I have a dream that one day I be part of a platform where one will not be judged by the glamor of their username but by the quality of their discourse.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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Well, what’s stopping someone else from adopting TomHanks@Lemm.ee?
There's over 1400 people solely in the US named Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks The Celebrity does not get patent rights or trademarks or copyrights on the name.
Wanna know which is the Tom Hanks The Celebrity? Check if their profile is authenticated against their personal website, à-la-Mastodon.
I see this as a benefit. Generally speaking celebrity posts are the most useless threads on most platforms.
I presume I'm supposed to care, but I dont, and I don't know why anyone would.
The other night 337K people all registered to vote, simply because Taylor Swift sent one message on instagram.
People come to the platforms FOR the celebrities. And that's just ONE celebrity. The more celebrities on the platform, the more fanbases come with it.
But celebrities are picky. If they think something will hurt their image, they won't do it. Even if theres minimal chance it hurts their image. They have to be protective.
So they need assurance that when they post something, there's zero chance someone else could be posting "as them". Ironically enough, that was the original purpose of twitters blue checkmark.
Fuck the celebrities. They aren't your people, peers, or friends. They adopt platforms only when they determine they can make a buck from it. They're the kids that break your new toys, and you're suggesting we keep inviting them over to play.
They will only bring enshittification. Having a platform that isn't celebrity friendly is a boon.
With the celebrities come their followers. Which is like 97% of the world. I'm trying to get that 97% to adopt the fediverse.
But they don't come on their own. They go where their celebrities go. The celebrities bring content for their followers to consume.
You're arguing quantity over quality. I do not care the least for bootstrapped growth at the detriment of the platform. I also do not care about people who idolize and platform hop in order to follow celebrities. I suspect very few will bring with them value beyond increased traffic.
If you want this, Reddit is still an option available to you.
Quantity is quality, if you have good filters in place.
I never understood people that argue something is bad by looking at the median case. The problem of Reddit, Twitter and Facebook is not due to the amount of people they have, and they were absolutely fine until they tried to exploit their userbases.
(Aside for @blaze@feddit.org: see what I mean about Fedi's anti-growth and reactionary culture? Our friend here is not an isolated case)
Aside for @blaze@feddit.org: see what I mean about Fedi’s anti-growth and reactionary culture? Our friend here is not an isolated case
It's more against having celebrities and their followers coming here en masse, which I get.
I've still seen a few comments mentioning "organic grow" which seems indeed healthier
"oh, I want it to grow, I just don't it want to grow with people that I don't like"
You can dress it however you want, it's still elitist, reactionary and exclusive.
The other night 337K people all registered to vote, simply because Taylor Swift sent one message on instagram.
That's the example used by OP to make their point. Just from a technical perspective, how are instances supposed to handle 300k new users overnight?
To come back to your usual argument, do you expect those hundreds of thousands of new users to get a Communick subscription? Or to even support the hosting costs of the instances they would use?
how are instances supposed to handle 300k new users overnight?
They won't. Not at first. First we will get maybe 50k, LW will do their thing and try to gobble up the majority of users, alien.top can also help absorb part of this crowd and I could even finally convince some other admins to set up fediverser on their instances to help with the migration.
But the important thing is that this type of backing from the mainstream would mean free marketing.
do you expect those hundreds of thousands of new users to get a Communick subscription?
All of those people, of course not. But I expect the increased user base and media attention to bring the following:
- more instance admins realizing that this is not sustainable to be run as a hobby
- power users who want to run their own instance
- companies looking to establish their presence online (therefore looking for a quick/simple way to set up an instance)
- increased usage in the topic-based instances, which can open potential revenue streams.
- more people realizing the limitations of the server-centric approach and becoming interested in a single "Social Browser app"
All of those things translate indirectly into more business opportunities, none of which need to sacrifice the ideals of the open social web.
The fix for this is for the guilds and unions that represent these celebrities to spin up their own instances. The suffix of the username granting the legitimacy.
It would solve the issue for people who look into it. But what if I registered AstralPath@Lemmy.World? I could pretend to be you. And because most people won't check, I'd get away with it until people caught on.
Now if you make your living off your public image, and I say horrible things, your career could take a hit. Even if nothing I said is true, and its proven it was never you.
People will just remember "Hey, remember that time AstralPath admitted to having sex with their grandmother?"
"No, that wasn't actually them."
"Are you sure? I remember reading about it in (insert tabloid here)".
And suddenly you have a legit reason not to use a platform that easily ruins your career through no fault of your own.
People will ALWAYS attempt to troll online for the memes. Remember Boaty McBoatface?
If your email address is lostmymind@outlook.com, what prevents someone to create lostmymind@gmail.com and pretend to be you?
A difference between kbin (and mbin?) vs lemmy (and pyfedi) - the former would show the entire name, including instance. If instance was not included, it was because it was local (so you could assume '@kbin.social')
On lemmy/pyfedi the name shows up alone - though you can hover over and see the instance name. But at a glance I can see how someone could get confused. Not the best UX IMHO.