this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Fediverse

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It’s rough right now politically in the US. A lot of people around me seem like they’re ready to give up hope. It makes me incredibly angry seeing Zuck up there with all the other billionaires, and Elon is a parasite that has infected the government.

I often find myself wondering how I can make a difference. How can we regain control of our world?

Idk if I’m being dramatic, but 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.

Am I being dramatic lol? Do you all feel the same way? I was kinda getting emotional even. Like we could bring real change. That gives me hope, which is something we are desperately lacking right now.

It’s not just Lemmy. It makes me happy to see all the Fediverse platforms (specifically activity pub based) blowing up.

Friendly reminder if you have the financial means, donate to your instance, donate to the Lemmy devs, donate to Pixelfed or any other social media app fighting big social media. And better than a one-time donation, set up a monthly contribution even if it’s just $2/month. It really helps open-source developers when they have a steady income.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 minutes ago

Hope in what sense? Hope that it's generally possible to connect online without corporate social media? Sure ...

Hope that it'll become a replacement social media at a large scale? Probably not ... I think the way push-federation is implemented makes it inconvenient and hard to grasp, and generally people seem to prefer centralized platforms for the sheer convenience of use, which is hard to beat.

So I guess it'll remain stable in it's own little niche ... which isn't bad I suppose ...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Yes. But I'm worried about Big Tech hijacking ActuvityPub and that they enforce the end of net neutrality. EU regulations and investments is our only hope right now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 59 minutes ago

Hope ? Maybe, maybe not

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

I'm not in the US (thinking of you guys everyday), but when I found myself feeling depressed by the direction of big tech, I realized that open-source and the Fediverse was the healthy and exciting way forwards. It was the one thing that felt like I remember the internet feeling like in the late 90s. I think you are spot on. It is the only way that democracy can survive in tech.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Frankly, it’s stressing me out. The non-stop barrage of Trump, Musk and other bullshit is just a bit too much on here. I get how the platform generally is very left leaning, but it really does feel like the sky is falling every five minutes, you know?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Lemmy, the Fediverse, and open source in general too. Every time bullshit happens I find myself more and more replacing closed systems with community-developed and community-run systems. It’s not only the giving back/contributing/being part, and the openness, it’s also that this cannot be taken away so easily. Taken by buying the company, a software update, agreement change or the fact that someday you may not be able to pay your monthly fee and loose access to all your stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It's nice, but it doesn't really give me hope. Lemmy is good because it's not mainstream. Once it got relevant, it would turn into today's reddit. And if it, by chance, evolved into relevant opposition, I believe it would be easy for billionaires to destroy, despite the decenzralized character. It could also be used for curbing the opposition by gathering information about it. There's no way to hide from people with enough money.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 58 minutes ago

What's wrong with being the next Reddit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Honestly, it's just a matter of time before they make more Luigis snap. Hopefully they'll be an organized way to oust them all before the guillotines and the dining sets start coming out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

It gives me hope yeah, alot of my family and coworkers are extremely conservative and it's given me hope that they're not the default for cis people. I've since gotten away from alot of them and met irl friends who're more accepting but the presence of people online who didn't begrudgingly tolerate me before then has given me hope and the courage I would need to advocate for myself and not accept the bare minimum

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I'm just glad to be part of a community that seems to have some shread of human decency left. That's not all too common here in the States these days.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

It does give me hope, but I also worry it may be a double edged sword and opening pandora’s box. There are way too many ideologies here that aren’t democracy. Given how easy the public was brain washed by Trump, I fear this may be an avenue to expose those people to things that probably shouldn’t even be crossing their minds.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Lemmy is very harsh to most people. People that think liberal means the Democrats.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

It's not just Lemmy. I was thinking more like Mastodon. Tbh I haven't tried frendica, but I haven't heard of anyone actually using it.

At least pixelfed defaults you to the main instance so you don't have to think about it if you don't want to. Although the official android app hasn't worked for me in ages.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

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

Start making things from scratch. Stop buying shit.

Opt-out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

Nothing gives me hope these are the darkest times ever

[–] [email protected] 18 points 13 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Corporations might accidentally help if they try to make their own instancss, like if you sign up with google to join the fediverse, realize most instances block googles because its corporate, then they make an account at non corporate version.

I think the best way for it to grow would be making it easy to self host, yunohost maes it pretty easy, but more managed hosting options competing or more of the big ones offering it would go a long way.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 18 hours ago (17 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago (4 children)

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.

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