The fediverse was designed to let every instance or even every user decide for themselves who they want to interact with. There is no need to persuade others to use the fediverse the same way you do. A few months ago I wrote a blog post about why my personal single-user instance wouldn't defederate from corporate-run instances as long as they play by the rules, with the clear intent to defederate if they do things that harm the way I interact with the fediverse. People got outright vile, called me names and tried to convince me that any tiny interaction with anyone they don't like would inevitably lead to the death of the free fediverse.

Personally I would rather have federated social media based on an open protocol where every user can decide what's the best way to interact with content than being forced into proprietary platforms just to get updates from my favorite video game studio, streamer or artist. It may well be that there are people on the fediverse who exclusively want to interact with vegan FOSS communist hippies and that's fine. But I'm not one of those people and I don't see why they should decide how I run my instance or get mad at me about something that doesn't affect them at all.

Let's all be as tolerant as we claim we are and treat people (and instances) based on their deeds and not based on how similar they are to ourselves.

[–] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de -4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

On second thought, maybe I do want an "us vs. them" with "them" being people who use downvotes as an "I disagree" button.

Disclaimer: this was meant as a joke.

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 20 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I did not realize there were downvote rules. How am I supposed to use my downvote?

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

There aren't, but it's worth thinking about what a vote does. In Lemmy and similar systems, comments with higher scores are listed first and seen by more people. A downvote means "fewer people should see this".

Now perhaps you just believe fewer people should see things you disagree with. That's not my position, but I won't try to talk you out of it here. If that's not your position, however and you instead believe civil, well-reasoned discussion between people who have different viewpoints is valuable, then using votes to simply express agreement or disagreement will not serve to promote such discussion.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How about a second vote system for agree/disagree, because I agree with you in principle and try to use it this way, but in practice the votes are definitely used for that. Now that I write it out though I realize people will just double smash both buttons when they disagree anyway.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

I wonder whether up/down, like/dislike, etc... is the right concept for discussions. Slashdot's concept of attaching a label like "insightful" or "off-topic" when rating a comment seems like a good idea to me; the UI nudges people toward the admin's preferred reasons for voting.

[–] dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Definitely not a strict rule and I wouldn't want to force anyone to do it the way I do (maybe I should have marked my comment as a joke) but as far as I understand, downvotes were originally meant for spam or low-quality/low-effort comments. Stuff that just doesn't add anything to the duscussion and isn't worth reading. Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often on Lemmy.

Downvoting comments that you disagree with just to bury them, especially without even leaving a comment that explains why you disagree, just feels petty.

Overall, I'd rather upvote a well-written comment even if I disagree with its contents and downvote ten "yeah, same" comments that agree with me but add nothing to the discussion.

[–] A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

It's more like "etiquette." The downvote button serves to bury a comment or post, so it's arguably best to use it as a "this isn't relevant or is hateful/unproductive" button.

[–] akrz@programming.dev 24 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The middle one! I think for-profit and non-profit solutions can co-exist and benefit off each other :)

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As long as the advertisers and corporate bullshit stays on the for-profit solutions and doesn't start bleeding into everything else, this is fine. Hopefully they'll act as a wick and draw the corporate interests to themselves.

[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago

Luckily I do not think they will be able to add Ads to federated posts since ads need to be explicitly disclosed, and that means they can be easily blocked even at the server level

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agreed! I'm always nervous about EEE, but this is one of those cases where if they do try to modify the protocol, we all collectively tell them to fuck right off. They're here on our turf, we don't need them at all. They want to play nice in their own corner? Fine. They start misbehaving, sending ads, trying to change things? Pass, defederated.

[–] bisby@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Hopefully. The thing about social platforms is that if everyone else leaves and doesnt tell them to fuck right off, it can get lonely. Xmpp still exists and im sure some people use it successfully, but its definitely not the same scale it once was

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think it's accurate and actually a bit disingenuous to lump WordPress and Flipboard together with Facebook/Threads, because these entities behave drastically differently, Flipboard and Wordpress are sharing their content with others on the Fediverse (plus wordpress is hosted software, people can run their own versions of it independently) without trying to compromise and manipulate users, Facebook is trying to recruit Fediverse users onto their platforms, that's why they're doing one-way Federation and banning Keywords related to Fediverse related platforms. To say "iT'S All cOrPOrATe" is ignoring these key facts, which is why I say it seems disingenuous.

Bad instances are going to be a struggle always, that's just the nature of a federated network, there will always be bad actors, compromised nodes, and malicious users that we have to deal with, that's never going to end no matter what happens. Even if it becomes infrequent it'll still always happen.

[–] cerement 23 points 7 months ago

Corporate Instances versus Open Fediverse

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 21 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

public companies always enshittify in the end so 3rd one

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world -4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not necessarily. And in the Fediverse even more not

Federation is like the magic lotion against enshitification

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

how can you say that?

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Its a lucky guess. Enshitification happens in walled gardens because users cannot move to another service. In the Fediverse, I think this aggressive commercialization will not happen because users can just change to another server.

[–] sodalite 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

corporate vs. free, then zoom into free and vs. bad instances. we still need something like TheBadSpace to help with safety and moderation.

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

That's true! Updated the image.

[–] NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth 6 points 7 months ago

I came up in the 90’s.

Give me that wild Wild West again.

[–] pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

thread's bad everyone else good*

(not counting trolls and n##i instances

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

That could actually be a forth category, but what's the argumentation? Because Threads is a monopoly?

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago

No wait, I think it doesn't. Because other instances will federate with Threads and because of this, it doesn't make sense to block Threads permanently.

[–] Ignacio@kbin.social 4 points 7 months ago

Fourth panel, meaning Corporate & Tankie Fediverse vs Free Fediverse.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 months ago

Fourth panel. AI trained on all the above, floods it all with generated content rendering the signal-to-noise ratio too terrible to tolerate, even for corporations.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 7 months ago

Open fediverse and bad instances

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

I'll be honest, I never think about it. That's such a minor and non-relevant issue to have in my life, I can get to that once everything else works for a change. :'(

[–] PoliticallyIncorrect@lemm.ee 0 points 7 months ago

2nd.