Could someone explain what this means to non-techy people?

What is onion routing?

Sorry, I didn’t know that was even a thing to look at it.

IMO it’s never about the tool, but who controls it

I 100% agree, it’s extremely powerful and covert though, the hospitals could be using it for both good and bad as well.

Okay, thanks for the suggestion but I’m kind of clueless when using github for things. It looks like it does what I want, but how would I implement this?

If you remember, I’d love it if you kept us posted on the projects. It sounds like you’re on to many somethings.

I would use it in a heartbeat, that would be fantastic.

I don’t know if you read the entire transcript, but I bolded what I think you might want to see:

There’s a real tail wagging the dog element of this where you can want to have a different media diet. I have set up RSS readers many times in the past two years. I used to read all of my news in RSS. I used to sit in school, my laptop open, and not pay attention, and go through my RSS reader, and I remember saying to some of my friends, “I finished the internet today,” because I’d read everything in the RSS reader, and there was a great diversity in content. No one thinks that way anymore. You open an RSS reader, you plug your favorite websites into it — candidly, even ours — and you get a bunch of stuff, and some of that stuff is obviously made for SEO, and some of that stuff is obviously made for other platforms.

And very rarely do you see, “Oh, there’s an audience here that wants to read every article on this website, and that is a package,” but it’s coming back. People want to do that, right? You can see… You have felt that way. I have felt that way. We write articles about RSS readers, and people read them. There’s demand for it. Do you think that demand is ever going to get filled?

I hope so. I tend to think, “Wasn’t the great promise of Silicon Valley and all these tech startups [that] we are going to give users things that they want?” There’s this thirst for a new form of delivery of content, better curation, more holistic ideas of what we should consume, and I hope that products arise to give us that. I think people are restlessly questing for it right now in RSS, in newsletters, in a parasocial podcast video, whatever ecosystem. But I don’t know. I like internet technology, I like when startups do new stuff. I hope that they take on this challenge and figure it out.

I think we’re in it, the fediverse ran by instances that are more interested in fostering community than making a buck. There is a need and want for new ways to access the internet, the fediverse is one way that it’s being provided. I’m not sure we’re ever going to attract the internet tourists, but that’s probably a good thing. This is where you go to get away from that.

I agree with you on most levels, but I think the author is leaving it more up to developers to develop a site that brings back RSS feeds and newsletters to the masses. That the masses are wanting it, but can’t find it. I would love an RSS reader that is FOSS for firefox for example, it would solve so many issues for a lot of things. All I can find is something like feedly that is essentially doing the same thing showing what they want you specifically to see.

I also think the underlying issues are more about the tastemakers being this ephemeral “they” from the masses which can occasionally be overridden, him talking about the creators knowing exactly when people turn away from their content that can be then “fixed”, and that the homogenized coffee shop is the norm and authenticity is found by the masses and then ruined. It’s a weird flow diagram that is kind of like pre-internet with magazines. Idk, it’s a good conversation regardless if he doesn’t have the answers.

I wonder if people who are new to Lemmy feel that loss of algorithm for most instances. It’s probably the thing I like most about Lemmy, I don’t have the sense of corporate showing me what they want me to see, but I could see how that would be a shock when you’re so used to it from other platforms.

I don’t know that they would talk about this, I tried to look up the difference. It’s a small instance and I’m sure it’s not nefarious if they do, they have to keep it in check somehow.

I guess I never noticed the weekend push on reddit, but tbf, they had so much more trolling that it would be hard to check unless you kept a chart.

You can block them like I will and my instance will. They’ll be starting on Mastodon first, but I’m sure they’ll expand as they need to show “growth”.

Could you explain what you’re saying in common language?

Thank you for explaining it, I think you’re right. Not sure why they wouldn’t explain it to me, I can’t read minds and that’s an interesting conversation.

They’re not going to be compelled to fix it until it’s an active problem when there are a lot bigger problems sitting around that are easier to fix.

Which is even more reason for all the big instances to not federate, but it’s their choice. All these smaller instance, weekend hobbyists are going to feel the pain. At least meta says they’re going to integrate slowly. We’ll see.

Yikes

Meta’s lead for Threads, Adam Mosseri, was head of Facebook’s News Feed and Interfaces departments during that long, warning-heavy lead-up to the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. After the worst of the violence was over, Mosseri noted on a podcast that he’d lost some sleep over it.

I agree that some of what Evan characterised as Small Fedi isn’t about small for small’s sake, it’s more about the view you describe – what L. Rhodes calls “networked communities”. Of course, the consequences of this result in slower growth than the Big Fedi view, so a smaller network in the short-to-medium term, so from his perspective I can see why I chose this framing.

I can see why he chose it, but I still don’t agree with it. It’s not a forgone conclusion that it will end up small if someone doesn’t federate with threads. It’s still growing slower, but it could hit huge now that all of the kinks are getting worked out. One more x fuck up and tweak to mastodon that makes it more user friendly, it could take off. I think people are okay with it taking off, just on fediverse terms, not evil company terms.

I’m having trust issues with them. I had an issue with them in their support community where they most likely deleted comments and then wouldn’t own up, and now I’m at another instance. I would have left when they said they wouldn’t defederate threads anyway. Leaving isn’t that hard. If .19 gets figured out, you’re supposed to be able to leave easily as well.

In one of the comments in the original Big Fedi, Small Fedi

by Badri December 27, 2023 at 1:06 am

@evanprodromou this is interesting! I think I agree with many of the points on both the “Big Fedi” and “Small Fedi” sides. It would be interesting to list them as a sort of multiple-select quiz (maybe without the big/small fedi headings) and see which combinations of points people end up selecting.

What I really hope is that there’s some way for people from both clusters (and those stuck in between) to coexist. Can the Big Fedi people connect with everyone they want to, while the Small Fedi folk keep their comfortable distance and protect their safe spaces?

I think most of what Evan listed as Small Fedi aren’t really about the small, they’re about the sense of trust and the trust that we can defederate successfully if things go terribly wrong. I really don’t have any opinion about any of the others trying to join except the known shitty, evil companies.

I also agree with the bolded part. Do we have a way to take polls and mix up all that everyone wants? It would be interesting to see what is most important to most fediverse users.

Why would they fix it?

Isn’t that what I’m asking if they fixed, am I not understanding, or are you fucking with me?

Why would you want threads and/or alt right people to be able to get around blocks?