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John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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It's brief, around 25:15

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nf7XHR3EVHo

If you've been sitting on making a post about your favorite instance, this could be a good opportunity to do so.

Going by our registration applications, a lot of people are learning about the fediverse for the first time and they're excited about the idea. I've really enjoyed reading through them :)

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[–] 46 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Agreed, but at least Bluesky is a public benefit corporation, so it supposed to take in the needs of society as well as profit in its decision-making. That may not be much, but it's a start.

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    I'm not familiar with the details of that, but it seems like more of a red herring to me. A form of controlled opposition to divert people away from truly revolutionary platforms.

    Of course it has to seem like a plausible alternative, but is it actually decentralized or altruistic enough to make a meaningful difference? I think not.

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  • [–] 46 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    "Public benefit corporation" is such an oxymoron, I know it's cliché to say this but it reads like something out of 1984.

    If your goal is truly to benefit the public, why wouldn't you start a non-profit? It's because they want profits, which will always be at odds with the interests of the public.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago*

    If your goal is truly to benefit the public, why wouldn't you start a non-profit?

    Because your non-profit isn't likely to go anywhere; Capitalists don't give significant money to non-profits, but they'll invest in a public benefit corporation because of the potential for profit. The corporation can then take their money and use it for whatever public benefit it intends to work towards. It's a workaround to try and scrape some benefit to society out of capital, that otherwise wouldn't exist.

    Whether Bluesky is actually a good example of a public benefit corporation or not, I have no idea, I don't use it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Their protocol allows for federated relay servers, but I'm not aware of anyone having done the exercise of launching one.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    That's because, to my understanding, the prerequisite to be able to launch one is "handle the raw, unfiltered firehose of all the traffic on the entire platform". A relay has to be a mirror of the entire company's hosting infastructure, and you'd have to essentially do it for free. It's no puzzle to me why no one's done it yet.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    You’re absolutely right, but as a UxD, until these platforms learn UxD, they’ll never work. They can’t.

    It doesn’t matter how great they are, the vast majority of people won’t learn. And they shouldn’t have to. That’s why big commercial apps are better – good designers need to eat, and big companies can pay for their eggs.

    It doesn’t matter how good your model is, without great UxD, you’re dead in the water.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    "Public benefit corporation" is a meaningless designation. All it means is they have the option of putting their mission over their shareholders, not that they are obligated to do so.

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