If it ends up that meta is able to destroy the fediverse simply by joining it, that is a design flaw on OUR end.

“Simply by joining it” is not an accurate representation of what will happen in the slightest. Meta is not some scrappy little Lemmy instance operator relying on donations to keep the lights on, they’re one of the biggest companies in the world who simply do not care about fair competition or open standards, and they have a proven track record of using that position to either buy out or destroy competition.

When Meta have so much money that they can simply outspend any other fediverse platform and become dominant that way, how is that a design flaw on our end? You can make a project as resistant to corporate overreach as you like, infrastructure to run it still costs money and there is no fediverse operator on the face of the earth that is going to be able to outspend Meta when it comes to infrastructure and R&D. How is defederation not an appropriate response when smaller instances are crippled under the inevitable load stemming from Metas users?

Corporations have been embracing, extending and extinguishing FOSS projects in the tech space for decades now, and their demise has rarely been because of a fatal flaw in the projects themselves. It’s been an intentional play by Microsoft, Google et al to ensure that there is no viable open alternative to their walled gardens. Trusting them in any capacity is naïve at best and catastrophic at worst.

I encourage you to read this blog post which outlines these concerns much better than I can: https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

It's actually three medium-sized online platforms in a trench coat.

Tech bros are a scourge on society.

Neat, another service that Google will inexplicably kill in anywhere from 6 months to five years time.

Something I’ve noticed as an elder millennial working in IT is that there’s an assumption by older generations that because zoomers have grown up with smartphones that they’ll be automatically be proficient with tech as a whole, but it’s not correct in my experience and I really think it’s doing them a disservice. They’re better than anyone else I’ve met at navigating apps/mobile UI and can be super efficient working that way but tend to struggle as much as boomers with more traditional computers, because it’s simply not what they grew up with and no one really sat them down to formally teach them. We’re definitely going to see more of the “appification” of common office tools and programs as the zoomers and Generation Alpha progress in their careers and start outnumbering the older generations in the workplace in my opinion. If AI hasn’t put us all out of a job anyway.

Elon is a free speech absolutist, as long as you’re hurting other people and not him.

I’ve been dipping in and out, but frankly I can see myself leaving it behind entirely in the future. It’s really, REALLY apparent how toxic and miserable the majority of Reddit is when you’ve spent time using a platform where the main point isn’t to collect as many upvotes and awards as possible at the expense of empathy for your fellow humans.

If this is “cancel culture” the phrase has lost all meaning.

They banned the RedditAlternatives sub a few days ago. If it wasn’t the case before, it is now. This situation must be rattling some cages at Reddit redgardless of what Spez said.

I swear people have completely forgotten how the internet worked before Reddit. If you didn’t like a platform you could just…leave. Walk away and make your own and if enough people shared your feelings on the matter, another community would form. It happened all the time, there wasn’t really a monopoly. The fact that we can feasibly do that again (even better in a lot of ways) and people still act like one volunteer-run community drawing a line in the sand over what is acceptable and what isn’t is some catastrophic blow to freedom of expression truly shows how deep the centralised social media brain worms have burrowed.

I feel like the people complaining haven’t actually bothered reading about what Beehaw is for and the ethos of the administrators. It’s literally all right there in the sidebar, I read it before I made my account. This is completely in line with that. It’s such a nothing burger. You’re not being cEnSoReD because one instance out of thousands has drawn a line in the sand on what it will tolerate and what it won’t.

In short, no.

In detail, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Another Google service destined for the glue factory.

Anyone operating an instance should defederate from this shit immediately. This is exactly the kind of corporate overreach that isn’t welcome here. This will end very poorly for the fediverse I think.

I am convinced that printer companies make their products as esoteric and intimidating to the average person as possible on purpose so that they can sell expensive servicing packages to businesses.

NTA. They’ve tried to screw us all for money and if there’s any justice in the world they’re about to find out what made their site so attractive to investors the hard way. Fuck ‘em.

/r/WallStreetBets will probably find a way to lay it to waste in the first ten minutes.

New fear unlocked: unknowingly signing up to an instance that federates with servers hosting CP 🤢

Where you draw the line is ultimately up to you. Some people are using both Reddit and fediverse platforms, some are dropping Reddit entirely, some like yourself are lurking only. There’s not a community on the fediverse for everything yet, and the ones that are may not be as active as they are on Reddit or may not be federated into your home instance. The way I see it, if there’s some information that you need that happens to be on Reddit, you shouldn’t deprive yourself of it. The unfortunate reality is that Reddit has come to replace a lot of forums and discussion boards over the years and now has a monopoly (I’d personally call it a stranglehold) on community-sourced information. We can change that, but it’s going to take a while. Do what you need to do.

Interesting, I wonder if they’ve decided that the negative publicity of appearing to censor alternative platforms wouldn’t be worth it.

This is very 2023.

Conservatives are more obsessed with kids genitals than anyone else on the planet yet they constantly accuse everyone else of grooming children and being sexual abusers. They’re disgusting.

Exactly. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that anyone is obliged to allocate their server resources to you.

ITT: People not understanding that if they don't like the rules on one instance, they can use literally any other instance and that problem will evaporate.

I believe now more than ever that any site that revolves around a community should be in the hands of said community and not corporations or else this eventually happens

This is how it used to be before the internet for most people basically became five websites run by enormous faceless data mines. Forums/bulletin boards/IRC channels used to be run by the community for the community and in my opinion the internet was better for it. Sure you’d get the odd flame war or power-tripping mod, but it was super common for a large portion of the community to just up sticks and start a new forum somewhere else if it became too much of a problem. Then Reddit killed most of the hobbyist forums stone dead. There’s nothing to go back to so we have to start fresh. But honestly, I’m here for it. I’m tired of being the product for a bunch of advertisers. Take me back to 2004.

I wouldn’t put it past them in an attempt to protect their IPO. It’ll be exposed almost immediately, but it’s not like an idea being terrible has stopped spez before.

Easy solution to this would be introducing a feature similar to multireddit where you can group smaller communities together as one. It could be on a global basis where everyone gets the same communities or on a local basis where users can add or remove communities as they see fit. I really don’t think it’s ultimately going to be as much of an issue as Reddit users think. The alternative is doing it the way Reddit does and then you just have…Reddit again. I keep seeing people who left Reddit because they don’t like the way things are being done complaining because Lemmy doesn’t do things the way Reddit does. That’s bizarre to me. You don’t solve the problem of a few people holding all the power over a platform by moving to a new platform but keeping the same architecture that caused the problem in the first place.

He’s not right. It’s none of his business.

My guess is that the vast majority of people using Chrome aren’t even aware that Chromium exists.

Except unlike Reddit, you’re free to use an instance which does federate with these servers. I fail to see what is unsettling about this.

There’s four admins here, and they all do this voluntarily. They will all have jobs and lives outside of this platform, and they’ve all been incredibly busy since this instance blew up. I don’t feel like it’s particularly fair to demand that they take on hours and hours of extra work dealing with spam and trolls from other servers when they’ve been quite upfront about what they’re trying to create here. If you want the content from those instances it’s really not much of an ask to make an account there.

Spez has told Reddit staff that the blackout “will pass”.

He’s right, it will. And that’s the problem.

A two day blackout means nothing to Spez and Reddit. What it tells them is “we can treat the userbase and developers like shit and they’ll still use our platform for the other 363 days of the year”.

The only thing that will force Reddit to the negotiating table is blacking out indefinitely. Not a single protesting subreddit opens back up until they realise what made the company so attractive to investors in the first place.

Elon Musk says something fucking stupid, must be Tuesday.

I like to dance. Sometimes it’s angry dancing, sometimes it’s happy dancing, but it helps me blow off steam and express emotions in a healthy way.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. Still amazing to this day.

Only people I feel for is the workers at Reddit. Not their fault their boss is an asshole.

It absolutely will be, at least at first. But as long as Lemmy can keep some forward momentum, the idea will become less and less alien to more mainstream users as more people are exposed to it.

Lemmy doesn’t have to kill Reddit on the spot, it just has to be a viable alternative. And as long as we keep the communities here alive, it will become one. I don’t think the idea of federation will be strange at all in a few years.

I'm old aren't I

Valve knows better than to put all of their eggs into one basket. Microsoft has signalled that they’re slowly but steadily moving towards a Windows + Xbox walled garden ecosystem, and while we’re not there yet, it is coming and Valve know that it could kill them off when it does.

It’s a shame this has to happen, but I respect your decision. You’re completely correct that it’s impossible to actually build a safe space while anyone is allowed to walk in off the street.

Is there a list of federated servers anywhere that we can access?

The tech giving me hope for the future isn’t the one currently consuming as much energy as a small country to store JPEGs on the blockchain for rich people to flex with.

I skipped the pain and just bought a rice cooker. It’s easily my most used kitchen gadget.