I’m old enough to have witnessed the early beginnings of the Internet in the 90s - and what’s happening now with the fediverse feels like coming back to its roots.
We may well find that the implosion of Twitter and Reddit - within 6 months of each other - is the beginning of the end for “big tech”. It’s unlikely that it will go away entirely but I do feel a seismic shift happening. I seriously hope that it’s not a false dawn.
Someone will try to monetize the fediverse. They may not be successful, but they’ll try.
Oh 100%. The beauty is if they try in a way that is harmful to the fediverse at large they will get defederated in a heartbeat.
When I moved to Lemmy and learned about how federated sites like this work I realized how utterly impossible for something like what’s happening to Reddit to happen. The biggest obstacle to Reddit users migrating right now is the fact that there’s no equivalently sized community to move to.
That would never be the case here. In addition to defederating like you mentioned, users not in the instance in question could easily set up an alternative community, as easy as it would be to open a new sub. Users in the instance in question could easily migrate to another instance. No need to find an alternative platform, no need to make a new account (in most cases), and no need to worry about a new community being active and well established.
While I see downsides to the fediverse, I see some major upsides, especially in the wake of Reddit’s implosion.
As long as 1 server doesn’t become too dominant. At least, that’s how I understand it.
There are probably plenty of ways to do it…but most of the ones I can think of involve catering services to users directly, which is fine with me.
capitalism world we live in
Oh 100%. The beauty is if they try in a way that is harmful to the fediverse at large they will get defederated in a heartbeat.
Potentially a large stumble for “big social” I don’t think that the msft/goog/amzns of the world are going to feel this as long as they’re service oriented… but anyone platform oriented is likely watching this closely. That said I don’t think that twitter is going to “end” anytime soon. But their one company domination over the microblogging space will certainly not be quite so absolute
Not the end of big tech. You’re likely posting from MacOS or Windows and using services like AWS, Azure, or GCP on the sites you use and abuse.
The end of centralized social media though? I hope so.
I’m commenting from Arch Linux. I made the switch two months ago because I’m fed up with M$. What held me back for years was that I like gaming but thanks to Valve/Steam gaming gets better on Linux on a daily basis.
I love Linux, but in reality it still doesn’t support enough of the software people use. I own a bunch of audio software, and don’t feel like running it on wine or something like that.
Also, even the easiest Linux distros will eventually have an issue that forces you into to using a shell of some sort… I know a lot of people who would not be able to handle that. Also it can be a massive time commitment for troubleshooting.
Sadly Windows and macOS are (more) reliable
Getting a bit of a downvoting there, @datavoid. I’m a Linux dev that works for a Linux shop that runs Linux on all his machines at home; I personally love the fact that I can send my test team and any customers having problems a list of shell commands to fix it all. (Quite a lot of our customers are more adept than I am, will send me back an improved version.) Much easier than a list of which buttons you have to push and a hundred screenshots, much more flexible when you’ve dozens of remote servers to deal with. But yeah, if you expect a GUI all the time, it takes a mindset change.
Linux has made enormous improvements in game compatibility recently, to the point that I don’t much bother checking ProtonDB any more for most things I’m interested in buying off Steam. But there’s still problem areas - funky DRM, very specific performance requirements, and reasonably small target audience - where some games just don’t work right, and that’s basically the problem checklist for most high-end audio stuff as well. Can probably add a driver requirement for specialist kit, too. Might be a struggle to fix that; requires manufacturer support, and they’ve not much interest in supporting a small market.
MacOS is built on BSD, which is like Linux but more arcane (sort of). (Edit: also the Android kernel is a Linux kernel). If you don’t find yourself using the shell in MacOS (or Android), it’s because they’ve done the work to make it unnecessary. The command line is still there, and can still be used to fix (or cause) problems.
The companies developing your audio software release it for Windows or Mac because that’s what the users are running. If the majority of their users were running Linux, they would be releasing Linux binaries.
As for being more reliable… it depends on your use case. Around 79% of all publicly accessible servers on the internet run something Unix-like, with about 38% of the total being Linux. Windows is used for about 21%. In my sysadmin work, I use Windows when it’s mandated by the software (again, because the developers chose to release for Windows only, not because the software is fundamentally tied to it), and Linux everywhere else. Reliability is a big part of that decision.
Not necessarily the end, but they’re almost certainly going to be diminished for it, probably because the money is beginning to dry up, and the silicon Valley rush seems to be ending.
Everyone these days seems to be trying to invest in AI, rather than just blanket throwing money at new tech companies with the hope of them turning a profit later on.
Reddit and Twitter will probably still be around in some shape or form some years down the line, but they might just be relegated to the background in the same way that Digg is.
Can’t wait for the AI and Metaverse bubbles to pop.
Turns out people like working with other people and enjoying reality. I’m darkly amused that “touch grass” has quickly become both an insult and sincere life advice.
I wish I was as optimistic as you. I fear the robot overlords will displace so many jobs civil unrest will be inevitable.
Civil unrest is inevitable. The current system is not sustainable.
Agreed. Big tech platforms make it easy for everyone to participate. But while we gained simplicity, we lost control and independence and creativity. Every website isn’t supposed to look the same. And our expression and activity isn’t supposed to just be grist for the data mill.
I remember fondly the days of early broadband, when tons of people would run a server on an old laptop for an IRC bot or a shoutcast stream or whatever. We need that back. I hear about people doing that with Lemmy instances and Matrix homeservers and the like and it makes my heart sing.
Twitter and reddit won’t implode. But hopefully they keep all the users who just want to mindlessly scroll through low effort content and the smarter ones join the fediverse.
And desire to participate! Commenting on most websites is shouting into the wind. I feel like general engagement has the potential to be better in a decentralised environment.
deleted by creator
Agreed. Not just shout into the wind bit really engage and LISTEN as well as talking. Reddit used to have that. It’s largely gone away in the last 5ish years :(
Between Lemmy and Blue sky we might get back to a more decentralized social media again. Reddit and Twitter going the way of digg for these two would be a good thing.
On the path to become synonymous with AOL
Investers are gonna see yet another mindless man child ceo
Lol, fuck spez. I’ve used reddit since 2011 but this debacle has been the last straw for me.
2006 here. Bye,
FeliciaSpez.Class of 2008 checking in. I’ll miss Reddit, but I won’t miss Spez. Spez can eat a bag of dicks.
I think this is not the great IPO advertisement they were looking for…
“… not going to change anything”
Yet look what happened to the fediverse. I wouldn’t be here without his boneheaded move. So it already changed things for me and thousands more like me. I don’t plan on going back.
Yeah for me it was sort of good that this happened as I’ve been meaning to stop using reddit for a while. Was planning on using RSS readers for following news though, will have to get into that more.
RSS-feeds are good for fiding content to post too :)
Yup, that’s why I’m here, I am curious if federated services will become the norm in the future though, even for bigger companies…
I know meta has announced a twitter-like that will use the ActivityPub protocol, which is a little concerning to me, but it could be a good thing if it brings more users to the fediverse, and if they open source anything.
In the Verge interview, huffman said the api usage costs reddit $10 mio a year. So charging Christian alone double that seems just…greedy.
10 for Reddit and 10 for himself
“We can’t subsidize other people’s businesses,” Huffman said. “We didn’t ban third-party apps — we said, ‘You need to cover your costs.’”
Too bad the article author does not put this into context with counter-arguments. “Your cost” saying that’s the cost is a wild claim. They supposedly set an arbitrary, high price.
“I think every business has a duty to become profitable eventually — for our employees shareholders, for our investors shareholders and, one day as a public company, hopefully our user shareholders as well,” said Huffman, who co-founded the site in 2005.
I’m not so sure every shareholder is necessarily looking primarily or only at money return. It’s equally probable a shareholder may be a shareholder to support the platform - even if it operates at a loss - because it’s a good or important platform.
Finally realized how to sign up for Lemmy. Federated ftw. Insurance against this kind of stupidity.
This exactly. I’ve been a redditor on one account or another for over a decade. For a very long time, read it was 100% of my social media and online community time. That seemed safe because Reddit had always been run in a user-friendly manner.
But then somebody gave Spez a microphone and he managed to destroy 10+ years of community trust and good will in like 3 weeks. Every single thing he says doubles down, reiterates that he doesn’t give a shit what the users want.So it’s time to diversify. This right here is my very first post on Lemmy, never would have bothered with it if not for Spez. But now I am more carefully considering where I invest my time and discussion, and what networks I want to see grow.
With any luck, this decentralized stuff is going to be the answer to enshittification.
Starting this comment a bit flamebatey: I think reddit will stay around and I’m very very grateful to u/spez for keeping his position in spite of all the opposition.
Because he single-handedly seeded lemmy and kbin with enough users to take these platforms out of a niche and make them viable.
Now in the future we wil still have reddit (with a lot worse moderation and a lot more annoying ads) but we suddenly also have an alternative.
Yes, the fediverse already was there before, but when I check out the old content I find it very hard to find something I’d have been interested in - which suddenly changed in the last few days.
It’s like the musk twitter/mastodon. moment all over again. And with federation it at the same time more annoying and feels much more like the old world again, when individual people not huge companies would own the web.
(Btw this is my very first comment ever on lemmy, too - and it suddenly doesn’t feel like it transfer ownership of my words to a corporate giant, anymore)
Reddit will remain but it’ll be just a meme page, I doubt if any of the more specialised, specialist communities will stay. It’ll be just another 9gag. I’ve been on it since 2010, I watched it grow and evolve and it honestly looked very reasonable the whole time, progress was for the better. then spez decided to kill it in a few weeks. Over a decade of progress will be gone.
I’m definitely not going to download the official reddit app, I’m done with it for good. Lemmy’s mobile website is good enough for now, hoping that the Apollo developer decides to make a Lemmy client eventually
I also will never install the official reddit app. I’m trying to move away from reddit altogether for various reasons.
I created this account this morning and am writing this message on Jerboa (got it off fdroid). So far so good!
Fellow Jerboa user here - it’s basic but it has everything needed. Currently I’m in a remote French Polynesian island and it’s perfectly responsive.
Bonjour from Canada!
Bonjour! En tant qu’Américain non francophone, être ici me donne envie de ne pas avoir appris le latin au lycée.
J’ai appris le français au lycée. Je ne me souviens pas de grand-chose par contre. Google a traduit cela pour moi, mais ça a l’air correct.
Oui, il semble que je me sois fait un ami qui utilise également Google Traduction pour communiquer en français. C’est l’essence de ce qu’on appelle la lingua Franka. Quelle chance j’ai rencontré celui qui est connu sous le nom de SkullRot. Bonne journée à vous et bonne chance dans vos efforts.
Yeah I’m on jerboah from the Google app store. Seems to work fine
Shit, let’s go back to digg, why not? Is it still there?
checks digg.com
Oh shit, nevermind, here is good!
Why not jerboa? Works decently well… EDIT: nevermind, forgot it’s not on iOS and mlem isn’t great yet
jerboa exists and works very well
Isn’t that only on android? I’m on iPhone
Mlem on iOS
Yeah Mlem is very buggy and missing a lot of big stuff right now. That being said, folks should use it to at minimum provide feedback so it can improve.
It’s in beta. And Testflight is full. Should be out on July first tho. The Homescreen solution is fine for now.
It’s crazy that he is probably the only one not seeing how bad he look like and how bad he is destroying reddit
At this point I think he’s immolating himself on purpose, and after the api changes are done a new saviour CEO will come, who won’t reverse anything, but with a clean record.
I dont think his plan is even that deep. They have an ipo coming up and spez is set to make yacht money. he doesnt care if he burns the site to the ground cause he still walks out with a giant paycheck
They do stuff like that sometimes, like twitter is doing now, by putting a woman CEO right after Elon set everything on fire, so that twitter vocal minority can blame her and say that Elon was doing everything better. It’s what they call the Glass Cliff. Something similar might be happening here, without the anti-feminist part.
What has that to do with the CEO being a woman? Every CEO after Elon “lost”, trying to get that mess back on track is going to blow up on Twitter, regardless of sex
Pandering to his misogynistic neofascist fanbase?
They have already done this once. I wonder if anyone here remembers the previous CEO…
Yeah, that’s a plausible outlook.
He’ll just cash out and fuck off somewhere. Lol
He doesn’t see reddit as a community, he sees it as a way to make money. If he comes out of it with a profit, then that’s a win even if reddit itself dies.
Yeah, he doesn’t cares about the communities. All he cares is the IPO.
Reddit CEO Diggs in heels as outrage engulfs website
FTFY
“…we made a business decision that we’re not negotiating on.”
Great, then I’m not negotiating when I say you’re a shite CEO and I’m done with your crappy website.
This whole debacle will end up being a MBA case study in a few years on how not to work with your user community.
“Protest and dissent is important,” Huffman said. “The problem with this one is it’s not going to change anything because we made a business decision that we’re not negotiating on.”
“we’re not giving in” said everyone ever that gave in to protest later
We will see. It can still go many ways. With how big Reddit is they can certainly push through. We will see what impact that will have in the long term.
In my opinion even if he changes his mind and tries to backtrack, the damage is done, for sure.
They’ve already shown their hand, so why should anyone trust them again even if they did backtrack? They’ve proven they don’t care about us and are willing to go back on their words if it benefits them. I don’t see any restoration of community faith in Reddit’s administration.
Because 90% of their users don’t care about APIs or 3rd party apps, they just want the content however reddit makes them consume it.
