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  • 16 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • How was the concept first explained to you, or when did it click?

    I don’t remember. We had classes throughout elementary school that taught us how to use computers. I learned how to read the news and use email from my mom. I learned how to play games like Silkroad and StarCraft from my dad. I don’t remember who taught me how to watch videos on YouTube. It kind of felt natural I guess.

    Do you understand how insane it is to have the aggregate of all human knowledge — the only comparable thing once being a physical library or university — one search away? That it’s absolutely insane you can engage in a real-time conversation with someone on the opposite side of the world? That you can find niche communities in an instant?

    No, not really. I never thougt about it that way until I was much older.

    Were your parents super strict about internet usage? How quickly did you find workarounds?

    Very strict. I could only use the internet if it was for school work during the week days. But during the weekends, I was free to use it however I wanted.

    There were no workarounds until high school when I was free to play games and surf the web as much as I wanted any day of the week.


  • People have suggested making a portal/quiz for instance signups, but that adds to the barrier. There are also problems like how in-depth and inclusive it should be. It reminds me of Linux distro pickers that often suggest weird niche distros.

    There are already big/default instances in the Fediverse though but there are people who actively discourage this. Maybe Mastodon just had a bad start and Bluesky learned from that. I wonder if Bluesky’s PDS will be like Fediverse instances though. Many Fediverse instances are built around shared interests but the PDS just looks like a glorified handle.

    Personally, I think the Fediverse discourse should shift to designing social media with decentralization in mind rather than mimicking mainstream social media with a “decentralized twist”. I don’t think the Fediverse will ever be as big as Twitter, but it doesn’t have to be. It just needs to be sustainable enough to keep new conversations going.

    Doesn’t answer the question but maybe it’s worth sharing anyway.