• CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Maybe it’s time to socialize social media? All these activitypub-based projects are open source, open governance, and many of them are receiving government grants already, so let’s just pay the server costs via taxpayer money and call it a public service.

    • Nato Boram@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Putting Tumblr on ActivityPub could be interesting and potentially save it, but there’s so much deleted content from when it was in its prime that I’m not sure if it’s even worth it. The platform is so dead.

      That said, giving taxpayer money to private social media businesses is the worst idea ever. In the first place, public money should mean public code.

      • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For sure! My comment was ambiguous; I meant we could consider running government-backed instances of open-source, standards-based social media, not “let’s give tumblr a pile of money”.

        • Nato Boram@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A government-sponsored instance could be interesting, but I’m not sure what value it would bring. Also it would probably turn instantly into worse than Facebook with toxicity.

          • weedazz@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I could see one that focused on CDC / nih data and communications. I use clinicaltrials.gov all the time for work to look at study designs for big clinical trials, could be cool to have an instance that covered info from there. I could see another one maybe for weather and traffic related data from NOAA, state highway authorities, etc. maybe another space related one for NASA and space force (lol). Others for the military branches, it goes on and on. The government has social media accounts for most of these services already, could give the fediverse a big boost if their content is directly hosted on government servers

    • Wooly@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Probably the worst idea I’ve ever heard, we need less social media, not more.

        • Wooly@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s where the addiction part comes in, life’s boring without it but I can recognise it’s been a net negative for the world.

          • CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Thanks for being chill in the replies. I read this back just now and it came off a lot more hostile than the jokey/flip tone I had in mind. I don’t want you to delete your account; I like social media and I wanna hear your perspective, I just meant to kid about posting comments creating more social media which is against your stated intent.

            • Wooly@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              DW, I never take anything as hostile really, it felt like a sarcastic joke to me (I’m British) but I wanted to get into a more in-depth discussion which I ended up getting because of your joke. So congratulations.

              Read and comment to my other replies if you’d like, I’d just be repeating myself here although there are far more things wrong with social media that I didn’t bring up.

          • ඞmir@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think so, it brought some issues to mainstream attention that otherwise would be left to rot for another decade (or even longer). I’d argue that’s worth a lot and not necessarily offset into the negative by the other things social media has done

            • Wooly@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              What issues could only be address with social media but not normal methods of getting across news?

              It’s ruined generations, Gen Z is fucked,only caring about internet clout, whatever the younger generation is called is even more fucked, their entirer lives documented and uploaded to the internet by their shitty parents, including their most embarrassing moments. Boomers are being brain washed too.

              Like, fuck. Just think about all the misinformation and conspiracies that have been able to thrive online because of social media. It’s a big part of why society is going down the pooper, imo.

              The only positive really is it kills our bordem, but we had to sacrifice our dopamine receptors.