I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?...
Surprised no one else mentioned this... the answer is negative many months (or years?), most are Mastodon instances and probably not many people are familiar with most of those instances tho.
There was a fairly serious controversy months back when mastodon.cloud was purchased (if I remember correctly) by the same company that owns pawoo.net and another large Japanese Mastodon instance, the company is for-profit. Several right-wing shithole instances obviously have ads and are for-profit. Also there are a few instances owned/operated by for-profit companies, Medium immediately comes to the top of my mind.
Problem is a fairly significant portion of Mastodon admins I know were so staunchly against anything touching for-profit companies within a 12-ft stick that they immediately defederated from all of the said for-profit company affiliated instances...
To answer the second question... I don't know. Again, the larger Mastodon instances (over 10,000 users each) I'm aware of seem to do just fine on user donations now, but the concept of profit comes every now and then. Paid moderators/admins was also something to keep in mind for this topic.
Oh god don't even mention it... I was already afraid it would break down last year (when we didn't have this extreme heat). I'm planning to leave Texas as early as possibly can partly because of all this craziness, meanwhile some of my coworkers don't even notice what kinds of nightmarish scenario is happening down here
Nope, just native kbin.social. Firefox almost never crashes on any other occasions either, so it's probably just my issue then, I'll have to look into this
I stand my opinion on this... Some people are defederating Meta because they are anti-capitalist; these are the same admins who defederated mastodon.cloud as well as instances from Medium/Mozilla/etc on moment's notice, so I think they will certainly defederate from Tumblr. Most people would probably want to at least wait & see since Tumblr isn't as nefarious as Meta is
... no, but that could just be me being weird and broke (literally not having enough to buy something dissuades a lot of purchasing behvior). Also... mentally if there is a salesperson involved (who does not have my best interest, obviously) I'd automatically mark the thing as inferior unless proven otherwise
I dunno... if I am too easily swindled maybe grab a nerdy, logical friend to help out or sth? Seems like everyone else on the thread already mentioned how to do proper research on different subject matters so
Definitely. I just found the whole thing odd tbh... First of all, Nature is extremely rigorous with their review (because they only publish highly novel/interesting findings and is very thus susceptible to fraudulent stuff). Yet this paper passed for a Nature-branded journal (albeit a newer one, I think Nature Aging is only like 1yr old or sth) with doing only one experiment (a monkey trial), and they don't even know what this "klotho" thing is... My suspicion is that the aging field is just too small so Nature Aging is lowering their standards? They've accepted less than stellar works before too.
The results seem fine to me & I really hope this is something real since I'm also studying aging, but as someone with some medicinal chemistry training... Nothing is confirmed until you get a positive phase 2 clinical trial result, otherwise we'd have cured all cancer and Alzheimer's a long time ago lol... I'm not putting my eggs in this basket just yet
I’m trying to understand how an app would even get that info in the first place, how that’s classified and why a mobile operating system even has a way to provide that data....
Phones give out a lot of personal information on their own lol. On top of the phone, don't forget that social media apps like Threads also require you to login... with credentials stored at FB/Meta... that they can derive all the aforementioned information on, as well as other type of things (Amazon purchases? Stuff you watch on youtube.com? Google queries?...) by using some creative tracking technology. You basically gave them a dog tag to identify you whenever you sign up for services after all
For shittier apps like Thread, apparently they also do some weird stuff like forcing the app to be on once the OS boots, so... yeah.
Interesting, I did drive for Uber Eats during the pandemic a bit...
I guess the main "backlash" is because these few companies have to pay minimum wage now? Drivers are gig workers so have been treated as independent contractors so far: a.k.a. no employee benefits, absolutely no minimum wage... The flexibility might sound alright to some on first glance, but the more you think about it the worst it gets. And yeah these companies basically made money by giving the false pretense that you can have a flexible work schedule but then squeeze profits out from both ends
So to get back to this... I guess these companies are arguing about this law not just because they are greedy for a few extra bucks, but because mandating them to pay minimum wage might straight-up bankrupt their businesses? I don't mind tho... Uber got to where it is today by being a loss leader & drove out the cab companies. Might as well let 'em taste a bit of their own medicine for all the shitty gig economy they brought to us
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform, Semafor reported on Thursday, citing a letter sent to the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro.
Theoretically... yes and no? First of all it's a given that any truly rich person in today's day and age is a capitalist, no exceptions.
Modern capitalism is based on the assumption that "maximizing profit" leads to the best outcome for everyone... which is not true. So if theoretically a rich person is trying to be 100% rational then they cannot be "good"
On the other hand... also theoretically, rich ppl have a lot more resources to give and support causes they care about, so on this aspect they could be good? I know ppl who donate a ton to social causes but I honestly don't know how much of their donations can be attributed to tax benefits
In practice... I guess most of what you could call "good" people wouldn't want to make that much money in the first place? Or it could just be probability, good people and rich people are both quite rare, so good+rich is even rarer (if we assume they are independent).
Second this, as of right now Nebula is the only service I know which is even remotely comparable to Ytb's scale... unfortunately is behind a paywall and is mostly only for infotainment content. Peertube is getting there but not yet. And ofc we don't talk about the O site.
Invidious: an alternative front-end that is open-source and privacy-respecting. Here are a list of open instances. If you are reasonably familiar with docker/self-hosting you can also host it yourself, but be aware it's somewhat resource- and maintenance-heavy....
...??? Ok that's strange. It seems like interoperability between Lemmy-Mastodon is quite reasonable now, but between KBin and other lesser-known Fediverse apps seem a bit funky. I haven't received this thread on my Calckey account yet despite following both /m/random and my kbin.social account.
Also I previously made a NSFW thread (this one, not actually NSFW: https://kbin.social/m/random/t/27995) which got super weird... So the content of the thread (which is supposed to be marked NSFW, by the way) became the CW on Calckey. The post itself became like this, and mysteriously had one "like" (upvote?):
"""
【[NSFW] The Reddit NSFW copypasta】
Please put an NSFW tag on this. I was on the train and when I saw this I had to start furiously masturbating. Everyone else gave me strange looks and were saying things like “what the fuck” and “call the police”. I dropped my phone and everyone around me saw this image. Now there is a whole train of men masturbating together at this one image. This is all your fault, you could have prevented this if you had just tagged this post NSFW
(This is a test post to see if the NSFW checkmark works)
Civil rights groups and Democrats reacted angrily to the US supreme court decision in favor of the Colorado web designer Lorie Smith, who argued she had a first amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages. Critics of the court’s decision say it ushers in a new era of prejudice in America....
I had to do a double-take on this... I thought I was tripping to hear three explosive pieces of new development, from the US Supreme Court, all with a 6-3 vote, all erasing social progressiveness, within only two days... Saddening to say the very least, why is this happening
So YouTube has a lot of problems, there's no denying that. Frivolous and selective (not to mention automated) copyright enforcement, bureaucratic termination appeal system, COPPA idiocy, the whole clusterfuck that is monetization, etc?...
Might be a hot take but... I don't think Odysee is a failure by any means? They did establish themselves somewhat. A very good number of FOSS creators already synced their content over or even made Odysee their primary platform, Mental Outlaw was probably the most famous one. They also got their weird LBRY nonsense sorted out so there was at least some type of monetization.
The thing was... Odysee seems to be catering very much towards the right-end of the political spectrum, so that might end up deterring a lot of ppl. Wouldn't assume some people who just want to watch cat memes to like getting a bunch of conspiracy theory and stuff thrown at their face... PSA The Linux Experiment (TLE) is very much aware of Odysee and explicitly avoided the platform because of that reason
There's also Peertube as an alternative, but if Odysee suffers from bad marketing/bad monetization then... lol. Not to name names here but there is a prominent content creator (who is also on Nebula and on Mastodon) who mentioned that they don't want to deal with Peertube with all the extra hassles for potentially just some freeloaders to watch their content for free.
So how long until the Fediverse is monetized?
I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?...
Southern US Reaches Dangerous "Wet Bulb Temperature". Here's What That Means (www.iflscience.com)
Multiple southern states and a few midwestern states are at "extreme threat" levels of "wet bulb temperature".
Firefox sometimes crashes when I'm on kbin.social: happens to anyone else?
As title suggested....
If the majority of the Fediverse is going to defederate from Meta Threads, does that mean we will defederate from Tumblr too?
Title
Hello fellow adults! Anybody else feel like almost every time you have to talk to someone to buy a thing, you're being swindled? If so how do you keep yourself from being taken advantage of?
See title....
Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys’ memories (news article & attached research article) (www.nature.com)
TL;DR...
How does an app like Threads get access to financial, political, health, religious or browsing info through your phone's OS. What is the actual source of that data?
I’m trying to understand how an app would even get that info in the first place, how that’s classified and why a mobile operating system even has a way to provide that data....
DoorDash, UberEats, and Grubhub sue New York City over a new $18 an hour minimum wage for delivery driver (www.businessinsider.com)
Some drivers at DoorDash and Grubhub supported the New York City pay bump, but others say it will actually mean less pay and freedom.
Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads (www.reuters.com)
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform, Semafor reported on Thursday, citing a letter sent to the Facebook parent's CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter's lawyer Alex Spiro.
Lab-grown meat: the science of turning cells into steaks and nuggets (www.nature.com)
Companies making cultured meat are attracting billions of dollars of investment. Here are their biggest challenges....
Can a rich person be a good person?
I don't mean doctor-making-150k-a-year rich, I mean properly rich with millions to billions of dollars....
what is the alternative to youtube?
Hi! sorry for the random topic 😅...
YSK: a few ways to watch YouTube videos without using youtube.com
Invidious: an alternative front-end that is open-source and privacy-respecting. Here are a list of open instances. If you are reasonably familiar with docker/self-hosting you can also host it yourself, but be aware it's somewhat resource- and maintenance-heavy....
A test post, also includes link to ProPublica and a cat pic (www.propublica.org)
This is a test post to see how kbin.social federates with my Calckey instance. I'm curious how formatting works......
Content moderators are just janitors of social media: Low-pay, low-respect, but one of the most important jobs of cleaning up human trash
So are automods just roombas?
My long cat (lemmy.world)
Will there ever be a way to add a content warning (CW) to a post?
As title suggested. CW culture is super prevalent on Mastodon and the Keys, so I'm wondering if that is even a possibility?...
‘A dangerous step backwards’: outrage at supreme court’s LGBTQ+ rights ruling (www.theguardian.com)
Civil rights groups and Democrats reacted angrily to the US supreme court decision in favor of the Colorado web designer Lorie Smith, who argued she had a first amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages. Critics of the court’s decision say it ushers in a new era of prejudice in America....
Mew didn't want me to play video games
Anyone else dismayed by the limited success and adoption of Odysee (YT alternative) when it comes to Reddit alternatives?
So YouTube has a lot of problems, there's no denying that. Frivolous and selective (not to mention automated) copyright enforcement, bureaucratic termination appeal system, COPPA idiocy, the whole clusterfuck that is monetization, etc?...