Yeah it is thriving, what I meant is that to have a chance to replace reddit, lemmy needs to find some technical solutions (moving / migrating / merging of communities) and somehow stop fracturing into islands.
But maybe that age of the internet has passed and people are no longer willing because of trolls, bad faith actors, sock puppets, bots... and the increasing polarization of ideology and propaganda.
I tried like 4 different lemmy instances before settling on lemm.ee because it hasn't defederated from the socialists or "tankies". So I can participate.
This defederation fracturing lemmy really speaks to both self-censorship of allowable ideologies and also bad quality of admins and mods several servers.
If lemmy can't somehow federate communities separately from instances I don't see lemmy thriving.
Have been using it a while since the browser fiasco. It's awesome but the workflow has a few niggles:
I'd love a theater mode that uses the full width of the window but still allow the title and comments below. No sidebar or scrollbar besides the video, more like MPV.
Also LibRedirect isn't perfect with embedded videos. I'd just like to have a link I can click so it opens in FreeTube.
And links from the browser are always opened in the first active window instead of opening a new window.
Do we need to do this every six years when a US-backed reactionary loses?
Maybe it's just me but it seems the synchronization of public opinion on reddit / lemmy with Empire seems to be getting worse. (EDIT: It seems to be getting more "convincing")
Like there was some opposition from the "progressives" and "leftists" about the Juan Guaidó sham and you could argue about it without getting downvoted into oblivion, but now very few dare to talk about the latest attempt to capture Venezuela's oil.
If you want to test it you could just seal your room, tape the windows and doors and keyholes, then let enough petrol evaporate until the air is saturated. Then you can test spilling it on the floor without fear of evaporation!
List the number of wars, conflicts or proxy wars China was involved with the last 50 years. I wonder what it is about those people that makes you think they are so untrustworthy and dangerous? Like contrary to actual historical facts of who is dangerous and kills people and destroys countries.
Well even if you'd keep advertising if you turn YT into a public utility or non-profit, MUCH more of that money would go to creators. And/or much less advertising. Or less annoying or more discerning ads. And of course no demonetization because you talk about problematic issues.
Without advertising you'd need some kind of revenue. I imagine something like e.g. a EU wide "universal content subscription" or something like that. So if you create good content the various distribution channels simply track what you watch, anonymize it (firefox has this new system that got them in hot waters) and distribute the money from the giant pool to the creators.
Maybe start with a universal newspaper subscription so we'd have a free press again, new newspapers or channels that produce independent news with only the viewer as a customer, without ads.
For music in the EU / Germany there are collection agencies that already do this sort of thing. So it's not even without precedent.
Obviously there are tons of issues to work out, but the biggest is simply that the elite do everything to gain and maintain power or wealth and this would go contrary to that.
They can't wait to start another proxy war, this time with China. They are encircling China with military bases and outposts and then constantly harp on "China's aggression". Fucking disgusting.
Nationalize youtube and turn it into a public utility financed by the UN. Create a kind of patreon system that distributes funds to creators similar to how it's done for music collection agencies.
There are always alternatives, but not until people demand an alternative to constant brainwashing. Right now it's unthinkable because people insist that there cannot be an alternative and therefor the status quo mustn't be endangered.
At this stage burning it all down would be preferable although that would never happen until we're seen widespread system collapse.
Yeah, because if we know one thing, it’s that a group of people never has outlandish and crazy beliefs.
Yeah and that is the big lie right there. People have become so indoctrinated with the idea that profit seeking and unbridled greed is somehow neutral and can be trusted compared to things people might decide. That democracy is itself the problem, not the influence of capital on democracy. That we need to abdicate all power to protect us from the people with the crazy ideas. Instead we now get the best or worst of both worlds, capital using the most extreme beliefs to make money or gain power and social media pushing polarization for profit.
The inflation myth is a common fallacy btw. That only happens when essential goods (with "non elastic demand") become scarce.
PS: Anyway, I did say these things are unthinkable
For news, you could set up a trust and transfer ownership of each news station to the workers for a type of collective. Let them vote democratically how they want to run their news station or news paper. Let them elect editors and managers. Or something similar to that. Financing shouldn't really be a problem, after all governments can print money and run plenty of ministries and agencies.
You could do the same for social media, just transfer ownership to the collective of the workers. After that it is self-governing. That would be a massive change from corporate ownership, profit optimization and catering to advertising. Of course this is unthinkable.
And yeah I like the interoperability, the EU did something like this, mandating interop for messengers. But I'm not sure it really works.
On reddit you basically have to sort by controversial today and lemmy isn't far behind. There is a hive mind today where people jump on the hive mind and hate wagon. And public voting will increase that, the whole idea that we need to watch out for the dissident malicious actor stalking social media attests to that. That is something that needs to be tackled through a kind of automated or extremely efficient moderative response to detect bots and voting patterns of malicious actors. Of course the question is if anything can be done at all against this shift in zeitgeist.
What is needed would be a way to anonymize voting through some kind of clever algorithm or blockchain or token or something. Or maybe that can't work or then prevent any protection against bots.
Public voting is much more of an political and self-conscious act. There is a reason voting in democracies is private.
And there is also a difference if I have to deploy special measures to see who votes how, or if it is made very easy to see and use. Ultimately there should be some kind of crypto algorithm that hides how a user voted from activitypub.
Yeah it is thriving, what I meant is that to have a chance to replace reddit, lemmy needs to find some technical solutions (moving / migrating / merging of communities) and somehow stop fracturing into islands.
But maybe that age of the internet has passed and people are no longer willing because of trolls, bad faith actors, sock puppets, bots... and the increasing polarization of ideology and propaganda.