Unfortunately, Lemmy demonstrates pretty clearly that decentralized systems are just as vulnerable to propaganda and brain rot.
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
1369 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
60694 readers
5249 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So long as it is humans posting this will be a problem. The benefit of a federated system is that you can't compromise the person at the top and then everything collapses.
I just jumped on here today (from seeing this article on Reddit) but my understanding is that the advantage is that the CEO can't decide he wants to suck authoritarian cock and destroy our ability to discuss and/or organize.
(Admittedly I joined the biggest server I could find so I kind of violated that idea as well).
load more comments
(1 replies)
Humans are vulnerable to propaganda. Lemmy's architecture is against censorship. This helps to push back against propaganda, but only so much. But at least not being censored is a big win IMO.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Its time people learn this everything is run by humans and humans suck
At least we can easily pack up and move camp in familiar territory (same apps/frontends, etc.)
load more comments
(4 replies)
Agreed. But we need a solution against bots just as much. There's no way the majority of comments in the near future won't just be LLMs.
we have to use trust from real life. it's the only thing that centralized entities can't fake
Closed instances with vetted members, there’s no other way.
Too high of a barrier to entry is doomed to fail.
Programming.dev does this and is the tenth largest instance.
Techy people are a lot more likely to jump through a couple of hoops for something better, compared to your average Joe who isn't even aware of the problem
load more comments
(7 replies)
10th largest instance being like 10k users... we're talking about the need for a solution to help pull the literal billions of users from mainstream social media
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(8 replies)
load more comments
(23 replies)
load more comments
(45 replies)
Decentralized is too complicated. Worker owned is a better path forward and is centralized so it's easier to support and be understood by its users. Moderators are workers and should have equity.
Karl Marx 2.0 right there
This is early days; I have a feeling in a few short years there will be ownership and simplicity of distributed services and whatever evolves from them.
I think if we had co-ops running some of these systems it would definitely alleviate some issues
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Well it helps, but if you live under an oligarchy they will find ways to stop uncontrolled social media.
You have to address the root of the problem or you will ultimately fail as soon as you get big enough to be a problem.
I want not just decentralized
but peer to peer
like Briar, but Lemmy-style
Correct
How is Lemmy (or whatever) ever gonna scale up to the size of Reddit though? If they can’t deal with trolls and bots and spam then what the hell are we gonna do?
What do you do in real life? You tell them to fuck off.
on reddit majority of heavy lifting is done by community mods. hosting, however, is a pain, lemmy is centralized as fuck.
Guns are the only alternative to the tech oligarchy.
You think they can't buy, manipulate, or just crush decentralized social media? If anything they can do it easily, divide and conquer. FOSS ain't gonna free you, esp. when the largest contributors to FOSS projects are big corps.
so we just all buy guns and fend for ourselves? we need communities in order to fight fascism, we need to be able to organize and share valuable information with people. is technology the answer to the problem? no its not, but it is part of the answer, and to ignore that is shortsighted.
load more comments
(2 replies)
That's absurd. Large sharp dropped blades, poison, starvation, spears, looped ropes, fire... There are many alternatives available.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(10 replies)
Checked the rules and I think this is allowed? But if you've still got reddit and don't mind being a fediverse evangelist please go consider hitting this thread: https://reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1i6rp3o/decentralized_social_media_is_the_only/
I would recommend an actual cafe with actual humans in it face to face over this
I agree but let's be honest. That may be how it worked in revolutionary France but that wasn't how it worked in the US in the 20th century. The "3rd Places" that most people were involved in were union halls, civic organizations, and social societies. We've largely forgotten that history, but it's not something we can get back without organizing online first.
load more comments
(3 replies)