oxjox

@oxjox@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to Reclaim Social Media from Big Tech⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Big Tech doesn’t run social media. It runs algorithmic advertising platforms.

  The majority of people using algorithmic advertising platforms are not content creators, they’re consumers (if you’re reading this, you’re probably not in the majority). They have no interest is active participation in “social media”. They’re in it for the entertainment, the distraction, the memes, the algorithm telling them what they should care about. You can’t remove this feature and expect these users to find content for themselves.

  You can argue the pros and cons all you want, your reasoning may be factual and altruistic, but you will not get a substantial portion of content consumers to migrate to platforms that require more effort. They know what they’re signing up for. They have no interest in “reclaiming social media”.

  Bluesky and Mastodon are fantastic platforms that, in my opinion, revive some of the core tenants of social microblogging. But this is like comparing a bulletin board system (BBS) to the Yahoo! homepage. Some people want to be involved, some people want to be told.

  One of these platforms offers a greater profit making opportunity than the other. If one allows people to make money and another does not, what’s the motivation for the most influential of creators to embrace the latter? And then what’s the motivation of the consumers to embrace a platform that lacks the most influential creators? (Again, if you’re reading this, you likely aren’t a member of the majority.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is not Microsoft. I haven’t updated my plex software in over six months and it runs fine. Still, yes, I would expect updates to any software I purchase as new patches are needed for OS updates, etc. That shouldn’t be more than two updates a year for a given OS - if at all.

  Selling a product, generating revenue, using revenue to improve products or create new products is how we used to run businesses.

  If they’re unable to maintain software updates with the revenue they get, then they should discontinue support of less popular products.

  As I’ve stated on the plex forum, plex is no longer a media management and consumption platform. It’s a video on demand service. That’s their prerogative and that’s fine. The issue is that they’re discontinuing a product that people have purchased and use on a regular basis. I paid money for a product and that product can no longer be used if I change the device I use that product on. They should have left the existing product alone and released something wholly new.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I bought a media management and consumption platform running on my own server using my own clients. For what reason do I need a relay service to watch content in my house on my server?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So what is the move for them?

  Plex has a two-pronged VOD service. They have ad-supported “live television” and they have content to rent.

  I don’t know if that’s enough to sustain them but I don’t really care. I’ve been a PlexPass owner for over ten years. I have only asked that they resolve bugs and made requests for things like proper organization of classical music (which they’ve explicitly stated they will not consider).

  You do bring to light something I hadn’t considered; that they see Plex as a business model. From my perspective, I want to buy a fully developed product with the expectation of bug fixes and security patches etc over time. I genuinely can not think of a single thing the developers have added to the service that I’ve used in the past ten years.

  So, what kind of business model charges money to do things that don’t have an apparent impact on the user experience?

  Plex has been one of my most used applications in the past decade. However, it has its limitations and they are actively imposing more limitations on the experience in favor of “a sustainable business model”.

  The issue is that their sustainable business model is interrupting the users’ sustained use of a platform they’ve already paid for. I’ve had to go through all of my devices and disable all auto-updates to ensure I do not get the “New Plex Experience”.

  What we should be asking is why “selling a product” is no longer a business model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex now will SELL your personal data⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Another longtime user here. If you haven’t already, you might want to disable autoupdates on all your devices. The “new experience” is not without its controversies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Apple CEO “cares about nothing else” Than Building Breakout AR Glasses Before Meta⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d be interested to hear from the youngest generation (15-20 YO) to hear if they care about this at all.

  I’m approaching 50 years old and had been an early adopter most of my adult life. Growing up from the 1980s through 2000s, there was a near-mainstream narrative that we were living in a unique era of emerging technologies. It was exciting and we were anxious for anything new.

  It seems to me that nothing is really new and there is nothing exciting, if not interesting, about technology today.

  I’ve actually been stripping down the technology from my life as it’s become too distracting to get things done and has prevented personal growth and the formation of memories. For one example, I recently subscribed to a print magazine because I prefer a tangible object that I can associate with in and of itself (and choose to own and collect).

  Looking at analog trends like vinyl records and film photography and cassette tapes, it seems like people are at least trying to incorporate tangible objects into a modern lifestyle. Then you have the trend of the dumb phones which indicate people are becoming more aware of the detriments caused by an always connected lifestyle. Thankfully, some car manufacturers are returning buttons to their cars in response to owner feedback about everything being a touch screen.

  I mean, I’m not a multi-trillion dollar organization with different departments studying the feasibility of future products but I do wonder if something like AR glasses are already more of our past than our future.

  I think there’s a more than reasonable desire for a device to help you through your day - especially in foreign countries. But do you think you want that to be glasses or something else?

  Lastly, this reminds me of the prediction from Michio Kaku in Physics of the Future about augmented reality contact lenses. Should we at least accept AR glasses as first step towards contact lenses? Do you think society would accept these 20-40 years in the future?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if we started uploading YT videos to PeerTube?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Because, contrary to what you may think you’ve observed over the past ten+ years, copying and republishing anyone’s content without their permission is a US copyright infringement.

  So yeah; if you want to get their permission, ensure all their links and such are migrated over, and do all the work for them to mirror content they’ve created without the benefit of making any money on it, have at it.

• ⁨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 ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.