So, I was kinda idly thinking about how we’re seeing more and more companies such as Reddit give into peer pressure in favor of profit. As their endless stream of investment dollars with the hope of being profitable eventually seems to be running out. How do you see the web moving forward?

Do you think the best way forward, is to go back? I was thinking about it and back in the old days people would have websites that they would host that would make little to no money, they’d just run them for fun, for the passion of it. Do you see these days returning? Lemmy is kind of an example of that, and other federated self-hosted software. It kind of feels like the way things might be headed. People host their own, smaller scale sites, not in pursuit of profits specifically, but for the passion of it.

I honestly think this way of communicating with eachother is more genuine, more real and honestly more optimal. Communications with others shouldn’t entirely hinge upon the will of one soul entity. And while federation definitely has its issues, I personally think it’s vastly better than being ruled by 1 single entity who’s entire goal is to farm as much mindless doomscrolling as possible in pursuit of profits.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against making money off of your work, I think if you spent time working on something you should absolutely make money off of it. However, I don’t think it’s the way our communication should work. For original content such as art, books, movies, shows, games or other similar mediums, I definitely think that the creator is entitled to make money off of that work.

But having our communication fueled by that sort of business model doesn’t make sense to me. It incentives more harsh restrictions on speech and discussion, restricting user speech/expression to what’s “advertiser friendly” and of course, for harvesting and collecting our personal data like we’re some sort of crop or cattle.

Might’ve gone on a bit of a tangent there, but I hope my general point still got across.

What do you think is the way forward for the internet, and will it require us to go back?

  • Burger@burggit.moe
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    1 year ago

    I’ve always found more valuable discussion to occur on places like the Fediverse. I really miss when old forums were index-able and not this bot/Indian written SEO trash hellscape that’s getting promoted by search engines that ask the question that’s titled in the article 20 times “What is $thing?”

    I really hope the internet of old does make a comeback but I’m not optimistic about that. I don’t know what it is with people who cannot grasp such concepts like signing up for a server on a Fediverse, but it’s really annoying. They all sound like they’re written by facebook moms or some crap. You don’t even need to grasp the concept just go on the server you want that’s in the instance lists and sign up! We’ve abstracted away concepts like servers and TCP/IP in general and its taken its toll on people’s tech literacy.

    They’re having to create college classes for zoomers because they can’t grasp a file manager because the likes of Google and Apple abstracted all of that away with smartphones. iOS doesn’t even have a filesystem you can browse. It’s all completely sandboxed.

    Discord got popular because of all this abstraction they did because apparently plugging in an IP address/port number in a VOIP client like Mumble is way too hard. The interconnected communities concept further strengthened their network effect. I’ve had former friends who can’t even grasp that now because Discord made bad man IP addresses/domains go away. I really hope Discord is next to feel the pinch with the free money faucet turned off.

    I hope interest rates continue to climb because these zombie-like companies being kept afloat by 0% interest rates need to be stabbed in the heart so that they can’t continue buying out innovative tech companies or strangle them in the crib just because they might gasp have to compete. FAANG is a bloated corpse that needs to meet its end.

    • GalvyGalvyCwanbewwy@burggit.moe
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      1 year ago

      From what I’ve seen on reddit the biggest hurdle to signing up to lemmy at least seems to be endless handwringing about picking a suboptimal choice instead of just picking one

      • SmolSlime@burggit.moe
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        1 year ago

        “Perfect is the enemy of good.”

        • Someone I don’t know

        I too was worried of picking the instance, but I decided to make multiple accounts instead. It’s not like the registration requires email, and I can just nuke the account if I don’t need it anymore.

      • Stargazer6343@burggit.moe
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        1 year ago

        My advice is to either pick the first one you see, make accounts on 20, or host your own. I’d consider the latter if I had the money for server bills

    • awoo@burggit.moe
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      1 year ago

      I really hope Discord is next to feel the pinch with the free money faucet turned off.

      Not sure if it’s just me but the amount of retarded useless feature Discord has been pumping out in the last few years reminded me exactly of Reddit. Super reaction reeks “low handing fruit” vibe.

      Yeah, they are definitely feeling the pressure.

      • Burger@burggit.moe
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        1 year ago

        Good. I’m sick and fucking tired of getting a retarded dumbasss zoomer meme when I search a project’s Discord when it doesn’t find anything “HAHA LE EMPATHY BANANA.” Which more and more projects are using that in place of forums because, why the fuck not. Let’s use a shitass platform with a shitass search feature which can be removed by the admins at the drop of a hat because, “Hurr TOS said we can do what we want, you agreed to it neener neener!” The users there are of low quality too. They constantly talk in zoomer speak “Bruh bruh bruh!” See picture below to see what I’m talking about:

        It’s like if zoomers and stackoverflow had a baby. Discord makes me genuinely mad at the internet and I’ll cheer for its collapse if/when it happens.

        • awoo@burggit.moe
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          1 year ago

          Tell me about it. Don’t you love searching your problem in a Discord server, finding someone asked about it then having to read through a hundred banter and meme only to find out no one answered the answer and you just wasted minutes of your life shoving shits in digital form into your brain.

          What’s more infuriating is Discord is a closed garden by design. The chat logs are not indexed by any search engine. You can only access the information if you join the server and if the server is gone for any reason, it brings all the information with it. Yeah, good luck hosting your “community” on that crap.

          • moyi@burggit.moe
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            1 year ago

            DISCORD IS NOT A WIKI PAGE

            DISCORD WILL NEVER BE A WIKI PAGE

            STOP HIDING CRUCIAL INFO ABOUT ANYTHING BEHIND A DISCORD “SERVER”

            IM FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF HAVING TO TRUDGE THROUGH DISCORD SERVERS TO FIND ANYTHING ABOT VIDEO GAMES