I wrote an article back in 2020 warning against relying on privately owned platforms for creating communities and public forums. These companies are not accountable to the users, and they curate the content on the platforms in opaque ways that ultimately serve the interests of the owners of these companies. The same Marxist argument about workers owning their tools applies to digital platforms as well. We have to have software that’s developed in the open, and that’s hosted by volunteers, and funded directly by the community. This is the only way to ensure that our interests are represented.
https://justiceinternationale.com/articles/2020-12-02-we-must-own-our-tools/
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I think that slow and steady growth is actually a positive. I’d argue that the key part to focus on right now is sustainability. This involves having enough devs to work on the platforms, enough people who are willing to host them, and enough users to produce content. Once these three criteria are met, then the platform will stick around indefinitely. This is a very different dynamic from commercial platforms that need to find ways to monetize and grow to stay viable.
Mastodon now has millions of users, and now there are a bunch of other compatible platforms like Pleroma that all work on the same protocol and interop with each other. It’s very much in the real of being indefinitely sustainable in my opinion. Even Lemmy with hundreds of thousands of users has likely passed the threshold at this point. So, I’m not too worried about rapid growth as an aspect of viability for the fediverse.
Meanwhile, the slow trickle of users means that new people end up adapting to the existing culture, and this is an important feature in my opinion. When you have a stampede of people come in from the mainstream, they bring the mainstream culture along with them and their views become dominant. We already saw this happening to an extent on the popular Lemmy instances after the Reddit migration.
I expect that we’ll continue seeing more and more incidents happening on commercial platforms as they crackdown on political speech, and we’ll be seeing more and more waves of people join the fediverse. And the bigger fediverse gets the more attractive it becomes since there’s increasingly more content available.
TLDR here is that we shouldn’t worry too much about rapid growth, and instead focus on making sure things are sustainable. The growth will happen organically over time.
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Mastodon is definitely growing, and I see it from personal usage that it got a lot more lively over the past year. I think there’s always going to be this ebb and flow dynamic happening where we get a wave of new users. Things get really lively for a while, than a lot of users become inactive, and things get quieter again. The dynamic does cause some intermittent issues, but the platforms do become increasingly more robust over time as well. For example, Lemmy was having all kinds of issues handling new waves initially, and over the past year it got a lot more stable. Personally, I’m pretty optimistic with the way things are progressing.
And a couple of articles showing how much growth happened recently:
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I agree with the part about owning our digital tools, the Fediverse community turns social media into a more transparent process with FOSS, and helps to turn otherwise complex software into user-friendly packages that can be setup more easily, thus putting more power into the hands of the people.
We still have to keep in mind that decentralized FOSS social media platforms aren’t different from traditional social media in terms of potential to turn into reactionary walled gardens. So there needs to be something done different to avoid the cycle of:
(anarchist) decentralization -> (capitalist) centralization -> (anarchist) re-decentralization
For sure, there needs to be a conscious political effort to promote sound ideas. Simply having open source platforms doesn’t magically solve that problem, but it is a prerequisite for having a voice. It’s also worth noting that decentralization is perfectly compatible with principled organizing. The key is to work on building a common set of ideas and understanding across the network that’s grounded in sound theory.
Why do people still continue to use this shit site and then act surprised when this happens?
Got permabanned over a year ago for telling Jordan Peterson to blow his brains out and my life has genuinely improved
If only he took your advice. More lives would be improved worldwide as a result.
Every time I remember he exists I mourn that he didn’t perish in Russia.
I got permabanned from pre-Elon Twitter for saying Donald Trump Junior should live up to JFK Junior’s legacy and get in a small plane.
Yet people still tell me that Twitter was a leftist cesspool before Elon bought it.
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When life rewards you for your good actions 🙏
People be addicted. I’ve seen some argue that Twitter is a necessity. Any excuse to stay on it.
I was addicted Reddit. I left after the gzd purge, and looking back it’s not at all appealing.
Like it’s not rose-tinted glasses right? It’s legitimately gotten worse (more ads as posts, ‘unapproved subreddits’ needing an account??, etc) right?
I think after taking breaks from some things that weren’t great in the first place they lose their appeal, but yeah theyre getting worse too
Yup, in a just world, Twitter is blocked/banned
I personally use it because of how many comrades I follow, I wish they were on here but it is what it is. I assume they’re on Twitter because they don’t know of any alternative and the wide reach they can have.
I use it for some of my other more mundane interests still (music and cooking stuff predominantly), but not politics. Trying to be a leftist on twitter is a special kind of futile. I don’t actually post much of anything on it, but there are some good recipe and music resources I keep an eye on from time to time, it remains decent for that.
banning the account of the only anti-pedophile podcast is not a good look ngl
Musk in the Epstein plane ✈️🏝️
Freest country on earth btw
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Look at all that free speech Musk brought to Twitter
And to the surprise of absolutely noone liberals are celebrating.
Also liberals after all leftists accounts are backed: where’d all these Nazis come from?
Could be mass reporting combined with Twitter lacking human moderation
Nvm Bill Ackman and Musk might be involved
Some accounts are still intact though https://twitter.com/ByYourLogic/
they banned Brace during The Tunnel Era for Bill Ackman’s braindead wife…I’m out of the Neri Oxman fandom now. fuck you lady, love is not a house built on a foundation of care. I don’t even want your orbs. you have set back our research of the secret Jewish tunnel irreparably
Who is exactly shocked by this? I’m literally only still there and on Reddit because I want to see how long I can last before a permaban
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Get the fuck away from the lathe homie
Stop giving them ideas. I feel like they’re going to ban those accounts just because you said that.
The urge to tell Twitter comrades about Lemmygrad is hard to resist. I know I can’t just go around “advertising” but man, its hard to delete Twitter when I have so many comrades on there. I don’t want to lose access to them.
If too many people find out about this place, big tech will shut us down. Which, they’re going to do eventually anyway but what can you do?
Yeah, thats why I don’t tell anyone even though I really want to…
i got banned some months ago and decided not to bother with it anymore.
Something something free speech is back
I stopped using Twitter late last year, and I haven’t felt a need to return to it
genuinely surprised it didn’t happen sooner 🤷🏼
