I don't think the Fediverse will surpass mainstream social media by any means. I genuinely don't believe there will be a day where any Fediverse platform will reach even a tenth of the userbase of its mainstream counterpart.

The current trend of Fediverse platforms seems to operate in this way: "make X ActivityPub compatible" where X is any existing or emerging mainstream platform. A good example is Loops which, I feel is completely disconnected from the TikTok userbase that it attempts to capture. TikTok is very popular precisely because of its addictive algorithm and I'm not sure if the ethics of Loops will follow in that direction.

Although the Fediverse population is small, I think it's pretty resilient at least. We're all here because of a shared ideal of "social media" that isn't owned by a single entity. Unless users outside the Fediverse share the same ideal, it is unlikely they'll stick around.

The three problems listed on your post have pretty much been the same for the past three years and I don't think anyone has made a good solution for it (otherwise, it would have blown up by now). There are so many suggestions like making a quiz or choosing a random instance but we all know those come with their own flaws. I don't know how many years it will take for us to solve this problem but I'm always happy to see new attempts at solving them. The funny thing though is that some of these solutions rely on centralization...

However, in my opinion, I think we are approaching the Fediverse wrong. The current expectation is it to eventually replace mainstream social media (it won't). There is an obsession with a grand narrative or even a utopia.

In my opinion, the "new" problem of the Fediverse should be this:

"How do you build a platform with decentralization first in mind?"

If we start thinking about this question, then problems like "choosing a server" should be irrelevant. I think about this question almost every day and I'm always on the look out for new platforms (both Fediverse and non-Fediverse) that hopefully aren't just "X but ActivityPub". I hope there will be more effort put into developing a platform where choosing an instance isn't thought to be a hindrance but is actually part of the experience. A platform where we aren't actively trying to "hide" decentralization.

The question might sound stupid for some but just try to think about how we're always chasing after mainstream social media and never really coming up with something original and unique where features are designed around decentralized interactions first.

I don't have the answers to this problem but I hope we can change the way we think about the Fediverse.

I don't think it will ever conclude. It does get better but not consistently. Most times I'd still get fatigued from all the dialogue but there are very rewarding moments at the end of some quests that make it feel worth it.

The quests that have been consistently good in my opinion are the "intermission quests" - the last major quest of each region before the next. The last quest of Sumeru is the most memorable one for me.

I'm gonna wait for the platinum ultimate mega collector's anthology edition at a 90% discount after 7 years.

screenshare with audio when

which government? there are plenty of those.

Most people in my media classes seem to be so obssessed with the content of social media as opposed to the systems of social media. A lot of other students and professors are only interested in alternative content rather than alternative systems. They talk about the "algorithm" as some kind of sentient being instead of something programmed by people. It's a weird shift in media studies going from concerns over systems to content.

Another one is how people will only watch things that are on Netflix or whatever the popular streaming app is now. Some people have asked me for film suggestions but when they find out that it's not on Netflix, they lose interest even if I provide them with a link to it from archive.org or other very special places.

There's a PR for it. Hopefully we get it on the next update.

DaVinci Resolve is much better than any open source NLE. Generally, most closed source media production software is better than their open source counterparts except Blender. Blender is incredible and it gives me hope that other open source software can be just as successful in the media industry.

This should explain the fmhy situation:

Out of curiosity, other than fmhy.ml, lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad.ml, what other Lemmy instances were using .ml domains? Also, how are the latter two still running but fmhy.ml isn't?

edit: This has triggered a chain of comments I wasn't expecting. I'd appreciate it if someone can answer on a technical level. Is the latter two using a different registrar or name server which is why it still works for them?

My favorite r/selfhosted comment.

Here's my experience with some search engines:

A Tier -- Gives me the closest results.

• Google: A classic and oftentimes, it gets what I want. A lot of the links are redirects which is annoying.
• Kagi: It's paid but it has a lot of features like "lenses" and "quick answer". The results are pretty good. It gives me good articles and PDFs instead of a blogspot post.
• You.com: The WORST UI EVER but the results are surprisingly decent. It's pretty close to Kagi. It might actually be the same thing. It also has an AI chatbot but I don't think it's as good as Bing's or OpenAI's.

B Tier -- Gives me decent results.

• Startpage: ~~It used to use Google search results but they switched to Bing. It is worse than Google.~~ EDIT: Search results are still closer to Google but they "incorporate Microsoft Bing results". From my experience, it filters out some of Google results that were very useful for me. Their widgets (particularly the Wikipedia one) sometimes displays irrelavant information.
• DuckDuckGo: Results are worse than Google. One time a referral link came up in one of my searches.
• Bing: There's no dark mode. The AI chat tool is pretty nice and is comparable to the OpenAI one (significantly better than Google's Bard). Search results are worse than Google.
• Yandex: Search results are similar to DuckDuckGo.
• Ecosia: Search results are similar to the ones above.

C Tier -- Gives me poor results.

• Brave: Search results feel so inconsistent and out of place. Maybe worse than the ones above.
• Mojeek: Independent search engine. Results aren't very good.

Open Source Front Ends - Results quality varies.

• SearXNG: It depends on which instance you're using. Sometimes search results error out due to rate limiting but you still get results anyway. It has a lot of options and configs so it fits to your liking so you can choose which search engines you want to include.
• LibreX: Actually one of my favorites since I've never encountered errors due to rate limiting but using it to search for images is terribly slow. It has a cool feature where you can add front ends like Libreddit and Wikiless. It also has a built-in torrent search engine.
• Whoogle: The UI isn't very good and it performs poorly on most public instances. A smaller or private instance might be worth looking into. It uses Google search results.

F Tier -- It sucks.

• Qwant: Not available in my country.

If anyone knows of any other search engine not in this list, let me know so I can try it out.