Time and contribution from users like me and you, probably more you because you’ve posted something!

Support the communities you enjoy, and report the trolls in the comments. Block people who are trying to cause trouble and encourage others to do the same.

Three big issues.

Usability: A lot of these alternative platforms are incredibly confusing for people who aren’t tech-savvy. You can’t expect most folks to really understand the idea of Lemmy instances for example. Bsky kind of hit the sweetspot of being super easy to use, offers not just familiar features but better features than its competitor (blocklists), while also being an open protocol. Though they’re FAR from perfect (their team is extremely questionable to say the least), and it doesn’t seem like the protocol itself is gaining traction.

Population: This is a self-defeating prophecy. We saw it with twitter to bluesky, and we’re JUST starting to see it with reddit to lemmy. The vast majority of people just won’t shift to platforms where the people they want to interact with aren’t present. They won’t move until they feel like they absolutely have to. People put off moving from the Nazi bar formerly known as twitter for literally a year - the site’s been nothing but a cesspool for ages now, but the vast majority of users couldn’t be bothered to moved to an alternative site until bsky got lucky. Hell, even now, so many people still stick to it because they’re afraid of losing engagement or some bullshit.

Algorithms: I HATE algorithmic feed bullshit, give me chronological 100% of the time, but frankly the vast majority of people have been spoonfed algorithmic feeds for at least a decade now. Going back to bluesky as an example (since it’s probably the most successful example of an alternative platform at the moment), it prioritizes the chronological feed, sure, but I’m actually amazed (and appalled) at how many people apparently only use the Discover tab. It’s a necessary evil until we can wean the general populace off of their instant gratification and endless scrolls.

I started on here almost 2 years ago and it has grown rapidly, I’m very impressed.

2 years ago, you could knock out all the content on here in a few minutes, now, there’s so much content and even stuff bleeding in from Mastadon at times.

Edit: make something good and people will come, Facebook, ig, snapchat, etc started off at 0 as well.

Corporate buy in, just look at bluesky. I don’t want lemmy to grow.

As the growth of Bluesky showed, most users do not care about decentralization as much as they care about usability. In his talk at ATmosphereConf last month, Paul Frazee explained that this is why his team built ATProto instead of using ActivityPub.

What I’d like to see is someone build an ATProto forum like Lemmy, and for it to be fully federated with Lemmy using Bridgy Fed.

EDIT: I know about frontpage.fyi. It does not have communities/subforums, so I would consider it more of a Hacker News replacement.

Money, donate money to the projects.

More instances. Should make it super easy to roll your own. Lots of small instances just takes me back to 00s message boards, it was a good time.

1. don’t lose steam, use steam.

videogames are a critical part of life for many people. find ways to integrate with, interact with or somehow involve steam. like literal steam it is pervasive, rising and hot espite being as old as time itself. look at gaben. some joke that he is a god. ignore that silly crap and look at the decisions he makes for the company. he rarely makes bad moves.

2. nay. aye.

ai is being forced violently down everyone’s throats. i didn’t sign up for this internet snuff film. it’s all over the news. websites have removed assistant popups offering help. gppt, guinea pig potty training.

3. make time for time.

not the magazine, put down that spice. nothing needs to be spiced up. milhouse is not a meme. the streisand effect is temporary and ultimately works. let it grow naturally, if you force it, the masses will reject it, shit all over it then leave it for dead.

4. an enema of my enemy is an anemone

people need a place to go. you have a place. people don’t like change. they move when their home dies. when it turns to shit. your enemy, whether by design or not, is reddit. reddit grew as digg died. let reddit die. a sea of people will steadily migrate over unless you supershittify faster and harder than them. look at a-a-ron’s [rip] early work with reddit and markup. keep. it. simple. keep it tight. don’t make it look like a sea cucumber with all the extra shit twiddling off.

5. porn.

remember deviantart? remember tummbler? remember imgur? what do they have in common? they all got rid of porn. their slow decline began at that moment every time. porn is hard (i don’t mean like that), once a site’s ability to share porn goes down (not like that) it’s really hard (not like that) to get it back up (not like that). there are plenty of obvious risks. csam. trafficking. too much or too little goatse (it’s not that little baby, please).

in short, time (3) for hot (5), steamy (1) humans (2) giving enemas to sea anemone (4). or something like that (6-9)

EDIT: I notice that one of my words was redacted. I think that is an example of the slippery slope that is part of shittification. I understand why it was removed. Very well actually, despite my developmental disorder. That’s right, I am developmentally removed. It probably will automatically redact the word again in my previous sentence. I get it, the word itself has shifted in meaning due to it being used in a derogatory manner excessively.

I am not trying to provoke any specific reaction by mentioning it and reusing it. I do not want to offend anyone with the word or any words.

Same as certain other words, while offensive to some, to the point of it needing redacted, others whom the word is used offensively towards, may some day choose to take it on as a title proudly. The meaning of words can shift and changes over time. I recall a time when the word “queer” was bad. I wonder if that will be redacted here too. People got in trouble for saying it when I was younger, regardless of their intent. It had the same weight of offensiveness as fuck, shit, piss and damn. It shifted again though and now is part of the LGBTQ+ abbreviation and to my knowledge, is not considered offensive anymore, unless used specifically as such.

The part that concerns me however, is the automatic redaction. That sort of automation is potentially a weapon that can be abused. It is blacklisting speech without regard to intent. No, I don’t want people spammming racial epithets or derogatory language constantly, something I’ve had the displeasure of handling in the past, elsewhere, as a moderator in a group videochatting website and in subreddits i modded (including the infamous spacedicks).

I believe that any kind of censorship like that should be handled on a case by case basis. Automatically doing it will alienate people, some who are unaware of the indecency of the word and some using it as it was initially intended, all to stop the bad actors hoping to gain a reaction. Automatic removal is caving and letting the bad actors win. It is letting them dictate which words can be used and which are to be removed. What happens when the word “holocaust” becomes a slur? What happens when it is decided that the word “removed” becomes offensive?

I’m not asking for any changes, I just felt the need to make my case and point, as I have done numerous times on many platforms. I want to issue this warning, that censorship and especially automatic censorship, is very rarely the right way to do things. I understand why. I also know it creates a sort of ethical debt that stifles the wrong people eventually, while the bad actors move on to their next target. So it goes…