This is why I’m a big fan of Lemmy and federated social media. It removes the monetization incentive, and it’s obscure enough to barely be targeted by bots (so far). The remaining piece that is still an issue, in my opinion, is that we’re still engulfed in the more modern internet culture of rage-bait, walling ourselves into our echo chambers, and occasionally seeing heavy-handed moderation.
…it’s obscure enough to barely be targeted by bots (so far).
This is what concerns me. If the fediverse ever catches on to the point where it’s worth it for bad actors to be running bots, not only will instances have to restrict signups, but also defederate from those that don’t (kinda like how beehaw does it).
I agree … but we should develop the federated social media in whatever way we can, however it turns out or looks like or even operates … as long as we’re using it, it’s a good thing.
As long as corporate control is kept at bay and away from federated social media, we’ll be OK.
If any corner of the federated social media starts to get infected with corporate control, then that disease will just grow and consume the whole system … just like every other thing it destroyed before.
Oh totally, but I was thinking less about edgy trolls and more like, rage-bait headlines and rants intended to keep you engaged with a platform because you’re mad. Or, for example, floods of political posts with all the nuance of a negative daytime TV campaign ad (you know, with the deep voice, storm clouds, and spooky music).
I remember in the early days of the internet, that type of content was around, but still largely relegated to talk radio or email forwards. Now it’s mainstream and some of the most popular content on every major social media site. It’s disappointing and feels inauthentic, like your favorite hang-out spots have slowly filled up with solicitors handing out flyers.
Yeah, corporations getting involved to monetize those things for engagement is new. Before it was for the sheer joy of arguing with/pissing off people. That still exists as well, of course.
And because we aren’t chasing profit, mass adoption, or clout here, we can get increasingly local and granular with our instances, and increasingly rigorous about who we let in. Since what we’re chasing is real community, we have nothing to sell out for. And even if some instances do flip over to corpos, we can just defederate and welcome the inevitable influx of departing users.
The thing you really have to look out for in the future is “premium” instances or forks of Lemmy which are paywalled, and eventually locked down to a single instance. It just becomes the next Twitter. It’s unlikely, but something to be wary of once the rest of the open internet is picked clean.
Shame that capital is without a doubt mining our genuine public communications for their wage depressing plagiarism machines, because it’s not like you can get that from the old place anymore.
This is why I’m a big fan of Lemmy and federated social media. It removes the monetization incentive, and it’s obscure enough to barely be targeted by bots (so far). The remaining piece that is still an issue, in my opinion, is that we’re still engulfed in the more modern internet culture of rage-bait, walling ourselves into our echo chambers, and occasionally seeing heavy-handed moderation.
I’ll take two wins out of three any day though.
Nicole is a trailblazer.
We need to bring back meta-moderation, kind of like Slashdot had.
I didn’t use Slashdot. How was it handled there?
This is what concerns me. If the fediverse ever catches on to the point where it’s worth it for bad actors to be running bots, not only will instances have to restrict signups, but also defederate from those that don’t (kinda like how beehaw does it).
I’ll take forum lords ruling too strictly over their little fiefdoms over the kind of stuff that happens on large platforms wrt moderation.
I agree … but we should develop the federated social media in whatever way we can, however it turns out or looks like or even operates … as long as we’re using it, it’s a good thing.
As long as corporate control is kept at bay and away from federated social media, we’ll be OK.
If any corner of the federated social media starts to get infected with corporate control, then that disease will just grow and consume the whole system … just like every other thing it destroyed before.
Yeah, I think most of the problems are downstream of corporate control. Maybe we take that piece away and the others follow.
(Or maybe the last 15 years of corporate sanitization of social media has left a cultural impact that isn’t going away…)
Nah, time heals all wounds… as long as they have time to heal.
I was around for usenet and those have all always been a thing. That’s just how people are. They just don’t call it “flaming” any more.
Oh totally, but I was thinking less about edgy trolls and more like, rage-bait headlines and rants intended to keep you engaged with a platform because you’re mad. Or, for example, floods of political posts with all the nuance of a negative daytime TV campaign ad (you know, with the deep voice, storm clouds, and spooky music).
I remember in the early days of the internet, that type of content was around, but still largely relegated to talk radio or email forwards. Now it’s mainstream and some of the most popular content on every major social media site. It’s disappointing and feels inauthentic, like your favorite hang-out spots have slowly filled up with solicitors handing out flyers.
Yeah, corporations getting involved to monetize those things for engagement is new. Before it was for the sheer joy of arguing with/pissing off people. That still exists as well, of course.
And because we aren’t chasing profit, mass adoption, or clout here, we can get increasingly local and granular with our instances, and increasingly rigorous about who we let in. Since what we’re chasing is real community, we have nothing to sell out for. And even if some instances do flip over to corpos, we can just defederate and welcome the inevitable influx of departing users.
The thing you really have to look out for in the future is “premium” instances or forks of Lemmy which are paywalled, and eventually locked down to a single instance. It just becomes the next Twitter. It’s unlikely, but something to be wary of once the rest of the open internet is picked clean.
Shame that capital is without a doubt mining our genuine public communications for their wage depressing plagiarism machines, because it’s not like you can get that from the old place anymore.