this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Is there a solution to make the whole ecosystem mature and professional?
Certainly having everyone on one instance isn't the way to go.
We could have a constellation of smaller service providers, like we do for email nowadays. Everyone talks about Gmail+Outlook having 80% of the market, but we all forget that the tail still exists and that is made of hundreds of independent companies which make a healthy living charging $20-$50/year.
And what's stopping that from happening now?
I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that servers die because they are difficult to maintain. This is perhaps especially true for kbin/mbin based servers.
I suppose for enough money some might be willing to maintain, but I'm not sure it's that simple.
Mostly, culture. Everyone hates ads and corporate controlled networks, but almost no one wants to pay for a commercial service provider. People say that donations is an acceptable alternative, but no one pays enough for admins and developers to make a living out of this.
I can tell you that if if that I had 10000 paying customers for my commercial offering ($29/year for Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix and Funkwhale), I'd be able to pay myself a good salary, support the developers (I pledge 20% of Communick's profits to the devs) and hire a couple more people to help me. It is not a lot, and a lot less than Facebook extracts from each user by exploring user data.
I do not blame people for this, but that's because as much as people hate ads and corporate controlled networks, they hate parting with their money more, and corporate-controlled, ad-ridden social media is free.
"Skin in the Game" is a powerful filter. If people are not willing to put their money where their outrage is, then their opinions and desires will be completely disregarded.
I can bet that the majority of people here on Lemmy have paid a handsome amount of money for their corporate-controlled smartphone, yet paying less than 3 bucks a month to sustain an independent internet is such an ordeal? I have no sympathy for these types.
I do have sympathy, considering a smartphone has become somewhat a necessity and not everyone is aware of options like the FairPhone. I agree about the filter, but it's also true that no matter how much time social media consumes in peoples' life, a lot of people would not want to say "I spend money on social media," to look quite that online, no-life internet obsessed what a loser and all other sorts of insults. And even if they told nobody, they might feel ashamed about it—because oh my god, who pays for social media except a terminally online power-tripping mod lmao. Especially since the norm now is to not pay, and people tend to resist change that incurs any cost on them. Ads and the corporate control thing are probably just a minor annoyance for most people, they personally have not hit their bullshit limit yet, not everyone has the same priorities. I'd like them to have the option of a nice ad-free social media too. If I wasn't around for the Reddit API drama I would not even be aware of the Fediverse and would not be here having this discussion with you. Also, not everyone is in a financial position to donate for social media.
Honestly kind of fearing a negative response because of your statement you have no sympathy for that kind of person—which means you might be more willing to engage in a harsh manner with me too. But I'll take that risk in order to speak up in opposition to the no sympathy viewpoint.
Hard disagree. Computers? Internet access? Sure. Those are very difficult to live without. But a smartphone is still a convenience at best and an expensive toy at worst. The only reason that people think that is such an indispensable part of our lives is because people (especially in North America) will happily give away their freedoms in the name of convenience, and corporations will gladly profit from that.
My lack of sympathy does not mean animosity. It just means that I do not submit to the idea that people can "play the victim card" when talking about the evil corporations if they are not willing to put anything on the line.
There are plenty of people who will say "I accept the ads because that is what allows me to have so much content for free". I may disagree with that, but at least it is consistent. What is hard to swallow is to see a bunch of Gen Z privileged people "protesting" against spez without giving up on anything of material substance.
Some people get a smartphone instead of a computer, but you are right, I probably should have said "something with internet access."
Sorry. In my experience, lack of sympathy is often paired with animosity and harshness, so I am a little wary. Disagreements in real life are a lot easier because you can tell tone better, and if the person is civilly disagreeing, or if they are going to start getting hostile on you. I'll agree to disagree here.
Implement OpenID? Or logging in with web3 (blockchain)? Or maybe account backup on google drive?
Any solution is better than no solution
Is the problem account making or data having persistence/backups?
Or is the issue having an account on service A, service A dieing and then when you create an account on service B you have to start over again, so we need to improve account portability?
I guess I also wonder... Is that a real problem for Lemmy? For Mastodon where you follow users sure, but does anyone care about their Lemmy account?
Ideally both issues should be fixed.
Personally I don't care much about old posts that nobody reads anyway. But my nick, settings, subscriptions, avatar, and block list are important.
So perfect solution should be ability to log in from any instance, not just the one I made my account on.
Lemmy allows to export and import those in one click. Does Mbin also support this?
Can I export it from an instance that doesn't exist anymore?
No, that's why I save it every few weeks