- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- fediverse@lemmy.world
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Hey, that’s us!
There’s another alternative, which is no social media at all. There is no particular problem that it solved. If it disappeared, would your quality of life be worse in any way?
I could live without all the news and stuff, and I do just ignore it when it gets too much. The ability to communicate with other people across the entire world however is something I really appreciate.
Sometimes when it gets overwhelming I don’t do any news or social media at all for a few weeks. It seems to help my mental health, particularly when every bit of news suggests that everything is going to shit.
google hasn’t done much with YouTube yet
There’s Peertube as an alternative. It lacks some content, but the platform is on par. It is developed by a French association called Framasoft. Thus said, you’re right, Youtube is still okay, even thus there are some fake videos and scam, but they are easy to avoid.
It lacks some content
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if this isn’t the understatement of the century.
Peertube sucks ass, so much content simply not even there, most videos don’t work or they’re in either mostly french or russian, and this is on the biggest instances.
Now I might be stupid, but I really don’t see how peertube is an alternative. Odysee or rumble are my personal best bets, but in case of youtube it’s hard to find a real alternative in my opinion. Especially as a creator.
Word.
Honest question, what are the incentives for instance operators to play nice, so to speak? And not just recreate new oligarch safe havens?
It seems like each instance is a miniature zone of centralization and it’s still incumbent on individuals to create their own circles of influence. For better or worse that’s how we get hivemind echo chambers and I’m not sure it’s even in human nature to seek anything else.
Alternatively we have to rescue our friends and families when they start to fall for BS and educate them aggressively on improving the sourcing of their information.
For better or worse that’s how we get hivemind echo chambers and I’m not sure it’s even in human nature to seek anything else.
There it is, in every shoddy analysis someone has to mix up the thing we have with “the only thing possible”.
Echo chambers aren’t part of “human nature”, they’re designed into the algorithms by the broligarchs to rachet up engagement – giving them $$$ – while making it impossible to build consensus and community in a way that threatens them.
Up until a couple of decades ago, there weren’t widespread echo chambers on the Internet. The first version of websites (even social ones) were simple chronological feeds. Nowadays, thanks to the assmasters in charge you don’t even know what you aren’t seeing online on most of these sites. Comments look completely different based upon even simple things like gender.
Federation provides some answers. While it is entirely possible to defederate everyone you as an admin disagree with or don’t want to promote, most commonly instances pick the option to not defederate all at will, as the majority of people actually prefers to be connected for the most part.
Although I realize something like this might not be possible, i’d love (in a theoretical perfect world) a delegative/liquid federation. where you can “delegate” your blocklist be an aggregate of other people’s blocklist, which would allow a community of users independent of any admin to create a decentralized blocklist based upon mutual trust. To word it with an example, if I trust user A, who in turn trusts user B and C’s idea of who(/what communities) to block, i’ll then be blocking the same people as user B and C.
It could work in reverse too, if I trust user A who allows anime communities and user B who allows game communities, then I can see anime and game communities. If people trust me, they can see the same thing i’m seeing. Imo that would spur user interaction and make a decentralized way to not put any one person in power. If user B suddenly decides to only trust fascists, I don’t have to trust them anymore and those changes would be propagated.
I don’t know if that made sense, so sorry if that explanation is wack! It is loosely based on this concept that I read from awhile ago, for which I haven’t thought of the possible downsides.
I don’t believe the transitive principle of trust that you cite is all that workable, unless it can be done at a finer granularity.
In my own case, I (A) trust B and C. But B doesn’t trust C, for reasons that have conditioned my relationships with both B and C so that I can still trust them. The reason for that is that trust is multifactorial: A can trust B for some things, not others. So what we’re trying to model is an ontological relation, not just a directed acyclic graph.
Based on that, the best we can probably achieve is being able to set the degrees of separation of delegated trust (maybe 2 hops and that’s all in my case), and add the ability to subclass or otherwise tweak someone else’s blocklist (say, B’s a fine person but habitually forwards Joe Rogan crap that I find to be nothing but vexatious noise), or C despises my favorite band but is otherwise quite sound, etc.
That’s a cool concept, but there are indeed some caveats to address, especially with the propagation part. For example, if you rely on user A to filter you gaming posts, and they suddenly decide they’re not into gaming anymore, you and everyone who relies on you will not get gaming feeds anymore. Or if he is a sudden Nazi, not only you but people who trust you will get that content until you react (and until then, some others will unsubscribe you).
With a complicated enough network of trusted people, this will trigger a chaotic chain reaction that will make your feed less stable than a chair with one leg.
Also, conflicts should be resolved somehow. If a person A whitelists some content and person B blacklists it, and you follow both, what should be done?
One way to go about it is to create a limited list of authorities, but that obviously comes with the danger of someone having too much power. You can make groups of people vote for inclusion or exclusion of topics, but it’s not feasible to vote for every single filter because there are simply too many. You can elect someone to do this, but we know what may happen to elected officials.
I haven’t read the full article due to sign up paywall, but…
First, millions of small business owners and influencers who make a living on TikTok were left to beg their followers in TikTok’s last moments to follow them elsewhere in hopes of being able to continue their businesses on other corporate social media platforms. This had the effect of fracturing and destroying people’s audiences overnight, with one act of government.
How is decentralised social media going to help with this if the entire point of decentralisation is the opposite?
On decentralized media (Mastodon at the very least), you can move your account and your subscribers to any other instance whenever you want. You move with your audience, and they’ll barely notice any change, using the same app to keep following the same person automatically.
And this is why I’m still on .ml there’s not a way to move on Lemmy. Yet
Luckily, there’s normally little cost to switching Lemmy instances anyway. You can even probably take the same username and register on another instance, quickly rebuild your feed and that’s mostly it.
As everything is connected and there’s not much reason accumulating account age/karma/you name it, the loss is pretty minor.
How do we protect ourselves from propagandists and censors? Large, small, popular and individual.
You do your research :)
I did my research at the heritage foundation.
I’m not so sure. Depends if there’s a solution to the bots. Bluesky is inundated with them already.
I just wish we had a bit more political balance here… I’m not talking about fascists, but more people that don’t blame everything on capitalism would be kind of nice…
There are a few misconceptions in your comment:
While I do agree that there are other problems like racism and bigotry which existed before capitalism (based on an answer you gave in another comment) and while I do agree these also need to be addressed, I do disagree that capitalism isn’t a major source of problems of modernity.
Why?
Because the cornerstone of capitalism is to use money to generate more money in a feedback loop towards (nonexistent) “infinite money” (which is different from feudalism, roman empire or ancient Egypt which all had some sort of market without being capitalist economies).
SInce it is impossible to make infinity money, an inherent part of capitalism are the crises cycles of boom and bust.
It also makes the creation of services as an afterthought (because making money is more important) and it is also tied to the enshitfication we’re seeing today.
I think you’re calling as “capitalism” a thing that is actually “technological innovation (under capitalism)”
We’re all aware of free/open source softwares
We’re all aware that it is possible to develop technological innovation outside of capitalist framework (and again: Capitalism = Using money to make more (infinite) money)
almost all of scientific researches advances are because of passion of the researches instead of the greed of capitalism.
Yes… Everyone “needs” money to survive. But I hope you do agree that nobody in the world needs billions of dollars to simply survive.
for God’s sake, a lot of people living in “third world” dream of earning 300 dollars a month to survive and consider that making 1000 dollars a month is a small luxury (I’m from brasil and 1000 dollars is around R$ 4000 or R$ 5000 while most people lives with R$3000 or less)
What I’m saying is that, past the required money for surviving and for having a few “luxuries”, there is no need for anyone having millions or billions of dollars every month and that it would be possible to keep scientific and technological grow under such conditions because curiosity and desire for changes are part of human nature.
if it was entirely impossible for humans to develop things without being paid before, then nothing around open/free software would exist.
For real. I once had the misfortune to admit to having some Centrist ideas, and the down votes were immediate and generous. No discussion, just personal attacks.
And we wonder how things got to where they are.
Sorry this is a platform for people of you’re an ostrich then please go back to sticking your head in the sand
I’m not Dee Renolds, but you may think of me as such, if it makes the world feel safer for you.
If nearly everything currently wrong with the country weren’t due to capitalism run amok I could sympathize. But unfortunately it’s not the 1960s anymore.
Okay, buddy. It’s all capitalism. Good luck with your pamphlets! I actually like the idea of making Western nations question capitalism… This said, no. It’s not “nearly everything” wrong with the world.
Wake up, my friend. It’s 2025. Just because people in power are getting worse, doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better.
(segregation was a legacy of capital interests pushing race theory to justify slavery)
I wonder what else is to blame ?
Human nature? Greed? Racism? Biggotry?
There’s an upsetting number of topics… And now I’m depressed. Because life is depressing when you think about it too much, isn’t it?
It sure is. It’s important to touch grass on a daily basis to stay sane. I personally go outside take a stroll and caress some leaves.
Regarding your initial point : I see “capitalism” as the family of systems that enable that kind of IT monopoly. Sure, human traits such as greed and bigotry are probably the source of evil but it seems to me they have to be tapped, and enabled. The fact that the conversation often ultimately turns back to capitalism is legitimate imho.
So, capitalism then.
[Entire world on fire] “I just wish everyone wasn’t so fixated on discussing the fire, how it started and who’s responsible…”
You have to realize how mesmerizingly obtuse your comment is?
Lol. Yes, I’m obtuse. You aren’t, but I am. Great argument.
Too late, capitalism is the problenz
Yes, it is. But it’s not the only problem… In fact, there are a thousand other problems I wish we could all discuss with at least half the fervor as this topic.
But no. This is the topic.
That’s gonna be kind of an issue in a network where civil discourse and disagreement falls between calling people a Nazi/fascist at best and wishing them double death by murder rape at worst
Uhh… What?
If you’re a Trump supporter, I respect that you may be confused… But Elon Seig Heiled yesterday, so…
Just picturing that, as you type this, you have a swastika tattoo on your forehead.
“Why is everyone so judgemental? I’m not one thing! A person contains magnitudes!!!”
It’s a Windows logo!11! /s
Not trying to get into a whole ugly thing, just curious what your pro-capitalism stance is. Because I would definitely fall into this big Lemmy category of seeing 90-905% of modern problems being rooted in capitalism. So I would (civilly!) disagree, no doubt. Doesn’t mean we can’t have a reasonable discussion!
I don’t have much time and energy for long discussions, but I just wanna share my feelings.
I feel like people here see capitalism as a very black and white thing. Either it’s there and corrupting everything or it’s gone and everything is awesome. Personally I don’t think that’s the case. In my opinion there are some cases where the market can solve things more efficiently than a government institution, granted that this market is regulated and controlled by the government. I’m against unbounded capitalism like we see way too often nowadays.
But here in western Europe, while certainly not perfect, the situation is way better than in the US. The government controls companies, gives them a slap on the wrist if they get too greedy. And while it still poisons a lot that it touches, the competitive aspect of it also makes sure that many inefficiencies are cut. In my opinion even we are not regulating it enough, and I do consider myself left-wing. But completely abolishing capitalism doesn’t make sense to me either.
I think some things are better left to the government, stuff like healthcare, public transport, utilities like water or maybe even energy. Other things are better left private (but regulated): restaurants, barbers, supermarkets, most product development like phones, cameras, cars, computers, etc. There’s a huge grey area there that I don’t really have an opinion on.
But I don’t see how a society without capitalism can provide stuff like decent smartphones, game consoles, restaurants, festivals, etc. These more “luxury” goods rely on competition to innovate and provide decent experiences, and here capitalism works better in my view.
LOL. I’m not pro-capitalism, but thank you for proving my point.
I actually think, as one example, the US’s healthcare system should 100% be socialized.
I would also be interested in a defence of capitalism that doesn’t come down to “but the USSR” or similar.
Even Karl Marx noted capitalism’s dynamism and ability to cause change. In my own case, I went from poverty to modest wealth in a capitalist system, and I know many others who had similar experiences. I’m also aware that it empowers sociopaths, causes corruption, of its tendency to degenerate to oligopoly, and its failure to adequately address externalities.
And there are many, many variants of capitalism. The one now prevalent in the US is one of the more lethal strains. Improperly regulated capitalism such as that is a nightmare. Properly regulated, many of its negative features can be mitigated. I could stand living in a social democracy until a better alternative is piloted and proven.
Preaching to the choir!
It might be good to reiterate (in part) why we’re all in here.
I want to believe, but decentralizing is what got us into this mess. The Fox people lived in their own world long enough that it created this whole alternate reality that spawned Trump.
If we keep our heads in the sand 2028 is going to end up exactly the same and we will all be scratching our heads when the Undertaker becomes president.
I dont want to deal with people gore spamming every single Matrix channel again.
I don’t understand this sentence. The two words I don’t know in this context are “gore” and “matrix”
Gore is probably gross medical pictures. Matrix is a chat room program.
Decentralized money as well. We need to move away from the control of government and corporations (they are now one and the same). I’m putting more and more of my money in bitcoin. The dollar will continue to erode while wages stay flat. And Trump and his new oligarch buddies will completely decimate the American economy and stock market while they make out like bandits, leaving everyone else the bag holder. Your 401k isn’t safe anymore.
Same but with Monero. I don’t need my friends, neighbors, $5 wrench attackers, and governments knowing how much money I have. And neither should you.
Said so on paywalled site…
404media paywalled? It’s free to create an account
If it’s free, why does it say “This post is for paid members only”?
Not this article. It’s free. Paid subscribers can read it without ads, is that what you meant?
Some of their posts they do reserve for paid subscribers, but those are usually behind-the-scenes type things, not the journalism.
I wish I could subscribe but I’m not $100+ dollars a year rich. Still impressive that they are doing DIY tech journalism.
No it wasn’t free, I got that message and couldn’t read it.
Try again, I just read it for free. I’ll post it here just in case:
https://www.404media.co/decentralized-social-media-is-the-only-alternative-to-the-tech-oligarchy/
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy Jason Koebler Jan 21, 2025 at 12:33 PM
The TikTok ban and Donald Trump’s rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.
If it wasn’t already obvious, the last 72 hours have made it crystal clear that it is urgent to build and mainstream alternative, decentralized social media platforms that are resistant to government censorship and control, are not owned by oligarchs and dominated by their algorithms, and in which users own their follower list and can port it elsewhere easily and without restriction.
Besides all of the “normal” problems with corporate social media—the surveillance capitalism, the AI spam, the opaque algorithms—let’s take stock of what has happened in the last few days.
First, millions of small business owners and influencers who make a living on TikTok were left to beg their followers in TikTok’s last moments to follow them elsewhere in hopes of being able to continue their businesses on other corporate social media platforms. This had the effect of fracturing and destroying people’s audiences overnight, with one act of government.
TikTok has since come back, but it is still unclear what the future of the platform is, and TikTok now exists at the whim of President Trump and is beholden to him to an unknown extent. TikTok’s status in the Untied States is still up in the air—it is still not available for download in the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store, and it could disappear at any moment if service providers like Oracle decide that Trump’s executive order and assurances that they will not be prosecuted or fined are not enough assurance to keep the app online.
Elon Musk, who had already turned X into a cesspool of hate and an overt tool to get President Trump elected, is now formally part of the Trump administration, meaning the platform is literally owned by a member of the Trump White House.
Meta has made an overt shift to the right, and Mark Zuckerberg has himself become a Trump booster. The platform is making its content moderation worse, has declared that immigrants and LGBTQ+ people are legitimate targets for hate speech, and has made many of these changes at the behest of the Trump White House and Stephen Miller, according to The New York Times.
Zuckerberg, Musk, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were all in attendance at Trump’s inauguration Monday. There is now no major corporate-owned social media platform that is not aligned with Trump or beholden to him in some way, and nearly every American is on at least one of these platforms.
The TikTok ban highlights, as we’ve seen before, that businesses and accounts built on these centralized, corporate social media platforms are incredibly fragile and can be taken away at any moment, whether by government action, algorithm tweaks that destroy reach, a platform deciding that a specific account does not comply with its ever-changing rules and political systems, etc. We have made clear at 404 Media that one of the reasons we ask our readers for their email addresses is because we have seen media outlets that rely disproportionately on social media distribution die over and over again. Individual influencers and account holders are now seeing how fragile what they have built really is.
The solution to this is decentralized, federated, portable social media in which users own their follower list and can port it elsewhere when the server they are posting on changes its rules, changes its politics, is threatened or attacked by the government, or otherwise becomes untenable. Mastodon’s ActivityPub and Bluesky’s AT.Protocol have provided the base technology layer to make this possible, and have laid important groundwork over the last few years to decorporatize and decentralize the social internet.
The problem with decentralized social media platforms thus far is that their user base is minuscule compared to platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, meaning the cultural and political influence has lagged behind them. You also cannot directly monetize an audience on Bluesky or Mastodon—which, to be clear, is a feature, not a bug—but also means that the value proposition for an influencer who makes money through the TikTok creator program or a small business that makes money selling chewing gum on TikTok shop or a clothes brand that has figured out how to arbitrage Instagram ads to sell flannel shirts is not exactly clear. I am not advocating for decentralized social media to implement ads and creator payment programs. I’m just saying that many TikTok influencers were directing their collective hundreds of millions of fans to follow them to Instagram or YouTube, not a decentralized alternative.
This doesn’t mean that the fediverse or that a decentralized Instagram or TikTok competitor that runs on the AT.Protocol is doomed. But there is a lot of work to do. There is development work that needs to be done (and is being done) to make decentralized protocols easier to join and use and more interoperable with each other. And there is a massive education and recruitment challenge required to get the masses to not just try out decentralized platforms but to earnestly use them. Bluesky’s growing user base and rise as a legitimately impressive platform that one can post to without feeling like it’s going into the void is a massive step forward, and proof that it is possible to build thriving alternative platforms. The fact that Meta recently blocked links to a decentralized Instagram alternative shows that big tech sees these platforms, potentially, as a real threat.
And the far right has unfortunately shown that even small social media platforms can have an outsized impact on national politics and can be used to create political power. A legion of the worst people on Earth have spent years building admittedly resilient alternative social media sites after being deplatformed from or rage quitting sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Places like Rumble, Gab, Truth Social, Odysee, and Patriots.Win are full of the worst America has to offer, but people on these websites have been successful in seeding (often false, often hateful) narratives that filter up the power chain and often end up getting repeated by Donald Trump or on more widely viewed right wing media like Fox News.
I bring up these platforms not to champion them but to highlight that being pushed out of or voluntarily leaving more mainstream platforms did not kill the ideas that were being shared by these people; in fact, their ideas now make up a core part of the current administration’s policies.
This is all to say that it is possible to build alternatives to Elon Musk’s X, Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram, and whatever TikTok will become. It is happening, and it is necessary. The richest, most powerful people in the world have all aligned themselves and their platforms with Donald Trump. But their platforms’ relevance and importance doesn’t necessarily have to last forever. A different way is possible, if we build it.
Thanks for posting the text. I went to it again and this time instead of saying it was for paid subscribers only, it said I could view the article if I would sign up for a free account. I suppose they randomly pick one or the other approach, or maybe they try to get you to pay for a sub first, then try to get you to go for a free signup to at least get your email address.
Decentralized is too complicated. Worker owned is a better path forward and is centralized so it’s easier to support and be understood by its users. Moderators are workers and should have equity.
Karl Marx 2.0 right there
I think if we had co-ops running some of these systems it would definitely alleviate some issues
Communication is not for sale.
This is early days; I have a feeling in a few short years there will be ownership and simplicity of distributed services and whatever evolves from them.
