I do believe we’re seeing the very beginnings of a larger cultural shift towards the small web and its philosophy
I think that’s the crux of our different perspectives. I do agree that for federation and such to reach the mainstream it’s going to have to start with a cultural shift; I just can’t see that appreciably happening any time soon. I’ll be really happy to be wrong though.
If a user has a problem with their instance’s management, they only need to go to another one rather than a whole new platform with different UI, none of the same people, none of the same content.
But the old content and old users still live on the original instance: if you continue to participate has anything particularly changed? And if you don’t, is that really all that different from forum hopping?
edit: I suppose you also mean participating in communities spread across instances. That’s fair, but I do want to point to Lemmy’s current top-heaviness as to why I think that’s still a tad unrealistic. Also, as it stands instance hopping is definitely not painless. These are definitely tractable problems, but I do think it’ll be a couple years before I can reconsider my stance.
What makes me a little less hopeful is Mastodon’s greater maturity with the same instance top-heaviness and block list sharing from the top. I get why it’s necessary, but the net result is that peoples’ content is still decided from on-high with arguably even less public accountability. I just seriously don’t see the value-add from Joe Schmo’s perspective in exchange for grappling with extra complexity and I think that’s evidenced by Mastodon’s slump past the initial Twitter acquisition outrage.
Nonetheless, things are arguably still in the early stages so the only real answer is “wait and see” of course.
If you’re talking about an exodus on a community level, we’ve had plenty of intra-Reddit examples of splinter communities forming in opposition to moderation incidents on the main subreddit. They tend to not gain traction - most users are extremely apathetic. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, it just means most people still have the perspective to (at least unconsciously) realize that the specifics of this social media stuff barely matters at the end of the day. But it does mean they tend to take the dumbest, least effort option when it comes to these matters, which I’d say played a big part at how we arrived at the current social media landscape in the first place.
and traditional social media sites will clean up their act and bring everyone back
To clarify, I don’t quite hold this expectation. I fully expect Reddit to become irrelevant over the next few years. I just expect whatever to replace it will be another Reddit in the same way Reddit ended up becoming another Digg.
So it’s less “clean up” so much as I expect new companies with new platforms to do the same dog & pony show as usual. Maybe it was just my neck of the woods, but by far the most linked alternative in subreddit blackout messages was to sister Discord communities, even though that’s ideologically empty in the long run.
It’d be fun to look back on this a decade from now
Much agreed.
One facet that I’ll concede makes me a lot less confident in my own expectations is the geopolitical one. While I’m sure every country would like to maximize its ability to spy on its citizens and beyond, curbing US hegemony in online communications might be a win unto itself. But then the Fourteen Eyes alliance exists, so I really have no clue what the net pull of the situation is. I just hope something spicy leaks at some point.
I think that’s the crux of our different perspectives. I do agree that for federation and such to reach the mainstream it’s going to have to start with a cultural shift; I just can’t see that appreciably happening any time soon. I’ll be really happy to be wrong though.
But the old content and old users still live on the original instance: if you continue to participate has anything particularly changed? And if you don’t, is that really all that different from forum hopping?
edit: I suppose you also mean participating in communities spread across instances. That’s fair, but I do want to point to Lemmy’s current top-heaviness as to why I think that’s still a tad unrealistic. Also, as it stands instance hopping is definitely not painless. These are definitely tractable problems, but I do think it’ll be a couple years before I can reconsider my stance.
What makes me a little less hopeful is Mastodon’s greater maturity with the same instance top-heaviness and block list sharing from the top. I get why it’s necessary, but the net result is that peoples’ content is still decided from on-high with arguably even less public accountability. I just seriously don’t see the value-add from Joe Schmo’s perspective in exchange for grappling with extra complexity and I think that’s evidenced by Mastodon’s slump past the initial Twitter acquisition outrage.
Nonetheless, things are arguably still in the early stages so the only real answer is “wait and see” of course.
If you’re talking about an exodus on a community level, we’ve had plenty of intra-Reddit examples of splinter communities forming in opposition to moderation incidents on the main subreddit. They tend to not gain traction - most users are extremely apathetic. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, it just means most people still have the perspective to (at least unconsciously) realize that the specifics of this social media stuff barely matters at the end of the day. But it does mean they tend to take the dumbest, least effort option when it comes to these matters, which I’d say played a big part at how we arrived at the current social media landscape in the first place.
To clarify, I don’t quite hold this expectation. I fully expect Reddit to become irrelevant over the next few years. I just expect whatever to replace it will be another Reddit in the same way Reddit ended up becoming another Digg.
So it’s less “clean up” so much as I expect new companies with new platforms to do the same dog & pony show as usual. Maybe it was just my neck of the woods, but by far the most linked alternative in subreddit blackout messages was to sister Discord communities, even though that’s ideologically empty in the long run.
Much agreed.
One facet that I’ll concede makes me a lot less confident in my own expectations is the geopolitical one. While I’m sure every country would like to maximize its ability to spy on its citizens and beyond, curbing US hegemony in online communications might be a win unto itself. But then the Fourteen Eyes alliance exists, so I really have no clue what the net pull of the situation is. I just hope something spicy leaks at some point.