Big Tech Wants You Trapped. The Open Web Sets You Free

I hope more active users move to the fediverse. That way we will have a lot of variety in content and can also potentially prevent communities from becoming echo chambers. I suppose moderation will also have to be taken up a notch for these changes to actually have a positive effect.

prevent communities from becoming echo chambers
I suspect this will still become a problem since we can subscribe to whichever communities we like and vice versa.
- It is a feature, not a problem.
  I have, like, this whole rich life offline. My curated list of instances and communities (plus my user block list) is just my entertainment and a small portion of my day.
  You may not believe this but I have numerous thoughts, activities and interactions that never leave a trace online. I have no obligation to drink from the firehose that is being pumped from the septic tank of the human psyche.
- @Flagstaff @gunpachi I'm not sure echo chambers are inherently a bad thing. My real life is a carefully crafted echo chamber of people I like to spend time with (which conveniently includes my family). The problem comes when we get all our information from that echo chamber.
Echo chambers are not bad when the echo is due to the majority opinions being in favor of basic human rights and equality. Giving voice to those that spew hate is not conducive to going anywhere except a circle.
- And you will be the one deciding what constitutes hate, whose voice to cut off?
Also, more active users means more niche communities. I just realized there’s a Severance community that is medium active. One less thing I need Reddit for.
- What! My outie loves Severance.
  I can’t locate this community using search on the term ‘severance’.
  Do you mind sharing the instance and community name?
  Praise Kier!
- Niche communities are awesome ! Sadly reddit is still the king in this aspect.
  Maybe in a few years lemmy will reach that level or even surpass it... One can dream.
I hear echo chamber brought up a lot but never really have seen examples of a place that doesn't have an echo chamber.
I think that's just the natural result of people forming communities as opposed seeking out battle grounds for adversaries.
Only thing that can be done is offering people the tools to freely form as many communities as they want with the main barrier being who feels compelled to join the new echo chamber community.
Why moderation? The old internet didn't have moderation. Why does everyone feel the need for moderation?
- The old internet was hidden behind dial-up modems and TCP-IP stacks and weird telnet and usenet protocols. This complexity worked as a filter and the people using it were mostly academics, students, techies and other nerds (me amongst them). The moment uncle Bob could poke his way through social media on his phone from the shitter, the whole thing cascaded into Eternal September and "the old internet" was lost forever.
- Trolls, bots, and scammers make them necessary at a minimum, and then the subliminal messaging from the cronies of politicians, etc. make them welcome. Bots are easier to make than ever before so you can't compare the past with the present that easily. kbin.social died last year because of relentless spam bots posting garbage/malware links 100x/sec.
- What? The old internet absolutely had moderation, even back in the day of BBS.
- I don't know what old internet you used, but the IRC channels and forums I used to run around on definitely had moderation. This was about '97. Maybe you're talking about the late 80s when barely anybody knew the Internet even existed and it was just academics and ubernerds?
- Guess you never used forums.

Less bots, more genuine conversations, it’s also not as fast-paced as other social medias.
It’s great. It feels like a forum from back in late 2000s / early 2010 and I like it
- And even when it gets heated, people still seem to listen and not just performatively push agendas. Seen more "fair enough"s than in years of Reddit.
I wouldn't mind a little faster paced fwiw, the conversation can stagnate a bit sometimes, but it is what it is.
Yeah though I think it's a little bit too political at times. I get it, Trump and Musk is destroying the USA from within, but I don't need to read about it in every second post...
- thats what reddit has become, even worst they allow the con sub to be on the front page all the time.

I tried Bluesky for while but honestly I like Mastadon and Lemmy better. I'm also testing LOOPS (tiktok replacement) which is from the same creator as Pixelfed. There's something comforting using decentralized platforms that are safe from Government and Corporate intervention

I like that it feels more like the web when I was younger, smaller communities usually with a more specific topic, run by a person or small group.
What's your impression of loops so far?
I've been underwhelmed, but I don't know if that's a platform issue or an adoption issue. Found a couple good accounts to follow, but I really want a block option to keep some accounts out of my "for you"
- Content wise it’s underwhelming but it’s random videos. There’s more variety than Pixelfed which has an even smaller community. Eventually more trends will catch on to Lopps but I hope there’s more original content once it’s out of beta and public
- will be hard without some algorithm. tiktok is useful for finding content that align with my interests
LOOPS
Where can I DL and try it?
- https://loops.video/ You can download the Android APK or Download TestFlight for iOS to use it. You have to sign up first
If only we had more content not related to "look we're free!", "look Linux is freedom", "free free free!", "MAGA bad, but we're independent and free!", it would be even more awesome (not a pun to your side, just a piece of frustration)
Also, for those saying "create it yourself" - I do
- Idk why you are getting downvoted but I wish we had a little more variety to the content. I basically see the same things everyday in my home feed.

I remember reading a book that talked about public spaces and how we often think of malls as public spaces, but they have so many restrictions and ulterior motives that it doesn't really hold.

They're essentially the irl equivalent of centralised social media platforms. I hope once the fediverse really takes off, we can have 'official' platforms/instances that are run by governments that federate only to other 'official' ones. That seems like a better way to reach people, instead of Xitter.

It is incredibly frustrating to see for example Ursula Von der Leyen preaching "EU STRONG" stuff on fucking shitter. Really? This is your way of showing how strong the EU is and we shouldn't or can't rely on USA? By posting your I'm strong message on the precise platform the US chief nazification officer owns? FFS.
If all EU governments together decide to ditch shitter and move to mastodon instances, media follows. It's a pretty cheap measure to implement, too.
- Hard agree! I do think fediverse platforms are perfect for public entities to disseminate information.
  I’m US based so my example is say a county. They already have the IT infrastructure and staff. Make an instance for the county and a community for each department.
  The road department can post road closures and upcoming traffic diversions. The parks department can promote events, etc.
  These type of instances can just disable comments. They are read-only so moderation is not needed.
  It’s trivial from a resource perspective and even easier than updating a website.
- It makes sense if you are helping Russia or are in on isolating the USA. These parties are being funded by these billionaires in Europe. So I mean, eu strong is likely just a front.
- EU really should ban Twitter. US social media has turned out to be incredibly dangerous with algorithm manipulation with the best evidence being the US and their election and people.

The selfhosting movement sets people free in general.

Does selfhosting movement include using non-commercial instances of apps like mastodon/lemmy/matrix etc?
- Self hosting movement is hosting stuff yourself, so kinda, assuming you're not putting some kind of advertising on your own services, but most commonly I'd see things like jellyfin, nextcloud, navidrome, immich and then a bunch of other stuff, there's foss alternatives to most commercial offerings.
  Awesome selfhosted
  Is a great place to start.
- Sure? If you help fund it, definitely. You're not self hosting, but you're still involved with those who do.

I agree with the sentiment of this post. In fact, I was trapped (and extremely discontent) on Facebook for the first half of my digital-life; before finding open-source - and the rest is history.

I am afraid that we are not doing nearly enough however. This (like most things in this world) is a multilayered issue with no quick-fix, but the core of it is that many (and I mean MANY) of us are tech illiterate. Worse so, even more of us are math illiterate.

This generally means that most cannot cope with the current world we live in, and are experiencing extreme levels of inertia. I was here at one point, so I know how difficult this transition is.

An open web existing (on its own) won't do much - its the culture that needs to change. We need to be equipped to think, fight, and adapt - or our spaces won't survive. We are in a constant arms race with bad actors and ALL OF US need to be capable to win this fight. When the bots come to Lemmy (and they will), are most of us prepared to handle filter-lists, run servers, and potentially create a web-of-trust? I doubt this.

I would really like to see a return to real-life communication for most things (as humans are, from birth, well adapted to this) and the open-web only be used for automation and coordination. I think the most freedom comes from stability and the internet (in general) just does not offer that.

I think you're forgetting Lemmy already has a pretty high barrier to entry tech wise, I think most of us will be fine.
- This is true, but only for now.
  The point of decentralized social platforms is to eventually include everyone. This is not to say this is Lemmy's goal, but it is certainly the goal of its users. The tech-illiterate will show up en-masse (they always do) and what will be our answer for it? From what I see, we have none - this is no different than living on borrowed time.
  We have to remember that "enshittification", before all else, is a cultural issue. When the people that have this culture arrive, the whole platform will suffer for it (hence what I said earlier). Humans are just better with dealing with this in real-life, but the internet poses a lot more challenges that I just do not think we are ready for.

I’m not a fan of mastodon because it really does feel a lot like other social media sites, I don’t really like any form of advertising, whether it’s intentional or unintentional. People post too much bullshit trying to gain followers. I never cared much for twitter/facebook/instagram anyway.

Lemmy however is a better replacement for Reddit, so far. I remember when Reddit was the replacement and now look at it, a big steaming pile of ads and bots, power tripping admin and moderators, killed 3rd party apps that made the site useable. Hopefully lemmy can remain the same as it is now.

My fear is that, if lemmy gets too successful, that regarding bots the same fate may occur.
- Typically if you're gonna deploy a bunch of bots on lemmy, it's easiest to do via your own instance, which is fairly easy to filter out.
  Luckily the federated aspect will help with this a little bit.
Totally agree. These platforms have no discussion culture. They are only designed to gain followers. This means only polarizing content of a very small group of users gets attention and all the rest is not even visible to other people. Reddit or Lemmy is very different in that sense. Even a new user can start a rich discussion because of subs/communities and without the need of followers. Thus the quality of the whole network is overall better.
- reddit was different, now its extremely hard to even comment, let alone mod or start a sub . apparently with that whole sub banning debacle in jan, its even harder to start a sub or even posting in general.

The major platforms are convenient.
But the open web offers something better: genuine ownership, community governance, and independence.

This has a kind of underlying connotation that the open web can't be convenient. This is not true.

It is true that lots of platforms on the fediverse (Lemmy included) don't have the best user experience and user journey flow. But that's not how it has to be. We don't have to accept that as a given.

It's the same problem that Linux faces, where UX issues aren't prioritised because the user base is technical enough to deal with the bullshit. We can't let the same thing occur to the fediverse.

But that's the problem though, devs are notoriously bad at UX, and people good at UX don't seem to care as much about FOSS and the open web. At least that's my experience.
So we need people to speak out so devs can fix these little paper cuts in UX
- Agreed, this has always been a major disconnect.
  I'll also say that devs are notoriously bad at "being a noob". A lot of software just takes too much investment to get working - those that do not tend to be extremely predatory (i.e Facebook).
  Devs need to create dead-simple software that has UX which caters to common actions humans would do.
- people good at UX don’t seem to care as much about FOSS and the open web
  I'm not sure this is true - at least I have an alternative explanation.
  People who do the UX design and all that are rarely invited into the process. Open source projects often look for "maintainers" but this almost exclusively means "developers".
  There's documentation and contributing guidelines for developers. Where is the same material for product managers or designers?
  We don't get product managers and designers in FOSS because they've never been invited.
- There's plenty of good, open source UX in FOSS. Have you seen the Gnome family of apps? They look great and are easy to understand.
Back in the old days, you could register an account without giving your phone number. Nowadays, pretty much all the big social medias won't let you register an account without a number. I guess that's not a big problem for people who don't care about privacy, but for me that's a total deal breaker. This means, that there's a huge barrier to entry.
- Yeah but who doesn’t have at least a cell phone these days (unless you’re making many accounts)? They’re useful for 2 factor authentication too.

anyone got tips for finding quality memes on mastodon? i love the philosophy of the service, but i have 0 interest in reading political takes from strangers all day, and right now it feels like all i see on the “trending” page is people complaining about politics. i just want to escape the bad news and laugh a little, not get mad at my phone anytime i open the app

You gotta make them.
For real, I love mastodon and its philosophy but sometimes I need some brainrot or something fun, and that site its only politics, tech, and memes made by old people
Tell me when you found some :‘D
maybe have a extra mastodon account where you just follow positive things and radically filter out negative stuff (even with word based filters)
and then i can just recommend:
be patient. The awesome people will be found over time.
lemmy communities are also great, but i dont remeber the names. But different instances have some funny meme communities.
search hashtags
in general explore stuff.
Mastodon seems to be in a weird middle that a lot of community platforms fall into. There are a lot of memes (way too many honestly) but they are political memes. I would imagine this is because a lot of people are genuinely worried about their future, but do not want to risk their life nor come off as "cringe".
This is not surprising, given that we are living in extraordinary times, but it is frustrating. I would like for intelligent and practical people to come together and talk about solutions - but we've generally been reactionary. You want good and spicy meem - but we've generally be reactionary. Like I said, its frustrating.

Any great app on Android for mastodon?

I've been using Moshidon. One day I'll find an app as good as Ivory on iOS, but in the meantime Moshidon is fine.
- I'll second moshidon. It gets bonus points for letting you see your followed hashtags. Or something like that. There's something with hashtags that you can't do in the web browser that you can do with apps. Moshidon does that thing.
fedilab ☞ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/fr.gouv.etalab.mastodon/
I use Tusky and am satisfied, maybe there are better apps idk
check also here for more apps https://joinmastodon.org/apps
I use fedilab, in part because it's the best app for peertube that I've found. But it's got great support for Mastodon and Pixelfed as well.

I've gone all-in on (properly) federated social media and I've got to say it's been a great experience. After what's happened to Twitter, with Zuck's recently stated plans for Meta, and TikTok's immediate Trump cocksucking, I realized that all privately-owned platforms are as good as compromised, no matter the utility they otherwise provide.

Instagram was more difficult as it was how I found out about a lot of local events, and was my primary connection to a lot of old friends, but it was worth it. I actually reach out and talk to those friends who I previously just followed. It's restored some actually connection that social media had stripped away, and I find myself avoiding the endless scroll I used to get caught in.

I'm still working on evacuating YouTube, but using RSS feeds to be more deliberate about whose uploads I'm notified about has helped a ton.

Great read, thank you for sharing.

Preach!

This post is... Well a little lacking in my opinion. I am someone who believes that if we can't tolerate different opinions in different spaces that isn't a good way to engage in good faith anyway. While I like the fediverse. Example: Mastodon and Pixelfed. The platforms themselves isn't always the most user friendly and to me at least is a little lacking. I'm also confused as to why this post flat out doesn't mention bluesky as well but I digress. It's a very new thing to look at what social platform people use as a political statement. Of course we all know MAGA supporters use Truth Social and X (Twitter). At the end of the day when less and less people refuse to come to the table and find common ground the more violent and destructive the world is going to become. Violence only creates more violence. imo.

I am someone who believes that if we can't tolerate different opinions in different spaces that isn't a good way to engage in good faith anyway
So you've not been paying attention the last 20 years? Letting Nazis be Nazis on your platform just turns it into a Nazi platform
- Everything you're saying is just fear mongering in my opinion. Also bad faith as you only point out the most extreme examples right off the bat. I don't engage with extremism you ARE a part of the problem.

John Mastodon.

My grandfather met John Mastodon in 1861. He says he was very nice.

enshittification. Reddit , mozilla and tiktok has recently joined the ranks/. they saw the money right wing content brings in, and they went with it, of course they need equal number of arguments against this content, otherwise thier investment fails.

keeping you engaged on their terms. And their terms alone. There's no freedom

So keeping you engaged on seemingly your own terms is acceptable and possible?

Such articles just make me think of Bluesky with boredom and suspicion.

The real free web is the non-existent luddite web. It should solve problems platforms solve now, but with minimal engagement possible, ideally look for a second, push a button and leave for a walk. A platform is not interested in minimizing engagement, so it should be a system where paid work necessary for its operation doesn't allow one to become a platform.

I like talking about that, and even tried to push myself (executive dysfunction is a bitch) to try to start a little toy project of something like small web (meaning objects with basic hypertext pages with links to other objects ; with current state of an object being a result of many crud-like messages, and which are considered and which are not would be determined by signatures and chain of trust, meaning that two people with different political views could have very different versions of the same forum and both be happy ; such messages and not resulting objects would be what's stored and replicated, like something between Usenet and a version control system). But then realized I don't really want to do that, just to talk about that, and that's more complex than it reads. Maybe eventually, when I'm twice older.