John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed

I wish he had mentioned Lemmy, but it's understandable that he didn't. Also Bluesky isn't an alternative to big tech, it IS big tech. I wish it wasn't stealing so much of our publicity lately.

But beggars can't be choosers, and we have seen some nice growth over the past couple months. John Oliver fans are the perfect candidates to join the fediverse, hopefully some of them find their way to Lemmy.

I'm really not happy about bluesky their fragmentation of the fediverse protocols is only going to harm us in the long run.
- Intentionally, I think.
- I’m really not happy about bluesky their fragmentation of the fediverse protocols
  shrug, I wish they were with us, but they are also a big ole corporate entity, so I'm kind ok with us staying our our side of the fence. As they need to implement payment and corporate protections to their network, we're free to be free over here.
  is only going to harm us in the long run.
  We don't have to play ball. not with them anyway,
  I think, If we have any credible threat, it's going to be from the Governmental gross anti-tampering laws, forced moderation, or backup regulations. They could make it legally difficulty for us to exist.
- Bluesky was always twitters goal, they were losing hella money, so they devloped blue sky.
Agreed, but at least Bluesky is a public benefit corporation, so it supposed to take in the needs of society as well as profit in its decision-making. That may not be much, but it's a start.
- I'm not familiar with the details of that, but it seems like more of a red herring to me. A form of controlled opposition to divert people away from truly revolutionary platforms.
  Of course it has to seem like a plausible alternative, but is it actually decentralized or altruistic enough to make a meaningful difference? I think not.
- "Public benefit corporation" is a meaningless designation. All it means is they have the option of putting their mission over their shareholders, not that they are obligated to do so.
- Chances are it's really just that, a start. See OpenAI.
- If I was losing money and wanted to mantain control over the public id become a public benefit corp too
- So twitter didn't make money anyways, this is a better way for them to hold power
John Oliver fans are the perfect candidates to join the fediverse, hopefully some of them find their way to Lemmy.
Too late - we are already here!:-P
- This was literally the photo that finally got me banned from Reddit years ago.
- How can anyone not love the guy?
Also Bluesky isn't an alternative to big tech, it IS big tech. I wish it wasn't stealing so much of our publicity lately.
This; I'm so sick of hearing it pop up when people mention alternatives.
- I'm not sure anyone mentions bluesky as an alternative to big tech.
  Pretty sure they only mention it as an alternative to musk/X.
- The thing that it really has going for itself is that it simply isn't twitter. And Muskler made sure that's a huge deal.
Indirectly, looking up "John Oliver Mastodon" brings up this post in the top few. "John Oliver Pixelfed" has this post as the first option
So we're not completely left out :)
Exactly, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Someone using BlueSky over Twitter is a good thing.
- We still shouldn't be doing the dirty work of rich people for them.
  We should all be promoting Mastodon over the centralized and corporate-owned bluesky.
I agree, but I also think we should remember a loss for musk is a win for society
Do you really think Lemmy could handle the amount of people that Reddit has?
As far as I know the existing instances are usually running on capacity and always in need of donations, and that’s when the owner isn’t handling the costs themselves. I’m not sure how well most instances have right now.
Maybe Lemmy would benefit of some way to get people to pay, such as purchasing the ability to give people awards etc. like Reddit. Despite being useless stuff, it might provide some fun that would make hardcore users want to pay. But for that to work out, all apps would also need to show the posts awarded in a different way, so I think that’s unlikely.
But the point is that without a business model, the Fediverse will only be able to handle a limited number of enthusiasts before it faces scaling problems.
- Do you really think Lemmy could handle the amount of people that Reddit has?
  yup. no question. Not one instance mind you, but Reddit is also a giant cluster. (and clusterfuck)
  As far as I know the existing instances are usually running on capacity and always in need of donations,
  We just need the big bois to stop stuffing themselves. There's 0 reason to have 2/3 of the totally traffic flooding into world because people are scared of Federation that they never even have to deal with.
  Maybe Lemmy would benefit of some way to get people to pay, such as purchasing the ability to give people awards etc.
  Maybe we make some premium pay servers with baller architecture, killer response time, user capacity limits and high speed storage?
  But the point is that without a business model, the Fediverse will only be able to handle a limited number of enthusiasts before it faces scaling problems.
  Eventually, it's going to be ads, donations or payments. It's all someone else's computer, someone has to foot the bill. But at great scale, you should be able to have an ad-free experience for something in the range a dollar or two a month.
- LW definitely can't handle more traffic than it already has. It already (thanks to the admins' refusal to update to the latest version of Lemmy, which fixes this issue) takes multiple days for LW content to get federated to other instances properly, which is why I've had to switch over to this alt account of mine because there are zero comments on this post in my main instance. With more users, that delay would grow from days to potentially weeks.
John Oliver being uploaded to YouTube is awesome! I should comment that Lemmy is a great Reddit alternative

Mom we are on the TV!

we

Not Lemmy though. Based.

Yeah I think it's best we don't advertise this place. It's a little strange.
- Come to Lemmy, we got: blood thirsty Linux users, furries, femboys, communists, and tankies. Also, porn.
- It's no different than reddit, DIGG, or the Something Awful forums before they got popular.
- We need to get more people in here if we want it to actually be a Reddit competitor. Right now it’s good for some communities, but smaller ones are still extremely underpopulated.
- It's good to have some friends, but don't let too many normies in.....
Not based.

Does that ~~Late Show~~ Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have a presence in the Fediverse?

Someone on mastodon told me, if you haven't found someone on fedi, you are probably not looking hard enough. But no, I don't think they are on fedi
- Someone is wrong lol. NFL, for example, cannot do anything outside of Twitter at this time. They are apparently working on it, but it's gotta be implemented league-wide, so it's taking some time. Idk if they're even trying to get onto Mastodon, last I heard it was just Bluesky.
  This is a large org with hundreds of millions of fans, with no presence on Fediverse really. I'm sure there are mirror accounts, but none are official.
You mean Last Week Tonight? The Late Show is Colbert.
- I do 🥺
Good question. Would love that!
https://lemmy.world/post/25998432

It's crazy how the wind changed. Does anyone remeber the almost exact same thing 4 years ago, when people on the right side of political spectrum shared alternatives to big tech from their point ov view? GAB.COM, PARLER, BRAVE, DUCKDUCKGO etc

XD

Duckduckgo? That's just a search engine, no?
I agree on the rest of the parts tho
- Yeah, odd inclusion. Duckduckgo is indeed a search enginge, but it's essentially just a front end for Bing.
- DDG and Brave were pushed as "censorship free" alternatives, back when I was looking into covid disinformation, because the very obviously fake websites would sometimes rank higher on them
  There may be more to it though
- I mean yeah, doesnt matter. The point is people shared alternatives to big tech just like folks who are not in the power right now. Cause apparently x is musk's and it looks like the consensus is that rest of big tech is siding with Trump for profit
In both cases it was primarily performative for Americans but this time there will be considerable chunk of Europeans who will be looking to leave big tech for services in non-hostile countries.
How is Brave right wing? Because of cryptocurrencies?
- Brave's business model is a crypto scam wrapped in a protection racket. It man-in-the-middles the site's ads, replacing them with Brave's own, then holds the revenue hostage unless the site gives legitimacy to Brave's crypto by accepting it as payment.
  For comparison, "normal" ad-blocking consists of an end-user exercising his property right to control the operation of his own computer by programming it not to display the ads at all.
  Hopefully you can see how the thing Brave does is very different, and much more ethically fraught.
- It’s not explicitly rightwing.
  A couple years ago Musk was recommending Signal.
  It’s just an example of right wing people recommending alternatives.

This is fantastic to see.

Bluesky will be the next Twitter. Just give it some time

https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana
thats how its creator feels too.
- And here’s how and why it will be enshitified:
  https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/
Exactly! All a person has to do is to look around - the right buys up all popular media platforms and converts them to propaganda outlets.
- https://www.businessinsider.com/x-competitor-bluesky-valuation-new-funding-round-2025-1
mastodon is already the next twitter, bluesky is just a direct copy of it with nothing keeping it from going the same way. mastodon is open source (can't be corpoed), federated (can talk to other platforms/instances so being on a small one doesn't hurt anything), and most importantly, uses a protocol that doesn't make self-hosting impossible due to storage requirements.
- And is comprised entirely of no one I care to follow, awesome.
I signed up today. I never liked Twitter but I will give it a try. Steam (PC gaming platform) is a member so that's a plus for me.
Why bluesky instead of mastodon? It's like saying lemmy.world is going to replace reddit instead of the Lemmy platform.
Are you just commenting how the people who use something like twitter are eager to be herded like sheep into the next walled garden?
Are you part of the bluesky viral marketing campaign to make it artificially seem like it's "already won"?
- I’m wondering this too People are hyped about bluesky but it is the same corpo bullshit that Twitter is. I mean it is literally by the same dude. Why fold?,
- When I said bluesky will be the next Twitter did I said Twitter is a good place. Twitter is now bullshit.
- Why bluesky instead of mastodon?
  Because there is only so much oxygen in the room, and corporate ventures like Bluesky seem to come into really exciting DIY community spaces that are creating amazing things and pull the oxygen out of the room while never quite delivering on what they are promising... or seeming to promise... and in the mean time the projects that originally created the innovative energy in the space are lost in the noise.
  I mean... see basically the entire early history of the commercialization of personal computers for endless repetitions of this pattern.
  Remember we are not the customers of corporate social media companies, we are the raw husks they extract value from through surveillance capitalism and ads/paid content.
- There is another interpretation. Calm down.

Here's the same video on PeerTube

https://tilvids.com/w/rq6WfwnQTiHfpoWhURLNBS

We should have a bot link federated alts for links... 🤔
- There is a Firefox extension that does automatically (although it seems to be a bit unreliable). Maybe someone can extract that part into a library and make a not with it.

I say give it three years and blue sky will just be a neolib twitter

- Yeah, infighting in the resistance is a waste of time.
- Interesting info, thank you. It isn't FOSS so I don't plan on actively using it but I try to keep my finger on what's up. I don't miss Reddit and wish I didn't need a FB for my job. My account is almost a ghost though and I don't have it on my phone. I'm sure they still have way too much data on me though.

Not friendica, which seems an obvious facebook alternative.

Also, I think they're onto something with their fuck it approach that every social media platform would benefit from. The internet was mostly that before. Content moderation primarily serves advertisers, it was never really for the people. Old internet anarchy was chaotic fun.

The Internet was never supposed to have a central authority beyond the DNS tables.
- Imagine traveling down a liminal space of tubes and the only signs are nondescript TLDs.
Content moderation primarily serves advertisers
I'm lost, here. Do you not think fighting toxicity and hate speech is a valid and important function of moderation that's just as much or more for the sake of the people as it might be for advertisers?
- I think the rise of hate speech on centralised platforms relies very heavily on their centralised moderation and curation via algorithms.
  They have all known for a long time that their algorithms promote hate speech, but they know that curbing that behaviour negatively affects their revenue, so they don't do it. They chase the fast buck, and they appease advertisers who have a naturally conservative bent, and that means rage bait and conventional values.
  That's quite apart from when platform owners explicitly support that hate speech and actively suppress left leaning voices.
  I think what we have on decentralised systems where we curate/moderate for ourselves works well because most of that open hate speech is siloed, which I think is the best thing you can do with it.
- I think that it's just words & images on a screen that we could easily ignore like people did before, and people are indulging a grandiose conceit by thinking that moderation is that important or serves any greater cause than the interests of moderators. On social media that seems to be to serve the consumers, by which I mean the advertisers & commercial interests who pay for the attention of users. While the old internet approach of ignoring, gawking at the freakshow, or ridiculing/flaming toxic & hateful shit worked fine then resulting in many people disengaging, ragequitting, or going outside to do something better, that's not great for advertisers protecting their brand & wanting to keep people pliant & unchallenged as they stay engaged in their uncritical filter bubbles & echo chambers.
  With old internet, safety wasn't an internet nanny, thought police shit, and "stop burning my virgin eyes & ears". It was an anonymous handle, not revealing personally identifying information (a/s/l?), not falling for scams & giving out payment information (unless you're into that kinky shit). Glad to see newer social media returning to some of that.
Lemmy has also taken over advertiser focused moderation patterns. A great example is NSFW. What is NSFW exactly? Not safe for work? Why is only that relevant?
NSFW is just used to mark advertiser unfriendly content. Why else group nakedness, violence, sexual content, and death in the same category?
It's way too vague to be useful, you have no idea if you're going to see a nipple or a murder.
Content warnings like on Mastodon are better, but don't provide a way to reliably filter out categories. I personally think it would be way better to have specific nested tags for certain types of material.
- Are you new to the internet? NSFW literally means what it says: it's content that would not be safe for you to be viewing at work.
  Advertising has nothing to do with it, which is why you still get ads on NSFW boards on 4chan; they're just NSFW ads.

One of the few decent TV hosts. His reporting on Palestine breaks with the anti-Palestinian censorship that dominates US media.

I’m sure he’s going to be facing lawsuits from Краснов and Wormtongue any day now.

I don't get it
- Dipshit in chief and his butthurt-prone sidekick will probably sue.

Good boi

Would like to get my family on Signal. I deleted my facebook account and now we use various other chat apps that I don't quite like

I've never understood why people just can't send messages through text. Like why do they need a special app in order to do it.
I don't use Facebook myself and my family members just started texting me and honestly it's so much easier
Don't get me wrong, I definitely think that signal is more secure. I just don't understand why people just install another app in order to communicate with their family, just let them know you're available through text
edit: I want to clarify that I may not have been clear/missed saying in this post, I'm not saying people shouldn't(if people would change I would love it), I'm saying I don't understand why people do knowing that your family members aren't going to care and are just going to text you anyway as has been my experience
- SMS is incredibly antiquated as soon as you want to do anything multimedia, or heck sending an SMS longer than 144 characters.
  My mother received a video over SMS the other day and it legitimately looked like it was filmed on a Nokia 6310.
  I've encouraged my family to use Signal to replace SMS and it functions really well as an SMS upgrade. It's more secure, private, supports sending decent quality multimedia, the interface is simplistic, it has formatting, does video calls well, and you can send a long message without it being a hacked together string of 5 messages.
  From both a security and usability perspective, it wins out on SMS in my opinion.
  Edit: there's also the nightmare of group chats with SMS. I hate when extended family try to use it
- i imagine its because text messages are saved by your provider and can be used or accessed by law enforcement even if deleted. but that may or may not be an issue for most people swapping recipes or talking to their family about normal every day stuff.
- Maybe you want to communicate through an encrypted service?
- SMS is a pain in the ass. iOS users aren't using SMS, they're using a proprietary system which is inaccessible to android users. Occasionally a 1-on-1 text works with RCS but it's janky

Anyone have a link that works for Canadians, you MONSTERS?

https://files.catbox.moe/avnl0j.mp4
https://peertube2.cpy.re/w/rq6WfwnQTiHfpoWhURLNBS?start=25m14s
Is the video seriously region blocked in Canada, but not in Russia?
- I may be wrong, but I think it's because some company owns the rights to the show in Canada and doesn't want people watching it on YouTube
- Indeed it is, that is such a weird block
https://peertube2.cpy.re/w/rq6WfwnQTiHfpoWhURLNBS
- Thanks!
You have to use a VPN.
- I just got it on the dl instead
🇺🇸❤️🇨🇦

Really hoping legislators in Sweden don't force Signal to pull its services from the country. 🫣

What legislation would do that? Would they want access to your messages or something?
- They want to make crime fighting more accessible to the police... 💀
Signal has been questionable for years. The way it's been pushed hardly, and how Moxie is emeritus, while much more questionable people are in control, doesn't fill one with confidence, and does ring some alarm bells. The relative proximity to some in the US establishment should be enough to do that. And the way some have been designating anyone who questions Signal as "Russian Propaganda" and immediately deflecting about how Telegram is bad, is even more curious.
Frankly, I would trust something like Wire more than Signal. And there are other options too.
Ideally, something with good security/privacy and is fully P2P would become popular. But those apps/networks never make it mainstream, which is unfortunate.
- There is a lot in here that I don't understand.
  What's wrong with Moxie? You mean it's weird he's an emeritus and not part of the board?
  What's "much more questionable" about the other people? From the descriptions on that page they all seem like standup people.
  Could you explain the "relative proximity to some in the US establishment" bit? That was too vague for me to grasp.
  "some have been designating anyone who questions Signal as 'Russian Propaganda' and immediately deflecting about how Telegram is bad, is even more curious." — Who has done this, you mean? And why exactly is it "curious"?
  Honestly, there was nothing at all in there that I understood, due to how vague it all was. I would appreciate it if you or someone could fill me in here, because it's important to know who's driving this thing, and if the platform can be trusted. I just want to not go by some vague rumors before I make up my mind.
- louder for the people in the back.

Can anyone explain Bluesky vs Mastodon as Twitter alternatives, asking as someone who never really used Twitter much anyway?

On the surface, both of them look very similar in format. They also both advertise themselves as decentralized and different from traditional social media, arguing that they won't face the same problems old social media did.
Mastodon uses ActivityPub, which is the widely used standard that most other fediverse platforms use. Mastodon is properly decentralized, where all the servers can interact and operate independently.
BlueSky made their own protocol that they control, citing that ActivityPub wasn't enough for what they wanted to do, and in some ways that's true. However with their structure, a central relay is needed in order for different instances to interact and so people argue that it isn't truly decentralized. Right now BlueSky is either the only instance, or basically the only instance. They've mentioned that they could transfer control of the relay to some other organization, but past that I don't think they've taken any steps towards that.
BlueSky is also a VC backed company while Mastodon is now under a nonprofit. BlueSky has its roots in crypto tech. There is more technical discussion on if it's even possible to have a decentralized BlueSky and if it's all just talk while they gather users.
My personal opinion is that I really hope bluesky does what they're promising, but I'm not expecting them to be any different than Twitter once they get a critical mass of users and the investors demand profits / infinite growth.
- Bluesky is what happens when someone with a corporate mindset wants to make something new and good. Mastodon happens when hobbyists get together and make something. Ive heard BlueSky has a board of people in charge to make sure it doesn't end up like twitter. Exactly what one would expect a company to do. Make sure something doesnt go wrong? Put a few people in charge. Mastodon just has the whole community. I may be wrong here as I dont use either. Right now Im just wondering what will happen when BlueSkys provider comes knocking with the hosting bill. As mass social media migrations are rare, its just a shame people are leaving twitter for another big tech site instead of something more community grown.
- For me the advantage of Bluesky is that I can own my identity. I can reserve myusername@mydomain.tld and use that, without having to run my own instance.
  With Mastodon I’d have to put up a full-ass server instance and worry about federation etc just to have my “own” identity instead of myusername@mastodon.social or something
- from what i understand, a decentralized bluesky is nothing for an enduser at all.
  TL;DR: the cost for an enduser to run a bluesky instance will soon be prohibitive because of the amount of storage needed owed to its shared heap architecture. but what it does is to provide a "credible exit" - if users lose trust or the company shutters, there's nothing in the way of another organisation picking up the mantle and continue from there on.
- BlueSky made their own protocol that they control, citing that ActivityPub wasn’t enough for what they wanted to do
  Sounds like bullshit for useful idiots that don't know what they're talking about.
Bluesky is corporate, Mastodon is closer to Lemmy in ownership.
There's a viral marketing campaign going on right now to herd the twitter sheep to the next rich-person's platform. That's why we keep seeing useful idiots say "bluesky" instead of "Mastodon."

I feel like the DNC are being pushed into a blindspot for the general public.

All Bernie has done is go around to speak at different events, and he is far from the only politician to do so.

It's what the DNC wants. They want to only be seen as the "lesser evil" to people like trump.
They genuinely have no interest in helping the working class, because they're not a part of it.
- Socialized healthcare, removing money from politics, and taxing the rich is not "the lesser evil" it's fucking good. It's blatantly a force of great good that we keep snubbing and blaming for no reason at all.
  What we should be doing is giving them majorities and supermajorities and praising them for the great work they do.

Are we that degenerate already??

YES! #winning

You don't just trade 1 powerful ceo for another when you get the chance to leave. Ridiculous.

I'm going to assume this was Daniel O'Brien's doing... because he's the only Last Week writer I know specifically.

Senpai noticed me!!

someone tell that n00b that Bluesky is not an alternative

It's fun for now until the state gets a hold of it. They'll be over here sooner or later, just let them trickle in and get everyone used to it.
- True. For now I'm happy to just see Twitter lose.
It is to twitter.

Not a big surprise it's only the alternatives to twitter and instagram.

Cool, everybody can build these companies up so that they can launch their IPOs and be controlled by a new board of directors fresh from wall street. It will all be so different.

Not commenting on Bluesky, but the others have taken steps to differentiate themselves
Mastodon was handed over to a non profit
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342603/mastodon-non-profit-ownership-ceo-eugen-rochko
Signal has been under a nonprofit
https://signalfoundation.org/
Being open source also means that people can fork the apps if something changes, or apps + server code in the case of a lot of fediverse software
The whole point of federation is that that can't really happen, or at least they can fuck a single server, but not the whole ecosystem.

Awesome!

So thats why it was slow for a while.

~~Is that mpv 👀~~

CIA. A rehash of the crypto ag strategy

What do you mean?

Having seen many of your comments across lemmy, I feel like you equate a lot of criticism of the state of Israel’s policies and actions with antisemitism. I acknowledge people who hate Jews exist and are definitely on the internet, but I find knee jerk accusations of antisemitism to be intellectually lazy.
- seriously - too many people see criticism of Israel's government and read it as condemnation of all Jews. As if it's the case that that government represents all Jewish people worldwide (or even all Jewish people in Israel...!)
  It's like people are thinking that wanting Israel to stop its genocide also means there should be another genocide targeting Jews?? Nuance beyond that sort of black-and-white polarized viewpoint seems to be increasingly dead.
I see a lot of anti Zionist stuff here. but nothing anti Semitic.
just my 2c.
- Yup. I'm always wary of people lumping anti zionism, anti Israel government, and anti semitism all in the same bag.
Oh come on, it's not like you're any better yourself. I've seen your comments around lemmy, and most were racist towards arabs.
what genocide? arabs attack, rape, and murder, then esconce the terrorists directly in and between civilian populations for the sole reason so that when israel responds the body count can be escalated and used as public relations. genocide. shame on you.
I don't recall doing any of that.
Anti zionism =/= anti semitism.
Jack isn't involved with BlueSky anymore. He left the board when they told him to fuck off with his push to get rid of moderation.
I've got nothing to add to the other replies on your mischaracterization of antio-Zionist as anti-Semitism.
- Jack is still the single largest shareholder of private Bluesky stock (beacause he founded it and never ceded his controlling percentage to anyone) "The Foundation" controls a certain amount, Jack controls the rest, surprise, the "leaving BlueSky" was his agreed stepping away from the board, dude didn't give up his stock, lol. If anyone tells you Jack isn't involved with BlueSky any more, you should really block them for either being willfully ignorant, or purposefully mistrustful.
The Fediverse is also a sewer of both overt and covert Antisemitism
Is this a problem unique to the Fediverse, or is this a case that it's more rampant here? Or does it only seem like it?
My feeds are fairly well curated, or perhaps you might say "blinkered", so I don't see a lot of it. Or maybe I don't see what's right in front of me, which is why I ask, since you definitely see it better than I can.
(This is not an attempt at a bad faith argument; I'm firmly anti-anti-Semitism, and I'm not saying it's not there. Frankly, I'd be surprised if there wasn't any. Anywhere there's people, their prejudices generally follow.)
Nice try Jacob
I'm Jewish myself and I completely agree with you.. Sadly it exists on a pretty much every social media, but BlueSky has a unique feature called sharable block lists/mute lists, I believe they call it "stacked moderation", I've subscribed to a few of those and it has blocked 90% of antisemites/terrorism sympathisers, I kinda wish some Fedi platform would have a similar feature as well