In the early days the internet was a free, egalitarian space for anyone to surf. Now, commercial interests rule – but users do still have some control.
The Fediverse is a bit more like the old USENET days in some regards, but ultimately if it ever becomes more popular the same assholes that ruin other online experiences will also wind up here.
What made the Internet more exciting 30 years ago was that it was mostly comprised of the well educated and dedicated hobbyists, who had it in their best interest to generally keep things decent. We didn’t have the uber-lock-in of a handful of massive companies running everything.
It’s all Eternal September. There’s no going back at this point — any new medium that becomes popular will attract the same forces making the current Internet worse.
I’m interested in distributed applications (think BitTorrent, not ActivityPub), and my primary concern here is filtering. I want to be able to only see content from people I trust and people they trust (and so on), and if I do that well, I won’t have to see a ton of crap. That’s how regular relationships work, and I’d like to try my hand at it with anonymous relationships. Think something like Web of Trust, but adjusted for larger networks of people.
The Fediverse by design prevents this, while the internet of the old age had little if any guardrails against this specially since the platforms never really federated with another.
Did forum sites even federate? One forum sites would be dead and the next would have more activity. But what if the other forum with less activity was the one you wanted to use? The old internet was a good start but there’s a reason why it’s dominated by Instagram and Facebook, while email, you can use mostly any provider and not feel like you’re left out.
The Fediverse is still a new concept and it’s gaining more usage then most other open source social medias. It’s the best we have, and more and more people land on it. (atleast going by some Mastodon metrics.) It’s not the biggest, but it’s actually impressive for an an opensource project what you do have for it’s userbase. I wish some people would understand that to an extent.
Ehhhh, the OG internet connected better because all nodes were well connected. The Fediverse is a series of single servers that can’t even sync all data across themselves. It’s cute, but it’s post-it notes on strings atm
I wonder if there’s a more efficient way to have things sync in blocks or something. I honestly understand very little about server architecture, much less decentralized social network architecture. Maybe having a smaller number of “centralized” (community-run, redundant, independent) nodes distributing blocks of federated data to take load off the actual instance servers that would only need to upload bulk data to fewer places?
Maybe this isn’t very different from how it already operates. Fuck if I know.
Yep we have different lemmy/mastodon/etc… instances talking with one another. Anyone can set up something like activityhub. Its a fun place in my opinion!
It’s what happened to the internet. Devices were dumbed down to make the internet accessible for everyone. Now the “normies” are also on the internet, whereas in the past they’d belittle you for spending time on the computer.
In time, the Fediverse will also be easily accessible. And where there are normies, you’ll find corporate enshittification.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes because I explained the word “normification”. You’re overthinking this. It’s a term that has been around since before Reddit became popular. It’s a term that stems from 4chan. I don’t like the term, I just explained it. And yes, the corpos are to blame but they couldn’t do the things they do without a certain user base. And that’s not your typical tech savvy user base. How is that so difficult to understand?
Couldn’t they “convince” instance admins to include ads? Couldn’t they flood communities with influencers? Couldn’t they promote Lemmy apps that have ads?
You are severely underestimating the criminal energy and creativity of these corporations.
Edit: reddit turned to shit way before the platform itself was up for sale. No need to buy the platform, bots and influencers are enough.
I’m not sure that categorizing people as “normies” is a great idea. nor is it a way to entice new people and voices to join and learn how to use the fediverse so that it can become a more reliable place.
i think blaming enshittification on “normies” is a lot easier than holding greedy corporations accountable for directly making everything worse. it’s surely easier, but the real issue remains unchecked.
if anything, it’s a good thing that more people are learning how much better the fediverse is. it helps the fediverse get stronger, not weaker.
“us” vs “them” is not a mindset that will produce anything except cesspools of toxicity. at least imho.
What’s really annoying is it’s straight out of the corpo playbook.
“We’re not responsible for ______, you are because you didn’t do enough ________”.
The most blatant is “global warming” and “ate too much meat/didn’t recycle enough/made poor choices with your car” and so on.
It’d be nice if people would stop trying to blame the worst offenses being perpetuated on people by billionaires and their pet corporations on personal choices, because it’s hot liquid bullshit.
I didn’t coin the term and I too believe it’s a huge generalization. However, “simpler” people are more susceptible to ads. The “normies” in question are the ones that don’t use adblockers, they believe ads are normal and they believe ads don’t affect them. Corporations capitalize on that. Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations.
Edit: even now you’ll find people that use Lemmy apps that have ads. The bigger the user base, the more greedy companies will find ways of exploiting the Fediverse.
Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations
If you truly believe that, then vilifying more “simple” and less tech-savvy individuals is not the way to do it. Don’t be angry that they click on ads. Be angry that they’ve been poisoned to think that behavior is normal on the internet.
Education is absolutely possible for those new to things like the fediverse. But education doesn’t work when you use those labels for people. It widens the gap, it doesn’t close it.
I was a normie once. I too fell for misinformation in the past. If it wasn’t for the freely available information on the internet, I wouldn’t be here today.
You went ahead and actually gathered the correct information. This is not what the “normies” in question do. Look, I didn’t coin the term nor do I approve of the use of this term. I just wanted to explain what the other person meant with “normification”.
Fair enough. What we desperately need is proper social media / modern internet education right from middle school level.
Identifying dark patterns, echo chambers, bot/human impersonators, fake news. I feel like this awareness is missing in both youngsters and boomers.
Honestly some normies would help us talk about something different than US politics, linux and being trans femboys. Honestly, we’d have some diversity in content. I’d like that.
I think it would make discussions about US politics even worse. But I agree with the rest. I personally would also like to have a more broad user base. That’d definitely spark more interesting discussions. Lemmy is a very weird echo chamber right now. It’s just very important that no one in the Fediverse starts to capitalize on them. That’d be the moment enshittification starts. And that will happen once the mainstream people come pouring in because greed will always corrupt the ones who have some form of power. Someone will take advantage of this.
Normification is a facet of our undemocratic capitalism. As you see yourself as a consumer of the internet and not a citizen, you mostly assume that a thing being
popular
monetizable
and convenient
is always preferable.
So the internet continues to have a huge potential to host many cool places, but
they can’t reach users that might be interested
gaining support from small donations is difficult
and they can’t integrate a complete set of features, accessibility, design and content moderation.
If you ask an average internet user about these places, it’s a common response to say they’re weird as in not normal. If you dig a bit for what they mean, it’s usually the above. Nobody is there, it can’t make money and it doesn’t have all the things.
you automatically assume I’m some weird corporate drone? you’re not exactly making your case very clear and you sound patronizing.
I’m not entirely certain who this rant is for, but i can’t imagine anyone who is labeled as a “consumer of the internet and not a citizen” is going to take you seriously.
and for that matter, those with good heads on their shoulders won’t either.
Stop blaming random people for the bullshit that corporations do and get away with. you’re pointing fingers at the wrong people and it makes your cause look fabricated.
Is this some kind of attack on certain minority groups or am I over thinking this comment? I googled what normification meant and the results gave me some bad vibes regarding this comments direction.
How can we go back? We’re already on the way back. It’s called the Fediverse.
The Fediverse is a bit more like the old USENET days in some regards, but ultimately if it ever becomes more popular the same assholes that ruin other online experiences will also wind up here.
What made the Internet more exciting 30 years ago was that it was mostly comprised of the well educated and dedicated hobbyists, who had it in their best interest to generally keep things decent. We didn’t have the uber-lock-in of a handful of massive companies running everything.
It’s all Eternal September. There’s no going back at this point — any new medium that becomes popular will attract the same forces making the current Internet worse.
Exactly.
I’m interested in distributed applications (think BitTorrent, not ActivityPub), and my primary concern here is filtering. I want to be able to only see content from people I trust and people they trust (and so on), and if I do that well, I won’t have to see a ton of crap. That’s how regular relationships work, and I’d like to try my hand at it with anonymous relationships. Think something like Web of Trust, but adjusted for larger networks of people.
That sounds awesome and I’d love to use it.
Same. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near done yet. 😅
The Fediverse by design prevents this, while the internet of the old age had little if any guardrails against this specially since the platforms never really federated with another.
Did forum sites even federate? One forum sites would be dead and the next would have more activity. But what if the other forum with less activity was the one you wanted to use? The old internet was a good start but there’s a reason why it’s dominated by Instagram and Facebook, while email, you can use mostly any provider and not feel like you’re left out.
The fediverse is just a barnacle on the larger Internet at this point. It has to become more - we need to make our own web
We need a faster safer quantum proof forward secret timing attack proof version of tor
The Fediverse is still a new concept and it’s gaining more usage then most other open source social medias. It’s the best we have, and more and more people land on it. (atleast going by some Mastodon metrics.) It’s not the biggest, but it’s actually impressive for an an opensource project what you do have for it’s userbase. I wish some people would understand that to an extent.
I help pay for my instance to operate, and it’s a cost I’m happy to help shoulder.
Us instance admins appreciate it I promise
Same, its on my best pi. 🥧
How is it running you a month?
Are you asking how much I donate per month?
Ehhhh, the OG internet connected better because all nodes were well connected. The Fediverse is a series of single servers that can’t even sync all data across themselves. It’s cute, but it’s post-it notes on strings atm
I wonder if there’s a more efficient way to have things sync in blocks or something. I honestly understand very little about server architecture, much less decentralized social network architecture. Maybe having a smaller number of “centralized” (community-run, redundant, independent) nodes distributing blocks of federated data to take load off the actual instance servers that would only need to upload bulk data to fewer places?
Maybe this isn’t very different from how it already operates. Fuck if I know.
Yep we have different lemmy/mastodon/etc… instances talking with one another. Anyone can set up something like activityhub. Its a fun place in my opinion!
Btw how do we stand on just blatantly copying and reposting material from reddit? I missed the announcement talking about that.
enjoy the mainstream memes and discussion, but avoid the algorithmic content slop from them. That’s how I see the fediverse. It’s a win in my book.
It’s not unless you are operating your own instance.
Or at the least, avoid the major instances and use smaller instances from individuals.
We would be better than ever, if not for the normification.
what exactly does that mean?
It’s what happened to the internet. Devices were dumbed down to make the internet accessible for everyone. Now the “normies” are also on the internet, whereas in the past they’d belittle you for spending time on the computer.
In time, the Fediverse will also be easily accessible. And where there are normies, you’ll find corporate enshittification.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes because I explained the word “normification”. You’re overthinking this. It’s a term that has been around since before Reddit became popular. It’s a term that stems from 4chan. I don’t like the term, I just explained it. And yes, the corpos are to blame but they couldn’t do the things they do without a certain user base. And that’s not your typical tech savvy user base. How is that so difficult to understand?
No, because corporations cannot buy the Fediverse.
Couldn’t they “convince” instance admins to include ads? Couldn’t they flood communities with influencers? Couldn’t they promote Lemmy apps that have ads?
You are severely underestimating the criminal energy and creativity of these corporations.
Edit: reddit turned to shit way before the platform itself was up for sale. No need to buy the platform, bots and influencers are enough.
Yes. One at a time. But the cannot “buy Lemmy” which is what a CEO would want to do.
No one needs to buy Lemmy to enshitify it. All of the above and many more methods would result in a shit experience.
I’m not sure that categorizing people as “normies” is a great idea. nor is it a way to entice new people and voices to join and learn how to use the fediverse so that it can become a more reliable place.
i think blaming enshittification on “normies” is a lot easier than holding greedy corporations accountable for directly making everything worse. it’s surely easier, but the real issue remains unchecked.
if anything, it’s a good thing that more people are learning how much better the fediverse is. it helps the fediverse get stronger, not weaker.
“us” vs “them” is not a mindset that will produce anything except cesspools of toxicity. at least imho.
What’s really annoying is it’s straight out of the corpo playbook.
“We’re not responsible for ______, you are because you didn’t do enough ________”.
The most blatant is “global warming” and “ate too much meat/didn’t recycle enough/made poor choices with your car” and so on.
It’d be nice if people would stop trying to blame the worst offenses being perpetuated on people by billionaires and their pet corporations on personal choices, because it’s hot liquid bullshit.
I didn’t coin the term and I too believe it’s a huge generalization. However, “simpler” people are more susceptible to ads. The “normies” in question are the ones that don’t use adblockers, they believe ads are normal and they believe ads don’t affect them. Corporations capitalize on that. Better tech education would definitely help take some power away from corporations.
Edit: even now you’ll find people that use Lemmy apps that have ads. The bigger the user base, the more greedy companies will find ways of exploiting the Fediverse.
If you truly believe that, then vilifying more “simple” and less tech-savvy individuals is not the way to do it. Don’t be angry that they click on ads. Be angry that they’ve been poisoned to think that behavior is normal on the internet.
Education is absolutely possible for those new to things like the fediverse. But education doesn’t work when you use those labels for people. It widens the gap, it doesn’t close it.
I was a normie once. I too fell for misinformation in the past. If it wasn’t for the freely available information on the internet, I wouldn’t be here today.
You went ahead and actually gathered the correct information. This is not what the “normies” in question do. Look, I didn’t coin the term nor do I approve of the use of this term. I just wanted to explain what the other person meant with “normification”.
Fair enough. What we desperately need is proper social media / modern internet education right from middle school level. Identifying dark patterns, echo chambers, bot/human impersonators, fake news. I feel like this awareness is missing in both youngsters and boomers.
Honestly some normies would help us talk about something different than US politics, linux and being trans femboys. Honestly, we’d have some diversity in content. I’d like that.
I think it would make discussions about US politics even worse. But I agree with the rest. I personally would also like to have a more broad user base. That’d definitely spark more interesting discussions. Lemmy is a very weird echo chamber right now. It’s just very important that no one in the Fediverse starts to capitalize on them. That’d be the moment enshittification starts. And that will happen once the mainstream people come pouring in because greed will always corrupt the ones who have some form of power. Someone will take advantage of this.
We could have separate instances for the normies and for the femboy linux users. And then, everybody can choose which instances to block/follow.
Internet? You mean the WiFi /s
No I mean the modem on my hard drive not the wifi.
With community visibility, there is plenty of room to form these communities that regular people can’t access for those who want that.
I can imagine an instance with a whole collection of insider communities. In fact, it’s already happened.
Normification is a facet of our undemocratic capitalism. As you see yourself as a consumer of the internet and not a citizen, you mostly assume that a thing being
is always preferable.
So the internet continues to have a huge potential to host many cool places, but
If you ask an average internet user about these places, it’s a common response to say they’re weird as in not normal. If you dig a bit for what they mean, it’s usually the above. Nobody is there, it can’t make money and it doesn’t have all the things.
…pardon?
you automatically assume I’m some weird corporate drone? you’re not exactly making your case very clear and you sound patronizing.
I’m not entirely certain who this rant is for, but i can’t imagine anyone who is labeled as a “consumer of the internet and not a citizen” is going to take you seriously.
and for that matter, those with good heads on their shoulders won’t either.
Stop blaming random people for the bullshit that corporations do and get away with. you’re pointing fingers at the wrong people and it makes your cause look fabricated.
Is this some kind of attack on certain minority groups or am I over thinking this comment? I googled what normification meant and the results gave me some bad vibes regarding this comments direction.
It’s not an attack on certain minority groups unless you consider “normal average person” a minority group.
It’s just a little bit of the old nerd superiority complex leaking out with a new word attached to it.