attilavago.medium.com There’s More To The Reddit Meltdown Than Meets The Eye
A cross-functional, objective analysis of the Reddit scandal…
Curt @
curt @beehaw.org
Retired engineer (computer systems) doing volunteer web site development
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2 yr. ago
Yes you're right about that and it should be pointed out. Having to choose a server is unavoidable. Having multiple servers is one of the best features of lemmy and the fediverse. Putting effort in to explaining it in simple terms would help eliminate some of the confusion.
Making the Join Lemmy Page More Accessible to the Non-Technical
I've only been a member of Lemmy for about a month. In that time I've seen many complaints on how difficult it is to join. While many of these may be overblown, I do see some merit in it.
I joined lemmy via the Join Lemmy web page. I had no problem with the landing page as I have a technical background. For a non-technical person, it could be a bit confusing if they bothered to read it. The Join A Server button is the essential point and it's quite clear.
When I got to the Lemmy Servers page, I panicked a bit. What criteria do I use to pick a server, how do I make the best choice? As it turned out, I joined one of the recomended ones, learned my way around, and then joined another that was a good fit for me. I even joined kbin. In the end, it doesn't make much difference what server you chose.
These questions are answered in the links on the page. For the grandma wanting to join a fly fishing community or the grandpa wanting to join a sewing community, going to a GitHub site and get
My suggestion that there should be an atheist community was mostly in jest. It's been my experience that atheists aren't interested in talking about atheism. I share your observations about existing atheist groups. It would make more sense to create a group to discuss non-spiritual explanations for why we are here. Again, just kidding. I don't think anyone has a such an explanation.
It's interesting the most of the comments are from atheists. Maybe there should an atheist community as well although it would be better to call it something like 'not a theist' as the term atheist has become so loaded. On the other hand atheists don't have much to say about not being a theist as not stamp collectors don't have much to say about not being stamp collectors.
Other than a couple of recommendations for Friendica, it looks like everyone hasn't bothered to find a replacement that does all the same things.
Friending all your relatives on Facebook was like attending a family reunion that never ends. At first, it was great catching up with everyone you hadn't been in contact with. Pretty soon after that, Uncle Bert would start on some political rant, Cousin Stan would try to get you to invest in some sketchy startup, and Cousin Sally would go on about a new cult she joined. The same thing would hold for an endless high reunion.
Facebook made sense for its original membership of college students. It was a great way to meet other students. You all had similar goals, experiences, and questions. Once you graduated, you all went your own way.
Social media is in its infancy in regards to how we use it. We're still learning about what works and what doesn't. For many of us, Facebook doesn't, more selective, less overall encompassing communication does. It's probably why we're all here on Lemmy and Mastodon.
I have cousins like that.
Ex-Facebook Users, What Do You Use Now?
I joined Facebook years ago not long after it took off from its college roots. I also quit it years ago when my feed became full of junk.
The one thing I miss is contact with my friends, family, and ex-cowokers. Most of them weren’t technically inclined so that was the only platform they were on. Some of them did move to Instagram, which I did as well until Facebook bought it.
I then tried wt.social shortly after it started up. It seemed like a great alternative, but its growth is very slow, It has 450,000 users according to wikipedia. Now there’s a version 2, Trust Cafe. The same article also mentioned that they’re looking into connecting to ActivityPub.
What do you use in place of Facebook to stay in contact with friends and family? Mainly, I just use text messaging apps. I use Lemmy and Mastodon for news and information.
Accessing Lemmy From a Mastodon Account
I have both a Mastadon and Lemmy account (actually two) as well as a kbin account so I'm fine with having several. It's interesting to see the interconnectivity of the two platforms. I'd love to see more of this.
Perhaps the best fit for the Earthling would be sharing and communicating with close life time friends and family that would have known you your whole life and remember what you said or did in your youth. It would be with them that one would want to share and reminiscence over old times and not people you just met on Beehaw as friendly they might be.
Thanks for the link. That's almost exactly what I was envisioning. It's great to see such a project so far along.
I remember following a few rings. There were also website that would allow you to explore other websites.
I agree it would have to be simple to be widely accepted. There would have to be an app to make set up easy. Clearly, self hosting would only be for the most technical of us. I've set up a dozen servers on bare metal VPS's and still have to follow instructions to get it right. For others, the set up app would also support exporting it to a service provider. Even so, it would probably be too much for many people.
That occurred to me as I wrote it. The main difference is the controlled connectivity with other 'web sites'. There's also tumblr. I still have a site there, haven't touched it in years.
The Last Social Network: Your Own
I just read Cory Doctorow’s article “Let the Platform Burn”. It reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for some time. Instead of joining yet another social network and recreating yourself, why not create your personal social network object and link it to others via a federation of the personal social network objects?
I call this object the Earthling object with all due respect to our extraterrestrial readers. The object would be maintained by its owner and contain whatever information the owner choses to add such as a bio, pictures, blogs, posts, or documents. The object could contain links to your friends, family, and coworker objects.
Once set up, you could serve it yourself or use an Earthling Service Provider (yet to be invented). It would be a lot like running your own Lemmy instance or joining an existing one. The essential feature of this approach is that all the data within the object and access t
Great article. When I came to lemmy/kbin a few weeks ago (I'm an old time now, right), I thought it will become great when most of those on Reddit realize that this is the place to be and come here in droves. That would be greatness. After reading this and thinking about it, I'm fine with the way it is now. There are lots of interesting posts like this one and interesting feedback to them. If anything having several million members in this community would make it worse.
Before writing the post, I thought it could be a good thing. By the time I listed all the drawbacks, I changed my mind. I made the post anyway to see what others thought. Many of you have pointed out even more issues with it. So far, no one has had anything good to say about it. Great feedback.
What if Everyone Knew Who You Really Were on the Internet
Let’s say the internet gets so bad that it becomes almost impossible to carry on a civilized conversation on a social network or to avoid a flood of anonymous emails. The people become fed up and can’t take it anymore. A revolution takes place and a miracle happens: every one is required to get a real id that can be traced back an actual person. This id is then required to do anything on the internet.
How many people are going to still post death threats, character assassinations, or make racist or sexist comments. How many people are are going to email you saying they’re a Nigerian prince that wants to give you money. It would sure go a long way to cleaning up some of the cesspools that make up social networking and the garbage pit that is email today.
Knowing who you are cuts both ways. A woman trying to hide from an abusive boyfriend or husband would want to keep her identity unknown. People facing political persecution would like to keep a low profile.
Perhaps the biggest hurd
I agree with you that it isn't that difficult. I signed up on mastodon.social months ago. It was a little confusing about picking an instance so I just arbitrarily picked one. The same was true for lemmy. Now I'm on lemme.ee and behaw.org.
In the case of Matodon, I recently discovered the Explore option. There's more than enough posts to keep me reading for hours. And most of them are interesting. Imagine reading an unfiltered Twitter feed. I don't need Mastodon to get any bigger for my needs. It may even be better if it doesn't get a huge membership. The same holds true for lemmy and kbin, bigger and better yes, but they don't have to be a Reddit replacement.
Home Assistant, ESPHome, frigate, grafana, influxdb, mosquitto, nodered, plex, and a few web site servers. Once set up, they're all easy to manage. The biggest challenge is upgrading Ubuntu on the web severs. All the other ones are Docker instance.
Will Reddit Kill RSS Feeds
I just set up all the subreddits I still want to following in Reeder, an RSS app. I'm able scroll through the posts ad free. It the occurred to me that this is a loss of revenue to Reddit. Could RSS be the new target for onerous fees?
It could be the case that RSS usage is small compared to 3rd party apps like Apollo so not of much concern. It also may be the case that it isn't possible for Reddit to charge for the usage. If they can't charge, they may just disable RSS altogether. I'm only guessing. I'll take off my tinfoil hat now.
This could be a chance for the Ukraine to push its counter offensive, especially if Putin or Wagner withdraw troops to deal with the coup. If not, the Russian troops in the Ukraine may get jittery hearing of a coup at home.
There's More to the Reddit Meltdown Than Meets the Eye
This article is on Medium, which has a paywall. I'm a member, but not logged in. I was able to read it so it may depend on how many times you've read Medium articles.
One point he made that I found interesting was:
So, in light of all of this, should Reddit even exist? Is there really a point to a web forum in 2023? Aren’t we past all that?
He thinks we are. I never thought about it before. Maybe in the case of some Reddit subreddits and other forums, but I don't think so in general. I've got a lot great information from forums.
I used to use Tweetbot to read my Twitter feed. I would read the latest 100 tweets every day. When the plug got pulled on the app, I just stopped reading Twitter at all and don't miss it. In the case of Apollo, I scroll through my feed for an hour or more if I'm bored with nothing else to do. I mostly looked at funny, wtf, and photos. It was mostly a waste of time, however entertaining it might be. So when Apollo shuts down, like you, I may not need Reddit as much as I thought.
Large corporations regularly buy up small firms to get their product. You may be less tin foil hatty than you think on that one.
Do You Think There Would Have Been a Large Protest if Steve Huffman Just Said We're Charging to Use the API to Increase Revenue?
I've been a long time Redditor and an Apollo user for about a year. I even paid for it. The main draw for me was the lack of advertising. In the back of my head I kept thinking that it couldn't last. Reddit is losing revenue from the lack of advertising views. It didn't
To me, Reddit's sky high pricing for the use of the API is intended to kill off apps like Apollo and for its users to move to the advertising filled web site or its own app, which I've never used.
If Huffman came out and said this was a revenue move right off would everyone be as upset as they are? Are people upset because Huffman completely mishandled the move or because they got their ad free experience turned off? If Reddit had an app the same quality as Apollo only with ads, would they be OK with it. I've only used Apollo so I can't speak to the other apps.
I can't blame Reddit for wanting to make money. It doesn't make a profit. Investors have to keep pouring in money to keep it going. They're going to want to s