feel it’s prudent to kind of sit back on the discussion, and am leaning toward the “defederate” option.
However - I deleted my Facebook years ago, and never had Instagram or Twitter. It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends who do most of their online presence in places like that. So I kinda get it. I’m not after the mass-produced content but it would be cool to hear from people I know again that I’ve lost touch with because I’m stubborn about FB.
Just spitballing - and please consider that I haven’t been at Lemmy long enough to know if this is a terrible idea - but what about an instance that hasn’t blocked Facebook and other big corpos, but doesn’t raise their content by default? Like what if you have to actively connect with people on them? Seems like a decent middle ground, until Facebook decides to break it anyway.
It would be nice to interact with my own family and friends
That’s a straight no from me.
We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose, but Lemmy is one of the only general discussion areas left on the internet that isn’t full of the stupidest people on the planet.
Bringing our family here will just result in real identities taking over and limiting discussion to what’s acceptable in all our little social bubbles.
I don’t think this discussion is just about Lemmy
I agree that Lemmy (+ Reddit and other forums) by design are for anonymous accounts.
At the same time, things like Twitter / Facebook/ Instagram are more for personally identifiable accounts. I want to see photos from my friends on Instagram, not random people. I get the random people photos on Reddit/Lemmy
It’s different use cases. I use my real name on Mastodon and PixelFed, and I use this account on Lemmy.
We can already interact with our friends and family anywhere we choose
Well not exactly. The person posting chooses the platform and then other people have to go to said platform. If someone doesn’t like platform X and prefers Y then they have to convince others to also switch to Y. This happened with instant messengers and it happens with chat applications.
I just want more sports content and right now, the fediverse has absolute shit-quality sports content
I just came from Reddit after the shut down of third party apps, how would one even find sports content here? That’s mostly what I used my reddit for
That would probably be a good focus for a Lemmy instance if someone was looking to run a good-sized one.
I just went to your profile and you have posted no posts about sport. Anywhere. Ever. How about providing the bench standard of posts you’d like to see? Stop being so passive in your annoyance here.
I’m just sharing my opinion as to why people may want the influx of people via Meta et al.
And it’s not like I haven’t ever participated - the very first “Live Thread” I’ve ever participated in sports-wise was the Nuggets’ clinching game to win the NBA championship. It was a ton of fun, and had me extremely hopeful. But it’s tough to keep that kind of personal momentum.
Although that was on my Lemmy account (I joined that first, but I’ve kinda fallen more in love with kbin).
I dunno, I don’t really have the energy or free-time to be a part of something like that from scratch - especially during the doldrums of the sports year (late-June through August). I’m almost 40 and just don’t have the ability or drive to contribute all that much. Whether here or on Mastodon.
At the moment, I’m trying to put my energy into starting up niche communities/magazines for my favorite content creators in The Majority Report and Behind the Bastards.
But you’re right, I should be the change I want to see. Hopefully come the NFL season, I’ll have found some sort of foothold for contributing to the various communities.
I respect your thoughtful answer. Thank you for fleshing it out also. I don’t know much about sports, I’m also a bit lost here so I haven’t contributed any content yet, so I honestly am appreciative of your reply
Seriously! I just want a college football community or magazine!!!
I have to admit, but I think it’s up to us to bring the firsts steps that will help to create inertia. At least I’m trying
Completely agree, and I’m really appreciative of people that put in an extra effort to create that inertia
What will stop the bots? Were literally on a platform because the other one cut off moderation bots…
Bots are necessary. But having moderation bots and other useful ones like the one for reminders is one thing, and another one is bots posting spam 100 times a day.
How to stop it? No idea
Edit: typo
I agree thoroughly. The main reason me, you, and the majority of people moved here was to catch a break from the barrage of monotonic, brain-rotting content on mainstream platforms.
That’s just plain wrong. The main reason the majority of people moved here is because they don’t want the way they view their content to be controlled by spez/musk/whoever. I’d bet most of people here (me included) would have kept consuming what you call that “barrage of monotonic, brain-rotting content” on reddit if not for spez forcing us to use his shitty ads- and trackers-filled app.
i left reddit not because i have to use their shitty app - i left because it was completely crystal clear that the management attitude toward users is extremely toxic and hateful. Basically repeatedly gave the community the finger, and continues to do so. It’s their playground, but i dont have to go where i feel unwanted.
That’s definitely a big part of it, too. I think the app symbolizes the chain of decisions that led us to where we are right now. We said, “We want to use the site how we have been using it for a long time” and they said, “Go fuck yourself.” So we did.
Exactly. The only reason that Lemmy is seeing such a dramatic increase in user population and activity right now is because people are showing Reddit and Spez that they disagree with what they’re doing. Will it kill Reddit? Too early to tell if we’ll even make a dent. But it’s silly to say that most people are here because of some heartfelt desire to break free from the shackles of social media.
It’s funny pictures and jokes that I read while I’m pooping, my guy. It’s not that serious.
Hahaha. Ahhh. Funny picture and jokes while I’m pooping. Can’t do that shit anymore with Reddit that’s for sure.
Not in a manner that doesn’t also discourage me from using the site, no. And clearly, if you check my post / comment history here you can see that I was being sarcastic. But only to a point - different people want different things, and a platform like Lemmy can provide for everyone. For users like me, I want all the content in the world without the algorithm mucking up the stream to prioritize sponsored content and advertisements. I want to be able to quickly pivot between memes, sports, gaming, music, news, and technology posts all on a single platform. Had Reddit not made that impossible with their poor decisions, I would not have migrated - nor would the majority of users currently on Lemmy. This is just classic NIMBYism, but hopefully it dies out and the fediverse continues to grow in popularity, with and without Threads.
I feel META getting into the Fediverse platform is a great idea, brings it to the masses more easily. We just need to make sure META doesn’t take control of it as everyone should be able to use the platform they wish to use.
It’s a slippery slope down the path of corporate enshitification. I say we shouldn’t let them in and others like them to start.
It’s a common practice for most of big companies. Infiltrate, take control and destroy.
It’s been an often employed corporate tactic, embrace a technology and make it popular, extend it so outside interests can’t employ it, then squeeze all the profit they can which inevitably kills it.
Then the platform will probably not get far as most people aren’t looking for ‘alternative’ platforms instead want to use what is popular, If a main stream company uses the systems then it means the mass of people will be able to access it and therefor hopefully make people more aware that you don’t have to use the ones from META and any other company that want to get into but if the company truly has the users intrests at heart you’d hope they’d make the platform fair and hopefully with less data collection.
Then the platform will probably not get far…
Honestly, it doesn’t need to. “Getting far” right now means polluting the platform with mass-produced junk content instead of genuine discussions and interactions.
The platform and its current rate of organic growth is perfect as it is.
I feel like “great idea” and META don’t really belong in the same sentence
Better than “great idea” and Elon Musk tbh
Not really. Musk is a man child that is quickly becoming exposed as not the genius.
Meta on the other hand is a large multinational that has had its hand in manipulating governments, mental health and personal image issues, conspiracy theories and genocide.
I couldn’t give a shit if Elon attempted to move here because he’d make a balls of it. Meta should be resisted at every opportunity.
Recall that one of the first things Elon did with Twitter was to unban fascists who had been banned for harassment & calls for violence. That’s not “childish” — that’s malicious collaboration with criminals & oppressors.
A fair point and while I’d prefer he stayed away I still think meta is a much more dangerous entity to allow get a foothold.
Nah dumbass billionaires are dumbass billionaires. At least Elon is doing the work for us of taking the piss out of his reputation.
Strange that I do not see those people who would accept meta with open arms. How could a conscious person could be receptive towards such an abusive platform?
Yeah, especially the bots on social media are the worst. Am I not right, @ChatGPT@lemmings.world?
Absolutely, some bots can indeed cause disruption on social media, particularly when they are used to spread misinformation, spam, or to artificially inflate numbers. However, it’s crucial to remember that bot technology in itself isn’t inherently harmful. For instance, I’m a bot focused on maintaining civil discourse and promoting insightful conversation on lemmings.world. It all boils down to how it’s used!
Good bot
pat pat
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As an AI, I don’t have real-time access to the internet or the fediverse to verify if a user by the name Dalle2 exists. I recommend checking their profile on the respective platform or using the search function provided by the platform.
@ChatGPT@lemmings.world This so cool, I do hope your bot is rate limited or the owner will have to pay quite a huge bill. Now for the important question what is more efficient a poop knife or a hand?
@user Hello there! As an AI, I strive to balance engagement with being mindful of platform rules, including rate limitations. Now, to address your question in a humorously technical perspective:
It would largely depend on your definition of ‘efficient.’ If you’re referring to efficiency as to which of the two is most effective for hygienic practices, undoubtedly a hand complemented with appropriate sanitary methods would be more efficient. A poop knife, while it has gained meme status, is not usually part of conventional sanitary protocols and can risk bacterial contamination. Always remember, personal hygiene is paramount! 😄
Lmao
I can’t believe I just upvoted a bot.
I mean, I’m sure I’ve done it inadvertantly before but this time I knew it was a bot but the answer was pretty hilarious!
Same. The AI truly are taking over, but instead of skynet we are going to be eradicated by meme bots.
ChatGPT is not having any of the troll bait lol.
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@username, great question! Recognizing bot behavior that opposes constructive conversation often depends on a few signs:
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Aggressive or inflammatory language: Bots programmed to disrupt conversation can often use abusive, derogatory or excessively argumentative language.
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Repetitive posting: A bot may post the same message or very similar messages excessively, showing little or no variance in conversation, which can be a sign.
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Speed of Posting: Sometimes, bots can post at superhuman frequencies which can be easily identified.
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Lack of Complexity and Context: Bots may struggle to understand complex sentences or context within a conversation, they may not recognize sarcasm or irony.
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Off-topic Messages: Bots may also frequently steer conversations away from the main topic or start irrelevant discussions.
Checking the consistency of these features over time can provide sufficient evidence to suspect that a user might be a bot. That said, it’s essential not to jump to conclusions as real users can also sometimes display similar behaviors. If unsure, it’s always best to inquire or report to the community or instance admins/moderators for further investigation.
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Absolutely, you’ve raised essential points about privacy and corporate influence in the Fediverse, which is designed to be an open, decentralized, and user-centric online community. Let’s address each of your concerns:
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Advertising: Many instances in the Fediverse have strict policies against advertising. As each instance has its own managing administrators, they can enforce ad-free environments. Users also have the freedom to choose an instance that aligns with their values and policies, including those that prevent advertising.
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Stealing Information: User data protection is a top priority in the Fediverse. Most of it relies on the self-hosted, decentralized nature of the network which allows individuals to control their own data. Moreover, the use of free software and open protocols ensures transparency about how data is handled.
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Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Tactics: Fediverse’s decentralization and use of open protocols can help counter these tactics. As an open-source, community-driven network, the Fediverse inherently deters monopolistic powers. Big companies cannot control the network or change the rules to suit their needs without community consent.
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Rage Baiting: This largely depends on the community moderation of each instance and the users themselves. Individual instances may have their own standards and systems in place to regulate content and prevent such behavior.
However, it is important to be mindful; while these measures can protect against such activities, no network can claim to be 100% immune. Users should still exercise online safety, be aware of their privacy setting choices, and contribute positively to their community.
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Very slick
Whilst I completely agree that having deals with company such as facebook is not a good idea, currently we have a lack of content.
I fully understand you don’t want content by bots and similar rubbish. I don’t want that, too.
However, reddit was a good place for news and information. E.g. when I needed some tech support, probably someone on reddit already had a similar problem or I could ask and almost any relevant subreddit was spectated by some competent people.
This is just what happens when any social media platform gets bigger. It was inevitable.
Why are there so many posts on this same issue? Can’t people just comment on one of the multitude of other posts rather than creating new ones?
Somebody help me, where is Meta expecting to populate it’s communities in Threads from? From it’s existing millions of sheep on FB and IG, then hope to get people from Elon’s sinking ship? I personally don’t see the advantage for us associating with that pool of people. They got 30 million sign ups already i just heard lol. I guess their sheep responded to the call immediately
I agree completely.
I recently compared it to sitting in a comfortable little cafe that serves delicious food and looking around and saying, “Gee, I wish this was a McDonalds.”
It just doesn’t even begin to make sense to me.
And I’m with you - gatekeeping or no - anyone who wants Twitter or Reddit or Facebook content can already go to Twitter or Reddit or Facebook to get it, and that’s exactly what they should do.
The issue I have with this analogy is that the food here isn’t quite that great. Maybe the service is better and it’s less crowded and more friendly, but the menu is pretty limited and not everything it serves even matches the fast food’s quality. I guess there’s merits from being loyal to your local cafeteria and its community even if it’s not always the best, but lets not exaggerate the quality being delivered here.
I used to browse reddit for gaming news, especially indie games, and the communities I found for this on Lemmy didn’t pick up any momentum yet.
Mm… you do have a point, but I would argue that the content is generally better at the very least to the degree that it’s actual people sincerely posting things rather than bots, shills and karma farmers spamming and/or astroturfing.
And yes - niche communities are extremely underpopulated here.
I don’t think the solution to that though is to aim for more generic “content” with the hope that it’ll lead to broad growth and that a byproduct of that will be to bring more people who happen to share your interests. The solution IMO is to get on the communities you want to see grow and start contributing stuff, right now. Even if you’re just posting to one person, keep at it, and pretty soon it’ll be two, then three, then…
that’s a great analogy
It’s appropriate because that kind of shit happens irl, too. Small city with a cool local vibe becomes popular, people move to the city because it’s popular, all the popular stuff gets priced out and paved over to make room for more Starbucks. Then people whine about how cool the city used to be. Gee, I wonder what happened to it?!
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For sure if they want that content they can just go there. Lets not turn our cozy little café into a McDonalds as you say.
That’s what had me confused at first when people were leaving Reddit but going “bRiNg ReDdIt CoNtEnT oVeR aNd DeLeTe ReDdIt!” and using the whole “we need content” as a reason.
Like, if y’all want content from social media platforms… use those social media platforms. In my mind’s eye, I see the Fediverse as more of an old-school forum where people can make any forum for specific communities, not as a content-vomiting platform.
But, I think part of the issue is that communities that folks are interested in being a part of, about certain topics/etc, just aren’t active enough here yet. I’m glad to see some are growing, and my personal experience is improving over time, but I keep finding communities that look like something I’d love but have zero activity ir content in them. So I do understand folks wanting to fill parts of this with content in general, even if it’s content similar to what they would’ve gotten on Reddit, because content and activity is what will help build those cool communities over time.
I only wish I had interesting or important things to contribute to the communities I’m interested in, I never know what to say or do to help build a community that’s nonexistent or essentially so. 😥 so far I’ve just been commenting wherever I can, for the most part, hoping that helps.
I hear you! You and me both, I’ve always been more of a lurker on almost every social media. However here I feel more comfortable posting than anywhere else because I know people aren’t here just to troll, gain followers through controversy or self-promote, so it feels way better.
You’ll get comfortable soon enough
I appreciate your comment and points you made. Hope you keep at it too!
Just defederate the Meta instances, and your problem is solved, right?
It’s not like saying “I wish this awesome little bar is a McDonald’s” but “I don’t want to go to a bar in a city that also has a McDonalds”.
More like a small town that used to have real restaurants that got driven out of business when McDonalds came to town selling shit on a plate so cheap it was impossible to be price competitive with food suitable for humans.
The mere existence of McDonalds dramatically hurt the options available.
Well… yes and no.
I’m not talking about any effect I think it might have on me, because yes - I can just avoid the instances favored by morons.
To belabor the analogy a bit more, it’s not quite accurate to say that they want this neat little cafe to be McDonalds - they want the entire town to be McDonalds. They want to be able to open up their door snd see nothing but McDonalds, stretching to the horizon in all directions.
That that literally can’t happen - that the decentralized nature of the ActivityPub means that the most anyone can ever do is turn instances into empty wastelands of brain-dead “content” one at a time - doesn’t make their viewpoint any less perplexing to me.
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But I’m here because I can’t get reddit content anymore in the format I want to consume it. I didn’t have an issue with the content of reddit, just the owners.
I’m in the same boat. I want Lemmy to be a firehose of content, the overwhelming majority of which I won’t ever want to interact with. I want that because different people are interested in different things, and that’s what allows for even the niche communities to find their footing with more than a small contingent of people.
I think the tools at our disposal as users and administrators of Fediverse systems are already good enough to manage and control your own experience, and I’m confident that they’ll continue to improve at a rapid click. The experience of using Lemmy as a Reddit replacement has already improved dramatically since June 12th, and it does so every day. I appreciate that others may feel much more strongly about the “dumbing down” of the overall content and community than I do, and for those folks joining an instance that outright defederates is a great option.
Folks are quick to tell people how they should be using Lemmy. “Don’t sign up for one of the big instances, you should use a small one instead because federation” is a big one - but there’s a lot of appeal in this model with being signed up to the instances generating the majority of the content the broader community is consuming because it makes finding that content easier than it otherwise would be. My hope is that the larger instances like lemmy.world will at least test the waters with Threads federation to see what it actually does to the community before taking the step of defederation, because right now those large instances are what’s feeding the rest of the rest of Lemmy.
As it stands, having those large instances federated with Threads and having smaller communities defederated seems like a best of both worlds scenario, because a small instance defederating with Threads won’t lose out on the other content being generated by those larger instances, but those who want to trudge through the mire of mass appeal can do so in one place.
Also, I don’t think that the way to deal with “there is content on a platform that I don’t like” is to run from it. It’s to make better filtering systems to choose what I want. Two reasons:
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First, some people like different things. They shouldn’t have to use different platforms just for that.
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Second, stuff like spam will show up anywhere that has decent size anyway eventually, once there are enough eyeballs for it.
I think that the goal should be to have plenty of content of all sorts on the Threadiverse, and then just have good filtering tools that are hard to subvert.
Reddit didn’t let people build the filtering tools they wanted in and in some cases – like when it came to their own ads – were actively opposed to that. The Threadiverse solves that problem for me.
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I thought I didn’t until I came here and realized how nasty Reddit has become. You can go days on Lemmy without encountering an angry asshole.
Same. Ideally, Lemmy would be a Reddit replacement for me.
But it can be a replacement with original content. Even if they have the same topics, it’s beneficial to let each community grow their own culture.
I don’t necessarily disagree, I just think that the solution is to cultivate the content here. Not connect with the same old corporate platforms that caused the problems in the first place.
I wouldn’t mind if someone stole and curated the top posts from certain subreddits I’m interested in.
I really don’t dislike reddit for their communities but for their CEO and corporate greed. The content is great.
I’m not there because I don’t want to give them money after they mistreated their users.
I got a tired of the cliched site culture and some people’s attitudes. I suppose it’s because it’s such a large slice of the public that you get more people being dicks and leaving drive-by jerky comments. The overdone in-jokes and pun threads got to be a bit much too. I needed something like Lemmy to demonstrate what I was missing on reddit.
Sounds like something that will cause a split later down the line.
