3 ms·
Don't y'all see? Every other day a story comes out about a centralized platform either: 1) Extorting for money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283887
by EGreg 1y ago
Don't y'all see?
Every other day a story comes out about a centralized platform either:
1) Extorting for money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45283887
2) Canceling accounts: https://www.eff.org/pages/when-knowing-someone-meta-only-way-break-out-content-jail https://www.eff.org/pages/when-knowing-someone-meta-only-way...
3) Has their algorithms choose what you see and hear: https://x.com/i/grok/share/NwPcWVxZiHQytvGs8MONRdpCi https://x.com/i/grok/share/NwPcWVxZiHQytvGs8MONRdpCi
4) Deplatforms you anytime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming
5) Demonetizes you, after taking over half to begin with: https://podcastle.ai/blog/how-much-money-do-youtubers-make-per-view/ https://podcastle.ai/blog/how-much-money-do-youtubers-make-p...
6) Allows governments easy surveillance and even hacking your account: https://natlawreview.com/article/even-hacking-field-government-surveillance-bill-passed-parliament https://natlawreview.com/article/even-hacking-field-governme...
7) Sends your information to advertisers, etc. etc.
8) Makes everyone increasingly depressed, angry and distrustful of others https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
Now I ask you, why do people put up with this, especially content creators with large audiences?
Because they have no viable open alternative that they can host easily themselves.
And why is that? Here is what it would look like if they did: https://qbix.com/community.pdf https://qbix.com/community.pdf
I think it's because just like in Web3, the incentives of Web2 are to make a lot of money for your early stage investors, the VCs, and very few choose not to sell out after they hit the critical mass and get massive centralized power and network effects. I've seen "indieweb" come and go, "decentralizedweb.net" is down but they used to have TimBL speaking at it. I've seen Diaspora come out 13 years ago and sadly one of the founders killed himself. I've seen Mastodon, which Trump's team forked to make Truth Social (one of the few deplatformed guys who actually got his own platform, had to spend millions on it).
Why do you think there is no good alternative to Big Tech, the way that, say, at least the Incredible Burger is an alternative for people who want to opt of meat?
- the_real_cher 1y agowe need to move away from centralized platforms asap
- EGreg 1y agoI’m working on it For now it’s already extremely full-featured, but still only web developers will be able to use it: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform If you do give it a try, come back here and write about your experience.