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> What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at ca

> What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? Is that really fair? Would there be nowhere to see pictures of cats without their millions of dollars in infrastructure and staffing? Or could it be that their millions of dollars in infrastructure and staffing for selling ads is the reason the goto place for pictures of cats is BigTechCo instead of a ton of smaller forums and communities each of which is relatively inexpensive to operate.

whoisjuan 5y ago
Aggregation and distribution are virtues of large communities, not small ones. The sophistication of Facebok's business is what allows the creation and distribution of content. I agree that if Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit, Nextdoor, Twitter etc, didn't exist, small communities would fill that void... But they would do through a fragmented and siloed user experience that is hardly discoverable for the majority of the connected world. This is the equivalent of running a taxi business vs running an airline. Sure, a taxi can fulfill several transportation needs but it could never replace what an airline does.
- bun_at_work 5y ago
  Once upon a time Google Search was there to help you find those small online communities.
  - sodality2 5y ago
    You're moving the centralization problem to google, then.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  > ...small communities would fill that void. For a short time, and the overwhelming majority of people would have no idea that content exists. Then some enterprising startup founder would realize that there's a huge market for those exact services, and history would slowly repeat (rhyme with?) itself. This free content, sans big tech pipedream is just that. Sorry if that makes you sad.
dmkolobov 5y ago
So, which do you want? A go-to place to see <insert arbitrary interest here>, or a ton of smaller forums and communities?
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  Have many smaller ones and aggregate them by yourself with RSS feeds.
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    And the vast majority of the internet-using populace, who will never figure this out, can just go screw themselves?
    - greedo 5y ago
      Yeah, it's incredible complex to figure out. (/s) People on this site continually underestimate the ability of users.
      - yibg 5y ago
        I mean, yea it is. My mother is not going to set up a RSS feed for herself of a list of forums that interest her. She does know how to log on to Facebook and look at the feed.
        piaste 5y ago
        With decent RSS support at the browser level, the experience isn't meaningfully different. - See interesting page -> click the Facebook follow button to get it added to your FB feed - See interesting page -> click the RSS button to get it added to your RSS feed
        Godel_unicode 5y ago
        You're wrong. That exact thing existed before, and that's not what happened.
maccam94 5y ago
Ahhh, I remember the good old days of forums where people would "hotlink" an image into a thread, and after enough people started viewing/forwarding that link around it would break because the image hoster's account would get suspended by their host for going over their bandwidth limit, or the original hoster would panic at their bandwidth costs and delete it and/or try to block hotlinking going forward. Maybe something like IPFS could solve this problem soon, but right now freely available image hosting on these centralized providers is the most reliable it's ever been.
- xfalcox 5y ago
  On Discourse (open source forum software) we default new install to downloading hotlinked images so we can prevent this very specific problem.
  - nico_h 5y ago
    But isn’t that copyright infringement?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Maybe? I'm not a lawyer and I would be surprised if they consulted one before implementing that feature. But unless the license for the file limits access it seems like they're just acting as an almost-proxy for these images, and not misrepresenting their ownership over them.
      - hermitdev 5y ago
        I'm not a lawyer, either, and have an honest question: how would a download of the image to cache it differ than a download to view it? They're performing the same action (downloading the bits). But, one stores it for later download by others, the second displays it (and maybe gets cached locally in a browser cache, making it look sort of like the first case...). Does intent matter? Is there an implied protection in that you can download for personal use, but cannot distribute? Does that break down on a multi-user computer? i.e. what if I download the image and my computer shows the cached image another user?

whoisjuan 5y ago

Aggregation and distribution are virtues of large communities, not small ones. The sophistication of Facebok's business is what allows the creation and distribution of content. I agree that if Facebook, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit, Nextdoor, Twitter etc, didn't exist, small communities would fill that void... But they would do through a fragmented and siloed user experience that is hardly discoverable for the majority of the connected world. This is the equivalent of running a taxi business vs running an airline. Sure, a taxi can fulfill several transportation needs but it could never replace what an airline does.

bun_at_work 5y ago
Once upon a time Google Search was there to help you find those small online communities.
- sodality2 5y ago
  You're moving the centralization problem to google, then.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Godel_unicode 5y ago
> ...small communities would fill that void. For a short time, and the overwhelming majority of people would have no idea that content exists. Then some enterprising startup founder would realize that there's a huge market for those exact services, and history would slowly repeat (rhyme with?) itself. This free content, sans big tech pipedream is just that. Sorry if that makes you sad.

dmkolobov 5y ago

So, which do you want? A go-to place to see <insert arbitrary interest here>, or a ton of smaller forums and communities?

pietrovismara 5y ago
Have many smaller ones and aggregate them by yourself with RSS feeds.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  And the vast majority of the internet-using populace, who will never figure this out, can just go screw themselves?
  - greedo 5y ago
    Yeah, it's incredible complex to figure out. (/s) People on this site continually underestimate the ability of users.
    - yibg 5y ago
      I mean, yea it is. My mother is not going to set up a RSS feed for herself of a list of forums that interest her. She does know how to log on to Facebook and look at the feed.
      - piaste 5y ago
        With decent RSS support at the browser level, the experience isn't meaningfully different. - See interesting page -> click the Facebook follow button to get it added to your FB feed - See interesting page -> click the RSS button to get it added to your RSS feed
        Godel_unicode 5y ago
        You're wrong. That exact thing existed before, and that's not what happened.

maccam94 5y ago

Ahhh, I remember the good old days of forums where people would "hotlink" an image into a thread, and after enough people started viewing/forwarding that link around it would break because the image hoster's account would get suspended by their host for going over their bandwidth limit, or the original hoster would panic at their bandwidth costs and delete it and/or try to block hotlinking going forward. Maybe something like IPFS could solve this problem soon, but right now freely available image hosting on these centralized providers is the most reliable it's ever been.

xfalcox 5y ago
On Discourse (open source forum software) we default new install to downloading hotlinked images so we can prevent this very specific problem.
- nico_h 5y ago
  But isn’t that copyright infringement?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Maybe? I'm not a lawyer and I would be surprised if they consulted one before implementing that feature. But unless the license for the file limits access it seems like they're just acting as an almost-proxy for these images, and not misrepresenting their ownership over them.
    - hermitdev 5y ago
      I'm not a lawyer, either, and have an honest question: how would a download of the image to cache it differ than a download to view it? They're performing the same action (downloading the bits). But, one stores it for later download by others, the second displays it (and maybe gets cached locally in a browser cache, making it look sort of like the first case...). Does intent matter? Is there an implied protection in that you can download for personal use, but cannot distribute? Does that break down on a multi-user computer? i.e. what if I download the image and my computer shows the cached image another user?