Avid Amoeba

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    toFediverse@lemmy.worldIs the Fediverse stalling?
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    2 days ago

    According to my observations, the Fediverse grows whenever people look for alternative. People do that whenever their comfort is disturbed by material changes. E.g. Reddit gated app APIs, people’s apps started shutting down, protest ensued, it failed, people looked for an alternative, many joined Lemmy as the obvious one. That created one of the largest spikes in active usage. There were others following that. There are network effects keeping people where they are unless there’s a significant force pushing them to overcome that. And so I think the Fediverse would grow the same way it’s grown so far. By being here for people whenever they can’t say or read something the way they were previously able to, as corporations enshittify to profit maximize. You even see them doing that themselves, with Bluesky for example, where they built an alternative that pretends to be federated in order to capture refugees. But Bluesky is inevitably going to get fucked too and since it’s federated in pretense only, there isn’t another instance to take over. I think the process is similar to Linux adoption. It was always there, chugging along for people looking for alternatives. It hasn’t stopped growing. It hasn’t exploded but we’re not complaining about where we are, are we.
















  • I understand completely what you’re saying and I have considered it. I just don’t believe we’ll ever get to the point where a fully automated system produces all necessary goods for high standard of living without human labour required. Worse, even if we get to the point where significantly less labour is required, history informs us that the unemployed would very likely revolt and take power through violence. Especially because we won’t be able to go from the status quo to a state where we neutralize revolting people automatically in a short enough time frame for people to be caught by surprise and unable to revolt. Not to mention that a part of such a revolt would likely include the stoppage of work by people who work on, maintain and operate the automation. I think the most likely scenario as we go down this path would be the formation of militant labour unions that take power back from the rich and steer automation into producing for the majority. Whether we go away from capitalism through this change or reshape it, I don’t have a guess.