Mastodawn

Adam Dalliance Jun 30, 2023

I didn't think they'd raise the walls on *my* garden, sobs the woman who registered at the walled-garden website.

Aybabtu Jul 1, 2023

Adam Dalliance

Today
* Reddit ends free API access.
* Twitter turns off anonymous reading.
* Youtube is talking about banning ad-blocking users.

The tech industry was living on cheep money and low interest rates, and now they're all afraid to let their precious content get used for AI training.

The walls are going up, the lawful corporate web is collapsing in on itself.

About time that the internet started seeing corporate ownership as damage and routing around it.

Raphael Jul 1, 2023

@pre yeah, seems like a trend right now. Let’s hope lasting change is really coming from this… I’m skeptical because these corporations are very good at luring people in. For all we know there may be new ones emerging as we speak.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Jul 1, 2023

@pre made that point in November:
https://vsquare.org/will-we-learn-from-twitters-collapse/

And no, I don't think we will actually learn from this. Sigh.

Hot Calc Jul 1, 2023

@pre hell yeah bro

I am Jack's Lost 404 Jun 30, 2023

@pre

This is an interesting theory. One clarification:

used for *others'* AI training

Adam Dalliance Jun 30, 2023

@float13 Yeah, sure, they all want to feed their user's data into the machine learning matrix, just as much as they want nobody else to be able to do it.

Guards up, everywhere except the decentralized pirate dark web.

Though even here we mostly gonna block Facebook I guess.

GuyWithLag Jul 1, 2023

@pre @float13 Blocking FB is just part of standard memetic hygiene practices.

OpenDNA⚙️Jul 1, 2023

@GuyWithLag @pre @float13 Level 1 Cognitohazard Containment

fedops 💙💛Jul 1, 2023

@float13 @pre I personally am absolutely ok with them choking on their own dogfood. Crash & burn baby.

I also think a lot of the current "pull up the drawbridges" is due to the dwindling ad revenue. There just isn't that much money to be made there at the moment.

Wiredfire

@fedops @float13 @pre I'm thrilled by the turn of events. It's finally getting folk to remember that the web was more free (as in speech rather than as in beer) before all the "web 2.0" excitement.

I'm hoping the moves of more folk to decentralised, federated, spaces will also inspire some UX enhancements to make them a little less daunting for those who have become too used to centralised, siloed, spaces.

It's the most interesting time for the web since the mid 90s

4dw@r3

🦬Jun 30, 2023

@pre I know it's not today but I'd add Netflix and their shenanigans to the list.

I say about time to it all, it's felt like a stagnation the past few years as places that were innovative become more and more corporate and full of themselves.

I'm really hoping this brings change, innovation, and creativity. From someone much smarter than myself who has a vision for what should come.

Jaime Herazo Jul 1, 2023

@witch_of_winter
Need to check out how was it you ripped your discs to transfer your stuff to files, then get a NAS and set up Jellyfin as a replacement
@pre

PhoenixSerenity Jul 1, 2023

@pre It's fucking bullshit.

Jamon Bull Jul 1, 2023

@pre @sqhistorian Long live the Fediverse!

Mischa 🔇Jul 1, 2023

@pre perhaps we will return to a pre Facebook internet experience. Perhaps this will backfire and we will have less monoliths and more distributed niche forums. Does every interest need the same platform to build a community?

Taco Dave Jul 1, 2023

@pre this post is even better if you read it in your head followed by the “and don’t it feel good?!” lyric from that walkin’ on sunshine song.

JohnW Jul 1, 2023

@pre A tiny bit more complex Fediverse seems a lot freer now, does it?

"Protect myself, protect my money will always come before users desires in a corporate environment".

skribe 🇺🇦

@pre The shitification continues.

Theriac Jul 1, 2023

@pre
Youtube has been insistent about going after what they consider to be "content leeches" for a good few years. Wojcicki was brought in to morph the site into a Netflix-like with communities and the result was video nagware.

Now however the aging youtube user population is being eclipsed by the youthful Tiktok and Twitch userbases

Over the past few months youtube has been frantically but unsuccessfully trying to break Invidous behind the scenes via soft blocks. Then last month cease-and-desists were sent out to people actively contributing to Invidious code in the git repository. Clearly intended to co-incide with the new anti-adblock policy.

Personally speaking I can see this as being a #reddit #facebook #twitter moment for #peertube The small to medium content creators I tend to watch aren't getting anything out of being on youtube, relying on patreon or similar.

@Theriac yeah, YouTube is just one among the many sites I upload to, and not even the one that brings the most views. They do not have the monopoly position they once had.

Theriac Jul 1, 2023

@pre
I think that's the issue in general - they're having a record industry moment.

Simeon Nedkov Jul 1, 2023

@pre Let a thousand open services bloom.

Karl Baron Jul 1, 2023

@pre @smallsco *our precious content

Richard Jul 1, 2023

@pre today is a good day for users to EOL them, and to find more open solution

Virginicus Jul 1, 2023

@pre I like the word “lawful” there. Internauts have been pirates before. Perhaps they shall be again.

@Virginicus Plus all the lawful sites will have to hand over encryption keys to government officials and scan uploads for illegal content and maybe check age-verification and god knows what other idiocy the law in various countries are planning.

It's not just corporate enshitification that's coming, it's also legal restrictions on encryption and data-sharing and identity-proof.

L Jul 3, 2023

@pre @Virginicus good take.
Rember the global community's effort toward digital ids, states' citizen wallets, social credit systems and the fact that sooner or later cyber-money will be reality.
It won't surprise me a bit if one day non identity-verified access to the internet will be illegal. I can already see the scandals that could trigger this worldwide.

Adam Dalliance Jul 3, 2023

@leemph @Virginicus

They may well try, and the phreaks will still do it anyway.

MaryPot 🏳️‍🌈Jul 1, 2023

@Virginicus @pre

It has already started vis-a-vis streaming "services". Who can afford to subscribe to all of that? Each has 1 or 2 hits everyone wants to see, the rest is rubbish and they charge a fortune.

Ozzy🕯Jul 1, 2023

@pre going by what i saw the other day on twitter when i closed my account, not so sure about lawful
awful

@ozzy Yeah, they might not be all that lawful. Refusing to pay rent or severance pay isn't all that lawful now I come to think of it.

Ozzy🕯Jul 1, 2023

@pre
Australia has an Esafety Commissioner
they sent a warning to #dipshit that if he doesnt clean up his site Australia would sue until he does.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/22/australias-esafety-umpire-issues-legal-warning-to-twitter-amid-rise-in-online-hate

Australia’s eSafety umpire issues legal warning to Twitter amid rise in online hate

Julie Inman Grant says Elon Musk’s platform has ‘dropped the ball’ on tackling ‘peddlers of outrage’

The Guardian

@ozzy Ahha, but now they can't even see if he's cleaned it up or not! They'd have to create an account and agree to the T&Cs of not suing Twitter.

Ozzy🕯Jul 1, 2023

@pre they have one, most australian agencies do
and still active...

J Jul 1, 2023

@pre @MurmeltHier

And a new community driven internet will emerge. Shall we call it #fediverse?

emmatonkin Jul 1, 2023

@pre
Also Twitch lost it recently with people who streamed simultaneously to YT and Twitch and threatened to retaliate if they did. Most streamers I follow went "oh all right then" and just stopped bothering with Twitch. https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-tos-update-bans-everyone-from-multi-streaming-on-twitch-like-platforms-2169439/

Twitch TOS update bans everyone from multi-streaming on “Twitch-like” platforms

A new Twitch TOS update has banned all users of the platform from multi-streaming to "Twitch-like" platforms such as Kick.

Dexerto

Richad A Jul 1, 2023

@emmatonkin @pre "Were they twitchy about the changes?" "Not in the least, in fact it simplified their lives." ;-)

Richad A Jul 1, 2023

@pre Today I wrote a blog post about the Silo websites, and how they're encouraging people to dump them, when people have crowdfunded and open source alternatives. It seems apt. I don't like the Walled Garden websites. I don't think they're run by moral people. I think they demonstrate their immorality by caling people that use their websites "addicts". That is not a good starting point for a good relationship.

a fresh pup of coffee

@pre the only correction being "their" precious content, which is our content hosted on their platforms. They sure didn't create all of that data themselves.

Mastodon Migration Jul 1, 2023

@david @pre At least part of the reason is normal product cycles. When something very popular is new and scarce it has enormous intrinsic value. This leads to high demand and high prices (including ads, data exploitation etc in price). It also leads to competition which provides lower priced options which more accurately reflect the intrinsic cost. Social media and network services in general are reaching a commoditization phase and can no longer support the prices they have been extracting.

Travis Jul 1, 2023

@david @pre And that’s why we need to go back to forums, blogs, and websites. Best of all, if you choose to run ads on your site, you get paid for your content. Not some mega-corp freeloading!

@travis @david
Yep. The lesson is don't build your stuff on someone else's computer, use your own computer.

Travis Jul 1, 2023

@pre @david Well you can use someone else’s computer, but make sure you have control of the software running the site (speaking as a web hosting provider and server provider 😉)

Julian Andres Klode 🏳️‍🌈Jul 1, 2023

@pre Heh I use AdBlocker on YouTube and have YT Premium, lol

Raphael Jul 1, 2023

@pre I get the banning ad-blocking users, though, as YouTube offers a way to experience the platform without ads.

Sir David Nielsen Jul 1, 2023

@pre @soller

ArneBab Jul 1, 2023

@pre sounds like it’s important now to archive good youtube content, even if just to watch it at another time.

Zergling_man Jul 2, 2023

@ArneBab @pre Always has been.

pas un réseau social Jul 1, 2023

@pre
@acousticmirror

🤞

kaukamieli Jul 1, 2023

@pre
Content the users made for them for free.

Alessio

@pre I just hope so bad this is true

@pre problem is, it is likely not going to affect any of them in a noticable negative way. Reddit just replace all the mods, Twitter replace lost users with trolls, and YouTube is a monopoly that had no realistic competitors.

Lots of users will leave, but most will remain and stay ignorant.

My prediction anyway. I wouldn't mind if users could affect platforms, I just don't believe it to be realistic.

Luckily, a few million people can still have a lot of fun here in the fediverse

@gigantos It's true that most people will remain, because they are followers.

But the new mods will be worse, the left-behind conversation will be worse.

Meanwhile the leaders are building the new places, leading the way. The followers will come when they notice they've been left behind.

Hopefully anyway.

Then no doubt they'll ruin it and the leading-edge will have to go more obscure.

@pre I also hope this is true, but worry the new leaders will be good enough. Many of the values of the old leaders are irrelevant to followers.

@pre basically, billions may stay on the "old" platforms while millions will run to the "new" platforms. Chances are that if a new platform gets billions of users, it's ends up as bad as the "old". Just look at apple. People love locked down products ran by overlords, even people on the fediverse.

@gigantos Yep.

Maybe that's why they call it internet surfing.

Best times are to be had at the crest of the wave before the masses flood in and spoil it.

Surf over from Usenet into PHPBB and from there to personal blogs and Twitter and now on over to Fedi.

The hackers.town crew have a new more-decentralized serverless thing launching this month.

Perhaps that's the next place to crest if this place gets ruined by facebook-federation or floods of simpletons.

hramrach Jul 1, 2023

@gigantos @pre That Youtube is a monopoly is an illusion that they would like you to believe.

Clearly when Youtube started it was One Video Site to Rule Them All, and when it implodes sooner or later it will likely not have a direct successor.

More specialized sites exist, general but less known sites exist.

And it will implode, it's increasingly tilted more towards advertiser concerns and less towards content creator and user concerns which means getting new content is getting difficult.

@hramrach @pre I know about a lot of alternatives, but because of content creators staying loyal to YouTube, they are not really alternatives.

Even the ones that just use YouTube as their place to post commerical for longer videos elsewhere (often nebula), still has most of their followers at YouTube.

I know millions will be able to get their data elsewhere, but there are still billions at YouTube.

hramrach Jul 1, 2023

@gigantos @pre And that's exactly the point - creators are pushing their viewers to other platforms as Youtube makes it more and more difficult to get new content there.

I have heard people somewhat seriously considering to post on Pornhub instead not because they do porn but because the Youtube content policies are so hostile that it's difficult to push anything in there.

And as people find increasingly less content on the platform they will move where the content is.