cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/372863
cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/61363
The right-wing billionaire’s platform has recently lost about 10 percent of its European user base.
A lot of our biggest communities still have like two mods taking care of everything and are prone to cherry picking. It‘s the same old forum structures where the internet bubble effect is just as strong if not stronger than on larger, already problematic platforms. Some of the things I‘ve seen and experienced lately bring back memories from those internet forum days. Good ones but also the worst ones. And I have to admit it makes me doubt the Fediverse is actually scalable. There‘s just a lack of accountability in the end.
Which is not to say a federalized platform isn‘t an alternative to giant corporations. Those have their own problems and fair share of fuck ups. But I think I‘m already starting to see the limits of the Fediverse. At least in it‘s current stage.
The fediverse is about options. If you don’t like how someone else runs their platform or community you can create your own. It’s awesome because you don’t get locked into one platform. And in the future I think we will see more big companies and organisations running their own stuff. But I agree that at the moment it is not what “normal people” are looking for and it will take quite some time until it develops. But to be fair the same was the case for reddit.
I guess there is a hope that if more people join the Fediverse existing instances and communities won‘t just become more bloated but people create their own alternatives. However I have to say that I have no interest in running one myself. I‘m mostly here to discuss things that pique my interest. Running a community just isn‘t what I‘m here for and I‘m afraid too many people are just like me in that regard and we‘ll create an environment that‘s all too similar to Reddit.
I also don‘t think it‘s good for the platform when people leave a community with a grudge to create a competition „with blackjack and hookers“ style. I want people to come and just create communities because they want to. That‘s where I see a future for the Fediverse.
But I also wouldn‘t want to subscribe to 5 communities about the exact same topic because that would just spam my feed with the same threads probably. However I would actually like to hop between them easily so I don‘t stick around the same few people or have to abandon one for another. A lot would have to change about the way we interact with the platform (UI) and how it‘s connected for this to work though. I‘m thinking about subscribing to topics and it shows you a good mix of communities where overlapping threads are kind of stacked or something and you could swipe cards to see comments from different communities about it or something. This is a tough one to figure out. Might not even be possible at all.
Could you elaborate on the scalability problems of the fediverse in comparison to corporation owned platforms?
I fear communities are lacking resources and structure to handle the masses. It‘s something corporations already struggle with but they house like 10000 times more active users. One way to go around that was mentioned above and suggested that new users may keep creating new instances and communities so a few places don‘t just explode in size. But from my experience, if a community already covers a topic, there won‘t be much competition and we end up with a power mod environment (Reddit) at best and instances going dark from overload (hug of death) at worst.
But I don‘t want to sound too bleak about all of this. In the end these are challenges that someone might already work on.
More people = more people that can moderate
Europeans don’t like Nazis.
Americans, well…
AfD Is Now Germany’s Most Popular Party For The First Time Ever.
I wish the ‘Europeans don’t like Nazis.’, would be true, but we maybe just lagging behind.
Europeans don’t like Nazis.
I wish this was true.
Greetings from Austria, where a far right party is the strongest, although not ruling (yet)
Couldn’t happen to a nicer piece of shit.
remember 80% of instagram is bots according to a study reported by german media.
so X id even say it could be more giving the vast hatred increase and content change over the last years. so basically they lost 90%%
Where did you read that? 80% would be insane if true
how can you respond to my deleted comment. I instantly deleted it after seeing a comment where I could add the same message under, so the discussion is more bundled
either way
funk’s german post referenced this Imperva Bad Bot Report 2024
EDIT 74% not 80%, doesnt change anything tbh :D
I would try deleting it again, sometimes edits/deletes don’t federate.
I still see it too, interestingly
I see it too. I’m using the Voyager App on iOS. Maybe because of that?
Thanks for posting!
Anecdotally, I watch reels on Instagram (i know) and the vast majority of meme pages that it shows me are the exact same setup around a slightly different premise, with the same purchased comments pinned from the same accounts or the accounts comment saying something like they’re too broke for paid comments please like.
80% is probably high but I wouldn’t be that surprised.
Don’t go to BlueSky !!! They’re not better than X. They obey to the same leaders… MONEY, GREED, AND POWER. A few weeks ago they restricted 72 Turkish protesters the access to their BlueSky accounts on simple request of the Turkish Government. So, BlueSky cannot be trusted they will secure the accounts of their customers. If Trump would ask BlueSky to block all accounts of members who are against him, they’ll do it right away.
Make mastodon more accessible then.
Which accessibility standards does Mastodon break?
Oh boy, where do I even begin:
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Federation. People have no idea what it is, which means that they have to familiarize themselves with all these technical concepts just to create an account.
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Servers. Most mastodon servers are locked, and you have to petition the admins to let you in, which often implies waiting more than a day. In other sites, you can create an account in 5 seconds, so mastodon is at a disadvantage.
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Lack of an algorithm. This implies people won’t see the content they like, which means they have to go and actively look for content. Most people don’t want to spend time doing that, they just want to log in, laugh at funny memes ans look at pretty pictures.
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The same is true for Bsky but people don’t complain about it there. It asks you what server you want when you sign up, etc., which is what people complain about in the Mastodon journey.
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Most people aren’t on locked servers. By which, I mean the majority of mastodon users are on the .social instance which is the default when you sign up on the official app/site and is open to anyone.
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Not an accessibility issue.
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3 is a feature to me. The “algorithms” seem to create bubbles, and I want to decide myself.
Some people want to make social media account to browse illustration or photography.
Unfortunately, that’s not doable on fediverse. You follow anyone, and suddenly your feed filled with content that you are not interested in. Example: your favourite artist also post a lot of game screenshoot, but you’re not interested in the games. You just want to see the illustration.
and bluesky doesn’t have a default algorithm either, but allows you to subscribe to algorithms created by other people
being able to choose how the information is presented is the way
That seems like a good way, to give the user the option. In your opinion, are these algorithms transparent enough to understand or even verify for regular users?
yes and no… essentially they’re http services that people run, so they can either be closed or FOSS… i could see a future where there’s like those 1-click “run on <serverless platform>” on github pages and you can audit the code if you want, and self host
they call them “feeds” if you’re interested in going deep
I’m pretty sure Mastodon is made of algorithms, mate
- So what?
- Damn straight they are locked. Other wise you get Nicole spam on all of them, instead of just a few.
- So what?
This is exactly the dismissive attitude that has shaped Mastodon development, and why it will never have broad appeal to replace any traditional social media.
So, you don’t know what accessibility standards are. You’re just using a term, “accessibility”, to mean “the way that I want it to work”.
and you’re just using the term accessibility to mean a11y… the word accessibility is far broader than simply accessibility standards for people with disabilities
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BlueSky may not be ideal, but anything is better than X.
X is just a machine for turning billionaire cash into political domination.
bluesky is just early twitter, and it wont stay that way for long. they’ve already removed people from there that the Turkish govt doesn’t like and there is nothing at all stopping some billionaire like musk from swooping in and buying it all up.
The right-wing billionaire’s platform has recently lost about 10 percent of its European user base.
It’s a good start but we gotta pump those numbers up.
remember 80% of instagram is bots according to a study reported by german media.
so X id even say it could be more giving the vast hatred increase and content change over the last years. so basically they lost 90%
EDIT/additional bit: funk’s german post referenced this Imperva Bad Bot Report 2024
The rest are bots and Russian troll farms.
Let me guess, they’re moving to Bluesky?
I tried moving to Mastadon first a few years ago and it was a pretty shit experience, Bluesky however has stuck in my app rotation pretty well.
Because Bluesky is centralised. You went from one serial killer’s house to another. You don’t know which serial killer owns your new house, but you’re hoping they’ll be nicer than the previous one. But at least their house is nearly as nice as the old serial killer’s house.
General advice regarding open source: even if you tried something out years ago and didn’t like it, it may be well worth giving it another shot. Open source projects often need some time to mature and take their time to improve, but only get better over time.
Which is incidentally the opposite of proprietary products, where if you give it another go in a few years it either doesn’t exist or is enshittified.
That’s were the marketing dollars are
Ayyy, gotta have that monaaaay!
Or meta because its better? Like getting run over by a small car instead of a bus.
Ewww people actually use Threads? Last time I saw it, it was like LinkedIn 2.0 filled with sigma grindset “chase that bag” crap.
I’m.on Lemmy and mastodon. Anything else is pure sarcasm. I sarcastically browse for TV’s on Amazon. But will I buy? No. All have spyware on them, so no. I wouldn’t touch meta with a 300ft pole.
This is not a particularly relevant comment, but you reminded me of when I was a kid and a friend had a TV on a stand opposite her bunk-bed. She didn’t have a remote control, but she did have a long stick, and she was amazing at pressing the buttons from like 2m away. Proper life skill.
Threads sucks compared to bsky don’t know what you’re talking about there. Bluesky has way more features and posting quality.
Unironically yes sadly :(
It’s not just X; American social media has been gradually turning into such a shit show for the last 10 years: censorship, misinformation, consensus manufacture and creeping enshitification. I jumped ship to the fediverse and never looked back!
Abandon anything this Nazi touches.
I forgot that people are still using Twitter. WTF!?
They are not - he X/cancelled it.:-P
What about his children that hate him but are still his children?
He’s gonna keep pumping them out till one of them likes him.
I mean, Mastodon is German, so they’re probably moving here. The federated fork of Dorsey’s Twitter is second.
BlueSky is not federated. Also German users have outsized representation on Mastodon but most of the network is outside Germany.
“federated”
There is always that one comment saying “b-but its technically kinda federated”. It doesnt fucking matter if its federated if 99.999% if all users are on one instance. The entire concept of a long lived, enshittification resistant fediverse relies entirely on being decentralized with a reasonably evenly distributed userbase. You fucking bet lemmy would already be completely worthless right now if people hadnt stopped lemmy.world from grabbing more communities and users.
What’s the quality like of the people who are still on Twitter in 2025? Does the fediverse want them? (These are real questions, I have no idea if there’s still any decent people on Twitter.)
ik some good people that are still there because some of their friends are.
Every massive influx from Twitter has brought a deluge of people I want nothing to do with in any way shape or form, and a small sprinkling of cool ones. Fortunately like 4/5ths of the crappy ones leave again, but that other 1/5th is a big number when you’re talking an influx of hundreds of thousands.
There likely are (I quit Twitter over a year ago), just because it does unique coverage on many topics.
It is humanities responsibility to make the rest of this man’s life miserable
Small chances for now, but let’s keep growing small communities here. People need to get tired of Instagram and centralized algorithms to switch to fediverse
I try to convince people to do “+1”. Like, keep X/insta/reddit or whatever, but every time you feel you have something to post, do the same at mastodon/pixelfed/lemmy. Those platforms are nothing without the network effects, and the network effects will diminish the more people do this.
I’d love it if the fediverse could have its own algoithms as long as theyre open sourced and made ethically, like they shouldn’t mess with peoples mental health or cause social media addictions
Yes. People don’t realize algorithms are one of the main reasons decentralized sited haven’t taken off. Most people don’t want to spend time looking for their content, they just want to log in, laugh at funny memes and look at pretty art
Europe doesnt want federated services, they want censorship.
Saying that oil production lowers emissions by displacing coal will be called climate misinformation, saying immigration needs to be lower due to a housing crisis will be called hate speech, using Bitcoin instead of the digital euro will be called terrorist financing. They’re already arresting people who do something as benign as retweet things, its a slippery slope.
Christ, this is such a stupid take. You’d think that someone who was around on the fediverse would have an inkling about just how many instances are based in the EU and Germany in particular.
Just because a country or userbase wants a degree of moderation and accountability, and doesn’t tolerate hate speech, doesn’t mean that views are censored. Basic Popperism stuff right there.
Meanwhile, in reality, the EU funds lemmy’s development.
saying immigration needs to be lower due to a housing crisis will be called hate speech
Yeah, that’s kinda hateful. True, it really would make things easier for EU citizens if less people were using the limited housing. But it would make things harder for the immigrants. Putting citizens over immigrants is… xenophobia.
Why waste the government’s time solving the problem at poor people’s expense, when the government could instead tax rich people more to pay for housing?
Putting citizens over non-citizens is called being a government.
Xenophobia is the irrational fear of foreign. And fear in this context usually shows up in the form of hate.
Putting citizens first does not mean hating the rest. Being a citizen of a country means that your government should represent you and your interests. It’s only natural that it develops into benefits for citizens.
Xenophobia on a person level is when you see a person that you think is not part of your same origin, do you cross the street, or attack him or whatever. Of course this is not even close to being an exhaustive list.
Xenophobia on a country level is when you punish foreigners irrationally. Not letting foreigners into your country because you have a housing crisis is not irrational, it is a valid reason.
I find it hard to find examples of country-level xenophobia. Even if the act itself may seem xenophobic, the government may want to gain popular support of their xenophobic population, which would be a reason and thus non-xenophonic.
Of course, not being xenophobic does not mean it is good. For example Israel genociding Palestinians is horrible. But their reason is that having a neighbor that claims the same land as you do is problematic, and they figured if they just kill everyone the world will forget in 100-200 years (or less) while the land will be theirs for longer than that with no revels, since they genocided them. Of course, having a reason does not mean that it’s not many other bad things (in this case, genocidal, which is worse than xenophobic).
You would fit in nicely in israel
No I wouldn’t. Just like arguing a murder is not illegal grafitti, doesn’t make you pro-murder. Arguing that a specific genocide is not xenophobia does not make me pro-genocide. I absolutely hate what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and I believe that someone should assassinate Netanyahu and all of his pro-genocide people on power of the Israeli government. Or imprison them for life.
But you can miss my point all you want.
Being a citizen of a country means that your government should represent you and your interests.
I’m interested in everyone’s wellbeing. Also, the government should represent its citizens’ moral interests. It should teach them kindness by being an example.
Not letting foreigners into your country because you have a housing crisis is not irrational, it is a valid reason.
Not valid. It’s discrimination.
The results of an action being done for a reason being discriminatory does not make the reason invalid.
Almost any policy is discriminatory.
Taxing the rich more is discriminatory against the rich. Helping women out is discriminatory against the men. Ending segregation is discriminatory against people that don’t want be near people different to them. The list is endless.
I assume you agree with all 3 of those policies. Yet they are discriminatory. Those 3 policies are done because of very valid reasons.
There are very few policies that I’d say are not desceiminatory. Like universal basic income or universal healthcare. And even then, by your definition of discriminatory, those would be discriminatory. Since they would still discriminate against non-citizens.
There is no world where a person born in X country that has never left X country to receive income from a UBI policy of Y country. Unless X and Y countries have some sort of deal where that happens.
I don’t think that’s why we’re having this conversation. Seems like you’re talking about technicalities and I’m talking about values. I don’t think we can have a conversation like this.
This specific technicality is important for your point though.
I’m gonna explain my reasoning so you can choose whatever you want have a conversation about.
Your claim was that putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.
My point is that putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of a state. And furthermore, that it is a good thing.
Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and that we should avoid it.
If both of our statements are true. The natural conclusion is that we should have a stateless society. I don’t think that a stateless society is a good thing. Therefore I’m trying to find a flaw in the argument. I think that the flaw is that you are wrong. So I have to have a conversation with you about why I think you are wrong.
If you are wrong, it must mean one of these statements are wrong:
- Putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.
- Putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of the state.
- Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and we should avoid it.
Since 2/3 statements are made by me, of course I think they are true. So I’m going to argue about why the first one is wrong.
The only way to proof your statement to be wrong is by first defining what xenophobia is. Which you might call a technicality, but I don’t think it’s possible to have a conversation if we don’t first agree what the meaning of the words we use is.
After defining what xenophobia is, we have to figure out if the “equation” is true: “putting citizens above non-citizens” = “xenophobia”.
I’m a communist and I think we should have a stateless society.
If you had a zoo would you continue bringing in animals if they had no space left to live comfortably?
Likely you would call that inhumane, you wouldnt say they were being intolerant of the new animals if they did not.
People aren’t zoo animals.
So cram them into substandard housing because they deserve less rights than animals?
You’re not offering a tangible answer here, the argument is situational similarity, not ontological equivalence.
And you think telling immigrants they’re not allowed to enter the country gives them more rights?
Have you been to Europe? They have “walking” cities. You really don’t need a car to get around. My kids backpacked through Europe. The furthest they had to travel from a hostel was outside Amsterdam. 8 km on bicycles! My son just came back from Japan (I know, not Europe). He talked a lot about the “Shinkansen”. A high speed train that travels 280 km/h. They were able to travel all over Japan “without” a car.
As a Dutchman, I agree we have great infrastructure and “walking” cities. But you’ve only seen Amsterdam. Outside of the cities, The Netherlands is more dependent on cars than you might think. I live on the border of the country and public transport is basically non existent and cycling is not viable due to travel distances, every adult has a car in my area. A family of 4 adults (children over 18 living at home) have 4 cars parked in front of their house here. We’re not as car dependent as the US, but we don’t live in a fairytale either.
Thank you for the insight. I always appreciate being educated :).
Try to go to an anti-genocide protest in EU and see how fast you get violently beat up, arrested or get cops at your door to have “a chat”. All tose things in Amsterdam you mentioned too.
Still not happened to me yet, and that is in the UK which has the far more authoritarian Policing Bill looming over us. That doesn’t make as interesting a soundbite though.
Oh boy…
Arresting people for retweeting? Really? Can you provide a source?
The article cites a case of online harassment from right wingers towards an immigration friendly politician that was ultimately shot. Are you seriously using this in defense of “but muh free speech?!”
“No, you have free speech as well, but it is also has its limits.”
Which is true. A lot of Europe learnt from World War II that certain types of speech should not be tolerated. In the rest of the article there are examples given - neo-Nazis for one. I am not particularly keen on tolerating the freedom of speech of Nazis or others that call for genocide and killing.
Too true. EC’s constant attacks on encryption is worrying to say the least. I hope nothing goes thru.
deleted by creator
Might have to also let people know the Fediverse exists?
