I think this decentralization and federation is what web3 is all about, without all the corporations calling everything to do with monkey pixel art that costs a million dollars “web3”
Hey! This post is not specifically related to the lemmy.world instance. From now on, posts such as these will be removed, in order for the community to stay on topic. However, as this is a highly upvoted post, I’ll just lock it for now.
Honestly I’m not even sure what the term web3 means but Lemmy does feel… less commercial, which is really refreshing! And I’m noticing alot less criticizism which is excellent. I’m certainly going to be staying here and trying to help it grow in a positive and mindful way.
I get what others are saying about it feeling like how the internet used to be… I’m really excited to see where Lemmy goes. Hopefully it doesn’t just end up the way its predecessors have gone! Feels like I’m part of a movement to fight the oppression!! Power to the people woo!
That’s what I’m enjoying about it so far too. Content is sparse but that’s okay. I’m so tired of being marketed to, of being a product. These open source federated apps are janky and quieter, but they feel more real. These aren’t algorithms pushing engagement and outrage or ads every 10 seconds.
Right? It’s way calmer here. I felt hesitant about that at first, but it’s only because we’ve gotten so used to an endless stream of (often inconsequential and low-effort) content. More isn’t always necessary or better.
Kid-me used to have days off and he’d hop onto Warcraft 3 or various message boards only to realize no one was online because everyone had jobs or was at school. It had a rhythm to it which was really cool. It wouldn’t surprise me if the “always-on” content spam of the modern internet has given people unhealthy ideas about what life is supposed to feel like.
I don’t mind the lack of an endless stream of content so much, however it would be nice if it was easier to not see the same content again and again after already reading it. Maybe some sort of read flag would be good for posts, possibly with a configurable number of new comments after which it is shown again.
Plus on Reddit, corporation makes money from content users create while here everything is open, free and fun.
Let’s just hope we can keep it that way! 🙂
I agree wholeheartedly. I think what all of us who care about these alternative underground social networks need to do is try to provide the best content we can, because that will attract other people here, which will benefit us in turn through the content they make!
There might be a case for a more sparse content feed. Sure you can subscribe to hundreds of communities across a hundred different servers but you are more in control of the feed. every post is going to be more relevant and you will have more incentive to take part in conversations instead of just refreshing and having a whole new page of crap.
There are some ease of use improvements to be made of course, this is the most users and fastest growth lemmy has ever seen, so there is some learning to be done as it scales.
You nailed it: It feels like a movement. And movements, especially nascent ones, require buy-in and work from their members. I guess that explains why I feel obligated to participate more than I did at Reddit.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a day, but it’s already clear no one is gonna build this out for us.
Same here, I think I lebt more comments here today than on reddit the last month
Right? I’m thinking about trying to start my beginner guitar sub (do I still call it sub?). I tried on reddit, posted a few times and it fizzled out. Maybe it would be more successful here. Just a sub dedicated to helping people begin their guitar playing journey. Playing guitar has made such a positive impact on my life, I’d like to share that with others you know?
What is sort of bothering me is how as it becomes more popular, I’ve already seen a few people asking about adding advertising to lemmy instances. I hope advertisers are not looking at diminished revenue with the reddit blackouts and trying to move to Lemmy already. I just can’t stand ads, and hope to never see ads interwoven with posts and comments.
I suppose the benefit to lemmy is that you could always migrate to another instance if yours starts pulling that shit
As far as I know, while account migration is technically possible it isnt implemented yet, so if a server decicdes to shut up shop due to lack of funds your account there is lost and only federated content on other instances will be saved.
So once migration of user accounts and communities is implemented we should be able to easily survive waves of server closures.
I do worry that it will eventually coalesce into a couple of ultra-large servers and lose a lot of it’s decentralisation though. gotta spread out!
I mean, I suppose creating alts on multiple instances might work as an alternative in the meantime. I don’t know if that’s frowned upon though.
Completely agree on the last point, though. It is crucial that we spread out!
I’ve made about 10 alts so far, just making sure to secure my username in case I do need to migrate somewhere
I don’t believe it’s frowned upon. I have one here on infosec.pub and another on fedia.io. I primarily use infosec.pub though
True enough. And I know I’m just a drop in the bucket, but I will do exactly that if it ever happens.
Technically it should already be possible for a company to advertise here, no? Not in the “there are little video boxes you can’t get rid of (barring adblocker extensions)” but in the sense that one could have their employees create accounts and make comments and posts to promote their products. They’d probably have to do it subtly and sneakily, because they’d likely get banned or if they had their own instance, defederated, but they could. Wouldn’t even need to pay anything beyond employee salaries to make it.
I feel like “proper” ads would be more difficult to implement, because even if the software were updated to include the ability to add them, people could and likely would make forks of it that just didn’t display those from federated servers, or clients that don’t on any server, and because the software is open source there would be no stopping it. An instance could defederate instances using such an ad-blocking fork, but that would risk ending up themselves isolated and therefore lose much of their traffic and viability as a platform.
I think it might be ok if some instances decide to run ads. Someone has to pay for the server costs, and ads are an option.
The great thing about the Fediverse is you can move to a different instance if you don’t like it :)
Web3 became a marketing term, doesn’t even really have a clear meaning, but it’s used as a catch-all word for blockchain-related things like NFTs, cryptocurrency projects, etc. But most of those are not truly decentralized, whereas Lemmy and other fediverse projects are.
I kind of like the idea of rebranding it around a more honest and inclusive definition of decentralization. Though getting past bad marketing is so hard it might not be worth it.
Yes, I would call it web1. Decentralization are basic concepts of the internet and it was more decentralized in the 90s. Getting back to the roots.
Great point. Lemmy and Mastadon look more like an effort to claw back the web of open access and decentralization from VCs, grifters, and the like.
The web3 that can be named is not the true web3, or something like that.
The “branded” Web3 was about “how do we create the third Web BUBBLE” more than “how do we create the third Web experience.” The people who missed buying AOL shares in 1996 or Amazon in 2002 wanted their chance to get in on speculation, except without the utility of an actual service or product underneath the hype.
But how can this be web3 without blockchain!?
;-)
What about my funny ape pictures? Won’t someone think of my funny pictures that costs a cities worth of energy???
This is what reddit felt like ten years ago … now it’s just a matter of growing the community and making it bigger and better.
I felt bad leaving my old communities at reddit … but in a funny way, I feel like I’ve stepped into a time warp and jumped back ten years … now I’m looking forward to the next ten on Lemmy and Mastadon
My thoughts exactly. Ten years ago reddit was “too confusing” for people too.
feels like a modern take on usenet/newsgroups/bbs.
You pick your local server and your chosen feeds and enjoy.
I hope as more small servers start up and die that we don’t just end up with a small number of mega size servers though, that goes against the point.
I think one thing that may help with this is letting users stay on their instance when browsing others. Right now, if I want to hop over to another instance, I can definitely link there or comment if using the appropriate channel, but actually going there makes it seem like I am signed out. Implementing features like this https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048 would help make the experience feel more cohesive, and encourage exploration of other instances without confusing users and accidentally encouraging sticking to one’s own instance.
Yes, if a new user weren’t paying attention they would be caught up by that a lot.
formatting links with /c/community@instance rather than full URLS works on some platforms, but only if the content linked has been federated, otherwise it is out of sync. You then have to know the link was good, the community exists, then do the copy paste into your search to force it to sync, then the link will work for you…
That could be smoothed out with better fed request optimisation. it’s particularly poor on smaller instances that haven’t federated with much more than the few big servers, or self hosted instances that have to built that from scratch.
Web 1.0, users form communities on bulletin boards, internet forums and newsgroups. It’s the birth of Web 2.0, investors and advertisers see potential in large user bases. This leads to social media and mobile apps as fronts for tracking users and big data collection. Smart home and wearables become a plot to bring tracking hardware into your life even when you aren’t actively engaging on the internet. The tech billionaire is born at the cost of the privacy and wallet of the user. Web 3.0, a federated Web 1.0 where users take back control of the internet. Tech billionaires live in homeless shelters and eat ramen noodles.
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I’d buy that for a dollar
I understand that reference
I’m honestly very excited about Lemmy and Mastodon.
With federated and decentralized technology, I think there’s a real hope of taking the internet back from the tiny selection of corporatized, monetized, sterile silos we have now, where everyone is forced to abide by the same compromise rules and everything can be co-opted or changed at a moment’s notice without the userbase’s consent, and giving it to smaller, more fun, radical, unique, and interesting internet communities, run by volunteers who really care, for like minded people.
I think it will lead to a much more diverse and richly textured internet, maybe even a more human internet, since each place you go will be a smaller, more intentional community which policies itself and can develop its own interesting culture and set of norms, while still being connected to everything else so the rot of pure isolation doesn’t set in.
Technology — especially how it is structured — is never neutral, and I think for the first time in a long while, we’ve stumbled on technologies in federation and decentralization that actually tend towards good things. The inherent benefits of federation and decentralization to autonomy and resilience and diversity and resistance tocorporatizationn are stunning, and as long as we don’t fuck that up by assuming that those benefits are sufficient, don’t rest on our laurels thinking we don’t need to maintain a culture that is consciously and intentionally oriented around preserving the things we want to see, I think we’ll be okay!
It certainly feels nostalgic to me being on here. I miss the days of webrings and message boards and just crawling ever forward into unknown new places. I was a kid then though, so I thought it was just me becoming wiser/more tech-savvy. Now I realize how freaky all the consolidation is. Even some video game modding communities now have more of a presence on reddit than anywhere else. It’s convenient but so weird.
I agree with u/Pelicanen that it feels like the uncertain times of the early internet where things were hosted by individuals and their really small websites. I don’t know to what extent it will catch on (although Discord is huge with milleninals/Gen Z, no?) but it’s interesting to imagine a world where the internet is primarily large consumer/business-facing websites and then highly decentralized communities.
It’s starting to feel like the 90’s again, but without frames ;-) I haven’t felt this engaged with the internet in years
I will have no disparaging of frames, thank you very much.
I loved frames and will not hear a word said against them
New project idea: lemmyframes by 2024, or we do a blackout!
I’m gonna take it up a notch and listen to the album Blackout while doing the 2024 blackout and then blacking out my screen with sharpie
fuck I havent thoguht about frames in a minute
those tiny verticle and horizontal scroll bars, that was a luxurious www
<table> my beloved
The joy of creating an entire website layout in tables with background images per cell to paint the UI with without a line of CSS
Absolutely. The spark of the internet is back!
I miss the blink tag and how annoying it was
It’s pretty dope. Been following the fediverse for a while, but I’ve never used twitter so mastodon felt kinda useless to me. I’ve never used facebook, so friendica felt kinda useless to me.
Anonymous strangers posting links and having discussions? Now that’s more my jam.
Same here, neither of those are my thing, but lemmy scratches my needs. Of course without reddit fucking up, I would never have checked it out, but now I’m really hoping this gets big, without losing it’s core
I’ve loved that part of reddit and still do to a point. The thing that’s been creeping into the platform is the problem with bots and astroturfing.
My favourite part was AMAs by scientists and authors or even ppl like Gov Schwarzenegger. I hope fediverse develops to that point one day.
I remember when AMAs were organic and people actually answered questions. Before prepared questions and answers became a thing.
I loved seeing those IAMAs too. Schwarzenegger, Obama, NASA scientists and Woody Harrelson (can we talk about Rampart?)! Unfortunately I think the web is worse now, far too much focus on monetization, bots, propaganda> and astroturfing.
I’m hoping that Lemmy flies under the radar in the sweet spot of enough subscribers but not too many.
The only bot issue I heard of is following people, which one would only get notified if they use new reddit or official app. What were the other bot problems? What’s to stop the bots on this site?
My thoughts exactly
I mean I definitely agree that this feels great, but decentralization and federation is what pure Bitcoin and crypto are all about. In many ways this community reminds me of the good vibes and great minds the early days of cryptocurrency discovery encouraged. This predated some of the corruption, VCs, and crypto bros that came around in 2013 during the first boom.
I still think that early soul of empowerment and community is there in Bitcoin itself but you gotta dig a little deeper to find it. I expect Lemmy will also “commercialize” to some extent in coming years, but it’ll always be better than Reddit and other centralized platforms that want to feature gate and censor unfairly.
I think the crux of what you are saying is that decentralized is a means to create a community. Most of us here want the idea to succeed and are putting in the effort, much like early crypto. Where both Reddit and Crypto failed is when commercial interest took hold. And to your point as long as Lemmy remains commerically disinterting, it will be a true community.
But, because of the decentralized nature, even if a commercial interest takes hold, it will be on individual servers. I can see the NBA or the Olympics or niche topics having their own servers – and I would argue that is a good thing for those interested to host. The value is that you can have both the astro turfed along side the organic with competing interests in the “why.”
I like that idea. The corps and sellouts get their own place, the underground has theirs, normies, weebs, etc. Everyone actually gets a place and unlike Reddit, they can’t really encroach on one another.
Yeah I definitely agree – you summarized my feelings nicely.
I would also add that as exciting concepts/technologies grow and commercialize they tend to become more subject to noise and self-interest interfering with some of their higher order “platonic” (ideal) forms. I fundamentally think that the more federated/decentralized a service can be, the better its original purpose and perfect form can be maintained. Practically I do think it’s challenging for both currency and link aggregation to be properly decentralized, but I think both Bitcoin and Lemmy are inherently beautiful implementations if you strip them down to their core.
I’m enjoying the lemmy.world experience, and I believe decentralised social networking could be the future. I am a refugee from Reddit and hopeful there is hope for a open, community focused platform.
As for this platform, I am apprehensive about somebody running the server I have my account with having the power to remove my account and my posts, but I guess this is true of any network in existence.
My concern in the long run is who pays for the hardware and energy costs even if it is federated. Without some kind of reliable funding model who will pay the bills?
Hopeful for many enjoyable encounters in the Fediverse.
You’ll always have to rely on someone else, unless you build the thing yourself.
The beauty of the fediverse concept is that it’s about as easy as possible to build it yourself.
The cost of running a host is a matter of economical management:
- It costs almost nil to run text-based content.
- Images take a bit of memory and bandwidth, but are even manageable with an old cellphone under a set number of users.
- Videos are a major drag, and very expensive unless you’re embedding them.
Most open-source is funded as passion projects by devoted geeks who typically already make a living doing other computer things anyway, and fediverse is a bit of the same.
It’s no different from using an email provider. Just get one that you trust will stay a while. But there are no guarantees. Google could kill off GMail tomorrow.
I agree. I think there are moderstion logs though which is a good step towards transparency, I think there should be admin logs too for the same.
As for the running costs, I hope there is a more transparent system rather than running it for profit and selling it to corporations.
Hah, web 2.0 was all about the explosion of user-generated content. Corps and cryptonerds wanted to make web 3.0 about making money, but the web has always been about the content, not its monetization. In trying to monetize the content, they’re alienating people and forcing them off the platforms they defaulted to.
Humans like to create and share content, no matter how easy or difficult it is to monetize. If the people who want to monetize humanity’s collective output make it harder to create, then hopefully the result is that people move off the ad-supported platforms and replace them with something that doesn’t rely on centralization with lots of capital to stay afloat.
If nothing else, the way that youtube has made it impossible for segments of the creative community to monetize their content and forced them rely on platforms such as patreon has made it more and more clear that ad-generated revenue is a dead end. You can’t force people to view advertising unless you hold their content hostage, and for the first time in history, they can’t buy out the means of production.
I was resistant to the federverses, but these corpos just think they can get away with anything…
Fuck them I won’t do what they tell me!
It will be fun to watch this place grow, it feels like the start of a new story!
federverses
I’m more a fan of the nadalverses, but to each their own.
Ok apparently my gif did not work
based
Based on what?
deleted by creator
No, you’re amazing
Every single platform that has claimed “Web 3.0” has been revealed to be a crypto scam, and generally not even a sneaky one. Pop over to minds.com if you’d like a free taste of exactly what that ends up looking like. It’s disgusting.
Good God, minds.com is a cesspool.
Very much aware of that.
replace them with something that doesn’t rely on centralization with lots of capital to stay afloat
There’s no conceivable reason that reddit shouldn’t be profitable right now with the market saturation they have unless the majority of people who’ve been making money off of the site up until now have been minimal effort contributors trying to get their piece of the money pie. 99% of the work is done by “unpaid” (by reddit) mods yet somehow they still have 2k people on the payroll and still need to centralize more and more capital to cover the overhead, it’s easy to imagine most of their current expenses are going to dumb corporate tech money sinks that are going out of style fast and have little to show for the last decade of spending lol
I mean that’s maybe the only good thing: If they are a public traded company, they have to file public revenue reports. Would love to see where those morons burn their money…
2k people in expensive San Francisco office space. Willing to bet that the % of them dedicated to improving user experience was quite low in comparison to those trying to figure out how to squeeze money out of it.
