this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026

105 points (94.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

39596 readers

1247 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

Asudox@lemmy.world

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

neidu3@sh.itjust.works

asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev

candyman337@lemmy.world

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

105

Are we building an alternative to billionaire platforms or just a quieter version of them? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

153 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] CptHacke@piefed.social 106 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Both are correct. I don't see the Fediverse ever becoming as large as the billionaire platform for the precise reason that it isn't run by billionaires with gigantic advertising budgets. As such, the Fediverse will not have the large numbers of users and hence, will be quieter.

That being said, the Fediverse IS an alternative to the billionaire platforms - especially for people who desire smaller, more intimate communities and - perhaps most importantly - controlled and governed by the people who use it.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

as long as there are enough people and content here, why should we even care if everyone isnt here? I dont even want every idiot here.

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 8 points 3 weeks ago

Preach. I'm happy to only hang out with the sort of people who see the value in social media by the people and for the people. Sometimes it's messy, some of us are kinda annoying, but it's always going to be better than corpo shit.

[–] mayako@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 3 weeks ago

This.

One of the reasons that billionaire controlled tech platforms become so mainstream IS their ability to grow and spread, and eventually become de facto means of communication online.

This allows them to break out of the early adopter, technical space and spread to a wider audience

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

Let me rephrase then. What is there to protect the Fediverse from control?

[–] CptHacke@piefed.social 26 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

The Fediverse is decentralized, which means that it cannot (or at least it would be very, very difficult) be shut down by anyone. On an individual level, any user is free to start their own instance or community with their own rules in place should another instance or community become undesirable. If there is something you don't like or that is somehow stifling to you, start your own and make it the way you want it.

load more comments (12 replies)

[–] ragepaw@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 weeks ago (13 children)

That anyone can run a node. I could put one in my basement.

load more comments (13 replies)

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Everyone can create an instance (Well, at least anyone who can pay for a domainname and hosting, which is the basic requirement for every webservice)
As default, instances federate with each other
Instances that are bad neighbors get defederated

That's it, basically. Even if someone bought up all instances and domainnames (which would require that server admins sell them, which i can't see many doing, or else they wouldn't run a fediverse service in the first place), there's nothing stopping you from creating a new instance outside of the control of this person the same day. It literally cannot be simply taken over by, say, Microsoft.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Right, and I'm thinking this is not actually a solid way to protect fediverse from what is happening everywhere else.

We can all create instances, but there needs to be engagement for it to matter. I'm not looking at this from the point of view of "what can I do to enjoy my time on the internet while my rights are taken away and I'm told my sister should go to jail for wanting an abortion"

There is a pattern that occurs with seizing digital spaces. It starts small. They begin dog whistling in small communities. Not enough to get banned. Just enough to get reactions. Based off the reaction they target a few of the weaker ones. Whistles get louder. They link those to their influencers who post to their base. That base begin to show up and the community begins to fracture. Mods get overwhelmed. Ask for help to increase mod team. Some of the new mod team are the very people poisoning the community or are affiliated. The new moderators make it worse. Users begin to block or leave the communities. More dog whistles. More growth from the right until the community is captured. They move on to target another bigger community and are now using the first community as a pool to feed into the bigger one and turn it. So you can de-federate but nothing really stops the attacks. There is no real mechanism right now to guard against what has happened as far as I see it.

If lemmy were to grow as big as other sites, it will be just as likely to swing hard right unless something else is done.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The "swing to the hard right" comes as soon as more normies arrive. There are basically two ways this goes:

a) badly behaved normies get the boot. comes with the side effect of keeping the cost for instance admins low and the work for mod teams small, but also means that we stay a niche. I have no issues with this.

b) normies come here and do as they always do. this is your scenario. Since normies - since they are normies - will simply swarm to single instances, as we saw at the API exodus, the rest of the fediverse will sooner or later defederate from those single instances if they aren't able to keep their normie horde in check. This is fine, actually. If i really want to look at something only the normies are talking about, i can simply fire up my normie-instance account and see all i want.

Since we have a simple mechanism of removing badly behaved instances in check, i cannot see how your scenario actually comes to fruit.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The decentralization is there, but in theory the owner of the largest node could defederate from everyone else, forcing users to leave the largest instance or put up with it?

It would be a lot like Meta in that way - the only reason it has survived is because everyone was already there and there's no way in hell to get everyone to switch to the same new thing. I genuinely don't know which direction users would go, lemmy users are an odd bunch.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

What is there to protect the Fediverse from control?

Why do you think people want it to have no control?

4chan exists, people would go there if they want a lawless wasteland. Or that weird 4chan ripoff that gets spammed every couple months here. Plebbit? They change the name constantly

And there's fringe instances where they claim to want that lawlessness, but look at their modlogs and they stamp out anyone who disagrees with them. So you can try an "anarchist" instance if hypocrisy is ok with you..

But your question is coming from a very unpopular perspective.

The vast amount of people want someone in control because otherwise it's just a bunch of trolls who don't have a choice if they use the big platforms, because they're IP banned from there.

Fediverse will always have a way for the dregs to get in, so having someone with "control" is necessary. Otherwise normal people leave....

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] StillAlive@piefed.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

User unfriendlyness.

Visually, Fediverse isn't like reddit, instagram, or any other popular social media places.

You need to put in some effort to even browse it.

load more comments (9 replies)

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

Getting mad at the people here just to have fun is about as useful as the people that come here just to stir up trouble. If people aren't having fun here, people aren't going to join or stay.

I post daily animal content. Anyone just scrolling can just scroll and click on cute animal and move on with life. But for those that want to read the posts, you will find ample opportunities of all varieties to get involved. As much as I'd like it to be different, everyone on here has their own reasons they can't or won't get involved, but a couple might. It's gotten me to work at a rescue for 2 years now, and one or 2 others have DMed me saying they got involved with places I've helped them find, and a handful more have done things to make their homes more suitable to bring back animals or donated to places doing amazing rescue work. It's not changing the world, but it hasn't been pointless.

We've got some communities that I think are great, like Dull Men's Club. Again, everyday activities, but it's people doing small acts to make something better than it was. I'd love to have activists here teaching folks how to unionize, set up aid programs, etc, but the pool of those folks is very small. The news and politics communities we have do seem to be full of a number of very outspoken and angry people. It turns me off to participating in most threads. It's not surrounding one's self in an echo chamber or safe space, but most of us deal with enough IRL obnoxious people to want to do it more here. I read the article if it's interesting and skip the comments. I'd probably like talking about a lot of the events with people here, but not if the same handful of obnoxious people are going to insert themselves into every thread, but that is what happens in a public forum. Until someone creates and mods better communities and has the patience to be trashed daily in Power Trippin Mods because it's effectually impossible to ban people, this is what we're going to have.

It's sad I can't recommend Lemmy to most people I know. I think about not posting here anymore from time to time, but the platform is a good size for me to handle my audience, and there are a ton of really great users here. My content doesn't pull in the angry crowd typically either. But as a whole, we got a lot of anger, misplaced or not, being the first things new folks are going to see. I'm not huge into the memes or comics a lot of the time, but people generally are going to react much more positively to that than more anarchy/communist rage posts.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

the problem is the angry commies, etc. are the most prolific and aggressive users. if your funny meme gets any decent traction... they come storming in because they see an opportunity to push their propaganda and bully people.

not a day goes by here where I am not told I am an ignorant capitalist facist, or worse.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh, I hear you. I just scolded all the bloodthirsty folks on the post of the hunter getting killed by the elephants. I await that massive downvoting, nevermind I'm one of the few (only?) wildlife rescue people on this platform. The dude seemed innocent and law abiding and well liked in the local community where he was savagely killed and people here are cheering.

It's also getting pretty sketchy with all the Israel comments. I've always been pro-Palestine, but every day the comments seem to be a little less anti-Israel colonialism and more to the Jews secretly run the world and all Jews support zionism side of things. There is so much gatekeeping in the news and political groups here. I really hesitate to participate anymore, which is a shame compared to how things felt at the API Exodus.

I felt pretty far left before I joined up here. I might still be. I was interested in anarchism and communism before spending so much time here. Now I'm not anti that stuff, but yeah, I don't need to hear any more about it right now. I'll keep doing my own thing over here and I'm fine being unaffiliated with a label on what my beliefs are.

Everyone was so scared of being a bad mod, but mods are what keep us from getting to where good users move out because the ones that chase them out while not technically breaking community rules do their thing. It's a thankless job, and that's why I have no desire to be one, but I am forever greatful for good mods.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 4 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, on certain hot topic issues there is no clarity or perspective, just blind rage and hate. And if you try to inject and perspective or context on them, well you get threatened, reported, and your comments will be removed.

load more comments (8 replies)

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Given how much "guilluotine memes" are on here...

no, this is not a "billionaire platform"

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

What?

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Billionaire Lemmy admins? Where do I get my check?

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Elilol@fedinsfw.app 3 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Well, I havent seen any bots or weird AI comments, Id say not yet.

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] TheFonz@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Lemmy is quickly becoming (maybe it always was) a self masturbatory exercise in anti-capitalist Marxist thought. Don't get me wrong, we need to fight capitalism at every moment. This is THE moment.

However, what I've gleaned is that the discussion here cannot step away from theory into the realm of prescriptions. Because prescriptions would entail confronting the harsh reality of the real world and end the little intellectual amusement park that are the lefty anti-capitalist memes.

In other words, Lemmy is acting exactly as designed: a containment space for tankie and lefties to never have to contend with real world actions. Billionaires love spaces like Lemmy because if we ever move the conversation away from memes, thats when they start shaking. But they know exactly that won't happen in places like Lemmy. The merry-go-round is just so much fun!

[–] Eric@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

I agree, but at the same time, would we have the alt-right if it weren't for spaces like 4chan and /r/theDonald that allowed them to build a sense of community and identity? This is better than jerking on Reddit in a sea of bots and "moderates"

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

In a word: distraction. Alternately, the "circuses" in "bread and circuses"

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments