• 4 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • I didn’t notice that you were posting from Mastodon as I’m on Lemmy and your posts appear here just like any other Lemmy user - but the @fuser at the start of your messages is probably the tell, I think Mastodon defaults the username you’re replying to, whereas Lemmy doesn’t. It’s great that we can use different applications without some corporate gatekeeper capturing everybody’s personal info at the integration point to hawk to an advertising company.


  • Well, thanks again for the info - I’m trying it now and the results seem excellent, it took me to wikiwand, which I’d never used but it’s a front end for wikipedia - it’s quite nice. I’ve learned so much about alternative FOSS and great ad-free content by reading and posting here. I was never a great fan of reddit - liked to scroll but hardly ever posted there - I thought RPAN was the coolest thing they did - but Lemmy is great for conversation, despite the relatively small user base - I’m grateful that reddit’s nonsense drove so many helpful people here.




  • Yes, it is a nightmare. The insane volume of ads and clickbait injected into web pages is killing the internet as an information source. Most of the searchable stuff is unusable. Which explains why ChatGPT was so enthusiastically embraced - it’s really just synthesizing content into a readable form that doesn’t require navigating around a jungle of animated gifs and flashing ads. That’s also I think why Lemmy and Mastodon are so refreshing to use, and hopefully will stay that way - although money seems to find a way to ruin everything. Lemmy right now feels a lot like the internet used to be before the big money came along and ruined it with advertising and platform lock-ins.






  • Right, except we aren’t trying to “replace” youtube. Those who are prepared to put up with youtube can have it. Same with spez/reddit. If people like those platforms, and happy with them then they can stay there. Those of us who don’t care for them can develop communities and content elsewhere.

    If you’re cool with algorithms showing you ads every five minutes then by all means stick with the commercial platforms, but you’re also generally welcome to help build or support a platform that provides a better user experience – and doesn’t use revenue growth as the primary motivator for everything.



  • we aren’t “competing”. We aren’t shilling for an IPO. We aren’t trying to emulate commercial social media. We don’t need 20% annual growth - or even significantly more users. We just need civil discussion forums without vitriol being deliberately injected to maximize ad impressions. On the fediverse, we are not the product.