Having been around since the early days of identica/statusnet: no, not really.
It's always been small and a generally nice set of communities but it won't reach a large enough audience to matter. US (and to some degree) global politics are such a clusterfuck that it'll take more than some little servers with people discussing open source software and art or whatever to create substantial change.
that's not to say it's pointless. it's nice to have these little groups to focus on. it doesn't give me any hope but it does regulalry lift my spirits.
EDIT: I also dont think it needs to be any kind of agent or tool of change. Why can't it just be what it is? Groups of people socializing with one another?
checkmk user here. i can second the adjustment phase. i tend to ignore my servers but when something goes sideways it's awesome to have checkmk's structure in place.
you folks are still scrimbling? hacker news says you can get much better results if you dronkle instead. in fact, you don't even have to worry about your implementation, just use the kneeb.io api for all of your dronkling (and scrimbling i guess via their legacy api deprecated last month). they just got seed funding and they reinvested that into their infrastructure. this is a no brainer!
I'm a daily driver of Bazzite and Bluefin. I felt this way initially but it's been generally painless. I typically check flatpak -> app image -> homebrew -> distrobox when I need something. If that fails, I use rpm-ostree and reboot.
I work in development/devops/infosec by trade and to date there hasn't been a single package or program that I needed that I couldn't get running with minimal fuss. I've even run a couple of MDM packages that my work requires.
Really love Organic Maps. I live in a semi-rural area, though, so the only issue I've had with it is getting it to recognize addresses. I can navigate "close enough" in most cases to get there. Solid project.
sadly it looks like the number of platforms you can sign into are really limited. would be nice if they let you specify an instance. a good start, nonetheless.
Rose colored glasses. I played the hell out of WoW for years from first release and onward. Chat was chaos and if you got invited to someone's vent server there were usually some jerks. Pseudoanonymity made people brazen.
I played a lot of competitive counter strike and it was the same. Constant trash talking or just nonsense spouting people. Any modern game I play with voice chat built in gets immediately disabled as soon as I start the game for the first time.
Socializing can happen later after a few (positive) interactions but I dont have the mental energy to deal with random folks when I just want to unwind with a game.
Over time: probably Contra on the NES, Tetris and Bionic Commando on the GameBoy, Operation Wolf and Sinistar in the arcade. DOOM, Duke3d, and XEvil on the PC. CS 1.6 and CS:S in college. The Gears series on the 360.
Then I had a decade or so gaming drought. More recently: Batsugun, Ketsui (Deathtiny and Death Label), Danmaku Unlimited 3, and Battlefield 2042.
i agree with your points but wanted to mention that binding arbitration is bullshittery that most large companies do by default these days. sign a cell phone contract, streaming/cable service, utility bill, whatever. there's probably an arbitration clause right in the fine print.
Bazzite for personal stuff because it looked neat and just worked after installation with a small learning curve. Due to interia I went with bluefin on the work computer for the same reasons
I just realized that you picked up on part of a name. "Rev. Dok. Granggggg" is just an abbreviation for "Reverend Doktor Granggggg", not three separate handles.
I use threema with family but getting others to use yet another app (especially for thin social connections) is difficult.
Depends on your threat model though, I guess.