decentralization of the internet

As I'm sure some of you know, Reddit and Twitter have been sort of imploding on themselves recently, and this has sparked a movement to leave those sites behind for good, and as someone that was already sick of the so-called "super websites" for a long time, it is quite satisfying watching this unfold, though truth be told, I don't really think much will change. Lemmy has grown exponentially in the past few days, but I don't think it will replace Reddit. Lemmy itself is built like soykaf, and a lot of the systemic problems from Reddit, such as mod abuse and censorship, are still present. Regardless, seeing the idea of leaving the big websites getting so much traction is very exiting. The subreddit r/redditalternatives now has over 51k subscribers and I see people there sharing their websites, and joining smaller websites and even talking about returning to old school forums. While I don't think Reddit or Twitter are going anywhere, I do think this will give a slight boost to smaller competitors.

>is very exiting funny to hear this considering not so many years ago small websites were more or less everything we had to have an easy conversation. in short, forums or death. everything that is not forum is bullshit. forums which require you to present any information that can be used to identify you, such as phone number, are pure evil bullshit and must be burned in the fire of inquisition. also reddit is toxic soykafhole, worse even that 4chan, so i always get slightly butthurted when hear it mentioned on boards. this being said i get a funny feeling that >smaller competitors are just another sorts of soykaf which are going to be just as bad or even worse that soykafsites they try to mimic.

One of the things I hated about Reddit was the way it seemed to kill off many of the niche forums I'd practically grown up on. Mind you, forums weren't perfect and were about as prone to mod abuse, but suddenly everything got turned into a subreddit on a single mega site. In theory, this would make posting easier, but in reality most users flock to one or two subreddits and those niche communities just die off. The only good "super website" was 2channel. I won't mourn the decline of Reddit or Twitter. But the downside is Redditors will spread out across the wired in search of a new home, taking the soykaftier aspects of their culture with them. A bunch will probably end up on 4chan, as most online refugees seem to these days, and then proceed to infect other imageboards.

>>36706 >Mind you, forums weren't perfect and were about as prone to mod abuse Forums were really bad about this, but the silver lining was you could just fuarrrk off and find another one that was hopefully less soykaf, or even a bit comfy. With reddit, it's literally the same bullshit fagget powertripping moderators and hivemind consensus-driven discussion across the entire website, with no alternative because all the old forums are dead. The upboat/downboat system sounded like a good idea on paper but just enforced rigidly conformist, uncontrovertial thinking and even on theory it sounds like the sort of thing invented by someone who never learned to not feed the trolls. >taking the soykaftier aspects of their culture with them This is unfortunately true, but the silver lining is without the aformentioned upvote/downvote system it'll be a lot harder for them to enforce a consensus. Additionally, yeah, 4chan is obviously gonna get (even) worse but I don't think altchans are in any trouble - redditors are normal users. They think even 4chan is the "scary deep web" and maaaaaaybe have an inkling that 8chan (if it's even alive; I've been under a rock) is that "scary sekret nazi raid site" They probably don't even know how to find altchans in the first place, and even if they do, the fact that they're slow and sparsely populated is a saving grace, since the ADD-addled normal users will just get bored and fuarrrk off somewhere else. Pic unrelated.

>>36704 >reddit is toxic soykafhole, worse even that 4chan This is true, and twitter is somehow even worse. Twitter users will try to find your IRL identity to destroy your life, harass your family, and get you fired from your job, all because of a joke you posted 15 years ago. It's also full of just the most chronically online degenerates you will ever have the displeasure of talking to. All in all, I'd rather be an imageboard addict than a twitter addict.

>>36706 >In theory, this would make posting easier, but in reality most users flock to one or two subreddits and those niche communities just die off I'm not sure about this, smaller subreddits exist and people have reasons to use them, most importantly that every very large subreddit is soykaf and many people realize this and leave out of disgust. Reddit is generally an ok website if you unsubscribe from every default sub and seek out niche subs that never or very rarely 'hit the front page'. The subreddit model does make posting easier, it automates the process of opening many different forums and looking through them to see if someone responded to you, or if there are new posts that are relevant to you. Users don't need to maintain as much conscious effort to continue participating. There are negatives to that removal of friction but it has benefits too. What I really want to see is decentralized tech that is able to bring things together in a similar way without someone wielding the kind of control Reddit admins have. >>36707 >but I don't think altchans are in any trouble - redditors are normal users. They think even 4chan is the "scary deep web" Probably true of the majority of the current userbase but I think current cross pollination is understated. Personally I was using both Reddit and 4chan heavily since like 2007, and you can see obvious imageboard influence in many posts and comments on Reddit, and vice versa.

>>36713 >What I really want to see is decentralized tech that is able to bring things together in a similar way without someone wielding the kind of control Reddit admins have. has anyone plugged Aether on here recently? it's trying to be a decentralized reddit. I haven't used in a while so I'm not sure how quirky it still is, but I'd like to see how it would function with more than 4 or 5 people poasting so feel free to check it out

>>36714 I might check it out later but any comparison to reddit isn't exactly a favourable one.

>>36706 They already did. You've already got straight up tumblr soykaf soykafting up the boards. Along with the fedbot posts designed to demoralise. Any kind of culture on there is long dead. >>36710 Twitter is normal person Kiwifarms I hope the fediverse catches on more though a whole lot of people that could have probably benefitted from it went to full on sucking Elons cock once the buyout happened and were spreading that "Mastodon is for CP soykaf."

>>36715 very fair, I just figured it was a reddit alternative that fit the criteria. if it's any consolation moderation is handled a lot more like opting into someone else's blacklist than having your experience curated by some random control freak

Compared to Twitter, 4chan isn't that bad. Like Reddit, the bad boards (which are the most popular) drag the place down. Fact is, any site that grows to millions of users ultimately suffers from the same kinds of problems as Reddit, 4chan etc. When you have so many people, the community feel goes away and the culture changes. Undesirables are drawn to the site fundamentally changing it's culture and the site admin either devolves into a bureaucracy of power hungry mods or becomes unregulated anarchy like 8chan/8kun. There are probably ways of mitigating this, but the major one is capping site growth and controlling the rate of expansion.

That's just ridiculous. Corporations won't just sit on their hands with so many potential revenue streams opening because Reddit and twitter seem weak. Facebook is already trying. It may not workz but at the end of a day another giant corporation will emerge as the supreme service provider. If you just want an insular forum for 3.5 people that's more than doable, but anything above 5000 regular users is not happening

>>36721 The internet has a tendency to mimic real life. Even outside of these niche circles like lainchan, I’ve seen people talking negatively about the current state of the internet. People leaving the big super websites and heading towards smaller sites would be like when people fled the cities and moved back to rural villages after the fall of Rome.

>>36722 Believe whatever you want to believe, lainon. If the internet was analogous to real life there would not be a population of terminally online beings. Internet allows you to make your avatar whatever you want it to be and interact with whoever is available at any moment. Internet is a different place within real life, like the ocean. It's like if everyone had a transmutation spell and teleportation/telepathy spell in their spellbooks IRL but at the same time there would be a ward against any physical harm on everyone while in there. Something like that, you can figure out the rest of the metaphor yourself

so generally speaking the whole internet must be taken down and redesigned in anonymous manner, coprorations murdered, lainons elected into power.

>>36703 I have mixed feelings with the normal person migration to 'our' side of the internet. It probably wont be too significative as people are retarded and loathe the slightest inconvenience, but I certainly dont want the average stereotypical Twitter/Reddit user on any chatroom or forum that I frequent (of course, the few well adjusted individuals should always be welcome). >>36704 There is so much useful and interesting information on Reddit though. The site itself may be soykaf, but it's huge. Kind of like YouTube to a sense. >>36707 >With reddit, it's literally the same bullshit fagget powertripping moderators and hivemind consensus-driven discussion across the entire website I dont think this is true. I frequented some subs with pretty responsive and seemingly fair mod teams. Not sure if that is very common, but there are fair communities on reddit. >>36716 >Twitter is normal person Kiwifarms This is very accurate, which is funny when you think about it. Exposing and harassing people is perfectly fine when they are 'racists', 'bigots' or other 'bad people'. >>36720 Personally like 4chan better than average Twitter when it comes to content, but 4chan really, really feels like a fed honeypot no matter how I think about it. It's disgusting.

>>36729 and it's good that we have a honeypot like 4chan, because the cancer doesn't spread all around. or if it spreads it is curable.

The whole decline of 4chan is sad considering the lasting influence it's had on the internet as a whole. It's like watching a beloved cancer patient waste away or a family member with dementia. There are still some nice boards there, but the whole place is going down the tubes. If Tumblr can come back from the brink then I guess 4chan could too one day.

>>36732 Unless they remove the account system and force every post to solve a captcha AI can't solve, it won't.

>>36730 Wait until one of them shoot some people and it goes 8ch.

>>36754 If somebody decided to shoot some other body, he'll manage without 4chan.

>>36713 yup, the only thing that hurt my soul when I deleted my account was the fact that I would never be able to post on subreddits like katana zero, hotline Miami, ultrakill, lain, sewerslvt and deathgrips or you could just make a bookmark folder on your browser and bookmark links to those subreddits (using teddit/libreddit ofc)

This isn't just about alternatives to Reddit or Twitter, it's about creating a digital ecosystem that mirrors the complex interplay and diversity of a rainforest. It's about moving away from the ego-driven monolithic structures to an interconnected web of individual nodes that collectively make up the Gaian mind of the internet. A truly decentralized Web would allow for a more diverse, authentic, and open internet culture, where users are empowered to create, connect, and communicate on their own terms. And here's the kicker, it's not a Utopian dream, it's an achievable reality, it's not something we need to create, it's already happening. You, me, all of us in this thread, we're part of this shift. The shift is unavoidable because we all noticed the stepping out of the social media/reddit matrix is actually pleasurable. Unplugging yourself is a high that more and more people will eventually be drawn into

>>37072 >You, me, all of us in this thread, we're part of this shift. The shift is unavoidable because we all noticed the stepping out of the social media/reddit matrix is actually pleasurable. look at yourself, comming in here and posting some dumb gudthink platitudes about the power of diversity and 'authenticity'. If not for the gaia/drug refferences I'd say you were GPT, but you almost might as well be. 4chan is the first social media site I posted on, I never 'stepped out' of facebook; I didn't need to because I didnt fall for it in the first place. The problem in internet culture isn't the existance of bad sites, but of bad users, and enough bad users in any community will make it bad however it was to begin with. Driving normal people off of sites like reddit doesnt make the internet better unless they actually leave the internet too.

I just hate 4chan with a passion. Between 4chan and reddit i choose reddit without doubt

>>37075 It's not just bad users that are on these platforms though. Reddit is particularly convenient in how easily you can find communities related to whatever obscure interest you may be into, not having to register multiple times etc. Twitter is less interesting but I can still see the appeal to some people.

Like any other organization of any kind, 4chan, twitter, reddit, etc, went through thier birth, growth, "little golden age" where they were actually really cool and fun, and then their disintegration into soykafholes as they were taken over by more and more psychopathic, dark-triad assholes. This is par for the course for every group, organization, culture, nation, civilization that has ever existed. One learns to enjoy such things as they pass through their golden age, then move on as they degenerate into insane cesspools. Lainchan has had an amazing run and is still one of the few places on the internet worth visiting and spending time and effort, so I'll enjoy it while I can.

>>39938 lainchan has managed to stay somewhat worth visiting even years after it's little "golden age", I think the watertight moderation may not be such a bad thing after all. Especially considering the dominant trends in imageboard culture and userbases.

i loathe this! twitter was and still is the best social media app. mainstream enough to contain everyone and their mom, but segmented and individualistic enough to have every stripe of humanity in its own loosely bound bubble. alt sites are perpetually stuck in a catch-22; no one uses them because no one uses them. the only incentives most people have for signing up to alt social media are politics and privacy. i don't want a site filled to the brim with people obsessed with politics and privacy! and i don't want a site for aged gentlemen to insider trade on, or for egoists to argue about mundane bullshit (which is what 4chan has been for the past forever), or for a single hobby and nothing else. i want everything and everyone. i want artists, creative people, interesting people, normal people (i love normal people!) and everyone in between. oh? your site is open source? and your site lets me say nono words without getting permaderezzed? twitter has a billion people. everything else is trivial. twitter truly is the faustian man's choice. as for other sites, reddit is banal as hell. the community-centric algorithm effectively prevents any sort of personality from finding its way out, it's like scrolling through youtube trending. it suffers from the same catch-22; nobody makes niche, interesting communities because nobody looks for "niche and interesting" on reddit, and the site provides no way for those communities to grow. 4chan i think still has potential. with some better moderation, people might start valuing the site again, and with that maybe it'll see a renaissance of sorts. but imageboards and regular social media sites are apples and oranges. >>37072 what you've invisaged is my ideal. part of what makes me love twitter so much is the individualistic way its algorithm is constructed. you form a circle by following people, and those people's circles find their way into your feed. every single nuance of every single person seeps into your experience. to have that without giving elon enough info to clone me would be a dream come true; but only if it can somehow summon enough people to provide a superior experience. i want decentralized centralization, basically. >>39970 hi

>>39971 Hello!

>>39955 this site had a golden age? i havent been here very long but as long as i have its been completely dead

>>39980 yeah the one time kalyx got paid that was the golden age

>>39980 I dont know why but i have come here on and off for many years and it was always soykaf

>>39971 If the only problem with alt sites was lack of population, then a federated twitter would just need to reach critical mass for takeoff. What keeps normal people from alt-sites? I suspect that the missing puzzle piece for alt sites is decentralized, sovereign censorship. If normal people don't want to interact with a type of person/content, it should be really easy for them to consciously echochamber themselves from that genre. (and rare for them to do so unconsciously) The american first amendment would be more resilient if it were phrased as a "right to hear" (whoever wants to speak to you) rather than a "right to speak" >>37072 >>37075 >>39971 I appreciate your distinct mindsets with respect to internet culture and user character. I would like to invite you to a thread on bitchan to critique an approach to diversifying the character of human beings across technical, medical and cultural methods. http://bitchanr4b64govofzjthtu6qc4ytrbuwbgynapkjileajpycioikxad.onion http://waycuw2c27ruakfblkf5tcegwmt3ot445dlfoypil6bzmm4yxg7a.b32.i2p /thread/BM-2cVPTGQ1MSPtx9QmpNeA69ePxJWEDVmULm/474d23e3cbc3