Can I ask what you’re planning to use block chain for? To verify each account? Or to federate instances?

Well. This is good news.

You are assuming that A. Google isn’t scraping data for their own AI, B. that these companies will create their own instances (which opens them up to a certain amount of liability and requires them to retain moderation/admin and maintenance staff (which costs money)). C. That the enshittification of corporate owned versions of Lemmy and the fediverse won’t push people to Lemmy sooner or later.

A fourth assumption you made is that the Threads federation push was made in order to do anything other than create hype around a feature that might draw people away from places like the fediverse. I kind of assumed (maybe I’m wrong) that they were offering it as a way to have all the benefits of federation - namely the assumption of FOSS adjacent services, but with all the “benefits” of corporate social media.

The truth is that it’s likely that Meta absolutely has had a detrimental effect on the fediverse because it has things that pull users away from the fediverse. Instagram has content. For days. And because the fediverse is small (shrinking as you say), and because it doesn’t have an algorithm that pushes certain content to certain users, Meta and the other services that have analogs in the fediverse continue to be popular.

A lot of this is because the fediverse still hasn’t figured out a way to be profitable to content creators and we no longer live in the early 2000’s of YouTube etc where content creation for free was popular.

I’d argue that a lot of the appeal of the fediverse is organic conversation and communication. The popularity of that as a whole is declining because of algorithms that tickle just the right feel good chemicals in our brains.

As for your comment about these corps investing in the fediverse? The only reason for them to do that is if they can make money off it. The major money making scheme the internet is relying on is ad service. So there’s a catch 22 here. I would rather donate money to fedi services than have the fediverse infested with ads.

I don’t want that. Part of the fediverse’s appeal for me is that people aren’t constant trying to sell me things on it.

While I can understand certain communities having "suggest a (game, service, product), for the most part I really don’t want to basically invite corps to think this is free real estate. And that’s exactly what I think this would do.

It’s seems like it would invite corps to basically astroturf Lemmy and the fediverse the way they’re doing with bot armies over on reddit.

I read an article the other day about the woman who wrote that tell all book about Meta. Supposedly (according to the article) she faces a $50K fine every time she breaks the contract she agreed to when departing the company by defaming them. But she has not ever been charged that fine. But she is facing bankruptcy.

That’s an article that’s so poorly written that it literally doesn’t seem to have warranted any comment except mine which says literally “I do not understand the facts presented in this article and how they correlate”. Last I checked there were no other comments.

We see articles like this all the time.

It’s pretty cool being a member of a den of iniquity.

Because they will create their own circlejerk in the fediverse too and people will leave them alone to do it. Instances would likely defederate from a truth social instance if it were federated. They are also in the habit of banning anyone who speaks against their side so it wouldn’t do much good to try.

I suggested “Fedlings” in the main thread and I think that could work for the fediverse at large.

I really like it too. If it takes off, no need to attribute it to me. I’m sure other people have also thought of it.

I like “Fedlings” personally.

So, there’s a inherent problem with blocking working both ways on a forum style site or platform like Lemmy.

When you block someone and the block goes through, if it works both ways, that means your comments or exchanges with that person disappear. The problem with that? They disappear for you and the person you blocked. Anyone else who comments can see the thread. But you both no longer can. So say someone comes along and responds to you on that thread. Or to the other person on that thread? Will their comment go through? Will you be able to see their comment? Will you be able to reply to their comment?

It becomes more complicated and further can affect users not related to or involve with the block depending on how it’s handled and for the most part that’s problematic.

I think we should be differentiating a “block function” (and neither the twain shall meet) from a “mute function” (a one way filter).

I feel like this might genuinely just be better than giving people a false understanding of what the filter they are using does.

This is what I do when I want to search Lemmy. I put Lemmy: “search for this” into the search box and see what comes up. It works better than Lemmy’s internal search function a lot of the time.

Thank you for this post. I have been talking the ear off my one Linux friend since I installed Bazzite and I’m sure he’s got better things to do with his time than help me every time I text him with a problem or a question. A lot of online forums on the subject talk over my head so I need clarification even when I can find the solution to my problem.

How’s fractal? It comes up as a recommendation for Linux matrix a lot and I was wondering.

If that’s the only language you have to communicate, I’d say more power to you. If you can translate what you’re saying using online tools, that might better facilitate communication and conversation.

It’s searchable but information doesn’t stay pinned and available. It’s meant to be a chatroom style place for gaming and as that it’s fine but when you want to build a community for something like a video game or a product, what ends up happening is you end up making a channel for every single announcement etc. Say you have a channel for FAQ? You either lock it so only moderators and admins can use it or you end up with a constantly ballooning channel where everyone can contribute. There’s no in-between and because each post isn’t really collated the way it would be here or on a forum the information is hard to navigate without search which often only gives a truncated section that you can’t even navigate to. There’s no context more often than not when you use the search function and it’s a very poor substitute for a forum as a result.

I don’t think discord is a good substitute for a website and I don’t think it’s a good substitute for a forum but it’s being used as both fairly frequently.

I did ask. Why is it like pulling teeth to get answers? I don’t use WhatsApp. Never got on that bandwagon. Something being free and open source doesn’t mean it’s good. Something being trustworthy from your standpoint doesn’t explain why it’s trustworthy to a layman who doesn’t understand why you think FOSS = trustworthy or good. It’s FOSS and you’ve looked at the code and found it to live up to its claims of being secure?

I’m not sure where the hostility is coming from here but I’m more pointing out that I can use a search engine to find out about matrix to some extent, but people who use the platform and have a better understanding of its pros and cons have valuable information to pass on. But when you ask them about it they’re full of recommendations but those recommendations often don’t have much in the way of information about what’s good about the user experience or feature set or even the code. I’m trying to show that the particulars of why you like or prefer something matter.

So, I’m going to say that I don’t use telegram and only know it as being presented as a secure messenger platform. As a result, I am just asking follow-on questions to further discern what makes Element preferable. And this is no different because I feel like this is exactly the problem lemmy and other platforms like it have. There are people who love them, but when people ask about them, they don’t offer any really informative data to support why they like them.

What makes Element (matrix) a secure platform, and how does that differ from telegram or signal or whatever. Like. What is matrix good at? That’s what I’m asking. Why suggest it over something else?

What are its pros and cons? What does it offer that telegram or similar don’t offer? Is it good for group chat? Is it available on multiple platforms?

Tell me about Element. This is the first I’m hearing about it.