this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2022
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As much as I hate the people behind Truth Social, I welcome more competition to Big Tech.
More competition doesn't work if there's a whole platform dedicated to hateful misinformation.
Better than Zuckerberg deciding what we're allowed to say.
Eh? You do know that truth social is just going to ban any opposing worldviews right? Hell its even known to use mastodon code illegally. They're not one of the better ones out there.
Lemmy started out like that as well. It has drastically changed, though. Good on the devs for that. I really mean it.
Reread what I wrote. I don't expect Truth Social to be anything good. It's just that having alternatives is better than a single monopoly.
And I'm just saying we need better mainstream alternatives. This is nothing to be celebrated because this just puts a stain on alt-tech
Quite the contrary. If Truth Social succeeds, then it will encourage more competition to enter this space. If it fails, then people will be reluctant to enter this space.
facepalm why would we want such a platform to succeed is what I'm saying. But whatever.
I don't want Truth Social to succeed because I like it. I want TruthSocial to demonstrate that we're not condemned to use Twitter/Facebook etc for eternity. That it is realistic to challenge them and win.
So why not just work on promoting lemmy and mastodon? Given that Truth social is just a bastardized version of mastodon.
Truth Social is growing very fast, driven largely by politics. Mastodon is not growing as fast. I use Mastodon and recommend it to everyone. But I'm also realistic. Most people will not leave Big Tech unless they have a reason. (and people don't care about privacy enough for that to be the reason)
i hate that i am forced to use facebook for a number of reasons. the main reason though, people use facebook because that's where people are. so for people to not use facebook people would need to populate another platform where people are, before people are there. it's a catch-22.
if the fediverse could have a unified interface for all platforms within the fediverse, conveniently interconnected by a single app/interface, so every platform would be populated instantly, and users started contributing content to each of them. the fediverse would stand a much bigger chance to get big. especially if a new type of niche platform could be invented to bring a lot of users over who aren't actually interested in the fediverse for the fediverse sake.
i mean, if you could use mastodon, peertube, goldfish, mobilizon, pixelfed, owncast, writefreely, etc. etc. etc. all under one umberella of access and convenience. without bugs and inconvenience and poor loading time, etc. and figure out an attraction that users want to experience (filling a gap of social media that doesn't already exist). then the momentum for population growth and content creation on all platforms would naturally grow (in the west). facebook etc is impossible to kill because of net neutrality laws in some countries. but citizens of those countries generally don't have access to the internet anyway. and the day they do, they would probably want to explore this unified service. let's call it... a unified fediverse, or universe for short.
True
Hasn't the fediverse already proven that?
Mastodon hasn't had mainstream success and is mainly people used by open source tech enthusiasts and people care about their privacy.
There are tons of challenges for Mastodon to overcome though. It's not able to aggressively market itself because it doesn't have a budget to challenge the big social media networks without getting actively crushed by them. No commercial interest wants to move to the fediverse because they can't exploit it and use it as a marketing platform. It also can't afford to strike deals in countries with no net neutrality laws (in many poorer countries, facebook can be used entirely without a paid internet subscription; which effectively makes facebook the de-facto internet, as people can't afford a paid subscription to access the rest of the internet). I.e. when facebook removed their free option in India, there was a massive surge of users coming to Mastodon, unfortunately this wasn't capitalized on (in fact, it had a lot of resistance), and the momentum died down.
Additionally, some of the fediverse is currently being supported and funded by the EU, who also officially hosts a few services within the fediverse. A handful of people within the EU wants to end the american commercial monopoly of social media and are pushing for the fediverse to replace them. But for that to happen, a lot more need to change. For one, if they finally manage to ban facebook in EU, you could see a good surge of adoption for the fediverse if marketing is done right and have an actual budget (the social media called 'Band' saw a big spike when facebook started banning a bunch of hobby groups - which was a missed opportunity, that should have been the fediverse, not another commercial 'facebook' clone, but the fediverse don't have a budget nor convenient apps and resources to make people jump ship over here - i.e. if the team behind Mobilizon didn't focus on france first-and-foremost, with the single biggest server being french (because the devs own server is always the 'trusted' server), and had an app available, Facebook/Band could have had actual fediverse competition).
The only people who know of the Fediverse's existence are tech enthusiasts. It's not a mainstream phenomenon and is not really hurting big tech financially. Truth Social is a much larger phenomenon.
Its an alternative the same way r/conservative is an alternative to r/thedonald. Except instead of answering to reddit admins they have to worry about their host putting up with their shit, ddosing, and everything else that comes with running your own platform.
Shit like this is still controlled by a group of people dedicated to spreading their bullshit 'truth' while silencing any opinions/facts that disagree with their predetermined narrative.
i really don't see the issue with that though. isn't it great that they're over there, rather than in here?
No, bubbles never work for the better of the society. Constant intellectual challenge on the other hand does.
you mean like how commercial social media literally push you to be in constant conflict because it drives user interaction and helps them generate wealth while also destabilizing nations and causing violent conflicts as a "reasonable" consequence?
no thanks, i want to be able to exist without perpetual idiocracy. i'm pretty sure their rhetoric causes brain damage at this point. let them be dumb on their own. and their world slowly crumble as they kill themselves off with antivax, nomask, guns, bleach, etc.
it's a problem that eventually solves itself when their belief is confronted with actual reality.
I'm amazed that you think that while the whole conversation was about promoting fediverse, you somehow deduced that I want people to be using algorithm based platforms like twitter and Facebook.
if your aim is for the fediverse to be filled with vitriol you might as well not bother and stick to commercial platforms. it would defeat the whole point of federating servers.
Missed the point. But sure
They already ban anyone without a full on trump loving opinion. Its just more weaponization of freeze peach.
Truth Social's code is open source. It uses elements of Mastodon and Soapbox.
The only reason they released the source code is because people dug around the pre-release versions of the site and found it was based on Mastodon, while TS claimed they owned all copyrights to the software. They were in breach of Mastodon's license.
They would have gotten away with it if this had never came to light.
What's important is invalidating the idea that only a handful of oligarch owned sites are legitimate media. The more alternative platforms appear the more the better in my opinion.
Isn't trump just another oligarch?
Of course, but my point was that normalizing having a lot of different sites is valuable. One of the main problems I see is the notion that only information that comes from a few mainstream sites is legitimate, and everything else can just be ignored out of hand. Having more media platforms and public forums is helping challenge that.
Can we please stop saying 'big tech', especially when referring to social media companies? These are not tech companies, they are advertising companies that sell your information to other advertising companies (or whomever).