Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

Re:Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely by joeythedolphin on Thursday June 15, 2023 @09:06PM (#36349504)

Brilliant. This properly frames so much of what I have been seeing. I actually worked at a social media building their applications. When our business people spent so much time telling us to build things to show the user what we wanted to show them, I always thought how idiotic it was that we would pretend to know what our users want. It's a form of corporate narcissism. I left :)

So if I buy the philosophy (which I do), how do I (practically) get started? Let's say I want to use the internet to actually interact with people in my community. Is that even possible anymore? Do I just download Mastadon and start wandering the dark? I've wanted to penetrate this "intellectual" space but I just do not know how, and I am a software architect of 20 years.

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Re:Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely by syntheweave on Friday June 16, 2023 @03:34AM (#36352833)

Approach it like evaluating dependencies, or maybe researching a political candidate. View a few different federated-social sites, with test accounts if needed. Rank what you like about them on a spreadsheet. Mark users or discussion threads you want to follow.

Then when you want to participate, that's your starting point. Lots of people are lurk-centric, but you are already in the comments section here, so moving your posting probably will not be the issue so much as contextualizing it, which the different software and instances do help with.

A lot of "community" is in having some ritual, some events to show up for, or some events you organize yourself. It doesn't take a lot of those to fill up a calendar, but it definitionally needs to be non-zero.

[ Parent | on HN ]