A distributed service is much less vulnerable to being bought up by a single narcissistic billionaire who can ruin the online experience of millions of people at once.
On the other hand, a distributed service like Lemmy is spread out over 600 Instances in countries all over the world. If someone buys the most popular Lemmy Instance and wrecks it, those users can simply move to the same communities on the second or third or fourth most popular Instance and the original Instance will wither and die. This also works for communities with power tripping moderators. You can quickly find out through a search which community is the “real” one by the number of subscribers it has.
Waryle@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
You’re just waving away an important fact, which is that shorts and their equivalents are notoriously known for killing attention spans and disrupting the management of dopamine in the brain, causing depression in particular.
We are no longer simply in the traditional custom of the elderly who despise the activities of the younger generations, we are talking about health.
EnderMB@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
While true, how is that any different to the arguments that were used for TV? Additionally, Lemmy is a social network in the same way that Reddit is. Is this not also dangerous?
As has been the recommendation for practically everything for the four decades I’ve been on this earth, moderation is key. Instead of hating new media, either regulate it (if the evidence is truly that great) or treat it with healthy moderation.
ugjka@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I made a rule that i only do social media on desktop pc. Phone is only for emails and rss feeds. Seems to work
Waryle@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Television is bad because it is a passive activity, but it is less harmful than the continuous ingestion of micro-videos. But I don’t see what it has to do here.
What’s the connection? I didn’t mention Reddit.
This would be to ignore the particularly addictive nature of this kind of content. It would be like comparing apples to Snickers: both are sweet, yes, but one is much more problematic.
That could be a point, but I’m pretty sure that if you ask anybody, the main reason given would be that it makes you stupid. But I can agree that this opinion would not necessarily be based on anything other than the eternal contempt for novelty as video games or manga were, for example, before they became popular.