With the recent happenings in the United States, the dangers of the privately owned Internet is more apparent than ever, and frankly, it’s scary. And so I’d like to make a simple request to anyone who is reading this; Please use the Fediverse, just a little more.
I personally hate it when I’m stuck having to visit say, YouTube or Reddit to get information, or to entertain myself in quiet moments, and if you’re reading this, the likely chance is you’re the same.
All I want to ask of you is to just comment a few more times, press send on that post that you felt wasn’t of enough substance to be worth anyone’s time. We have such a small community compared to everywhere else, but what we do have in common is that, in the grand scheme of things, we are the early adopters. And if we take that to heart and make this space a little bigger, maybe it will be just big enough we won’t have to visit walled gardens so often.
Thank you :)
rule
I was recently banned from reddit.
On all my accounts.
Across four email addresses.
Simultaneously.
Many of which haven’t been used in months. Years in some cases.
So - banned on one account linked to one address. Accounts linked to four other email addresses were banned. None of those accounts have been logged into from any device the account I got banned from was being used on.
The emails are linked to my phone number though.
So. Two steps ahead of you. But. They are either using some kind of NLP to identify the way I write. Or google is sharing that the accounts are linked to my phone number.
Anyway. Reddit can fuck right off. And I’ll be buying a burner phone with cash to make some accounts soon.
Fuck Reddit man. Fuck Reddit into the ground. Lemmy is getting there, feels like early Reddit. Comments are still removed from lemmy though
How do you know your accounts weren’t part of a ban wave? It doesn’t necessarily mean they linked them through your phone.
Because some of them, and their associated email accountsz hadn’t been used in years.
And there is nothing linking any of the emails / accounts except my.phone number.
Five email accounts, 20 odd reddit accounts. I’ve only used one account / email for the past year. And that’s from a PC / phone that were new around that time
I put this into my hosts file a couple years back:
127.0.0.1 *reddit*
fuck reddit.
Recently I’ve been thinking about what the internet was like in the 90s. Back when there was no social media. Maybe we should all return to forums and BBSs.
This and the level of free speech that came with it is really needed right now. I don’t mean free speech in a go tell someone you disagree with to fuck their aunt type of way. I mean having real deep hard conversations about organizing and enabling movements. It feels like the Internet is scared of that because of monetization and content policies that have chopped the balls off of any form of organization or resistance. Like there’s so much shit I wish I could say but some mod policy kills it with a pinned post at the top of the comment section before I can even begin typing out my thoughts.
Is there a list or links somewhere of the defederated basic site replacements?
Like I know about Lemmy (replacement for reddit), Loops (replacement for ticktock/reels), and pixelfed (replacement for insta). Oh and I switched from Spotify to tidal. 🤷🏼♀️
Is there a YouTube replacement? Thats really the next big media channel I use daily…
Thanks Lemmy friends 💜
This is a good place to start: https://fedidb.org/software/
I like the idea of PeerTube and hope it catches on, but I wouldn’t call it a YouTube replacement at this point. There are services that feed youtube content to users remotely though (there is/was a link-converter bot that went around that annoyed some people here, but a) can’t remember the name, and b) can’t remember the actual software involved).
I’d love to see nothing but PeerTube links in the fediverse. YouTube has become almost unusable for me.
I’m a fediverse supporter (obviously, that’s why I’m here), however what you’re looking for requires a critical mass of users that the fediverse (at least the Lemmy side of it) will never achieve as long as two very critical problems persist:
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sign up is confusing. People are used to clicking “create an account,” inputting a user name, password, and maybe an email, and then BAM they’re a user. I realize the whole instance thing is the entire point, but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they’ve even started using it.
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the site (or at least lemmy.world) is sooo slooow. Basic functions like loading images take me back to the dial-up era of “click the image then do something else while it loads,” which is downright ridiculous in the 2020s. Again I’ve stuck with it because I want to support the fediverse, but 99% of users won’t.
And no, these aren’t “features not bugs” unless you want to keep the site small and homogenous.
possibly the biggest eye opener has been seeing how much the average person knows about computers, it’s seriously hard to comprehend that divide (obligatory xkcd; https://xkcd.com/2501/), I think the best we can do is build a community, and give the loved ones in our lives an onboarding experience where we can. learning anything new is intimidating, but through exposure, it can be done, we’ve just gotta make it worth it.
but no one wants nor expects to have to do significant research and make a decision about how they want to interact with a social media site before they’ve even started using it.
Then just directly recommend specific, general purpose instances to people.
I agree with you on 1. I hope it never fucking changes. The worst thing that could happen is we get the critical mass of dipshits that turns every online service into a fucking shit tornado.
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Since all this shit started happening I’ve deleted all the social media apps on my phone and I’ve started using lemmy more. Gonna switch my YouTube shit over to peertube when I can.
Intending to actually delete my accounts in the coming weeks too. Bye bye, 13 year old reddit account. Nobody gonna miss ya.
Tbf I have been using Nebula a lot since I signed up pretty cheaply and I enjoy it. It’s owned by the creators. Found it through Jacob Geller.
YouTube is a bit of an issue as unlike the others there’s a lot of content and information you can’t get elsewhere.
I’ve been considering using a proxy to scrape and download subscriptions and add them to a personal server. Probably not practical to do for everything though with how much space that would be.
At the very least see if there’s a wrapper that can strip out a lot of content and just show the stuff I want to watch VS all the nonsense they fire at you.
I’m considering making some Peertube content to help water the drought! Just need some good ideas, haha
I’ve heard good things about Nebula, and I’m hoping to get an account when I’ve saved enough
lurk no longer
Lurk No More
Couldn’t agree more.
I think one that can be done is to create a pinned FAQ post in Reddit on the fediverse sub Reddit. I have seen so many questions popping up lately with a lot of potential users that seem confused.
If I had a Reddit account, I would absolutely try doing that. Unfortunately, I think I’m gonna have to hope someone does it for me.
It would be great to have a fediverse service for Meetup. Bending Spoons is aggressively enshittifying the original site, definitely ripe for disruption.
i have never used meetup, does mobilizon seem a decent fit? https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
I know this is the wrong thing to focus on, but federated social media is really lacking sex appeal. Like the technology powering it is so cool, but many of the clients (especially the defaults) are ugly.
I’m not saying form over function, but I find well-designed + functional apps really enjoyable to use. I want to be the solution. I’m writing my own Lemmy client and I really hope I can deliver on the sex appeal in addition to an amazing user experience.
you’re not wrong! back when i was considering mastodon, i found finding a good client difficult, and i understand plenty of people aren’t too fond of just using the sites anymore.
Would love a meetup replacement. It’s been hot garbage for a while. Not to mention a good portion of meetups in my city have died off since the pandemic :/
I already use fediverse an unhealthy amount, if I do more I might die.
you aren’t social mediaing right unless it makes you bleed
Then die.
Yeah I’m guilty of that. I posted to Reddit today, but not Lemmy. I’ve been telling my friends to switch to federated social media, but I still find myself slipping back to Reddit. Not because I like Reddit better but because they have more content or I already know where to look for specific content. But I’m going to try and post more. Thanks for the reminder!
be the change you want to see in the world! sincerely, the new owner and moderator of !falloutmods@lemmy.world and !fallout@lemmy.world, respectively
Hey! Just subbed! I’ve been hoping to make more media content around my Bethesda mod tooling Mutagen. I’ll be cross posting there when I do!
that’s wonderful to hear! every new modding tool in the arsenal is massive. I look forward to it! sincerely, someone who has a windows dual boot exclusively to be able to use the creation kit.
Everytime i go back on reddit the qualitt of that content keeps going down, just like my battery.
We need to get more people to adopt the Fediverse. The issue is lack of engagement.
I jumped on board with the reddit API fiasco. I use Sync primarily since I’m familiar with the format and I browse and post often.
I think one problem is that it’s confusing to your average Joe. I honestly still don’t quite understand how it works. I see posts like .ml and .world and I have no idea what they are even though I’ve been here a while.
Exactly. That’s the main barrier I think.
Also, the .ml and whatnot are just people on other instances.
It will get better with the massive bans
I go through a cycle for this. I leave Reddit because I hate it. And then I go here and well it’s quite obvious it’s a certain type of people who are willing to jump through hoops and use the fediverse. I find most of the opinions here to be a little bit too extreme for my taste. I just want to discuss football (soccer) and tech…
But I agree with you. It only feels empty because we all decide to not hit “post”.
I’m exactly the same, here’s hoping we’ll pave the way for many more like us, hey?
Reddit was not much different in the beginning. It was kinda of weird and had a super Linux tech nerd culture with a circle jerky political culture. There was kind of a nice time between that and now, even though it was still niche. Hopefully we can see something like that again but without all the private interest ruining it in the end. But yeah, I’m with you.
A lot of times I’ll write out a comment and end up deleting it. Most times it’s because I feel like it’s something that’s already been said or not worth reading but I’ll try to be less of a lurker.
I’m in the exact same boat. But I kind of realized, if I want to see a bigger fediverse, I’ll have to help build it up. As the classic saying goes, you can lead a horse to water; but first there’s gotta be water. So thank you for taking up the cause of building this lake :)
actually i don’t think that’s the saying