How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) (ploum.net)

submitted 1 year ago by jherazob@beehaw.org to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml

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This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance

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[-] MyMulligan@lemmy.one 0 points 1 year ago

The thing is that Meta and Reddit are masters of social manipulation through their algorithms. They know what low common denominators get the most engagement. I blame FB for a big number of echo Chambers and that just fed people their own negativity right back, made them spiral into a bad place mentally.

If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they'll do it all over again.

It's the halcyon days of the Fediverse. Negativity on my feed is nonexistent. There's discussion. There's respect for differences. I know things will change with time but it's important that the big instances never work as proxies for big tech. It's important that big tech doesn't get a seat at the table. Voices should remain individual and not some mouthpiece to an industry that wants centralized control.

[-] Spzi@lemmy.click 1 points 1 year ago

If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they’ll do it all over again.

They have that ability, and always will have. They can create as many accounts as they like on as many instances as they like, or run as many instances as they like themselves, use incentivized individuals, or employees, or bots, or any combination of all of the above. No one can stop them, maybe even no one can spot them.

The only thing which is holding them back right now is lemmy/kbin still being too insignificant. If the network continues to grow, more and more big corps will see it as a market and an opportunity, and they will have plenty of ways to interact with it.

[-] IAccidentallyCame@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

"Negativity on my feed is nonexistent."

Absolute first thing I noticed when I came in to test this as a Reddit alternative. It's so refreshing, and the discourse is so civil.

If there's a way we can keep this quality, it'd be amazing. I often wondered when I'm on Reddit or twitter how much of the awful negativity is really people's or bots/algos prodding them into acting this way.

If the current big players best bets are to weasel in on the large instances, are there any simple changes that could be done to prevent their take over or influence? Things that aren't too heavy handed?