Lemmy and Mastodon feel like the real web3.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
So you're saying that the real web3 was... the friends we made along the way?
web3 was within us the whole time
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!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 :)
It's nice to have this space to retreat to. Even if it doesn't outcompete the corporate web anytime soon, the existence of another option will constrain how bad they can get a bit, and will create a place for refugees to go after each new outrage. And it's not like the core functionality of any of the corporate sites was that complicated underneath all the bloat, after people have been on here working out the kinks for a while there's no reason it should be any less convenient of an experience.
agreed, i can’t remember the last time reddit added an actual useful feature.
The only thing they did do relatively recently that I liked was adding the option for subs to not archive posts that are older than 6 months. But I guess when you think about it, that's more of just taking a restriction away, and less of adding something new. Other than that, though, it's either just useless stuff or stuff that actively made things worse.
word is they've got 300 full time devs in the april fools experiment department
Feels like old school forums again. A little barebones compared to some of the corporate stuff, but that's not a bad thing. Just the simple what's needed no extra fluff.
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.
I'd buy that for a dollar
I understand that reference
I say let’s keep up this momentum and continue making this a space people want to be in and engage with.
We’re already off to a strong start, let’s commit and see what new corner of the internet we can define for ourselves.
The future of the internet isn't artificially scarce digital collectibles? 😲
What we're seeing here seems more like a restoration of the architecture of pre-web Internet services, like SMTP, NNTP, or IRC.
The protocols are built on top of HTTPS and JSON as a session layer, rather than on lines of ASCII as in those classic protocols ... but the architecture looks a lot more like "a bunch of servers under independent administration, that agree to share messages with each other in a network" than like anything with the stink of blockchains on it.
Sorry but I had to do it
@kiriakos @fubo One thing I think a platform like #Peertube needs to solve, which #LBRY does (because it uses a blockchain) is the financial incentive for content creators without ads because right now you can't really make money on Peertube. On LBRY you can because it features its own currency and on #Youtube of course but this is using ads. This is one of the advantages to using a blockchain. However LBRY's torrent like protocol for sharing video data is very slow and buggy which incentives the centralisation around odysee. The idea behind the project is great but not that well in practice if they don't make the protocol faster.
Pretty much yeah.
But what's wrong with bolckchains? That technology is good too, a bunch of lowly monetization schemes based around it shouldn't deface the core idea and its possibilities.
The notion that any "Web" technology (i.e. user-facing publication, sharing, & discussion) needs to be coupled with a fraught¹ payment system seems like a fundamentally contentious issue, mostly introduced by people who stand to profit from the success of those payment systems regardless of benefit to Web users.
¹ Regulatory issues, cut-and-run scams, and so on. Some blockchain services have turned out to be securities regulation violations. Some have turned out to be outright frauds where the issuers have just run away with "invested" money. In any event, nobody should today be relying on any blockchain service when creating forums or other services intended for the general public.
In theory/research papers, it's not a terrible idea, a few years ago, 3blue1brown on YouTube did a video about how blockchains and cryptocurrencies work at their core, setting the controversy aside. It is a currency that is actually tied to something of immutable valuable, time and logarithmic growth, and would require much more computational power than any singular entity could control over 50% of. Those goals are good goals.
The the irl problems come in on multiple aspects however, there are only so many graphics cards made every year, so people purchasing for mining impacted the entire market of graphics cards spiking prices higher and higher, they run on electricity which is still generated with a lot of fossils fuels, and cards that break because they're running all the time and are staying hot end often up in landfills, where lots of useful metals are just sitting and rusting away.
The problem with Blockchains is most of the projects associated with them are scams until proven otherwise. It's kind of like Western Union transfers, money orders, or iTunes gift cards, nothing wrong with the technology behind them, but when the topic comes up, I immediately think of scams.
I don't think anything is inherently wrong with blockchain technology, but what it's been molded into (a purely speculative profit driven ecosystem ) is a waste of it's potential.
Long way to go for ease of use, but the foundation is SOLID.
Decentralised without crypto-ifying everything. this is the way.
I gotta admit though, this has to be one of the first reasonable use cases for blockchain technology that I can think of - a P2P database for social forums... decentralised, but a single "instance" no matter how you access it. I imagine the blockchain sizes would get ridiculously large though, and all sorts of moderation issues. Probably not feasible, though I'm sure there's a project on GitHub I'm not aware of...
If you were to host the entire forum on a blockchain, every node would have to hold the blockchain. So not scaling horizontally, but instead copying the "database" a bunch of times. Think of hosting all of the data in reddit on a thousand nodes. Sure you could access it from any node, but the database would be just as big as before, just copied around a bunch of times.
In a way this thing is already much more decentralized than a blockchain could ever be, in that every server doesn't hold all of the data at once. Much better use of resources IMO.
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.
The internet was always intended to be decentralized
I'm nostalgic for when it was. Hopefully in some form it can be again.
Federation definitely feels like the next major stepping stone of the internet's evolution. Protocols like ActivityPub and Matrix feel like a bit of a "new beginning" for communities on the internet.
do you use Matrix yourself? how hard was it set up? every time i look into it i can't help but feel lost
I have an account, but I don't really use it much. Not because I don't like it, but because I don't have much to say really. I'm more of the lurker type.
The important thing about Matrix is to think of it like email. Homeservers are like your email provider, like Hotmail or Gmail or Protonmail. You look for a homeserver, then you just make an account on that homeserver. The "main" homeserver is matrix.org, but it's recommended not to make an account on there if you can avoid it. Remember that making accounts on these homeservers is free, so there's no reason not to make accounts on a few of them to try out.
The other thing to think about is your matrix client. This is similar to an IRC client or an email app. Luckily, this matter even less than the homeservers since you can freely switch between these anytime with basically no issues. If none catch your eye, Element is the sort of "reference implementation" so you can just try that one if you want. It has a web version too: https://app.element.io
There's some cool more advanced features like spaces and threads, but you don't have to worry about those much at first.
Creating an account? (basically the same as anywhere really) or your own instance? (Pretty easy, there are ansible playbooks, docker containers)
Not too hard just a couple things to get used to but it genuinely was barely harder than discord for an easy sign up
Federation definitely feels like the next major stepping stone of the internet's evolution.
Ever heard of Email?...
Or XMPP for that matter.
Federation has been a core principle since the beginning.
Email is pretty centralized at this point https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html
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.
I hate how crypto bros and scammers kidnapped the term web3. In reality is a nice concept, but they just turned it into a libertarian dystopia.
I like the overall trend towards ownership and non-centralized tools implicit in web3. If everything happening on the internet is owned by wall street, then it's not going to act like the real internet.
If there's a crypto aspect that has uses beyond grift, I'm open to it. There are certain ways it could be used to disintermediate owners and creators. I'm not sure if that's happening yet. Ownership rights with digital content do leave a lot to be desired.
I hope we soon see the end of the "gold rush" era in crypto and start seeing actual cool stuff being done with it. Especially since legacy banking will simply co-opt it sooner or later.
My 2c, the development around Ethereum isn't really that dystopian or scammy, and there's still promise for decentralizing financial institutions. A lot of people tried to cash in on it is all. Was just reading an article about the gold rush around marketing cereal ~1860-today, companies loading it with sugary and cartoon marketing to brainwash kids, etc., but that doesn't mean cereal is bad for you.
someone tried making a Reddit clone called Plebbit and it was built on the Ethereum network, avatars had NFTs, the UI was similar to new Reddit, was clunky, extremely unresponsive and its mascot was the NPC wojak meme so it's just a 4channer trying to swindle money. To actually make an account you had to pay for an address LMAO
It's so exciting to have another paradigm shift afoot. I feel a little regretful (not sure that's the right word here) that I wasn't born early enough to grow up with the rise of internet forums. It's not all bad because I also would not grown up during this great time of queer development, but it would've been neat. So now I get to live through and experience a similar time with web3 type stuff. The whole concept makes my little CS heart smile.
It's definitely an “everything old is new” situation. It’s kind of fascinating how the technology has both become ubiquitous, and been monetized like perhaps nothing before it, but is still able to find a way to serve interests beyond capitalism. It’s a pitiful bar, but I still think it’s neat.
It's also very nice to know that I get a choice. Like, if I enjoy an instance, I can give them a $5-$10 donation and that will be worth tons more than any ads I wasn't going to watch anyway. Once I get a bit more used to these instances, since I'm fortunate enough to be able to, I fully intend to pay some part to help them run. I get there are people who would rather watch ads, but this feels so much better to me.
All this gets me a bit hopeful that we will go full circle and end up using the internet like the old days, even though it is kind of impossible now.
I also wasn't born early enough to experience the rise of Internet forums. I was a late Reddit adopter, only jumping on in 2020. It is fascinating and exciting to be experiencing this in real time. Even if this isn't an instant and drastic shift, it's still a part of Internet history in the making.
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'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!
hear hear
Web 2 was when the buttons got gradients, Web 3 was when we removed them for flat again
web3 was always a cryptocurrency scam and was doomed to fail. Federation is more a return to the early web with a way to link everything together to compete and get similar services to megacorps while distributing costs.
This is what I keep thinking as well. The "kids today" don't remember usenet, IRC, etc. All were decentralized systems capitalizing on distributed compute resources and moderation. They did have problems when it comes to direction, moderation, systems playing "nice", fragmentation, etc. But I still feel the plusses outweigh the minuses in a federated system. Unfortunately the public does like their "benevolent (until they aren't) dictators"...
yeah, the lack of brand presence is a convenient side effect, its refreshing, just like the iconic McCafé® blend. Crafted to perfection by expert baristas, just the way you like it. Get one today at McDonald's®. I'm Lovin' It!
Good call. To me, Fediverse feels akin to the earlier days of the web. Fresh, new, relatively unspoiled. Nobody knows exactly wtf is going on, but the possibilities seem vast.
came here to say this... seems just like a forum to me a la web 1.0 or w/e
this feels like what Web 2.0 should have been: the advanced version of user-run platforms with decentralization added in, rather than the adternet and enshittification trap venture capital backed platforms that lure people in and then downgrade quality of life.
This is pretty much the alternate timeline of Reddit. Community driven link aggregators do replace forums, but they stay decentralized and not corporate run
With the quick death of Twitter and the even quicker death of Reddit, we as a community are speedrunning the transition to federated social media. We only need good mobile UX and keeping the growth, and we're set. It feels like a post-apocalypse right now, and I am not sure how to feel about it.
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.
Interested to see this develop. It's my first experience with a federated social infrastructure and feels like something I need to work towards. Rewarding in a way.
This is it 100%. I don’t think there is a major platform that does not already exist in the fediverse. I’m sure there is something, but even Instagram and YouTube can be replaced… well the YouTube one is hard due to the bandwidth and storage needed. But the tech is out there.
I think at some point this web3 will take over. Things like YouTube, will eventually come, but we need a lot of cost reduction in current tech to be able to do that.
We are finally taking the web back.
Yep. Definitely feels how it did before the corporate world learned how to take advantage of the online space. Feels good that we now have a solution to that ever growing issue.
I completely agree. It is almost like when you got to play at school but for some reason all the teachers were not there so it was more fun.
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???
I finally dipped my toes in and having a blast.
Just need to get Sync/Apollo/etc .. aka the BOYS to come and make some mobile apps and we're SET :)
Is Jerboa on Android the only application currently?
AFAIK yes, but until Spez conveniently ruined his site, Lemmy had like 2% of the user base it just gained. Jerboa is even made by the Lemmy developers IIRC. So now that the usage has spiked, I’m sure there are other developers thinking about it. Hell, I’m considering building an iOS app myself!
It really does feel a bit like the early days, for me. Bunch of strangers talking to each other in, generally, good faith. 'Course there were also tons of pop-ups, the banner would've taken an hour to download at that resolution... I like this more. lol
Haha, core memory unlocked. SHOOT THE MONKEY!!! 🎯🎯🎯
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.
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.
Now we just need a federated Youtube replacement.
There actually already is! PeerTube is the fediverse alternative to YouTube, hopefully it'll be able to grow more sometime in the near future.
I have a hard time imaging a free, open video hosting service will ever succeed. YouTube's infrastructure is insane, and that's reflected in their costs.
Any sustainable video hosting platform is going to need a solid monetization plan because the costs of hosting and streaming exabytes of video is just not sustainable on donations. Platforms like Floatplane or Nebula seem like good alternatives, but they've chosen for a subscription-only model - which I personally think is the fairest solution.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
The crypto side of web3 definitely felt way more "consumerist minded" with the way wallets were able to connect to multiple websites(exchanges) in order to "buy" things(alt/shitcoins). But federated social media feels like a much better use of decentralization so far.
Yeah I feel the same too. And I think decentralization is the only way to web3.
Distributed networks are very very complex to make. But decentralized networks have the simplicity and features of centralized networks with the addition of freedom that distributed networks give.
The best of both worlds really.
I do not like using Web3 to refer to federated platforms. Indeed, Web3 is strongly associated with blockchains, cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
To me Web3 meant federated or p2p stuff, like Secure Scuttlebutt, way before cryptocurrency and NFTs stole the term. I think we should steal it back rather than stop using it!
Web3 has been a pretty big disappointment in that case.
Lemmy is like web 1.5 with threads. Threads which still actually need a lot of work, I might add.
Related: https://web3isgoinggreat.com
yeah, i love this new paradigm. i don't understand it but i hope it'll lead to a better experience with cool usability features later on. hopefully a good buffer against evil & suits & etc
i love how post URLs have numbers now. you can get dubs and trips!
I think we as users defining the future of the web would be a great outcome. Here's to the start of a long project.
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.
Yeah, Corporate went off the deep end sniffing coke.
How do you use mastodon or even Twitter for that matter? I've been active on Reddit for a decade plus, but any time I try to tweet or toot it just goes nowhere to no one and I quickly lose interest. How do you get started with this stuff?
Find a few dozen people you like and start responding to their posts. Other people will see them and reply to them, and you can build up a network of people you interact with socially.
It's not quick, but the patience helps to filter down to just the people you actually trust and want to interact with.
In addition to this on mastodon (and *key instances) you can use hashtags can be used to follow and join in on topics you wish to post about. I find that people on the fediverse tend to be a lot more responsive when you talk to them in regards to something they have posted.
So, they're not more short form vs long form if that makes sense. And, you need people to directly follow you to be 'heard'. Unless you're directly replying to someone else.
Ditto for this, I can see the fediverse being the true Web 3.0! Love the freedom, flexibility and that kind of pioneering spirit I get by being an early adopter of what could be a new paradigm. Which is I guess an old paradigm, because we've kind of gone full circle to like, BBS and e-mail.
On the other hand I guess the ability to scam sell worthless monkey jpegs to greasy bros was kind of an amusing capability of the old web 3.0
@kiriakos or skipped 3 and went right to web 4.0
Wishfully thinking, but, I hope companies follow this
There's been quite a lot of large companies and institutions on the Fediverse, mostly on Mastodon. As long as there are people there, corporate will follow too.
Some examples:
Then there's all the big FOSS tech groups like KDE and Mozilla who are on the Fediverse too.
As long as there's an audience, people will come, just have to withstand the growing pains.
I don't know, it just feels like a fancier web 1.0 where things were less centralised (personal websites, forums etc).
Does that mean email is web3 😳
Web 1: Decentralized everything
Web 2: Centralized everything
Web 3: Decentralized everything?
Email is internet, but not Web.
(Actually email is older than internet as well)
I was literally thinking this like an hour ago! Feels like a small revolution that hopefully keeps its momentum and transforms more of the web.
Fingers crossed.
I concur. I was thinking the same thing!
I've been arguing for more decentralization for a long time now and have been shifting as much of my usage to self hosted services as possible over the past few years. I'm glad to see others picking up the cause. <3
Where's the Fediverse alternative to Facebook?
I think it's existed for over a decade and is called Diaspora.
That's actually a really cool name, fitting too.