Can we all stop the in-fighting for a minute and realise how awesome the platform we are on is?

We are forming communities on the realized image of the internet that we were told we would have back in the 80s and 90s.

You can make your own home on the web and have your own niche community, not owned by any corporation, while still being connected to the wider internet.

This feels like something out of a sci-fi movie.

      • Nora@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        Yeah mostly this. Also there seems to be some friction between the old guard and the Fledditors.

        • vamp07@lemm.ee
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          I think in a federated approach you’re always going to have disagreements among the parties that have federated. The beauty of a federated approach is that you have options. You can always just move your association to a different instance and in that way nobody ever controls the whole thing. I would also say that, for the most part, these disagreements are made out to be a much bigger deal than they really are.

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          I don’t think if it as a fight. It’s just people making choices about the content they want to see and services making choices about the content they wish to host. Which is how it was intended to work. For the most part I think it’s just healthy.

    • Ben@lemmy.ml
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      🥊

      You taking to me? Or chewing a brick???

      'Coz you gonna lose your teeth eitherway.

  • Xer0@lemmy.ml
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    That’s why I like this place. Feels very old school somehow. And it’s an actual protocol, like back before everything was the same handful of companies running everything with their own BS software.

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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      It really does feel a lot like the old forums are back, but now they can talk to each other. This should have happened a decade ago!

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      To me it feels pretty much like reddit so far. Maybe I’ve just gotten very good at ignoring reddit’s corporate bullshit though.

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        At least every third post isn’t a flagrant ad poorly hidden as “this cool thing I discovered, you might find it cool too!”

    • flameguy21@lemmy.world
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      kinda reminds me of the old internet when no one knew wtf was going on and everyone was just doing weird shit for fun

      • guy@lemmy.world
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        I’ve been wondering this. If a comment contains illegal content, which is possible in some cases, and blame can be extended beyond the commenter to the content provider, which is also possible, then is every instance the comment federates across culpable?

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          Best to look at federated instances as more official, set-in-stone subreddits. They all (usually) have rules and most of the time the instance is not responsible for a single person doing actions like that. If a kick or ban is also swiftly given, that usually also voids the instance owners of any illegal content.

        • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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          Companies aren’t responsible for it so I doubt instances will get in trouble.

    • sauna7843@lemmy.ml
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      The freedom of expression is relieving and oddly something I forgot existed. There has been so much censorship and polticial correctness that it has ruined what made the old internet fun.

      I would love to see Youtube be next in federation migration!

  • mindfultameprism@lemmy.one
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    This place is fantastic. I’m still working on convincing my husband that it’s going to take the place of Reddit but I’ll wear him down. He thinks because a lot of the posts only have a few comments and 20 or so up votes, it’s not a valid community. I think it’s just getting started and it’s exciting to be here early.

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      I’m really enjoying the relative lack of content and what feels like an absence of astroturfing or bot content and votes. Way less dillholes and the interactions I see are generally meaningful and kind. I’m slowly building my subscription list of communities and can check in on top posts for the day in the morning and evening. I really felt a compulsion to read most of the posts for the day on my few favorite subreddits (mostly picture based so lots of cool shit to look at and get inspired by). I have those communities set up in an RSS feed for when I’m looking to scroll through stuff.

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        I remember when they switched the formatting of vote numbers, e.g., from 5,238 to 5.2k, and realized it’s getting mainstream (which is not bad in itself, but… there’s something with a small community).

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      Any community is a valid community, if there’s 20 upvotes that’s still 20 people who saw, enjoyed, and gave it some time, and that matters on the modern internet where there’s a bit more gatekeeping than usual!

    • coldv@lemmy.world
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      It is not as resourceful for asking a specific technicial question, but other than that, I am actually enjoying the smaller communities. It feels a lot more civil.

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        I think over time it will be. Usenet used to hold the body of knowledge, then it was fora and then reddit.

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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    Not sure where you’re hanging out that you’re seeing infighting.

    Also, I’ve been living in the Internet you describe since 1990. All it takes is intentionally saying no to the corporate offerings; there have been self-hosted and crowd-hosted communities the entire time.

    Every once in a while I miss Fidonet though.

    • TrontheTechie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Fidonet was dope. Something magical about dialing (mostly) local and being able to see stuff so far flung it would cost you hundreds in long distance premiums normally.

      Even if you weren’t a hacker in the modern sense, it was such a good hack in the old school sense that you couldn’t help but feel 1337.

    • RoundSparrow@lemmy.ml
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      Also, I’ve been living in the Internet you describe since 1990. All it takes is intentionally saying no to the corporate offerings; there have been self-hosted and crowd-hosted communities the entire time.

      Yha, advertising was non-existent on social media in the 1980’s, BBS systems and such were run because people like sharing information.

      Facebook, Twitter were really about selling stuff and commercial advertising, people flocked to it.

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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        That’s one view on BBSes; I remember ratios and some services charging for extra line access.

  • nick@campfyre.nickwebster.dev
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    The software is a little clunky but this is everything I dreamed of when I got half way through making a peer-to-peer reddit clone in 2015 and gave up lol

  • Ramin Honary@lemmy.ml
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    We are forming communities on the realized image of the internet that we were told we would have back in the 80s and 90s.

    Exactly! Back in the 80s, tech enthusiasts would run their own dial-up message boards in their homes. The Fediverse is like that, but with all the benefits of modern technology. Anyone can run their own instance if they have a decent internet connection (usually fiber). But it is more than just message boards: they can run Lemmy, Mastodon, Wordpress, and even things like Tor and NextCloud, and instantly contribute their computing resources to the larger Fediverse community.

      • skiba@lemmy.ml
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        Just wanted to say I appreciate your reference of the Dodo.

        Reject modern life, return to Dodo

        Cheers mate.

        X

    • iSharted@sh.itjust.works
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      I’m not that well read on this subject, but you can do this in your house or with a VPS? I always thought there was some conflict with residential internet and selfhosting?

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        You can have issues with self hosting on a residential connection if your provider gives you a CGNAT connection and not a dedicated one. With CGNAT (Carrier Grade Network Adress Translation) your line is shared between multiple users. So are the ports, so imagine you’re trying to open a port on your router and expect to reach from internet to your home using that port. Your carrier may have splitted the whole available ports pool between the 4 customers behind your IP, and when you try to reach <your IP>:<the port> your packets may go Somewhere else. This thing is ok for when you use internet for classical browsing, not when you try to have traffic initiated from internet up to your home

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          Many ISP:s also forbid hosting servers in their terms of use, regardless of the technical possibilities.

    • Anonymousclimber@lemm.ee
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      Usenet is distributed. If you don’t mirror bins it’s not impossible to run your own “federated” server.

      • Thul@lemmy.ml
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        I loved FIDOnet - I dialed into the Chicago node to send an “electronic mail” when I was in the boy scouts. I knew I had to have that at home.

  • twhite@lemmy.ml
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    The fact that everything is just “working” feels great!

    Apps like Jerboa have made it so seemless to transition from deaddit.

    Looking forward to the upcoming features that make the communities easier to join for the layperson.

    Cheers!

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      I’m honestly really impressed by the fact that it is just working.

      In les than a month Lemmy saw an exponential growth and from my point of view it was always very smooth. It was a bit slow from time to time but knowing that all of that is just running on a bunch of servers puts together by few passionate relying on donations or just their personal resources.

  • Ben@lemmy.ml
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    Methinks you have been so busy trying to fight that you didn’t realise that nobody else is fighting.

    However, there’s a slight issue with ‘still being connected to the wider internet’ as I don’t see results for Lemmy content appearing in my searches the way Reddit content comes up.

    So it feels rather like a sci-fi movie when you’ve had too many mushrooms - kind of bright, but a bit confused…

    However, it does help focus that idea that - if we are going to have interesting discussions and create information which is archived - it shouldn’t be inside Reddit, and it should be accessible by search.

    So Lemmy is half way there…

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      The search engines are increasingly becoming enshitified anyway. I no longer think being found on Google is going to be the hallmark of success long term it was purported to be. We need a new search paradigm. And I don’t just mean reinventing search engines. I mean new ways of organizing content and answering search queries. Or better funding models for indexed search.

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        I think you could really plot the decline in usability of Google search over the last 10 years. SEO and algorithms have really ruined the user experience.

        • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
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          You know what? I agree. Even over the last few months, I’ve seen it in action.

          Before the blackout stuff began, I used to have to manually include the word “reddit” for reddit to even show up for most of my queries. Now, I can barely google anything without reddit showing up right near the top of the results.

          Shenanigans, I tell ya.

          • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
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            Consider this- so many people were just adding reddits to their search queries that it became something that was more standard than queries without a specific website.

            Seems pretty obvious to me…

            • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
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              Chill, it’s nothing to be serious about :)

              I mean, it’s also possible that I have just been searching different criteria, but a casual observation is just a casual observation at the end of the day. An anecdote is just an anecdote. I didn’t realise that I should have also had to mention all other possible causes lol.

              “Obviously”, other causes are also possible. Maybe my home network remembers frequent use of the website. Maybe it’s the large number of clicks that come from those google results.

      • jazir5@lemmy.ml
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        I think we need decentralized search, or rather federated search if possible. Something akin to Lemmy and kbin for search. I’m not sure what the implementation would look like, but it needs to happen I think.

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    No wait! I’ve just moved in! I missed all the fight!

    I mean… can’t you just do a little??? 🥺

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      Just wait a few days till some people overreact to something and call for defederating an entire instance due to it

      • Klear@lemmy.world
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        Wouldn’t be an online community if there wasn’t occasional constant infighting.

  • Matt Payne@sh.itjust.works
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    I agree.

    BUT some degree of infighting means we’re alive and engaged with the platform. I think it’s healthy infighting.

    • Ramin Honary@lemmy.ml
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      Exactly. No human community exists without infighting. Infighting is not a good thing, but it is a good sign – a sign of growth.

    • sauna7843@lemmy.ml
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      There is a significant difference between constructive criticism and infighting. Infighting is often fueled by emotion and can be seen as toxic, harsh, and genuinely unappealing.

      Constructive criticism on the other hand is a great way to provide another view point to someone who may not agree with you. It is up to them to decide on how they want to use this new perspective.

      • Matt Payne@sh.itjust.works
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        Right, but social media (and any social movement) needs to have some degree of blood-pumping excitement. Constructive criticism is super important, but so is passionate people yelling at each other. The important thing is that we’re emotionally mature enough to handle each other’s passion. If infighting leads to people crying “defederate now!” then that’s a problem. But “constructive” criticism can lead to the same fracturing.

        Let’s just ride the waves and steer this thing somewhere cool and strong! And it’s fine if “infighting” is part of the engine that keeps the digital blood pumping.

  • Higante@lemmy.world
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    It’s only infighting because we’re all members of a living community. Other wise it’s just fighting

  • sauna7843@lemmy.ml
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    It has been quite emotional to see this community grow! I was a lurker here when Lemmy only had hundreds of users and to see such a vibrant and diverse set of instances form has been wonderful! I hope to see this platform returning some of the nostalgia from the Golden Age of the Internet. An internet for fun!