There are teams of potentially 100+ at big tech companies who’s sole purpose is to make their flavor of feed as addictive as neuron-activationally possible
> The LAPD is not expected to like the existence of “Fuck the LAPD” merchandise. But their sole remedy is to not do things that result in people wanting to buy and wear “Fuck the LAPD” merchandise. I understand that would be a difficult task. But I promise you that it would still be easier than trying to get a court to rule that “Fuck the LAPD” shirts violate the LAPDF’s intellectual property rights.
Maybe Gemini could use some lightweight markup language. Shit it could be a form of hypertext. Maybe it could be called something like "hypertext markup language". Then clients could still decide how to render the page but there could be clear links between documents and sites.
As a thought experiment: how big would the network have to be for you to start considering paying for access?
The Fediverse (Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, etc) is already clocking in at around ~10M users. How much do you think it would be a "reasonable" amount for a service provider to charge for an account?
If they're actually providing a service beyond what's available everywhere else, such as actively removing bigoted garbage or more powerful tools to discover high quality content relevant to me, I'd toss them a few bucks a month. Especially now in 2023. I don't think I would have paid even that much in 2010. And certainly not $50 for a newer and smaller network.
I get what you're saying. I acknowledge I am an anomaly in being willing to pay at all. I just wonder if maybe it was the wrong time ($50 was certainly and still the wrong price IMO) for a paid social network to be successful. Perhaps it could work today with a small subscription.
See, that is the problem right there: the things that are "beyond what's available everywhere else" are financed with ads, data mining, or both. I am talking about how much you would pay to have basic access to service. The reason that people don't pay is that everyone wants to add conditions to justify their financial support, and this is why we all end up in the mess we are all in.
Now, let me try again: go to https://communick.com/packages and tell me if you think that what I am charging for the basic access packages is unreasonable.
Ah, you're irritable because it's personal to you. Yes, people place conditions on what they are willing to purchase, that's... how it works?
Why do I even want to be on Mastodon, let alone pay to be on it, let alone pay someone who is rent-seeking on top of a platform and content they aren't responsible for? Can't I get access to the social network direct from the source, for free?
> Can't I get access to the social network direct from the source, for free?
For free? No, you can't.
- You (or someone else) will have to develop the software. The source code doesn't just show up magically on github.
- You (or someone else) will have to test the software, triage bugs, help with documentation, etc.
- You (or someone else) will have to pay for the servers.
- You (or someone else) will have to do content moderation
None of these things are free. TANSTAAFL. If you are using it, it will cost you something, it's up to you if you want to pay with your money, your time, or your data.
It's funny that you include content moderation in there when that was one of my requests. Are you moderating content beyond your legal minimum requirements?
Come to think of it, did you write all of the Fediverse software you are using? Are you paying those developers monthly? Or did it... appear for free on GitHub? The sense of entitlement here is something else.
I think you would do better if you spend you time thinking of a value proposition instead of being irate at people and demand they pay you. I have no proof you would not be using my data, and I would be linking that (with a credit card) to a real identity. Promising me you won't do that is not a value prop I care about.
Unfortunately, this shows how much the people that keep complaining about Elon Musk or Zuckerberg really should not be listened to. People suddenly do not care that much about privacy if it costs them anything or brings some inconvenience.
I keep running https://communick.com because I am stubborn and because I can afford to, but honestly I've pretty much have given up hope that the basic services (Mastodon, Matrix) will ever reach enough users to be able to pay for themselves.
> I keep running https://communick.com because I am stubborn and because I can afford to, but honestly I've pretty much have given up hope that the basic services (Mastodon, Matrix) will ever reach enough users to be able to pay for themselves.
I have a faint hope that mobile hardware, software, and networking may eventually improve enough that federated communication nodes could run directly off the clients themselves.
The technical requirements are far from impossible - without even going for a Linux phone, you can run a nginx web server on Android via termux, and use dynamic DNS and/or IPv6 to stay discoverable as you move through cell networks. And hardware-wise, the power is plentiful, although I don't know how bad the battery drain would be.
But of course the experience has to be as easy as click link -> install Mastodon app -> have your own instance running off your device, with nothing but a subdomain in the cloud. Anything less and it's a non-starter.
We can do that since the late 90's. Skype was p2p and worked very well.
The problem is social, not technical. A p2p network will have problem with reputation and moderation. Only the super technical people will bother to deal with trying fighting scammers and trolls. The only alternative would be something pay-to-play to make it costly, but then those people paying will also want the conveniences and benefits provided by a system with some central authority.
Things like Laragon (https://laragon.org/) have taken up the XAMPP mantle in recent years. Not sure about production (I moved away from Windows for dev stuff similarly), but developing with PHP on Windows has definitely got easier, imo.
