oxjox
@oxjox@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Why BlueSky Isn’t the Alternative to X (Formerly Twitter) You’re Looking For — and Why Mastodon Is the Better Choice Over X, Threads, and BlueSky 1 week ago:
Mastodon emerges as the clear winner. It’s free from investor influence, ad-free, and controlled by a community that values user autonomy over profit.
That’s a gross assumption that people care about any of this. The tech-abled and tech-writers are in as much of a bubble as the Democrats were this past election.
The vast majority of people using social media do so for entertainment and passive news consumption and a ton of rage bait. Who owns or controls it is entirely irrelevant - ex., TikTok.
Ads? You think people in 2024 still care about ads? I think a lot of them enjoy it. Moreover, if you’re a small or local business, you want a platform that allows you to promote your goods and services. This kind of opportunity is what made social media explode. If you were a community business, would you prefer to operate on a platform that was strictly chronological or one that allowed you to pay to get noticed? What if you were an “influencer”? While normal people may dislike this stuff, it’s this stuff that generates revenue for the platform and, like it or not, increases engagement.
This lack of openness confines users to BlueSky alone, making it difficult to connect with friends on other platforms without creating a separate account.
How has this prevented Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube from succeeding?
You’re trying to force a platform to do what you want it to do. You’re not objectively looking at what the majority of social media users want. When I tell people about interconnected platforms, they have no clue what that means or why they would want that. They just want one platform.
You and I recognize the benefits of the Fediverse meaning one application to access many platforms. That may be a reality we observe one day but for now, nothing is fully developed. You’re trying to convince people that robotaxies will replace vehicle ownership today when they’re not done deploying them.
Mastodon’s structure, lacking an algorithm to push specific content, gives users freedom to create a feed that genuinely reflects their interests. For those who are politically inclined, Mastodon has communities and accounts covering all sides, but there’s no algorithm driving you toward any specific viewpoint.
If Bluesky has an algorithm, I haven’t seen it. I get chronological posts from the accounts I follow with an occasional and subtle suggestion to follow other similar accounts. Many of the accounts I follow are news outlets, journalists, civic leaders, etc. Some of the accounts I followed on Twitter are finally joining Bluesky while less than a fraction of those are on Mastodon.
I’ve been using Mastodon more than Bluesky. I like the instance I’m a member of which is operated by people in my physical community. Today I saw that more and more members of my community have joined Bluesky, including my local paper. I can not express the joy I’ve felt this afternoon seeing a platform blossom like the Twitter of old.
Betamax was superior to VHS. DVD Audio was superior to SACD. You may think the flexibility of Windows or Android makes them superior to MacOS or iOS. Ultimately, it comes down to marketing and convenience.
How do you make Mastodon better? You have to get brands over there. You have to get journalists and news outlets over there. When CNN reports that someone said something on Twitter, that’s marketing for that platform. When [the news] starts reporting that [celebrity] or [president] posted on Mastodon - then maybe you’ll start getting some traction. But why would that person post something so important on a platform with so few users?
- Comment on Why are people preferring Blue Sky over Mastodon? 1 week ago:
Mastodon has been around since 2016 and has 804k MAU.
The platform has 57 third party apps.
The platform is decentralized and has community ran servers.
Are you asking about “people” or “nerds”? People prefer Bluesky due to its simplicity and momentum. There are more popular outlets using it. If you’re assuming that People would prefer the complexity of the Fediverse and instances, if you think People know what a decentralized community run server is, you’re a “nerd” (for lack of a better term, I’m sorry).
The battle has always been the same: Windows v. Apple, Android v. iOS, SMS Twitter v. App Twitter. Some people prefer flexibility and investing time in making things work the way they want (Nerds). Some people want an out of the box product that’s well designed and efficient (People).
Fifty Seven Third Party Apps is not a selling point - that’s called anxiety inducing fragmentation. Some people want to walk down the grocery store aisle and choose between 57 options for toilet paper and some people just want “good”, “better”, “best”. The reality is that most people just want to be told what to do. They have too much shit going on in their lives to care about “decentralization”.
Mastodon will never challenge well financed closed or semi-open platforms. As it’s designed, it’s apparent it never intended to. It will continue to grow at a slow rate as an alternative. Hopefully, the fediverse is realized and you can choose to host your own server and gain access to other social platforms.
The reality is that this stuff costs money. In the near future, you’ll have the same three choices with social media as we do with other services: ad-subsidized, subscription, self-hosted. Anything with ads is going to have an algorithm. Anything with a subscription is going to have a board of directors. Selfhosting comes with a steep learning curve.
- Comment on YSK: You don't own your Kindle e-books. 1 month ago:
Not sure why you think this.
You just reiterated what I said.
If you were to rip a Bluray to your computer, you’re legally not permitted to watch that movie if you’re no longer in possession of the disc.
=
You can legally rip a Bluray for backup purposes. If you sell or give away the Bluray, you have to delete the backed up copy.
Technically, if the FBI were to ask you to prove ownership of a digital copy and you had lost the disc, it would be illegal to retain that digital copy.
Bypassing DRM is illegal because the DMCA explicitly prohibits the circumvention…
Yes. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a law that covers copyright protections.
- Comment on YSK: You don't own your Kindle e-books. 1 month ago:
Everyone should generally assume that unless you have something tangibly in your hand, you either do not own it or you may very easily and/or suddenly lose access to it. You could test this by trying to access the content without having to sign in to something.
All these streaming and subscription services should be considered ease of access conveniences. In other industries, you pay a premium for something to be prepared for you to consume. In the subscription industry, you’re paying less because you’re not paying for the content but for a license to temporarily consume the content (and probably because your info is being sold to advertisers).
Fun Fact: If you were to rip a Bluray to your computer, you’re legally not permitted to watch that movie if you’re no longer in possession of the disc. This is because you’re not purchasing the content of the disc but the license to view the content. Decrypting DRM is illegal not based on whether you own the content but because the DRM encryption itself is separately copyright protected.
- Comment on What app+hardware package is most comparable to iCloud Photos in regard to speed and features? 3 months ago:
I genuinely can not find a single thing to like about it. It feels like development was stopped shortly after they finished the wire framing. Plex and QuMagie are significantly better (and they suck).
- Comment on What app+hardware package is most comparable to iCloud Photos in regard to speed and features? 3 months ago:
I’m not blaming my hardware or Elestio for the archaic user interface. It looks like it was developed in the 90s and never made it out of alpha.
- Comment on What app+hardware package is most comparable to iCloud Photos in regard to speed and features? 3 months ago:
Thanks again! I just moved a publicly shared photo album from Google Drive to Ente and it’s great. Just the fact that you can sort images properly is a relief. I can’t believe how horrible photos sites are in the 2020s. Ente certainly has a lot of missing features but I’ll be using it for stuff like sharing (less than 5GB) photo albums with friends and family.
- Comment on What app+hardware package is most comparable to iCloud Photos in regard to speed and features? 3 months ago:
As I said, I already tried that. Immich is a hard no.
Frankly, it’s shocking so many people recommend such a really bad photo application. - Comment on What app+hardware package is most comparable to iCloud Photos in regard to speed and features? 3 months ago:
Ente
Thanks!
- Comment on What app+hardware package is most comparable to iCloud Photos in regard to speed and features? 3 months ago:
Appreciate that. Archaic, no?
- Submitted 3 months ago to selfhosted@lemmy.world | 14 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
That’s a good one. The photomarket on reddit was the main reason I was hesitant to shut down my account. And eBay is way too expensive and unfair for sellers.
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
Twitter.
I know this is the “wrong answer” but I have always used Twitter to keep tabs on local government agencies, newspapers, reporters, restaurants, bars, events, concerts, sports teams, etc. Not to mention all the accounts that pertain to my hobby’s and interests.
I’ve used bird.makeup but it’s not reliable if it works at all. Some agencies, like our transit system and streets department, will post on one thing on their website and something else on instagram or twitter (many have stopped using twitter after the api change). RSS is fine for some things but not everything. I haven’t been using instagram for years because of advertising and the algorithmic timeline. I at least need lists.
Really, the right answer here for my needs is that all these groups need to join the fediverse. I just don’t see that happening.
Or maybe I should say I wish the “existing platform” of my city government would start their own instance.
- Comment on Change My Mind: The Fediverse is not as connected as were told, and it's splintering even more. 10 months ago:
Hopefully this part of the Fediverse is working…
