People are talking about privacy but the big reason is that it gives you, the owner, control over everything quickly without ads or other uneeded stuff. We are so used to apps being optomized for revenue and not being interoperable with other services that it's easy to forget the single biggest advantage of computers which is that programs and apps can work together quickly and quietly and in the background. Companies provide products, self-hosting provides tools.
Kirk
I'm very familliar with the "Year of the Linux Desktop" joke but I also can't remember a time previously when Linux was getting this level of mainstream attention.
A majority of registered voters in the US have no party affiliation actually.
Not my instance 🤷♂️
With Mastodon you can migrate your account, Lemmy can't migrate (yet). But the difference between Fediverse and commercial platforms is that you can access the same network of content from different instances. With Twitter/Reddit etc. everyone is forced onto a single instance (and a single moderation policy).
Lemmy.world is the second largest Lemmy instance, and less than a third of all users. If someone doesn't like their rules it is trivial for a person to move to an instance who's ruleset better aligns with their wishes.
It's entirely possible in the future, since ActivityPub accounts can be "forwarded". It's a little clunky but look at Mastodon.
The fact that this is being upvoted so much I think demonstrates a big misunderstanding of how the fediverse works.
Nobody owns Lemmy and if a instance does something shitty it costs hardly anything to change instances. Nobody owns the lemmy software, and other softwares like mbin/piefed exist too with the same content.
There is only one Twitter whereas anyone can start "a Lemmy" (instance). I am using a different instance than you, for example. So if mine enshittifies I can go somewhere else and still have access to the broader network.
It would be weird if a Lemmy instance tried to make itself addictive. Like congrats your users request way more content and it costs 10x more to operate now yay
Back in the day Nike was fashion-non-grata due to their well known child labor practices. The fact that they reinvented the brand to the degree that they actually became aligned with punk/skater culture still blows my mind. Advertising is a powerful tool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_sweatshops