The mainstream ARE the crazies now, though. The outliers, and only some of the outliers, are sensible, smart people.
This is not the case in places outside the US.
Not sure elon could afford the cloud bills if mrbeast actually did that
That game looked great, it annoyed me it was a PS exclusive.
It is very easy to argue that network convergence is NOT a good thing. That’s the whole point of the “embrace, extended, destroy” point you responded to.
Honestly, after literally over 30 years on the internet, I can safely say that this idea of bringing everyone together into one space, that will make both the space and the people better, does not work. Even back in the 90s it affected the signal to noise ratio badly. Now there are significant sets of bad actors, shitposting/meta and general noisy ignorance and hate that can easily, easily drown out any decent signal. It’s like a permanent Eternal September.
Think of this like the subject of tolerance - typically criticised that as a philosophy, in that it would thus tolerate the very things that would undermine and destroy it. Rather, it is not a philosophy, but a social contract - if you don’t use tolerance yourself, others are not bound to be tolerant of you. Of course, I’m not talking about being tolerant/intolerant here, but using the quality of engagement and participation in a community, as a barometer for whether that user should be engaged in that community.
Some barriers to entry are self-selection for appropriate users, and therefore a good thing - whether through obscurity, level of engagement, education or whatever. Without these, everything gets overrun and crushed. We haven’t yet found a good self-moderating system for online communities that provides everyone with a positive and fulfilling experience.
Threads can be Threads. The fediverse can be the fediverse. No-one is forced to choose just one, and trying to force them together is going to crush the fediverse. Lemmy has about 20,000 active users. Threads got 30 million signups in 24 hours.
I think in terms of link aggregation, there is going to be a fair amount of duplication necessary to get a critical mass of links/content here, that people can interact with. After all, 1% post, 9% comment, 90% lurk.
I’m not suggesting we automate it, but in order to kickstart some communities I’m certainly going to be copying links from some good subs on reddit (if they’re open) over here. After all they’re just links to other articles/media/etc, they’re not exclusive to reddit.
It would be good if everyone who comes over here and subscribes to some communities sees that there are posts going on there. It only takes a couple or a few active people to make a buzz.
This. I mean, you have to expect the community who built the thing to be excited by the thing, but if they want it to be a broader community, then the emphasis has to be on what gets the crowd engaged.
Having said that, I don’t think this or any platform should try to be all things to all men. It should have an identity and a focus, and it may not be for everyone - other communities will be right for other people.