Distributed (and zero configuration needed), but with centralized development. Federated is not good enough - separate instances may lag behind in versions, or their admins do something wrong, and user identities and posts are tied to them.
Ideally when an instance goes down, all its posts and comments and users are replicated in the network and possible to get.
A distributed Usenet with rich text, hyperlinks, file attachments, cryptographic identities, pluggable naming\spam-checking\hatespeech-checking services (themselves part of that system).
It was a good system for its time, first large global thing for asynchronous electronic communication.
OK, if you are, you don’t pretend, and if you pretend, you aren’t. And if you talk about someone somewhere probably designing something, then you are not making that something closer. I’m tired of typing things in the interwebs people either already know and agree with, or won’t take seriously.
I’m thinking of starting a friendica node for my city. I feel that a big problem with federated apps is that the audience isn’t local enough; it’s usually mostly tech-oriented people and doesn’t have enough local services.
All we need is people at this point. Still way too many people on Reddit and they’ve gone downhill significantly since the push for monetization
Without the paywall: https://archive.is/TJzyt
I am so happy I have an account on here, even if some people can be quite abrasive
Tildes (a closed garden Reddit alternative) frequently love to reminisce about the days of small forum communities. Maybe we need to bring them back.
I have a feeling this place and other decentralized social medias will be banned in the near future. Look at what’s happening to TIktok. You either bend the knee or you get axed. It’s why the other social media giants bent the knee. They understand the writing on the wall. There’s more going on behind the scenes that they don’t share with us. I think we’re sort of watching a quiet coup.
If social media becomes decentralized we might even gain traction reversing some of the brainwashing on the masses. The current giants are just propaganda machines. Always have been, but it’s now blatant and obvious. They don’t even care to hide it.
Let’s call it by it’s name: neofeudalism/technofeudalism
In the same way that email has been decentralized from the get go, social media could have been equally decentralized, and I don’t mean in the older php forums, but in a different way that would allow people to reconnect with others and maintain contacts.
Tech Broligarchy*
Hey, that’s us!
There’s another alternative, which is no social media at all. There is no particular problem that it solved. If it disappeared, would your quality of life be worse in any way?
My mom asked what she should replace FB/Insta with and I reminded her we lived decades without them so we just go back to that.
Forums and communities like these were very important for me growing up in the rural US South
We wouldn’t be having this conversation though.
Sounds great, but completely unrealistic. People have almost universally embraced social media because we’re social animals. How would it disappear, short of an outright global ban?
I’m actually going to suggest; Yes, possibly. But for a very specific reason.
While much of social media isn’t ultra necessary, federated social media could be quite essential to collectivising and resisting state and corporate manipulation and propaganda. All other forms of media and news are corporate or state controlled, and thus can construct and project false narritives that are beneficial to their aims, much to our collective detriment.
Social media has become the dominant way that many, possibly most people, see the news, discuss such news with eachother from people around the globe, and build a picture of what’s going on outside of their isolated part of the world. I think Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent gives a pretty fantastic argument on the importance of citizen controlled media, and federated social media is about as citizen controlled as it can possibly get. It’s non-corporate self-hosted open source software as far as the eye can see! It’s not perfect, but holy shit this is as powerful as a tool to diseminate ideas and information on a grassroots level that we’ve ever had, and we should not underestimate its usefulness in the coming decade.
google hasn’t done much with YouTube yet
There’s Peertube as an alternative. It lacks some content, but the platform is on par. It is developed by a French association called Framasoft. Thus said, you’re right, Youtube is still okay, even thus there are some fake videos and scam, but they are easy to avoid.
Peertube sucks ass, so much content simply not even there, most videos don’t work or they’re in either mostly french or russian, and this is on the biggest instances.
Now I might be stupid, but I really don’t see how peertube is an alternative. Odysee or rumble are my personal best bets, but in case of youtube it’s hard to find a real alternative in my opinion. Especially as a creator.
“This centralized website sucks, let’s fix it with the same thing!” Last time I used Odysee it was full of tinfoil hat flat earthers. Rumble is youtube for people that got banned from youtube, and Odysee is youtube with the block chain pointlessly added to it. If either site ever hits youtube’s size they’ll just become the same issue youtube is, enshitification is bound to happen. I know having options is better than a monopoly, and Peertube admittedly is rough, but I think as it’s decentralized and self hosted it is the better option.
Rumble is youtube for people that got banned from youtube
I thought that was BitChute? Or is Rumble BitChute but not banned from all posts on Reddit (Reddit did a global block of all BitChute links as part of the attempt to black hole the video of the Christchurch shooting and the video the shooter’s manifesto suggests was what pushed him over the edge into action).
im subscribed to many privacy creators on odysee like mental outlaw
That’s fair, I like mental outlaw, and there’s nothing wrong with spreading your eggs out to other baskets. Having alternatives is better for sure, I just don’t think we should flock over to these centralized options as the defacto alternative.
I agree. I don’t use it for these reasons. But technologically speaking, it’s an open source alternative.
It lacks some content
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if this isn’t the understatement of the century.
Yep it has no content at all I would ever want to watch and I tried to give it a fair shake. That said I recognise YouTube is pretty much the Monopoly of all Monopolys and don’t know how to fix that.
