Actually truth social would be the perfect example, but again, how many people do you hear talking about how much they enjoy truth social? It’s true nobody wants to be sued by Trump, but that’s not really support as much as fear and its own form of censorship.
Truth Social is always there if you want it, but is it really censorship that keeps more people from using it or is it to some extent capitalism working?
If you have a truly free market people will just go to another platform bc there’s no reason they have to use X, or Truth Social, or Mastodon, or BlueSky unless one person (or a group of oligarchs) buys all of them and controls the market. If one of those platforms fails, can you really blame it on censorship?
Musk bought X bc he claimed he wanted to have free speech and to get rid of all the bots, but he did neither. Now that place is mainly a bot fueled echo chamber. It’s just not an enjoyable platform to use anymore, and most users have switched to an alternative like bluesky.
I personally don’t really like Bluesky either, but I know a lot of people that do. Even though it’s not a right wing platform, it’s still seems very difficult for content to actually reach people organically. The same is true with Substack, and you have even less control of the content that appears on your feed. I hate IG for that reason too (among many others).
Algorithm control and bot armies always eventually becomes a weird form of censorship. It happens on every platform (even lemmy to a lesser extent), and at a certain point it makes the platform just unusable. There are definitely accounts like that on Mastodon too, and I still use it for some things but don’t really interact much on there bc of the same reason.
It’s almost like an uncanny valley situation. Like at a certain point the bots go from a tool that helps to generate user interest and grow a platform, to just over saturating and creating dead internet vibes. Like you can tell when a narrative is being controlled or generated by a sudden swarm of users and it’s very off-putting.
Reddit has gotten so bad about this that you will have posts that just can’t be upvoted at all, with like a hilariously impossible ratio of upvotes to comments. Then those “user” recommendation posts that are clearly just advertisements are the worst. I used to rely on Reddit for advice and information on things like that bc I was talking to other humans without an agenda to sell me something. Now I usually just assume any recommendation on Reddit is an advertisement and ignore it.
Google and Apple cut their app off from the app stores so they switched to something that was a common protocol rather than a dedicated app and moved to Mastodon as a way to route around censorship
Apple and Google didn’t want to lose business by associating with something the majority of people found off-putting, but is that really censorship?
Again you’re relying on an existing platform to take on supporting your messaging instead of just promoting it yourself. Couldn’t you just rely on a user base sharing a link to download an app rather than putting it in one of the stores?
No one is arguing that we need an exclusively communist alternative to email or the web.
But that is also why so many users or instances block instances like .grad and to a lesser extent .ml, and some people do argue they should be de-federated.
I don’t think that’s really necessary. I’m glad to have the ability to talk to and interact with people I don’t agree with on everything. There’s .ml users here that have been very helpful with things nobody else was able to help me with. (I’m actually glad we’re able to have this conversation we’re having.)
But, I’ve also been blocked from .ml communities without any warning bc I shared images of Xinnie the Pooh. So, i’m sure there are some people on the left who willingly identify as tankies, and would enjoy a completely separate dedicated safe space on the internet for communism or leftist authoritarianism. If they made one, it would very likely end up running into the same issues as Gab/Parler, but I still wouldn’t believe that censorship is to blame for its failure.
It’s just difficult to create a market for a very niche and exclusionary product that a lot of people find off-putting due to extremist content.
Actually truth social would be the perfect example, but again, how many people do you hear talking about how much they enjoy truth social? It’s true nobody wants to be sued by Trump, but that’s not really support as much as fear and its own form of censorship.
Truth Social is always there if you want it, but is it really censorship that keeps more people from using it or is it to some extent capitalism working?
Truth Social wasn’t subject to the same pressures and attacks, largely out of fear of Trump. It’s mostly Trump and his fans that are why anyone cares, but most of the sorts attracted to a site like that came rushing back to X post-Elon.
If you have a truly free market people will just go to another platform bc there’s no reason they have to use X, or Truth Social, or Mastodon, or BlueSky unless one person (or a group of oligarchs) buys all of them and controls the market. If one of those platforms fails, can you really blame it on censorship?
There isn’t, outside of network effects. But the ones being barred from Apple devices, and only able to be sideloaded on Android (at least until Google removes that feature, which they’ve announced is coming) aren’t operating on the same footing as the others, and not because of a failure to draw an audience, but by being restricted by, well, a bunch of oligarchs…
Musk bought X bc he claimed he wanted to have free speech and to get rid of all the bots, but he did neither. Now that place is mainly a bot fueled echo chamber. It’s just not an enjoyable platform to use anymore, and most users have switched to an alternative like bluesky.
The range of rhetoric that won’t get you banned from the site has certainly expanded, even if most of what is actually there is deceptive bullshit. Probably 1 in 10 current Xitter users would be banned for saying unacceptable things under pre-Musk Twitter.
Apple and Google didn’t want to lose business by associating with something the majority of people found off-putting, but is that really censorship?
Tech oligarchs cut a competitor to other tech oligarchs off at the knees to control the span and spread of online discourse - this is the kind of thing that supporting feels like supporting the face eating leopard party.
Again you’re relying on an existing platform to take on supporting your messaging instead of just promoting it yourself. Couldn’t you just rely on a user base sharing a link to download an app rather than putting it in one of the stores?
Build your own entire tech stack from the hardware up, got it. Those leopards do seem hungry for faces though.
But that is also why so many users or instances block instances like .grad and to a lesser extent .ml, and some people do argue they should be de-federated.
I don’t think that’s really necessary. I’m glad to have the ability to talk to and interact with people I don’t agree with on everything. There’s .ml users here that have been very helpful with things nobody else was able to help me with. (I’m actually glad we’re able to have this conversation we’re having.)
I find a certain irony here, given the instance you come from and the instance I come from. Yours has defederated from ~95 other instances, including some for being too left and some for being too right. Mine has only defederated from one, an instance essentially abandoned by it’s admins that was posting spam and actual csam.
But, I’ve also been blocked from .ml communities without any warning bc I shared images of Xinnie the Pooh. So, i’m sure there are some people on the left who willingly identify as tankies, and would enjoy a completely separate dedicated safe space on the internet for communism or leftist authoritarianism. If they made one, it would very likely end up running into the same issues as Gab/Parler, but I still wouldn’t believe that censorship is to blame for its failure.
Far left fediverse instances exist, and can moderate as strictly or not as they please. No third party is actively preventing you from connecting to one with an appropriate client, including client devs. Let alone tech oligarchs cutting them off from major platforms entirely.
It’s just difficult to create a market for a very niche and exclusionary product that a lot of people find off-putting due to extremist content.
Yet, their problem wasn’t not being able to get members organically. Gab was doing pretty well until it got big enough to be noticed and it was forcibly cut off from the mobile market by Google and Apple, migrated their backend to Mastodon as a way around that, and then had Mastodon client devs block them at the client level. At the time of migration, they were the largest Mastodon instance, so it wasn’t a matter of lack of interest. That’s kinda my point - the barriers they faced aren’t organic or a lack of interest but coordinated moves against them.
Actually truth social would be the perfect example, but again, how many people do you hear talking about how much they enjoy truth social? It’s true nobody wants to be sued by Trump, but that’s not really support as much as fear and its own form of censorship.
Truth Social is always there if you want it, but is it really censorship that keeps more people from using it or is it to some extent capitalism working?
If you have a truly free market people will just go to another platform bc there’s no reason they have to use X, or Truth Social, or Mastodon, or BlueSky unless one person (or a group of oligarchs) buys all of them and controls the market. If one of those platforms fails, can you really blame it on censorship?
Musk bought X bc he claimed he wanted to have free speech and to get rid of all the bots, but he did neither. Now that place is mainly a bot fueled echo chamber. It’s just not an enjoyable platform to use anymore, and most users have switched to an alternative like bluesky.
I personally don’t really like Bluesky either, but I know a lot of people that do. Even though it’s not a right wing platform, it’s still seems very difficult for content to actually reach people organically. The same is true with Substack, and you have even less control of the content that appears on your feed. I hate IG for that reason too (among many others).
Algorithm control and bot armies always eventually becomes a weird form of censorship. It happens on every platform (even lemmy to a lesser extent), and at a certain point it makes the platform just unusable. There are definitely accounts like that on Mastodon too, and I still use it for some things but don’t really interact much on there bc of the same reason.
It’s almost like an uncanny valley situation. Like at a certain point the bots go from a tool that helps to generate user interest and grow a platform, to just over saturating and creating dead internet vibes. Like you can tell when a narrative is being controlled or generated by a sudden swarm of users and it’s very off-putting.
Reddit has gotten so bad about this that you will have posts that just can’t be upvoted at all, with like a hilariously impossible ratio of upvotes to comments. Then those “user” recommendation posts that are clearly just advertisements are the worst. I used to rely on Reddit for advice and information on things like that bc I was talking to other humans without an agenda to sell me something. Now I usually just assume any recommendation on Reddit is an advertisement and ignore it.
Apple and Google didn’t want to lose business by associating with something the majority of people found off-putting, but is that really censorship?
Again you’re relying on an existing platform to take on supporting your messaging instead of just promoting it yourself. Couldn’t you just rely on a user base sharing a link to download an app rather than putting it in one of the stores?
But that is also why so many users or instances block instances like .grad and to a lesser extent .ml, and some people do argue they should be de-federated.
I don’t think that’s really necessary. I’m glad to have the ability to talk to and interact with people I don’t agree with on everything. There’s .ml users here that have been very helpful with things nobody else was able to help me with. (I’m actually glad we’re able to have this conversation we’re having.)
But, I’ve also been blocked from .ml communities without any warning bc I shared images of Xinnie the Pooh. So, i’m sure there are some people on the left who willingly identify as tankies, and would enjoy a completely separate dedicated safe space on the internet for communism or leftist authoritarianism. If they made one, it would very likely end up running into the same issues as Gab/Parler, but I still wouldn’t believe that censorship is to blame for its failure.
It’s just difficult to create a market for a very niche and exclusionary product that a lot of people find off-putting due to extremist content.
Truth Social wasn’t subject to the same pressures and attacks, largely out of fear of Trump. It’s mostly Trump and his fans that are why anyone cares, but most of the sorts attracted to a site like that came rushing back to X post-Elon.
There isn’t, outside of network effects. But the ones being barred from Apple devices, and only able to be sideloaded on Android (at least until Google removes that feature, which they’ve announced is coming) aren’t operating on the same footing as the others, and not because of a failure to draw an audience, but by being restricted by, well, a bunch of oligarchs…
The range of rhetoric that won’t get you banned from the site has certainly expanded, even if most of what is actually there is deceptive bullshit. Probably 1 in 10 current Xitter users would be banned for saying unacceptable things under pre-Musk Twitter.
Tech oligarchs cut a competitor to other tech oligarchs off at the knees to control the span and spread of online discourse - this is the kind of thing that supporting feels like supporting the face eating leopard party.
Build your own entire tech stack from the hardware up, got it. Those leopards do seem hungry for faces though.
I find a certain irony here, given the instance you come from and the instance I come from. Yours has defederated from ~95 other instances, including some for being too left and some for being too right. Mine has only defederated from one, an instance essentially abandoned by it’s admins that was posting spam and actual csam.
Far left fediverse instances exist, and can moderate as strictly or not as they please. No third party is actively preventing you from connecting to one with an appropriate client, including client devs. Let alone tech oligarchs cutting them off from major platforms entirely.
Yet, their problem wasn’t not being able to get members organically. Gab was doing pretty well until it got big enough to be noticed and it was forcibly cut off from the mobile market by Google and Apple, migrated their backend to Mastodon as a way around that, and then had Mastodon client devs block them at the client level. At the time of migration, they were the largest Mastodon instance, so it wasn’t a matter of lack of interest. That’s kinda my point - the barriers they faced aren’t organic or a lack of interest but coordinated moves against them.