I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
It’s definitely possible to see scammy for-profit strategies pop up.
A more likely outcome is Big Tech coming in and fragmenting and dissolving ActivityPub servers like all the Lemmy servers. It will most likely be Big Tech incorporating the big tech websites/servers (Meta, Twitter, etc) into ActivityPub and then creating a closed Big Tech ActivityPub-like system where the artifically popular servers/instances (Meta, Twitter, etc.) migrate from FOSS ActivityPub to a closed for-profit system and essentially close off FOSS Lemmy. And most people wont understand FOSS ActivityPub vs Big Tech ActivityPub-like system thereby rendering OG Lemmy useless.
I prefer the idea of have separation; one whole server(s) for bots, one for for‐profit big tech, etc. Big Tech can play but won’t interfere with the heart of the AcivityPub.
But who tf am I?
They won’t fragment it. They’ll absorb its content while contributing as little as possible to it. Here’s how it will happen.
They’ll extend the feature set in a way that makes their instance more desirable to use. They’ll have boosts, but they’ll also have private systems to engage with like Reddit karma or Slashdot-style voting (funny, informative, insightful, etc). Anything that engages your stupid lizard brain to make the chemicals, and even better if those systems just aren’t supported by ActivityPub because they have plausible deniability for why these features only work on their thing.
Having created The Nicest Fediverse Server Ever that, so far, appears to be playing by all the rules, they’ll begin to dominate. A few voices will protest, but most will say “no, this seems to all be above board!” And because that will be true at the time, our Prophets Cassandra will be largely ignored. We’ll stay at this point until The Nicest Fediverse Server Ever has a majority of Fediverse users registered there and using it as their primary portal to the Fediverse. This is the most likely point to introduce advertising, when user trust is high and they can claim that they need to support the business of hosting all this. If they offer subscriptions, they won’t be necessary to access the site yet.
After capturing a critical mass of users, they’ll become covertly, then overtly, hostile toward other federated servers. They’ll allow you to participate in a thread from a federated server and dutifully share your post so you can enjoy getting replies, but they’ll have private threads too, until the private ones outnumber the federated ones. They’ll add more features that are either incompatible with ActivityPub or simply not shared with it, like a privately owned Imgur that only works with their site, or choosing to encrypt some part of user communication so it’s not practical to interoperate. They’ll defederate from some servers because THINK OF THE CHILDREN, some because they’re poorly managed, and some, in time, for not being Advertiser-Friendly. The ads now go fully rancid, the gloves come off, and would you look at that: your data HAS been sold to the highest bidder all this time.
Now fully enshittified, they’ll declare that the majority of their users are no longer interested in federation and that doing so is an expense they don’t need. They will defederate entirely, keep all the users, and kill everything that came before it.
Hahahah. Very good explanation, and well articulated. My thoughts exatcly
and this is why we must FIGHT BACK!!! I recommend the best way is to make the entire messaging system, twitter included, government owned and regulated. Who pays for it? The top 10% of all wealth and income earners in each country. BAM!!! Simple and QED.
We can privatise it again later, when the rules and environment for regulation are more settled.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
An article covering similar issues to what you brought up.
much thanks!
Yes. Exactly, however, it’s 2023 so new and more vicious strategies will probably be used.
How? If, say, Facebook built a Lemmy-compatible instance, the worst they could do is eventually defederate it from other Lemmy instances, in which case we’re right back where we started.
Don’t know exactly, but it’s what happened with Google and XMPP.
Same thing can happen here.
But I’m imagining that Big Tech starts to post from their own server with content that is interesting to the the masses, rather than us nerd, then they market to all the other servers to get a bunch of sign ups (maybe with exclusive content or features, idk), then federate with their own other websites and servers using their own proprietary ActivityPub, then bam OG ActivityPub never takes off, withers and become even fewer nerds like me, and and a bunch of bots with little content.
what is activitypub?
this is why all these concepts fediverse, kbin, lemmy, activitypub etc etc needs to be publicly disclosed in an internationally accessible wiki so that no single entity can ever take control. the fact there is no public and clear disclosure means people out there are CONTROLLING these technologies and have BAD INTENTIONS. Disclose them NOW.
Are you missing the /s tag?
I believe all the information is publicly available. The problem though, is as you say: it’s not easily accessible to us laymen. It’s all in very specific technological terms and codes. In the name of federation, accessibility, and transparency, there definitely needs to be a single database that describes all this, just like your wiki idea.
Slow down man. Activity Pub is just the system that lets Mastodon, Kbin, Lemmy, etc.communicate with each other. Pretty sure it’s open source and not some evil scary monopolistic thing like Chromium that every uses begrudgingly. Not everyone on the internet is a bad actor, even Kbin itself is developed by one guy in an apartment working 24/7 to try to keep everything afloat.
All of these things have already been disclosed.
ActivityPub is a public standard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
kbin is open source. https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin
Lemmy is also open source. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
Google is your friend.
I’m not sure about your last sentence. Google likes to collect cadavers. But I know what you mean :)
much thanks!! i will have a look at them :P thank you fo taking my concerns seriously :p actually there are huge groups of us high tech high AI high IQ people on discord who all feel marginalised and hated (many many incels here), and having people like you explain and open up really helps stop us from being suicidal and hating the world. we’re all struggling. pls help. much thanks!
Hey, I responded to some of your questions earlier. I don’t know if you saw my most recent response to clarify a few more things.
I have to say, seeing you on this thread being somewhat militant has me thinking you might be concern trolling? I’m trying to help you out, but you’re jumping straight to conclusions like Kbin is going to cause WW3.
For anyone curious, this is the previous thread in question: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/120407/Welp-I-just-deleted-my-12-year-old-240k-karma#entry-comment-471743
Obviously a troll
there is nothing about being a troll if legitimate concerns are being raised. these concerns need to be raised now. it’s good helldiver pointed some replies, but im guessing they will not be complete enough. people need to stop thinking the current state of information disclosure is enough. it isn’t enough. look at the way crypto is disclosed. 50% of users have no clue wtf is going on. info needs to be disclosed in clear and concise and non-technobabble ways. github is horrible. it’s full of geekspeak. we need to do better if we are to save humanity. we cannot wait till 500 years to solve hyperspace. we need to solve it now. that is why this is not being a troll. because we need to push ourselves. harder, faster, better than ever! look at fusion power. should have been solved 10 0 years ago. wtf is humanity doing? just scamming and cheating their way around. geezus. no wonder alien civs are not interested in talking to us. get real.
Wait, are you saying that you didn’t even read what I said? And you’re assuming that what I wrote is just shit? Without even reading it? I gave you a pretty thorough response. Probably took me a solid ~15 minutes to type out and research and provide hyperlinks.
Troll probably isn’t the right word to describe you. But it seems you’ve already made up your mind, and you want the Fediverse to be nefarious. Without listening to any actual discourse.
I would say that I feel you’ve wasted my time, but this has been pretty entertaining watching you come up with these crazy responses. Plus, I’ve learned a bit more about this platform, researching your questions. I’m going to go ahead and block you now.
People gave you the basics and nobody stopping you from DYOD
You are not asking questions. This post is a stream of rhetorical questions that can be easily addressed with a search engine. With that being said, specifically, what are you asking?
Take a quick look through the last ~24 hours of my profile. I’ve put a fair amount of effort into answering their questions. While it’s been entertaining for me, don’t waste any more time with this person. They are not listening.
@yesdogishere
Recommend researching what the Fediverse is. The whole concept is that there’s no single entity controlling the service. Literally impossible-ish.
much thanks!
Have… Have you tried Google?
There’s not inherently bad about there being a profit motive. Servers are expensive, developers are expensive. There are costs to be paid, and if I am going to do something full time I’m going to have to pay my bills, too.
That said, there’s definitely a line where it’s taken too far and it loses what originally made it great cough cough.
I think otherwise, only because being profit driven always ends up hurting the consumer. Whether it be squeezing out every penny from us and them not caring about leaving us destitute, to actively obliterating the environment, to stealing our data because “hey, you have nothing to hide right? Also, we’ll only use it for marketing ;) . Don’t ask why it’s so expensive to sell.”
It’s up to you as a consumer to make those choices.
But would you do your job if it didn’t pay you and you couldn’t pay your rent? If I decided to really put effort into running an instance, developing a nice frontend, paying for the servers, should I not be able to pay my rent?
What amount of money is acceptable for me to have to spend, since it’s immoral for me to try to get any of it back?