Ask Lemmy

Throughout history, every village had one idiot, two max. And maybe one psycho.

Today thanks to the power of the internet these idiots and those psychos can unite and create big communities and represent a strong unified force in the world.

Algorithm curated content driven by engagement doesn't deserve to be called social media any more. The Feed, seems apropriate, malnourishing as it is.

Not social media per sé, but definitely "the algorithm" that was introduced around ~2014 and has been tweaked by the likes of Cambridge Analytica to now provide us with endless ragebait.

MySpace was social media and had none of the toxicity.

Social media back then was making stuff you thought was cool and having friends and other weirdos across the Internet also enjoying the same things as you.

Social media today is juicing the algorithm to generate the most views, regardless of whether you like the content you're producing or not.

Everyone clustered on like 4 websites for convenience, and then browsing the internet started to feel like wandering around different sections of the same department store: sterile, corporate, advertiser-safe, and everything's transactional. Plus, it made it incredibly easy for any party that wants to astroturf public opinion, because now they only have to set up shop on a few sites: botting comments, infiltrating moderator positions, abusing the algorithms.

We desperately need to break the internet's monoculture, and I think federated social media like this is a great start.

Small forums always did exist and always will exist. That cannot and will not change

I like very much the comparison you made of a rural exodus; inspiring!

Yes. I'm a big fan of lemmy. I hope peertube gets going I feel it will be like the original YouTube

It's not destroyed, it's just no longer dominant.

It's clear, but I have the impression they were abandoned in favor of social networks...

Yeah. Yeah it's just you my dude. There's no way I've ever heard that sentiment before on websites or other posts.

You're probably not the only one.

However, the interest (on Lemmy-aligned circles at least) in self-hosting, reducing depedence on large tech companies, community building on smaller scale online and offline, has me excited again that the smaller counterculture can co-exist with the mainstream profit-motivated social media culture.

This has been the majority take since like 2015 or so. It’s very eternal September-adjacent as well, in that everybody thinks their vision of the Internet is the correct one and everyone else is a poser or just wrong and ruining it for them.

I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.

Welcome :)

It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.

This a very interesting metaphor, real spot on.

But I would say a lot of that rural Internet has not disappeared, not yet. It's still there, very much alive. People are simply not visiting it anymore. They don't dare go outside the pretty walled-gardens they're used to.

But those people wanting to stay parked in their corporate-owned gardens, or silos, doesn't make that small and more humane web go away. And would they chose to, they could still come visit it freely, they could still easily interact with their creators. They could even create and tend to their very own part of it, making that small Web a richer place.

They just don't do it. Most of the time because they can't be bothered with doing the actual work, or because they're afraid to try and to fail. They want to be fed easy to eat content, not learn to cook it themselves.

They want the a Web that is like those shitty fast-food serving standardized and over-processed industrial food. Something ready to eat that is barely food at all but that will stuff their belly and, more importantly, that will never surprise them. Alas, this food is as much a poison for their head as it is for their body. They will realize that too late. It probably already is.

Too bad, because the alternative is still a thing, not that far away.

The small web is still a thing. Many blogs still exist that only share content their author sincerely care about or is interested in, that are ads and tracking free, that respect their readers... But the majority of people have quit visiting them, they simply don't go outside of, say, YT, X, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok or whatever where they can all stay together parked like the cattle they have not yet realized they have become.

Back to your original metaphor. Digital rurality is still there and many could easily own a small part of it and make it exwactly like they want it to be, and be happy with it. But they prefer staying in the large over-crowed cities, in small overpriced apartments like most their friends are doing.

Lemmy is a great alternative to reddit but it could relatively easily become another silos—just plural and not corporate-owned but silos nonetheless. It's up to us to keep it open to the alternatives. I mean, sometimes I feel sad to see little posts & comments inviting people to go read/watch something they liked that is not already hosted on some corporate-owned platform. Heck, sharing personal content feels so much like a lost cause to me that I seldom share a link to my own blog posts: why bother? I also publish a lot less often than I used to, here again: why bother?

I'm not old enough to have known the old internet, but the photo- and video-based social media never felt attractive to me. The only social media that I used was Reddit, but now I'm here. I appreciate the genuine people speaking their own mind for the sake of speaking around here, instead of the vapid, superficial and clout-chasing ""people"" (read: [fascist] bots) of other websites.

I think you're confusing social media and late stage capitalism. Social media hasn't done anything to anyone, capitalism has used social media to further its own ends.

Social media brought all the normies into the internet. Normies ruin everything.

I don't think it was social media. To be honest with you, this is the worst thing I have ever said. Seriously! I swear to god, it was once the "normies" got on the internet. I think "normies" are socialized to be cruel, and they took that cruelty to the internet. I loved it when it was for the freaks and the geeks. It was the best of the best!

It took my favorite activity (reading) and turned it into a social one. An educational one too! It was amazing. There's still bits out here. I mean look at us. But there's a lot of trash on these sites too. Just filter, enjoy your echo chamber, and be open to people entering it with opposite opinions. In fact, be open to opinions all over the place, even in person. Just saying, I use this as reprieve. I don't need to work myself up, I want to chill and cool down with it.

I guarentee you're not the only one

You really think you're the first one, much less the only one, to say that? Really?