Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
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With the Fediverse slowly gaining steam, I've been thinking a lot about the structural problems with the big social media platforms of old. I really feel like we set ourselves up for this outcome. Of course Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit were going to let us down sooner or later. We placed our trust in private centralized companies to stay good on their ethics. The moment money even entered the discourse in those spaces, they were doomed to become what they are now. I really hope Lemmy and Mastodon and Frendica and Peertube and the other Fediverse platforms can gain popularity. We have a real chance here to build social media from the ground up, but this time with the long term ethics in mind. I really think this decentralized structure can allow us to keep more transparency and allow for smaller feeling communities to thrive without being subject to tyrannical administration.
Edit: Corrected "momey" to "money". Really sounded like a weird fetish there, I am sorry. Momey is not entering the discourse in any spaces, thank you very much.
Any time I talk about decentralized apps to friends and family I come across as some kind of conspiracy driven weirdo. I do not understand why decentralization comes across as some kind of extreme radical movement. I'm not protesting or anything, everything else just sucks lol
Maybe use familiar terms? Skip the tech jargon, and go straight to things like "Reddit and Twitter and Facebook are boring old media with crappy apps and adds everywhere; the cool kids are now hanging out on Mastadon and Lemmy". But you have to really own it.
"Decentralized" means nothing to most people, or worse has been associated with crypto scams, and the stereotypical Bitcoin proselytizer. The truth is, most people can't handle all that information.
You have to appeal to emotion. Statements like "decentralization prevents interference by third parties... Blablabla" will just go over people's heads if they can't relate to an abstract concept. Say something like "My family/friends in /country/ can't buy anything with their local currency because of hyperinflation, so now they all us USD or even Bitcoin" instead. That will appeal to people's emotions.
In the case of the fediverse an appeal to emotion might look like "Reddit has just turned to shit. It's not the platform I first joined. A lot of us have moved to Lemmy and it reminds us of when we first joined Reddit."
Also, just don't push the subject. Some people are not ready to follow you. Let people figure out the benefits at their own pace. Otherwise they get defensive, and you'll do more to make yourself look like a crazy from that place than to convince.
Also there's two facts that can be used to our advantage: the internet started out non-corporate and decentralized, and it's the for-profit corporate nature of these companies that's causing the enshittification. So you can just say that you like stuff that goes back to the old good days of the internet and don't like being under the control of greedy corporations.