Public opinion seems to be souring on all the big corporate social media sites, and I truly think if we’re able to get the word out about federated social media platforms, people will jump ship.
Also, it’s hard to dislike a platform that isn’t showing ads, selling user data, or generally making decisions for the enrichment of shareholders.
It’s so weird, I don’t even notice the lack of ads most of the time (pihole, never leave home, so it’s roughly the same experience I’m used to)
But when I go out? Oh man fediverse is the only site I’ll use because I know it’s safe from ads. The other privacy/user-focus stuff is just a bonus.
(I don’t have any friends around here, so just sort of go out to be out, and usually for food)
Inevitably there will be a fediverse instance with ads, but whether or not people want to use it will be up to the individual.
As long as the ads don’t federate in an un-blockable way, they can do as they like. I wouldn’t make an account there, I’d rather donate actual money than have a degraded experience (which for sure works out better for everyone), but I get the drive to monetize.
And they should absolutely -not- be allowed to federate ads, for any reason, since it goes against the vibe. But inevitably there will be “sponsored posts” (probably already are), and I think those instances/users will see themselves fade to oblivion, as long as new users are brought to understand that they could just chip in $2 and never see an ad.
I use Boost and it has ads. But they’re ignorable as a banner here and there, not constantly. I can live with that.
Is Boost really that much better than Eternity or Voyager that you put up with ads?
I like it.
Fair enough :)
What you can do is install wireguard server at home and then set your phone to use that wireguard connection always. That’s what I do and then my pihole at home filters all my mobile traffic as well.
I usually have a private vpn. It’s just isn’t always up. And I can’t be bothered to have it maintained most times because I’m not in control.
I’m considering setting it up through my router which has a built in option, so I don’t have to rely on my third party, but honestly I almost never leave pihole protected networks. So not a priority.
You don’t need an entire VPN just to block ads. I use RethinkDNS on Android and it blocks ads in most apps.
The vpn doesn’t block ads or do really anything, it just routes all my traffic back to my home network so I’m using my pihole for DNS.
I’m not about to install even more crap to do a half-ass job when I could just renew my certificate and pass it along for config, and be done with it and never get ads in any app, home or not.
I’m just lazy, and it doesn’t really come up all that often.
I honestly don’t think we’re there yet.
Remember, something like more than half of all people still don’t use an ad-blocker - some people want ads, or at least want that they provide money to keep the service going, and similarly with selling user data (to the extent that people bother to think about it at all).
Never underestimate the level of entitlement thinking on behalf of new users - like, “Which instance do I join? Wait, I have to choose!? Nvm, I’m out already.” (and for Mastodon, this has much greater implications than for Lemmy)
Also, one single reply to a comment in chapotraphouse on hexbear.net, followed by a second reply somewhere on Lemmy.ml, almost made me turn away from social media entirely, thinking that this place was fast becoming not really all that different than Reddit after all - I mean, these are leftists, aka liberals, these are/must be my people, right, R-R-RIGHT!?
The Fediverse is not for the uninitiated, and requires significant setup work to even be pleasant much less enjoyable, depending on where you go and the users’ innate level of insensitivity.
Though you and many others are working tirelessly to make it better by offering great content - thanks!:-)
As someone who is much more centrist/liberal, I had to block a whole bunch of leftist communities recently just so that I could keep enjoying the Fediverse. I would have greatly prefered not to, but so much of leftist content on here is far too cynical to any other position.
Even if they were correct, the maner of their interactions makes them wrong, especially the hostility.
Also, being a liberal in America is somewhat similar to being a conservative in Europe, I am told - i.e., “leftist” is a term relative to one’s local surrounding environment. Maybe one day I will become more leftist, although ironically all the leftist comments here are making me start to lean the opposite direction (it would be different if someone explained the positions, rather than simply dunked on everyone who does not share them - groupthink is not a valid way to arrive at Truth, especially when applied in the format of bullying behaviors to outsiders rather than merely acceptance of the in-crowd).
”Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. " - Karl Popper
The only reason u see them constantly dunking on everyone is because all the truthfull factual backed up with evidence replies they get get censored if it has a single thing to do the hexbear or .ml. Idk how they do it but a replete to .ml on a .world community can be censored by .ml but replete to that censored comment still work fine. .ml selectively federates the modlog as well to hide admin abuse. They will ban u from every .ml community for 1 comment disagreeing politically especially if u have evidance proving them wrong.
We have tried countering them by rational argument and public opinion but that is failing. We canot tolerate the intolerance of tankies ob lemmy.
I have stopped recommending Lemmy to people, bc I would be embarrassed for a new user to come here, get bullied as I have been (far more than happened on Reddit), and blame me like “you recommended me to talk to that crowd!?”). Kbin.social was different bc those communities were blocked from the start - at an instance level even - though that server has been down for days, and now I see it’s back up and full of advertisement posts as usual, bc many mods abandoned their communities due to all the technical problems with the service.
But there is hope for change in the future, in terms of perhaps making getting dunked on an opt-in rather than as it currently is an opt-out feature delivered to members of the Fediverse with little to no warning. e.g. here is a discussion I had with an instance admin. Progress, since so many of us joined the Fediverse since the Rexodus, has been (understandably) slow, but can happen, if we work at it!
For the lowest common denominator social media user, the bar is even lower. As long as everyone else they follow and care about is on the platform, they will happily move. They won’t even care that they will be free from ads and tracking because they never cared in the first place.
Fediverse is the future of the internet
You might inspire some of us to create a Facebook, Instagram, X account just to spread the word of the Fediverse.
Doin’ muh best to shitpost.
You’re all welcome, citizens!
Heroic Trumpet Music
Farting sounds
I’m doing my part too!
I’m doing my
partfart too!deleted by creator
You are now our king.
deleted by creator
Edit: Doesn’t exist. Someone needs to start this.
laugh tracks
I have many, many sovereign citizens to keep us alive.
Okay, now I am imagining that you are imprisoning sovcits in your basement and farming them for insanepeoplewhatever content.
Bet those sovcits would be cits real quick in that situation ;)
Nah I’d post videos of them if that was the case.
That’s just what someone keeping sovcits in their basement would say.
And I’m doing my best to keep it spam-free and ad-free.
Gonna be honest, a lot of times I feel like I don’t belong here, I’m still figuring things out. I’m not a “techy” type person (that seems to be some kind of prerequisite) and I barely know how to explain the fediverse to the layman, but I left reddit when they fucked over Joey (my preferred reddit app) and read enough to give reddit the middle finger and never look back. It’s been nice, really. I spend more time outside of the internet now. But I believe in the fediverse, I think it’s the right thing to do. I still check up on lemmy daily, but I get much more value and human connection and only spend the time that is appropriate on lemmy instead of endlessly scrolling. Most days I end up in some Wikipedia rabbit hole. Just like the good ol’ days. Learning new things, meeting new people. That’s what I love about the internet.
It’s what we all loved about the internet I think, before the web become… “that” (looking at the pile of shit the web has become).
But actually it’s not the web, not really. It’s the big tech platforms that most people seem to think is the internet now. It’s sad to watch how people log on to “Facebook” and not the general web anymore. And then Google in front of everything, like a big cancer growth.
Lemmy is not the new internet either I believe. But it’s here to show people that something else can exist. As soon as we let advertising in here though, it’s over.
The beautiful thing about decentralisation is that if an instance tries to as ads, then you can go to a different instance and see the same content.
If an instance creates as posts, your instance admin can block the whole instance.
Interestingly, the big instances seem to easily get enough donations to cover costs. I think that’s the great thing about this model, people are willing to donate when they know it’s not some big corporate making profit for shareholders.
adding to the old internet thing, using mojeek reminds me of the old search results! searched for something mildly obscure, actually got good results and also a porn site lmfao.
there’s a safe mode if it’s of use: nested in the settings gear menu but also on /preferences (to turn it on for all searches)
thanks peakjeek
I think the answer is not to gatekeep against advertising actively, but to have a platform that is resilient to that kind of thing. Like, if there were advertising on an instance people would fucking BOUNCE I think. And if it got somehow baked into the platform itself there would be a new fork with the advertising excised before the sun went down.
I’m not sure about that. What if advertising were used to cover server costs, just like donations right now? Then the community may be fine with it.
But I think it’s very dangerous to go down that route. Because it’s going to become about higher profits, not just covering costs, in the long run.
I don’t know either, but so far not a single instance has even tried to my knowledge. I have a very hard time imagining people being okay with it.
As long as the ads are good ads, I’m using Adnauseaum to block most though.
Honestly this is great, non-techy people making the transition is a good sign and something the system needs to gain mainstream appeal.
Also, people who aren’t techy are less likely to accept hacky workaround BS and complain until it’s fixed on a system-wide level, and that’s needed to mature the platform to something anyone can use. It’s getting there but it’s still got a lot of rough edges.
I enjoyed reading this. I came over from reddit when they started banning people for protesting. That showed me that reddit was not what I thought it is.
I‘m a techy person. I run servers for friends and customers, partly with fediverse services on them. Lemmy being one of them. I donate both time and money to lemmy and other services I enjoy and use.
The fediverse is a great thing imo. I hope it succeeds.
Gonna be honest, a lot of times I feel like I don’t belong here, I’m still figuring things out.
I left reddit when they fucked over Joey (my preferred reddit app)
Are you me? I thought I was relatively tech-savvy, and then I moved to Lemmy. Also, Joey was the best.
It’s easy to feel that way even if you are a techy. It seems like being minimally neurodivergent is the abnormal here.
That being said, I’ve been introduced to many different ways of thinking that I wouldn’t have gained otherwise. Think of it like you’re different, but that’s ok because everyone here is different - and that makes them (and you) all the more beautiful for it (especially in the context of idea exchange). In fact, being the different one here will give you the perspective that many of the people who use Lemmy experience simply by existing which, in and of itself, is a valuable thing.
Everyone being nd would explain a lot of why this place feels way better than Reddit for me lol
A way I have found to explain federated social media to people, that seems to work is this: Imagine reddit, but instead of one company, with one administration, owning the whole site, it is a bunch of different reddits, that are independently run, that choose which other reddits they wish to associate themselves with. When you log into one instance, you automatically can see, and interact with, all the other ones that one chooses to associate with. You can have accounts on as many instances as you would like, even having accounts on instances that do no associate with each other.
I just say: “It’s like email. There are different email servers, but they can all talk to one another. If there are things you really like, you can subscribe to them, and if there are things you don’t like, you can block them.”
Or replace “email” with “instant messages”.
Hey, I also was a Joey user. I am pretty tech savvy (I’m a software dev and a former sys admin). I’m not a Linux daily user though, so I still understand that out of place feeling. Like I have used Linux for things, but after working on my computer all day for work, I don’t exactly want to deal with roadblocks or tinkering on my computer in the evening.
I have also noticed that I spend less time scrolling on here than I did on Reddit, which is a good thing for me. It’s a place where I can satisfy that itch without getting lost in scrolling of posts or comment sections for hours.left when i saw too many reposts and way too many story-comments i was sure i’d seen before
which led me to realise reddit has been completely astroturfed
Oh yes, good point. That’s a big part of my problem when it came to my reddit experience in the end. I mean shit, I was a redditor since 2009. It was hard to leave but also not.
Admins. Thank you. Users. Thank you.
Mods?
Too busy abusing their mod powers to enforce their political views in most communities.
That sounds like me in World News exactly. Excellent assessment.
(I’m even more draconian in Lemmy Shitpost.)
And in 10Forward you’re absolutely brutal, keeping the comm in constant fear. You rule with an iron tentacle.
I’m going to go over there and ban you now for this.
Ban you FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE!
im taking a shit
This is what Lemmy is all about, right here. Just a good, honest nutsack taking a simple shit.
Same
nice
Add me to the shit list
Added
Ehh. What’s the average age around here? I’m guessing it wasn’t the youth that migrated from Reddit.
I’m in my 20s, is that considered youth?
@Wilzax @Underwaterbob yeah 😁
I’m OP and I’m 50 and female.
Old fucker. Your lot taught me an absurd amount of shit on IRC.
I’m 41.
I predate IRC and even web pages. I used telnet talkers!
Fuck it all.
In my mid IRC days I met Suzeran. She was fantastic. Ostensibly a man, but he identified as a young woman. Others in our group were furries or (why the fuck is furry a real word) whatever for the time. Dunno, but our old internet culture was about people, not politics.
So was mine. I mostly hung out in a largely gay men talker, and despite me being neither I made friends I still have today.
Yeah, it’s kinda nuts what we dealt with and/or loved.
My most awkward was a bro named Bronson. He made a joke anti-cuban song. He passed way too early. The Cuban bro that spawned the song was the person who told me about 9/11. “We’re under attack”
I did my best, but we were poor.
18 here
I’m 33. Joined up during the APIcalypse and ensuing exodus from Reddit.
Look at the baby over here. I remember 33… Actually not really.
Some sorta survey/census for the fediverse might be cool
We’ve had lots of them. It’s depends on the community but we’re generally older than r/, more female then you think, and slightly to very ‘techie’.
I’m not that young, but sometimes I see people here refer to their childhoods, and then I feel like a baby.
Now I feel old because my childhood was basically over before Reddit was born. Am I already old at 33? Gross!
33 old? Nah. 30s are just the start of actual adulthood (as opposed to young adulthood).
I am 17 lol
Im interested in this as well
I am in my mid 20s the kids call me old and the adults call me a kid.
I think it’ll be skewed based on reasons people are here.
I’m doing my best to look at memes 💪
Teamwork makes the dream work.
As would say this wise person (@[email protected]): you are not procrastinating, you are fighting for a free and open Internet
deleted by creator
I still haven’t been able to give up reddit but I have always been a lurker there. Here I’m trying to make a conscious effort to participate in conversations. I’m trying to be positive, kind, and thoughtful because that’s what I want lemmy to be.
I started to think of Reddit as just an occasional Google search result necessary evil and have successfully ignored it ever since. Log off DKC, there’s a better world out there.
In all seriousness I think eventually conventional social media will start to feel very siloed like AOL did as more people join the fediverse. I can’t imagine using a site that I couldn’t look at everything from anymore, save for stupid ass Facebook which I do solely for sovcit material. Why would I want to look at crap ads and AI when I can be here?
I started to think of Reddit as just an occasional Google search result necessary evil and have successfully ignored it ever since.
This is my experience. I try to search elsewhere, but consistently still find good info there. Only when I exhaust other options I go crawling back.
Oh it’s no biggie if you use it to deshittify Google. It is there, after all. Just treat it like ghetto Wikipedia and don’t hang around. Haha.
Thank you!
Similar here. Reddit has become, for better or worse, just another Facebook. I include in my search queries when I need. I get in for specific communities and get out immediately afterwards.
The thing that I love most about Lemmy and the wider Fediverse is the sense of actual community. Many of the users feel like actual people I could meet in real life. It’s essentially a digital cafe. Sure as hell not going back to Reddit or those other shit Big Tech sites.
Every day I am thankful for the work that has been done. It is life changing.
That’s it! I post a lot (you’re welcome all) and I feel like I have friends I talk to in the comments every day.
Yeah, Reddit was like that about a decade or more ago.
The current level of bot activity there is actually insane.
What I like about the fedi is I don’t care if it’s a “success” in the same sense that the closed social media sites have to be. It’s not like this project has quarterly profit targets to hit or else it’ll have to enshittify or else the investors pull out and we’re all screwed because there’s no more app.fediverse.com monolith or whatever.
Nah it’s just us doing our thing and enjoying ourselves. The activity around here already reached a critical mass a while ago, to the point that there’s more content than I could hope to enjoy, so anything from here is vegan gravy.
Just out of curiosity, how much does it cost per month to run a Lemmy instance? Not that I’d want to do that myself, I’m just grateful for our admins that keep Lemmy up and running.
feddit.uk clocks in at under £40/month. That’s hosting, and backups. lemmy.zip is similar.
Plus our time, but we’re obviously doing it as a labour of love.
You can rent an instance for like 10 dollars per month and grow from there. Then expand if you get users and things get slow. Lemmy runs ok on 4 GB of memory but it’s better with 8 GB. Postgres use the most.
It depends. I run an instance with a whole two users and it costs me about $25 a month.
But if I let 200 users join, I would need beefier hardware and a higher bandwidth limit.
However running an instance like Beehaw is probably on the order of hundreds, not thousands of dollars a month.
I’d certainly be interested to know for the sake of donations. I would gladly donate to keep the fediverse alive.
It varies greatly depending on your setup.
Lemmy.world’s monthly expenses are around €1,200. Though that includes hosting more services that just Lemmy.
https://blog.mastodon.world/For comparison, it looks like £30 per month for lemmy.zip:
https://lemmy.zip/post/7766703And lemmy.ca is around CAD$30 per month:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/39134At one point Reddthat.com was considering moving to a bigger server that would cost A$150-200 per month:
https://reddthat.com/post/8840079Ayy Lemmy.zip :)
I’m curious as well. I want to selfhost a personal instance, but CGNAT is getting on the way. I can always pay for VPS, but then the recent shenanigans involving CSAM images potentially being synced from rogue instances scared me.
For Lemmy.world a donation would help keep it alive without all the crap. Servers are cheaper then they were, but still not cheap.
OMG! Thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️
It’s not easy keeping things up sometimes, but we’re always looking for ways to deliver more for less, while still keeping things snappy.
It’s hard, but without the community, we would just be some nerds with too much time on our hands 😅
Much love for y’all!!!
Yeah but on the other hand Lemmy world sucks and it would be good for the overall health of the Fediverse if they ran out of money and had to shut down. Give that donation to a smaller instance who actually needs it. World is already the biggest and they don’t need to get bigger.
I don’t think we should be wishing for the demise of the largest Lemmy instance. However, I definitely agree that focusing resources towards growing small and medium sized instances is good for the fediverse.
They’re made too many bad decisions. The only reason people use them is they’re the biggest, not because they have a good admin team or even a good gimmick.
Just trying to take it easy for all those sinners.
Im just here for the memes
I know that you will
Everyone one of my shitposts is making history
Hey, shitposts are like manure that helps other posts grow.
I lurk!! But, thanks y’all.
Not anymore!
