I love how the French flag is a backdrop here

I’ve generally found that avoiding the biggest crowds seems to also avoid some (though not all) of the worst behavior. More specialized subreddits, communities, and magazines tend to be more chill, and also more focused on their topics.

It’s arguably so easy to “farm karma” that I accidentally did it for a while. Just kept posting silly puns to reply to stuff people post on the Florida Man subreddit.

Reddit karma ain’t worth much at all.

On one hand downvotes are an expression of negativity, but on the other hand downvotes are an outlet for negativity.

Meanwhile, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out why a bunch of the top comments here got like one downvote each, lol.

Honestly I don’t think an algorithm needs to work very hard to “be mean” like that. Sure, you can purposely put people with clashing views in each other sight on a place where people go to hang out and have fun. But you don’t even need to go do that on purpose. To some extent, people naturally produce more “engagement” with stuff that’s controversial/argumentative.

Imagine if I were to walk past you and say some completely innocent comment. Now imagine I were to walk past you and insult your favorite movie/show/song/game/whatever. You’d be far more likely to respond in the latter case.

So, as people respond, more activity is generated, and that makes the post “hotter”. Simply boost what’s hot, and you have a veritable litany of controversy.

How big is their userbase? I presume it’s far smaller than Instagram’s, so there’s going to be less concern with having a sudden influx of users than with Meta’s Threads.

Can someone provide or point me to a quick rundown of how Misskey and Calckey/Firefish differ?

I heard that foundkey’s development has stalled. I’m guessing we’re gonna see instances move from Foundkey to either Misskey or Firefish?

So it seems their reasoning is as follows:

1. billionaires “control” (in some way) the US government
2. said billionaires have an interest in getting people to join their companies’ platforms
3. therefore, they will collude to make the US government ban the fediverse

I doubt that they will readily consider the following information with a level head, but if they are willing to listen, you may want to cite the following:

• “Big Tech” is actually rather politically unpopular right now.
• The US government has actually held various hearings grilling leaders of major tech companies. Unfriendly hearings, I would add. (Your friend may just try to dismiss this as “theater”…)
• The various major tech companies see each others as rivals more than partners. Doubly so with Elon Musk gratuitously adding his own ball of stupid chaos into things. Heck, tech companies are more likely motivated by finding new disruptive technologies to undermine their competition.
• Meta and Tumblr have both expressed interest in supporting ActivityPub.
• ActivityPub, Mastodon, Lemmy, and the rest of this whole shebang is all open-source. Even if you make the flagship organizations illegal, the open-source nature of the software will lead other people to create their own hubs, and even to develop these platforms further in the absence of a flagship.
• The US government is gloriously slow to do anything.
• Hell, billionaires hate digital piracy! Have they been able to ban it? (This might be your strongest argument…?)

Tangential sidenote: I find the Lemmy easier to understand than Reddit.