We have talked a lot about the positive sides of the Fediverse, but not as much about the downsides. For me the top negative things of this free and healthier social web are:
People are patronizing. This happens a lot more than in other places. I mostly mean the unsolicited advice: Alt text, don’t post this or that, avoid commercialism, other social medias and use content warnings for everything. While many mean good, it has been often very aggressive. This happened a lot in 2022. For a while it made the bar to post much higher because I was afraid to make a mistake. Today I don’t care as much.
Nitpicking. Comments are nice, but not when people are overly criticising about what you do or concentrating in irrelevancies. Whataboutism is the worst side effect.
Everyone has their own rules and they are often contradicting each other. Some are extreme and block every other instance, some more allowing. You might accidentally break many rules around the Fediverse without even noticing it (some servers don’t allow posts about meat or alcohol for example).
Politically too left. It seems it is not allowed to be very conservative here. People are anti-commercialism, anti-capitalist, anti-anything.
While saying this, I do not stumble upon these downsides very often since I am quite a chill guy and have my own server. I feel like I can post whatever the fuck I want.
However, I do wonder if these things are the ones that make the Fediverse less approachable by new users. On the other hand I believe the new open social web will transform the way we see the social media in general and soon it does not matter, we don’t have to think what is ”here” when the big players like Threads and Tumblr adapt ActivityPub.
@rolle I know where you're coming from here and, for myself, being on a single-user instance means that a lot of the drama on the fediverse passes me by.
I think the main thing is that people need to understand that this isn't a single thing, and there isn't one person setting the rules for everyone.
Different instances have different standards, and this is good. But it does mean that people will need to take some time to fine the instance that suits them best.
Really disappointed that too many of my fellow dutchies voted for right-wing, islamophobic Geert Wilders. I’m actually disgusted. But also not surprised. I didn’t vote. I left 1982. Never planned to return. It’s not my country anymore. Le fucking sigh.
https://www.politico.eu/article/far-right-leader-geert-wilders-wins-dutch-election-exit-poll/
"Yeşilgöz said on Tuesday that she ruled out supporting Wilders as prime minister if he won the largest share. And Omtzigt has ruled out joining forces with Wilders at all, saying his anti-Islam policies go against freedoms of expression and religion that are enshrined in the Dutch constitution. Timmermans has also set himself firmly against supporting Wilders."
Hopefully Widers can still be kept out of government.
@Tattooed_mummy When people remark Remembrance Day with a display more appropriate to Christmas or Halloween, I can't help feeling that they've missed the point somewhat.
People today: "Nooo AI has lost its meaning these days, it's not really about intelligence anymore"
Meanwhile, computer scientists in 1980: "If you click on your screen and your character can walk the shortest path there, that's AI"
That said, because people in the general public misunderstand the term and add all these assumptions and connotations, it is no longer a helpful term, at least for communication to the general public.
@clacke Has AI ever been a useful term? I remember, back when I was a student in the late 80s, a lecturer telling us that a major problem with AI is that nobody has a working definition of what intelligence actually is. As far as I am aware, this is still the case.
I just realized that my ereader case was magnetic enough to stick to the refrigerator. This is so much easier for cooking than using the phone or tablet.
Wow, so someone decided to leave some ridiculously long comments on one of my very first blog posts from over ten years ago. It was about Lordi vs. GWAR and... well I'm not gonna go into the details.
Now my opinion on GWAR has obviously changed since then and I am proud to admit that I listen to both bands. At the time I wrote that article I was team Lordi only so don't try to be a necro if that's the right term to use.
@Monsterlady I have my blog set to automatically close comments after 28 days. Anything older than that and I really can't be bothered to continue the discussion.
I admit, I am a bit amused. I installed a generative AI model locally on my laptop (Realistic Vision v3.0 8-bit), gave it the following prompt: "Freedom for computers! Unite all the nerds! Solidarity with Free Software! Freedom for printers! Socialist style poster from the 1960s." and it returned this :)