Fediverse

The response is to tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out.

Start making things from scratch. Stop buying shit.

Opt-out.

Yeah

I mean if this is the best the left has

Trump will never get tired of winning LMAO 🤣

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.

It gives me hope, but hope for a slightly better future; not for a cure for fundamental ills of online communities.

Nothing gives me hope these are the darkest times ever

It's nice to see a significant portion of people (probably still not enough though) leave proprietary social media. Unfortunately, it took them extremely long to realize why that's a bad thing to use.

So that's one step in the right direction I guess.

On the other hand, there generally isn't much hope for humanity left because we haven't learned from past mistakes, haven't listened to science, and haven't ensured ourselves a decent future on this planet.

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.

Agreed, and I would add that finding ways to get nonprofit news organizations (e.g. ProPublica) and public media (e.g. NPR, PBS, etc.) to host and administer their own instances and to start directing their readers/listeners to those services would be a great way to advance this goal

Having been around since the early days of identica/statusnet: no, not really.

It's always been small and a generally nice set of communities but it won't reach a large enough audience to matter. US (and to some degree) global politics are such a clusterfuck that it'll take more than some little servers with people discussing open source software and art or whatever to create substantial change.

that's not to say it's pointless. it's nice to have these little groups to focus on. it doesn't give me any hope but it does regulalry lift my spirits.

EDIT: I also dont think it needs to be any kind of agent or tool of change. Why can't it just be what it is? Groups of people socializing with one another?

It gives me hope. We have an opportunity to level the playing field. So much hope that I'm actually starting a show to try to help folks get to know people behind the Fediverse! I truly believe in it and hope we can claw back the internet from the tech giants.

Oh, no. Not at all. All hope is lost, this is just a comfortable place to die.

Using the Fediverse feels like a small step in the right direction. Big changes are built on lots of small steps. I would say move in the direction of using the Fediverse more, the old alternatives less, and think of more small steps in the right direction you can do. I don't think just using the Fediverse is enough, but it is an important step to take. Keep going.

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 Musk-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.

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.

No, the Fediverse is full of conservatives. The technology is great, but the people here suck.

Mark Zuckerburg was up there at the inauguration because he is one of the richest men alive, and he became so mostly because of the platforms he owns.

By using the Fediverse and not his platforms, I'm denying him revenue from ads and data, even if its an infinitely small amount.

Use open platforms, give your money to ethical businesses and keep it from these assholes. Money isn't the only way for someone to have power, but there's no denying that the net worth on that inauguration stage was the most concentrated anywhere on earth. Don't give them a cent more.

That’s a cool idea? How do we actually make that happen? Call up NPR?

I like Fediverse because I get much better engagement with people here than anything else

The Fedi is the only hope right now.

I don't live in that country, but while I like Lemmy, no, I don't have hope any more. I've not had that for a long time now.

It's interesting though, to see the US slowly turn into our enemy, and to consider that Germany will be one of our strongest democratic, antifascist allies against the new axis of evil when the time comes.

Thankfully I'm too old to be forced to fight in the next war against fascism, but I suppose poverty and climate change might kill me before then anyway. There truly is no hope left for me.

There are a few specific people on fedi who do give me hope.

I mean it's really depressing even being in Europe honestly but at the same time it's a huge opportunity. It's time to take it :) Let's show them how decentralization AND open source can be a new standard! I'm seeing the same trend in Linux too and this is so important as well.

Also a lot of new projects to help decentralization are emerging, check https://spritely.institute/ which there's Christine Lemmer-Webber a co-author of the ActivityPub protocol :)