Ooh haven’t seen this, gonna be a fun read today. Thanks for the link!

Yeah, giving Google unfettered access to your attention span with their algorithm (or any giant corporation) is just a disaster waiting to happen. None of them are interested in your well being or helping you in any way, only to keep you engaging, and to try pushing narratives to the masses. These very same algorithms also determine how creators act and what they post, since disobeying the nebulous ‘algorithm’ results in having your video cratered.

As for PeerTube, I will tell you right out of the gate it won’t be a major supplement to offset something like YouTube watch time. You will find some fun though, it’s quite cool watching super indie stuff you end up enjoying, think like 2005 tier YT where people just kinda post stuff for fun. If you are a creative (e.g. artist, musician, maker, tech reviewer) and have the rights to your videos, MakerTube is the instance I’m on, and they would be happy to have you (my channel). If you aren’t a maker, you can browse the instance list and try to pick a server you’re comfortable with (all of them have an info page which shows their rules and what you can do). I know that’s tedious and overwhelming though, so I spent a little bit mulling for something I’d consider acceptable as a starting point and found Peertube.wtf. They seem to be open signups, allow video uploads with a high limit, non-US, a proper no bigotry policy, looks good at a glance anyway!

Adding to say I have the same experience. Not banned, never used a TPA, but downloaded RIF Is Fun when people were writing up a storm just to see what was even going on. When the blackouts happened, I saw the more and more unhinged shit the Reddit administration was doing to stifle the protests and decided to make my blackout permanent from then onward. My exposure to the Fediverse has entirely changed how I interact with megacorps and software now. If it’s not FOSS or DRM free stuff on my device, I don’t want anything to do with it. Obviously getting to 100% on that is a very tall order, but I’ve been making a lot of headway since 2023.

Even in spite of the vast disparity in quantity of content, I would vastly prefer Lemmy to current Reddit without contest. Even aside from the massive brain drain the blackout had, and all the ad related enshittification, imagine being punished for even upvoting awesome things like Luigi Mangione? Now instead of the countless years I spent leaving my art and constant comments to boost some boneheaded corporation, I can post them here and be involved with a movement controlled by individuals. A movement made for and funded by each other, instead of lining greedy pockets.

I think we would also do well to consume less content frankly. I’m closing in on two years since I’ve stopped viewing YouTube videos, and watching creators on platforms like Nebula or just buying indie media has been fine enough honestly. I also donate a fair bit to a creative focused PeerTube instance for my short videos.

Don’t take this as an all or nothing call though. Reducing reliance on the YouTube monopoly for your eyes, and being more adversarial to YouTube to any degree more than before is a net positive. Run ad blockers, use alternative front ends like Invidious, directly download videos with YT-DLP, and redirect your content consumption to more friendly platforms (or just reduce watch time in general). There is no true alternative to YouTube, but that doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel, or refuse to reclaim any bit we can back.

You post shit? Well well, you’ve come to the right place!

From what I understand the default behavior of NSFW communities is that remote posts are effectively treated as hidden and don’t show up unless you’re subscribed or directly access the community. However, Lemmynsfw explicitly altered this behavior such that their posts go into main feeds and were treated as normal (though marked as nsfw).

I was never subscribed to any lemmynsfw community but would routinely see their posts scrolling through top day, so I blocked the instance and now I don’t. Very useful feature.

But how else will you hear about all the little details of their daily lives on a regular porn site? The parasocial connections to your favorite porn stars aren’t gonna form all by themselves!

Probably, given the blurb about the TV digital transition being a future event. The mandated switch from analog to digital occurred in 2009.

I posted this at at 6:30AM on GMT-5, and the farthest out time zone due to some funny quirks is GMT+14 for the line islands. So to everyone in like, New Zeland and Christmas Islands, I sincerely apologize!

Oh god!

It feels like a toss up to me as well, but I’m going to try my damnedest. I crossed the 24hr mark because I wasn’t exactly planning to do this, but now I feel weirdly invested. We got the same clock, 6 hours to go!

Update: Made it!

I have faith in you, soldier.

It’s coming in the New Super Luigi game, a monkey suit power up! Perch yourself up a tree and press the run button to really let shit fly!

To our fallen soldiers, know that Luigi appreciates your resistance against adversity. Luigi respects your contributions to incremental change. Luigi knows perfect is the enemy of good, and just how much we need good right now. Do not feel shame in failure, but solace in knowing you tried in earnest.

Absolutely, it’s Luigi time. 😎

“We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” - JFK, holding it in

Leap day people have to wait four, the poor souls.

Though if decentralization were to be hidden, it’d be a good idea to cycle through lots of well established general instances for user signups under the hood. The vast majority of people are just going to choose the default options, and if it’s all going to funnel into mastodon.social, that’s a lot of centralization of users. Ideally no single server lords over all the others in terms of user count, because that gives them lots of power other instances may feel compelled to abide by. Having power spread out across many different people helps keep things in check, at the very least making large or drastic decisions more of a round table affair.