It’s rough right now politically in the US. A lot of people around me seem like they’re ready to give up hope. It makes me incredibly angry seeing Zuck up there with all the other billionaires, and Elon is a parasite that has infected the government.
I often find myself wondering how I can make a difference. How can we regain control of our world?
Idk if I’m being dramatic, but the Fediverse really seems like it could be our response to these fuckers controlling the narrative on social media. It could be more than just an interesting decentralized social media platform. I really think this could be a key step in reclaiming our democracy.
Am I being dramatic lol? Do you all feel the same way? I was kinda getting emotional even. Like we could bring real change. That gives me hope, which is something we are desperately lacking right now.
It’s not just Lemmy. It makes me happy to see all the Fediverse platforms (specifically activity pub based) blowing up.
Friendly reminder if you have the financial means, donate to your instance, donate to the Lemmy devs, donate to Pixelfed or any other social media app fighting big social media. And better than a one-time donation, set up a monthly contribution even if it’s just $2/month. It really helps open-source developers when they have a steady income.
You must log in or register to comment.
No, it’s continued relative unpopularity in the face of universal hated-but-contined-use of the mainstream networks continues to be depressing.
Although the onboarding process for most of the major fediverse platforms is a bit scary for normies.
Lemmy is very harsh to most people. People that think liberal means the Democrats.
It’s not just Lemmy. I was thinking more like Mastodon. Tbh I haven’t tried frendica, but I haven’t heard of anyone actually using it.
At least pixelfed defaults you to the main instance so you don’t have to think about it if you don’t want to. Although the official android app hasn’t worked for me in ages.
It gives me memes and that’s close enough
It gives me confidence. I know that now that I host my own lemmy, I cannot be randomly banned because I triggered some automatic spam filter with my scripts (happened in reddit), or banned because I talked back to the wrong mod. I know that our internationally distributed nature makes it harder to control top-down, so takeovers like Murk-Xitter are not possible. We can still be affected by disinfo campaigns and troll farms, and we unfortunately have weakened defenses against that, but I’m confident that a lot of smart admins and tooling providers will bunch together to figure out the countermeasures that will work.
How expensive is it to host your own instance? Assuming you aren’t doing it in house.
About 5-20 eur/month should be enough for most instance admins, depending on their provider.
Which do you use?
My setup is quite complex and I have 1000+ MAU so we’re not a small instance anymore. That said we use hetzner, ovh, and mailgun. Our hosting hosts are more than 100 per month but I could probably be running a bit cheaper if I wanted, but this way we have easy growing space.
That’s much more expensive than I would imagine! Hope you are fully funded. You’re the best instance.
Yes, currently the monthly donations exceed our hosting costs!
Yeah, being banned because a mod didn’t like you was the worst thing on Reddit. Especially if they modded multiple subs and banned you from a subreddit you never even came close to breaking the rules on. Some Reddit mods were just assholes.
oh snap, db0 the person! Love your instance.
it does. as an mbin cheerleader, its heartwarming to see the disparate AP based servers communicating with my server. lemmy/friendica/mastodon etc… knowing that no entity could control all those products. the key of course is the protocol and maintaining ActivityPub as functional, standardized service.
For me it does. I’m really enjoying Lemmy, and have curated a bunch of communities that I follow and participate in in a way that feels helpful, hopeful, and not toxic.
I like Fediverse because I get much better engagement with people here than anything else
It feels much more social being here not despite the smaller audience, but because of it.
People have time to respond to me if I have a question, and I have time to give really good and complete responses to anyone that asks me about something I post.
I made a post about a blender project I am working on from my Mastodon and tagged the Lemmy community. This project is pretty dear to my heart, and I wanted it to be seen by many people, so I made the same post on Reddit.
I got 35 stars on Mastodon + 80 upvotes on Lemmy + many cool comments.
I got literally no upvotes on Reddit. maybe skill issue on my side but the Fediverse is, in my general experience, so much better when it comes to engagement.
It’s cause no one on Reddit goes past r/hot on their sorts. If it isn’t found by people in New and given an initial boost, it dies there. Plenty of stuff has died with 3 up votes while a repost that has a bot farm behind it hits r/all every other week. Reddit now is a feed people scroll with no interaction; bots with an agenda and a select few users interact with stuff.
It seems like the only semi-viable alternative to oligarch run social networks.
I am not American, but behaviour exhibited by oligarchs such as Zuckerberg/Musk (and these are just the ones that get in the news) is not at all surprising.
Yes. The fediverse is a pretty difficult thing to be controlled by a single group: that’s sorta the idea. I see it as almost a refuge from all the bullshit. The lack of ads, tracking, content farming, censorship and control etc is refreshing. Here’s to hoping the fediverse continues to spread.
There’s plenty of censorship here though. Some instances are worse than others but even on a community basis, your average moderator is just some random dude who is free to remove your posts/comments and ban you just because they don’t like something you said and there’s not really anything you can do about it.
Not all moderation = censorship 🙄 You play by the rules or you face the consequences. Nowhere on the planet are the consequence-free zones - at least not forever.
If you really want fediverse instance where absolutely everything is permitted, make it. I bet you after the first CP post you’ll rethink your stand on “all moderation = censorship”.
That’s quite the number of assumptions you made there
Not all moderation = censorship
It is, by definition.
Let’s not argue semantics and argue realistic uses of moderation.
If you don’t want to argue about it then don’t bring it up.
Lmao are you censoring me, telling me not to bring it up? Weak.
I told you not to bring it up because you said you didn’t want to argue about it. Censorship would be if I removed your comment.
Do paste the definitions and sources here.
Help yourself.
No thank you. I’m not going to waste my time to try and find your made up definition of censorship.
Yeah but there are a few notorious large instances that censor things that aren’t stated in their rules at all.
Like criticising china or russia will get you banned from the ML instances but their rules don’t mention that.
But the point is, you have freedom to choose whatever instance and thus whatever level of moderation you want. I’m not saying censorship is impossible here, that’s just not the argument. The thing is, you aren’t locked in to the control of a specific group/owner/company. If you don’t like the way things are being run, skip to somewhere else, or alternatively make your own instance.
For people who value freedom the most, you can choose a platform with less moderation, and thereby accepting the risks that come with it. For people who value a more safe, stable and curated platform, choose one with more/stricter moderation.
You only have the freedom to choose if you have the freedom to be fully informed. If the instance you are on has “unofficial” rules they enforce, and they remove any comments of anyone discussing those “unofficial” rules. Then it is not moderation — but censorship.
Yeah, I can totally see how that could be an issue. You’re right, my bad. Just wondering if there is any way to truly beat censorship if this is the case?
The decentralisation of the fediverse works well.
Ie. taking my previous example of lemmy.ml censoring any criticism of Russian and Chinese imperialism, under instance rule 1 which is basically “no bigotry”.
Well I’m not on lemmy.ml, and if I talk about it in non-lemmy.ml communities, lemmy.ml admins probably won’t bother banning me — that would be too much effort, so if a lemmy.ml user ventures to communities on other instances, they can learn about this censorship.
(sidenote: I wonder if !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is blocked by ML admins, afaik it isn’t)
Oh yeah, for sure(I blocked the lemmy.ml and lemmygrad instance). But there is a difference between censorship and moderation.
Fediverse? Maybe. It will stay small and not monetized. For some that’s good.
Lemmy? No hope. Lemmy and the pessimistic world views here give ME no hope for anything on this planet. I want to leave, but keep finding myself back here doom scrolling. Some communities seems good though. The platform is good though and seems to be picking up.
Agreed. This is the most cynical corner of the internet I’ve ever been to, yet here I’m.
Reddit is worse
Reddit is more diverse. The same kind of cynicism exists there too but it’s dilluted by all the other content so it’s easier to ignore. Here that is less the case as majority of the content is news articles - granted that I haven’t been to reddit for over a year so I don’t know what it’s like today.
It depends how you use these platforms. On reddit, I go to a few somewhat niche subs (via a direct bookmark link) so I don’t see any content outside of those specific niches.
On lemmy, I use this account for news/global politics, but I also have an alt where I only access content from subscribed communities and there is minimal politics.
Specially for those of us who aren’t from the USA, there’s basically no content other than their news, a couple different hobby communities and the sellers from nsfw.
I also hope it stays not monitored, though I would happily pay $1/month to support running costs.
Hopeful that some parts of the population won’t be giving all their data away. There will always be bootlickers (apple fanboys, google lovers, reddit aficionados, Musk-worshippers, …) , people who just don’t know better (too old, uninterested, ignorant, unexposed, …), and people who can’t join due to things like censorship, internet speed, or whatever else.
Unfortunately, I am an Apple user lol. I don’t hate the products, but don’t care for Tim Cook, and I hate their labor practices. I also hate that they are anti-right-to-repair. I do appreciate the quality of their products and software. I hope the government slaps them with the biggest antitrust lawsuit.
Moving forward, I will be considering alternatives due to the ethics of their manufacturing. I am a big open-source supporter, and I understand that my support of Apple is a bit of cognitive dissonance. But I do wish Linux could find a way to deliver a product that feels as refined as a MacBook. I would be willing to donate to an effort to do so.
But I do wish Linux could find a way to deliver a product that feels as refined as a MacBook. I would be willing to donate to an effort to do so.
There are quite a few efforts to make linux a default and provide a good UX. One way to support them is buying stuff with linux pre-loaded. Then it’s using stuff like KDE, Gnome, other desktop enviroments and donating to them. I exclusively buy from linux hardware vendors (as in desktops and laptops) and have been donating non-stop to a few opensource projects for about 5 years now (maybe even longer).
The Linux Foundation though… I think only an external force could convince them to spend more than 2% of their budget on linux itself…
…abd this goes on anticorporate. Thank you very much. And yes, I think it does and we do make a difference. Keep it up. Organize and search for people like yourself. Instead of turning the naysayers one by one and burning out, find your allies and spread the word efficiently. Think of the ideal situation and make it happen. I‘m here, lets fucking go (same mission, different continent)!
The Fediverse is a sewer of antisemitism, and antisemitic censorship
How so? And what do you define as “antisemitism” and “antisemitic censorship”?
Absolutely.
set up a monthly contribution even if it’s just $2/month
I remember somewhere on the fedi, some instance admin saying that on average it cost $2/month per user. So, if you are relatively active on the server, $2 monthly recurring donation might cover your share of expenses.
how I can make a difference
https://blog.elenarossini.com/supporting-the-fediverse-one-small-act-at-a-time/
2$ a month is bad advise as payment processing fees will eat too much of it. Costs are also usually much less than 2$/month/member, but that is assuming the admin labor is provided by volunteers.
I don’t think you’re dramatic.
For me it’s about reclaiming my right to participate in online discourse on my own terms. In a way the fediverse is freedom.
I plan on trying to self host a mastodon instance for myself and rebuild my blogs.
I don’t think I’d ever want to self host a lemmy, I like being anonymous to a reasonable degree. But I like that lemmy lets me have a voice without acquiescence to reddits enshittification.
Also the community is largely great. I love the memes, I love the comments and discussions, and I like that I learn things from fellow internet users again.
