I actually got banned from this community on my old lemm.ee account under the same username. So I don’t make actual posts here. Idk if I’m even technically supposed to be commenting, so 🤫
Even so, Lemmy is nothing like what Reddit has become. Any platform is susceptible, but Reddit is now controlled by people who are out to prove a Fred Phelps like point about free speech. If you can’t say whatever you want, whenever you want, to anyone you want, go out of your way to ruin it for everybody and die miserable and alone.
Even if that does end up happening here, somebody else will just build back something new and a little better to replace it.
Fascists complained for decades about being censored on the internet and in that time what did they actually do? Did they actually build their own alternatives that anybody wanted to use, or did they just scheme and claw their way to the top to take over what somebody else made and force what they wanted on to everyone?
It’s true, they’ve basically made just about every popular internet platform unuseable in like 9 months, but that has also driven more people to just seek alternatives, and other people to focus on building them or making what already exists more user friendly. So when people just stop using that garbage, what happens to all those paid sponsors? Do they just keep paying to advertise to no one?
The dead internet theory just kind of assumes that people will want to keep using these platforms to witness bots argue instead of interacting with other people, but I can’t even really scroll through Reddit or Substack anymore bc I know there’s better content somewhere else that isn’t being controlled to keep a narrative going.
I tried to look for a very specific topic on YouTube yesterday, and got so frustrated with only having an endless stream of short clips of influencers instead of the one thing that I actually wanted, that I ended up just making an account on peertube. There’s not much content on there (yet), but the small amount that is there is sooo much more interesting than 99% of the garbage being force fed by YouTube.
I’m pretty sure that’s actually how capitalism is supposed to work when a “free market” isn’t being completely controlled by oligarchs. Like if this product sucks, and this other product is available and better, why would I keep using the shitty product unless somebody is tightly controlling the market and not allowing any competition?
I was talking to somebody yesterday about how being forced to switch to open source platforms has actually made me somewhat more optimistic for the future in general. Once somebody destroys something you love, it’s just gone. It sucks, but there’s a good chance you’ll probably never get back what was destroyed. You can’t go home again, but you can always try to rebuild something new, and make it a little better than before.
Did they actually build their own alternatives that anybody wanted to use,
Right wingers functionally excluded from major platforms more or less until Musk bought Twitter actually did create their own spaces. Several of which got made functionally inaccessible from mobile devices, or removed from search engines or otherwise actively prevented from growing organically, many of them eventually being quietly put back after any buzz around them had died down. Think Gab, Parler, various .win sites that are reddit-like, etc.
Hell, at one point the largest Mastodon instance was literally one such space that had had it’s own app banned from the app stores for being an uncensored far right space, and then several of the major general Mastodon clients made their clients refuse to connect to that specific instance at the client level as well. If you’ve ever seen a Mastodon client on say the Play store with negative reviews saying that it couldn’t connect to the largest instance, that’s because at the time the largest Mastodon instance was technically Gab.
But why did nobody just make an exclusively right wing alternative to mastodon? Idk anything about Parler, but it just seems like it’s easy to just try to make a space on an existing platform, but if you join something that was built by somebody else, you’re being provided a space within what they built.
If you feel like you don’t want to be restricted by the requirements of being part of a platform or institution, why has nobody really built a right wing alternative from the ground up?
Most of Project 2025 is based on Paul Weyrich deciding that the U.S. is beyond redemption in his opinion, and he says that the path forward for the right should be the homeschool model and create new institutions.
But that’s not what actually happening. They’re not building new institutions and offering them as an alternative open to anyone that wants to join. They’re just taking over institutions, and turning them into what they want. It’s like they’re doing this only to prove a point that what they want should be the way that everyone lives their lives, and since society didn’t want that, they’re going to force it on society.
If the entire basis of your movement is that society should be focused on and built around a very narrow section of all of society, why would it be surprising that the majority of society wouldn’t want to willingly be part of your movement since they don’t fit into it?
This is like if some people that were obsessed with frisbee golf took over every football stadium to try and force every football fan to become a fan of Frolf.
Realistically what would happen? Everybody suddenly accepts that frolf is the new football because a small group of people wanted it? Even if they can somehow hold on to power indefinitely, and keep all those football stadiums frolf only, would people really just stop playing football or would they just go literally anywhere else and play there instead? Even if it meant you might just have to start out playing in an empty field or parking lot somewhere with a few people, and slowly grow from there. People will just make new football stadiums or soccer stadiums or tennis courts bc not everybody wants to be forced to just play frolf.
I actually got banned from this community on my old lemm.ee account under the same username. So I don’t make actual posts here. Idk if I’m even technically supposed to be commenting, so 🤫
Even so, Lemmy is nothing like what Reddit has become. Any platform is susceptible, but Reddit is now controlled by people who are out to prove a Fred Phelps like point about free speech. If you can’t say whatever you want, whenever you want, to anyone you want, go out of your way to ruin it for everybody and die miserable and alone.
Even if that does end up happening here, somebody else will just build back something new and a little better to replace it.
Fascists complained for decades about being censored on the internet and in that time what did they actually do? Did they actually build their own alternatives that anybody wanted to use, or did they just scheme and claw their way to the top to take over what somebody else made and force what they wanted on to everyone?
It’s true, they’ve basically made just about every popular internet platform unuseable in like 9 months, but that has also driven more people to just seek alternatives, and other people to focus on building them or making what already exists more user friendly. So when people just stop using that garbage, what happens to all those paid sponsors? Do they just keep paying to advertise to no one?
The dead internet theory just kind of assumes that people will want to keep using these platforms to witness bots argue instead of interacting with other people, but I can’t even really scroll through Reddit or Substack anymore bc I know there’s better content somewhere else that isn’t being controlled to keep a narrative going.
I tried to look for a very specific topic on YouTube yesterday, and got so frustrated with only having an endless stream of short clips of influencers instead of the one thing that I actually wanted, that I ended up just making an account on peertube. There’s not much content on there (yet), but the small amount that is there is sooo much more interesting than 99% of the garbage being force fed by YouTube.
I’m pretty sure that’s actually how capitalism is supposed to work when a “free market” isn’t being completely controlled by oligarchs. Like if this product sucks, and this other product is available and better, why would I keep using the shitty product unless somebody is tightly controlling the market and not allowing any competition?
I was talking to somebody yesterday about how being forced to switch to open source platforms has actually made me somewhat more optimistic for the future in general. Once somebody destroys something you love, it’s just gone. It sucks, but there’s a good chance you’ll probably never get back what was destroyed. You can’t go home again, but you can always try to rebuild something new, and make it a little better than before.
Right wingers functionally excluded from major platforms more or less until Musk bought Twitter actually did create their own spaces. Several of which got made functionally inaccessible from mobile devices, or removed from search engines or otherwise actively prevented from growing organically, many of them eventually being quietly put back after any buzz around them had died down. Think Gab, Parler, various .win sites that are reddit-like, etc.
Hell, at one point the largest Mastodon instance was literally one such space that had had it’s own app banned from the app stores for being an uncensored far right space, and then several of the major general Mastodon clients made their clients refuse to connect to that specific instance at the client level as well. If you’ve ever seen a Mastodon client on say the Play store with negative reviews saying that it couldn’t connect to the largest instance, that’s because at the time the largest Mastodon instance was technically Gab.
But why did nobody just make an exclusively right wing alternative to mastodon? Idk anything about Parler, but it just seems like it’s easy to just try to make a space on an existing platform, but if you join something that was built by somebody else, you’re being provided a space within what they built.
If you feel like you don’t want to be restricted by the requirements of being part of a platform or institution, why has nobody really built a right wing alternative from the ground up?
Most of Project 2025 is based on Paul Weyrich deciding that the U.S. is beyond redemption in his opinion, and he says that the path forward for the right should be the homeschool model and create new institutions.
But that’s not what actually happening. They’re not building new institutions and offering them as an alternative open to anyone that wants to join. They’re just taking over institutions, and turning them into what they want. It’s like they’re doing this only to prove a point that what they want should be the way that everyone lives their lives, and since society didn’t want that, they’re going to force it on society.
If the entire basis of your movement is that society should be focused on and built around a very narrow section of all of society, why would it be surprising that the majority of society wouldn’t want to willingly be part of your movement since they don’t fit into it?
This is like if some people that were obsessed with frisbee golf took over every football stadium to try and force every football fan to become a fan of Frolf.
Realistically what would happen? Everybody suddenly accepts that frolf is the new football because a small group of people wanted it? Even if they can somehow hold on to power indefinitely, and keep all those football stadiums frolf only, would people really just stop playing football or would they just go literally anywhere else and play there instead? Even if it meant you might just have to start out playing in an empty field or parking lot somewhere with a few people, and slowly grow from there. People will just make new football stadiums or soccer stadiums or tennis courts bc not everybody wants to be forced to just play frolf.