The old hacker motivation of information should be free, takes me back. The internet was supposed to of made information free not reinforce the status quo... How wrong we all was in the 90s.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2023
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Yeah completely agree.
Back then we thought people would be objective and want to find objective material truth but instead it has done the opposite it has reinforced the ideals of individualism and personal truth in which people think reality it's a matter of personal opinion that there is no truth.
The promise of the internet would help people see different views and then we'd come to find common truths sort of the way scientific consensus works. Instead, what we got are echo chambers where people are only exposed to opinions that they agree with. I suspect that corporate ownership of media platforms plays a big role in that. Pretty much every corporate platform uses some sort of an opaque algorithm to decide what content people see, and these algorithms are designed to maximize engagement. So, people end up seeing what they want to see.
A large part ofn how we ended up here is largely down to capitalism as well considering the internet and these services started out by hobbyists doing what they loved and what they thought was important which slowly went corporate over time as these servers cost money to run which needs funding, and your forced to monetize and put up pay walls. A possible way to get around this is using RISC based architecture servers and generate our own electricity however that might be (Personally i'm a fan of the stirling engine). However your also running into the problem of funding, though this is where i'm the most communist and advocate building the machine which produce electric generating equipment.
I absolutely agree, we can see how the internet completely changed once it started becoming commercialized. We got to the point where most people just visit a handful of websites like Reddit and Facebook. That said, I'm very optimistic about the emergence of the fediverse because it brings back the way the internet was meant to function. While the fediverse is still tiny, it is steadily growing, and it provides a serious alternative to corporate internet.
It's still runs in the problem of price indexs with being funded, it will eventually fall into the same trap, wheither open source or propreitory the underlining economics of price indexs will the result in the same outcome no matter the best intentions. For example you can have universal healthcare but as long as it's funded by price indexs it will still have the inherent problems associated with it.
I expect to see growth of non profit social networking where people run servers as a hobby without a monetary incentive. This is what we saw happening a lot at the dawn of the internet with people running BBS boards, IRC channels, and small personal sites. I think platforms like Lemmy and Mastodon capture some of the same appeal and a lot of people are starting become disillusioned with profit driven models. We'll see how things develop I guess.
I can see where your coming from though the point i'm saying is that these servers requires electricity which costs money there's also living costs, you can have the best intentions in the world but without going to the root of the problem it will result in the same outcome no matter how you reorganise the management of price indexes.
So far, it seems like a lot of fairly large instances are doing well with the donation model. Only a small percentage of users have to contribute to pay for the hosting costs. Again, this worked the same way with the old internet as well. I don't think the outcome of the fediverse being commercialized is inevitable or even likely.
We said that about the internet back then haha
Non commercial internet never did go away though, it's just become more niche. I think these things ebb and flow. The pendulum swings one way and then the other. :)
If there was just one consistent synthesis then that would be it. The ebb and flow between the commons and survival hopefully one day the synthesis will land on the commons once and for all. The one thing i like about the commons is shows just how much bullshit we don't actually need, look on the google play store all the crap on there people making cash grab apps to make money then compare it with F-droid.
@yogthos @Foresight Hopefully the pendulum is starting to swing back.
The problem with the non-commercial internet has always been that there's often been a barrier to entry, in terms of technical expertise (especially anything that involves setting up your own server).
That's fine for those with the know-how, but it's not so good for grandpa who gets confused and calls the grandkids each time the order of the icons changes on his phone.
Agreed, there is a higher barrier to entry for the fediverse at the moment. I do imagine this will get more polish as the fediverse gets more popular. We're seeing this happening with Linux where it's becoming a lot more accessible over the past few years even though it's still only around 3% of overall OS market.
@yogthos Certainly some of the new iOS and Android apps for Mastodon show a lot of promise.
I'm also genuinely looking forward to the @pixelfed app becoming available in the various app stores in April or May.
So certainly some promising signs on the horizon on the usability front for the Fediverse.
Definitely, I've been using Tusky and Pixelfed app on my phone and both work great. Seeing Pixelfed app on the official stores will definitely be nice.