A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
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I mean looks around
Are we invisible?
Hello! Fediverse over here!
Community maintained!
Fresh memes!
rings bell
Come and get it!
Fresh memes!
My theory is that the primary reason why the fediverse isn't more popular with young people is cultural. For instance, I don't think anyone in generation z would use the term "fresh memes" :)
But yeah I also think that tumblr has a nostalgia advantage. It represents the internet before it "turned bad", while the fediverse represents a possible future for the internet. Both have different appeals, but I think that nostalgia wins out for a lot of people.
I think it does too, but the problem with nostalgia is that you forget about all the shitty parts and just remember the good bits. Tumblr is still owned by big tech oligarchs even if it is smaller than the other platforms, and is still vulnerable to the kind of enshittification that the fediverse is more insulated against. Enshittification actually came for Tumblr long ago but it looks positively tame in comparison with other platforms.
Yeah I agree, I think looking towards the future is a better idea in general. I'm on lemmy but not tumblr myself
I left every single western social network because they’re all filled to the brim with angry, asshole people. America has a ton of miserable people that will go out of their way to be rude to others on every social network. I’m sick of that energy.
If it’s not rude people, it’s ad after ad.
The only things I use now are Xiaohongshu (Rednote) and Lemmy (my own instance).
This comment is going to piss just about everyone off, but tik tok was actually amazing for the couple hours America was banned. That's not an endorsement of tik tok just an observation.
Funny enough, this is why I’ve enjoyed Rednote a ton. I’ve found that a lot of western folks are there as a reprieve from how insanely volatile Meta and other platforms have gotten. It’s a different vibe and the platform was specifically built for people to learn and grow together. The audience there very much strives to keep a good vibe and will call out anyone that tries to disrupt that.
Besides a bit of the fediverse, I’m back at reading blogs via RSS. I’ve never stopped using RSS and it’s just so nice.
I used to have a really robust RSS feed but lost it when the service I was using changed. Need to rebuild that.
Based instance name.
Thanks! Never thought I’d own a domain with “yachts” in it.
The people's version of owning yachts
It’s the closest I’ll ever get.
It's even more fun when the angry asshole people are mods on the platform!
See: reddit
Tumblr is owned by Automattic.
The WordPress plug-in company?
The WordPress company, as in the developers of WordPress itself.
Yeah, the one with the lawsuits involved and blocking plugins and such. Search for Mullenweg.
Been out of the WordPress dev scene for about 10 years. Didn't know they got so big
A large percentage of the internet runs on wordpress
When asked specifically about how Bluesky might fit into these plans, a spokesperson would only comment on its ActivityPub progress.
Based. But yeah tumblr has been talking about activitypub for years now and i get that this takes a lot of work, but damn they are taking a while.
Also, Bluesky doesn't use the ActivityPub standard, so it sounds like bullshit.
So, on the plus side that means they'll be on the Fediverse soon.
On the negative, by now I fully expect Matt Mullenweg to flip out over some perceived slight or rivalry and ruin Tumblr for everybody 🤷
Early 2000s, pre-smartphone internet was better. That isn't a romanticized claim.
Back then the internet was a bunch of coffee shops. Not literally, of course - but for me it was about 30 people on messenger, my favorite chatroom, a random message board, a small but far flung group of people on LiveJournal, and sometimes even my Neopets guild.
Each was my own retreat. The weird and funny stuff we shared there was created and shared because people had a passion for whatever. It also was great in that you could learn about something, and share it with another group that had not seen it yet.
Today the internet is the infinite cul-de-sacs of meme pages, political messaging groups, and disinformation rings on Facebook, along with approximately 6 people that keep showing up from your friends list of hundreds. Or it’s the screaming gladiatorial stadium of Reddit, where the sheer volume of noise smothers any particular voice. Maybe it’s the infinite lawless Walmart of X or even the carefully manicured Target that is BlueSky.
From mining your attention, to hawking trinkets amidst the spectacle, or attempting to sell a little bit of everything to anyone, the new internet lacks third places. It’s all business, all the time, and you can feel it. Every meme is created to engage with that platform’s broadest audience. Everything is homogenized and lacks uniqueness. All the content has been aggregated and reshared, and in the endless and futile search for validation from the algorithm.
And that’s why I like Lemmy. It’s a digital third place.
In many ways it was better. More organic and even the big names like google and amazon were more quirky upstarts rather than the evil megacorporations they are today.
That said lets not sugarcoat it too much. The early 2000s were edgelord central and message boards like 4chan and something awful were quite influential. Then you had gaming message boards like gamefaqs and the like. Woof so much bad trolling. Some of it funny and well done to the point of art but most just abrasive and annoying. The small message boards and communities were amazing though.
Pre-plattform was better i would say. The problem are all these plattforms they have to much power and dictate markets, opinions and life in generell for to many people.
Pre-portal?...
Nah, there was a time before all the legislations and regulations, a time with more freedom to... do whatever. It wasn't all for the best, though.
I am going to tell a sad thing that will make you all feel offended, but I can't refrain:
The problem isn't in the place/server/whatever. At least that is the minor part of the problem. The problem is in the people themselves. No matter where they will go, they will bring their shit with them to that new place.
You underestimate how much interface and algorithms impact how people interact with eachother.
Facebook has spent millions figuring out how to make your feed as divisive and confrontational as possible. I don't think it's had a good outcome for humanity and I think it's more in the powers-that-be's hands than the above person thinks it is.
It's inevitable for ads supported social media.
They need to keep you "engaged" to show you more ads, and the most effective way to do it is to foster conflict.
I agree with this. I 100% believe the lurch to the right’s acceleration in America was fueled by social media algorithms.
It started with billionaires buying up all the media, but was further accelerated by the algorithms.
I’d argue that this is just a continuation of billionaires buying up the media.
This and clickbait. Both were a race to the bottom for information and debate quality motivated solely by greed.
I’m wondering how Tumblr is a safe space while it’s still filled with porn-bots. I tried the platform several times and no matter what I do, I always get smacked with some random NSFW content.
I get spammed on Lemmy each week by "Nicole the Fediverse chic from Poland". Each time from a different instance.
I hope she isn't the start of the end.
Nah, there's always going to be bots in any public network, it's normal, should be fought and all but there's always adversarial individuals, we definitely should find who's this Nicole person and get them to stop this crap, but you'd be surprised how NORMAL it is to have anything on the public internet under constant, 24/7 attack
She/it is the only spammer I have encountered here. Would have thought it would be easy to block because each time is almost an identical message.
When people are talking about safe spaces in the current socio-political climate they aren’t talking about porn. They’re talking about Nazis.
Majority of tumblr nsfw seems like some kind of black and white artsy erotica made by touch starved girl nerds so what’s not safe about it
i've been there since david karp. you can take tumblr from my cold hands.