Couldn’t they “convince” instance admins to include ads? Couldn’t they flood communities with influencers? Couldn’t they promote Lemmy apps that have ads?

You are severely underestimating the criminal energy and creativity of these corporations.

Edit: reddit turned to shit way before the platform itself was up for sale. No need to buy the platform, bots and influencers are enough.

Absolutely! I fear it’s too late for many boomers but the younger generations are in desperate need of this. In Germany a lot of younger people are voting for Nazis because they have the cooler TikTok content. It’s a total shitshow. Our schools are garbage regarding this. I know this because my wife is a teacher and she’s the only one taking this seriously in her school. All of her colleagues don’t see the need. It’s really bad unfortunately.

You went ahead and actually gathered the correct information. This is not what the “normies” in question do. Look, I didn’t coin the term nor do I approve of the use of this term. I just wanted to explain what the other person meant with “normification”.

I think it would make discussions about US politics even worse. But I agree with the rest. I personally would also like to have a more broad user base. That’d definitely spark more interesting discussions. Lemmy is a very weird echo chamber right now. It’s just very important that no one in the Fediverse starts to capitalize on them. That’d be the moment enshittification starts. And that will happen once the mainstream people come pouring in because greed will always corrupt the ones who have some form of power. Someone will take advantage of this.

I didn’t coin the term and I too believe it’s a huge generalization. However, “simpler” people are more susceptible to ads. The “normies” in question are the ones that don’t use adblockers, they believe ads are normal and they believe ads don’t affect them. Corporations capitalize on that. Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations.

Edit: even now you’ll find people that use Lemmy apps that have ads. The bigger the user base, the more greedy companies will find ways of exploiting the Fediverse.

It’s what happened to the internet. Devices were dumbed down to make the internet accessible for everyone. Now the “normies” are also on the internet, whereas in the past they’d belittle you for spending time on the computer.

In time, the Fediverse will also be easily accessible. And where there are normies, you’ll find corporate enshittification.

What annoys me about Lemmy, at least with the communities and instances that I’m connected to, is that it is a really bad echo chamber for left / far-left techies. It’s not exactly representative of what is going on in the world. Don’t get me wrong , I prefer a left mindset. But I believe this is dangerous to a certain degree. I’m starting to think I should go back to forae. This whole social bullshit disguised as a news-aggregator is just exhausting.

I never had a twitter account. The entire premise was dumb to begin with. The only way I came in contact with twitter was when shitty journalists just took tweets and used them as a story. But that’s more of a journalism problem than anything else.

Paying to have your data stolen and sold sounds like a shit deal. Just use one of the many 3rd party apps for YouTube and Stremio for streaming. Fuck all those greedy shits. I support a select few content creators either via Patreon or their own website (Viva+), the rest can go fuck off. The internet was better when people made videos for shits and giggles. The best memes came from that era.

This is my exact setup and couldn’t be happier with it.

I honestly think I’ll be getting a feature phone next time. I’ll keep an old smartphone just for Android Auto and that’s it.

Why are you so defensive? Like, you’re really making an effort to come off as ignorant.

I suppose its easy to find tech savvy gen-z people on Lemmy ;)

Obviously what I was referring to is anecdotal and stems from my social bubble. But there is something to it, that growing up with dumbed down devices makes you less prone to dive deep into the details of tech. If I were born 2 decades later, I don’t think I would have gathered as much tech know-how as I did. I essentially had to go through all of it (started in the 286 era with PC-DOS, broke my dad’s PC countless times trying to make shareware games work, dabbled around on bulletin boards, grew up with the early stages of internet and saw how it turned to shit, etc.). If I didn’t have that, I might just have ended up knowing nothing more than smartphones.

People who know nothing more than how to operate a smartphone are not tech savvy. They can’t even do that properly. Never seen anyone from that generation use an ad blocker or revanced or anything else that combats enshittification.

Isn’t that what Google photos does too? I’m slowly degoogling but I must say, I do enjoy that feature. It kinda gives purpose to the random pictures one takes.

I will agree with that. Im honestly very happy and proud that we manage to power through the slight recession. And im 100% sure its because of good management. We jumped on board the sustainability train fairly quickly and we’re definitely benefitting from it. It helps that our customers are doing the same. Conservative mindset is what’s ruining our industry (and our political landscape). All they do is whine when things won’t work the way they used to and then they wait for state aid.

Anywho, thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it!

I work in heavy machinery. We use tons of metal, like literally. We’re still dominating the market with competitive prices and good technology. Building cars is amateur time in comparison.

Edit: the main portion of costs is personnel. We have a gigantic service network and they’re expensive as fuck because Germany has a good union (IG Metall). Gas is absolutely of no concern to us at all.

Not sure what gas has to do with building cars, but ok…

I’m guessing Bill Cosby?

What a legend!