TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)

In their current state, I would argue none of them are actually alternatives in the sense of being a real replacement. None of them is setup to scale, making the moderation/filtering point kinda moot.

To your point, the amount of money/effort to even try and rival YouTube (and/or Google) would be a hell of a task for sure. Since you would want it to be open, well moderated (but not so much that the majority of people scream “censorship!”), and be able to store/encode/serve a wild amount of video daily. And the later 2 things get exponentially more difficult as you scale.

It would need to be like the Fediverse on steroids, doing a distributed filesystem allowing every federated member to host/encode/serve part of the burden (like Kazaa/Limewire/DC++) but in some manner that people could be assured node hosts couldn’t tamper with videos. And then you would also need some sort of reward for creators that wouldn’t somehow lead to greedy power struggles causing an implosion of your open platform.

Ah, to dream.

Just took a look at them, and Rumble is for sure a hard pass. The 2 rows under “news” is all far-right extremist videos, which is great if you are aiming for the Parlor/Truth Social/Nazi and Nazi sympathizers of the internet, but I think you’ll miss most of the world going that toxic on the frontage.

What platform are you on that you need to use VLC?

You ever heard of a man Hannibal Lecter he was a “nice guy”.

• Donald J Trump

He’s shown you who he is, I think we need to start believing him. He has also surrounded himself with even more unhinged and dangerous people this time around. They have a plan this time to keep power and end elections. Putting your head in the sand doesn’t make him and his cult any less of a threat, and plays right into their playbook. They want you to become disengaged, to burn out, to think he is “just joking”, or just “telling it how he sees it”, or worst of all “the new normal”. These all leave his cult emboldened and with less resistance to grabbing power.

I know I’m feeding a troll, but US democracy is on the ballot this year. Previous years have been big years, but this could be the last election in the US. Trump getting to the White House will allow him to save himself, and he will be bringing Fascism to a whole new level in the US with Project 2025 and all the truly evil folks in his cult leadership circle.

This unlocks the secret 30 license copy.

For those not upset and see the band “just playing a gig”, what would be a line that you personally would consider too far? Would you be ok with them doing a private show for Netanyahu and his cabinet? Would a private show for Trump and his Republican lackeys be ok? How about Nestle CEO and its board, but none of its workers? Would a private show for the Proud Boys be ok if they had a “dump truck full of cash”?

The first thing that came to mind when I saw Reddit was The_Donald.

Mastodon is part of the fediverse though, and is open and a nonprofit. Bluesky is neither of those things, and that is why it’s different.

And giving the resources from a free and open network to a for-profit corporation is both dumb and rude IMHO.

I don’t think the argument is even about privacy, but giving away someone else’s (or in this case potentially a whole network of people’s content), and admins resources in order to drive some corporate profits they aren’t even getting a share of. If someone needs to chat with someone on Bluesky that bad then they should just make an account, not undermine a whole network so they can be lazy.

What has people upset is that the “service” is opt-out instead of opt-in, and one someone else is making for server admins without warning. If this person wanted to run a server and give their own content to the corporate overlords that is their choice, but making something to give others content away without their consent doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.

Yes, but consuming data and using someone else’s data for profit are 2 different things. Don’t believe me, start reposting a large news websites data verbatim with AdSense on it and see how quickly the cease and desist comes.

Open yes, but Bluesky is not open, they are after free content to make the corporate investors a return at all costs. If a non-profit wants to use my server to add content to their platform, I have no issue with that. But a for-profit can pay me for content if they want it, I don’t work for them or use their platform.

The same argument could be used for copyright itself, and why we have non-commercial licenses for things. Just because you are giving something away as free (as in beer), doesn’t mean that some for-profit should be able to just use it to drive up their user base and make the corp more money. I think content creators, or at the very least in the fediverse - server owners, should be able to limit what corporations can suck up to further corporate profits at the expense of the fediverse.

If you want to run a server and donate your resources to make a for-profit corp money, that is your right, but to tell everyone that they should have no control of their content is unacceptable to me.

Going out on a limb, but the for profit corporation being able to suck up your posts is probably what has many upset. I personally would block such a service as I don’t see these for-profit corporations as part of the fediverse, but as leeches out to Extend, Embrace, Extinguish.

Agreed. Cloudflare level of transparency should really be the minimum in cases of security breaches for all companies with any user/customer information. And when found to be purposefully hiding that information you should have your right to do business at least suspended in the US.

A policy as such would -

1. Incentives disclosure (or your essentially DOA in US)
2. Increase the IT budget and force more security over profit (because again the alternative is no profit otherwise - or at least many detailed explanations on how the company still isn’t doing anything)

EDIT - spelling/autocorrect battle

This isn’t based on income, but here is the automatic price adjusting.

EDIT So, not 100% as granular, but not that far off.

Dynamic Pricing

Another interesting aspect of dynamic pricing is that it can lead to price discrimination, where different customers are charged different prices for the same product. This is because retailers can use customer data, such as location, browsing history, and purchase behavior, to tailor prices to individual customers.

Well also remember that to win the “buy box” is also a competition amongst people who are just drop shipping similar items, sometimes by the pallet load, directly to Amazon warehouses and then based on margin basically doing a constant reverse auction to win the box the customer sees. Amazon also knows all this and will adjust its own competing stock/listings according to these changes as well. I have also heard that their prices are similar to Walmart and will vary based on estimated income of the customer. Have an iPhone or Mac and you are probably paying more than someone that shops on a cheap Android phone or no name PC.