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Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

blakewatson.com

191–200 of 388 posts

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#191
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have your own infrastructure to host all of these services then you're probably not the target audience. It's ok, it's my case too. But you have to admit that $20/year is quite cheap for all of what is provided here, without having to manage it all yourself, and with a "no trackers no bullshit" way of doing things. It's really the kind of services I don't need but would almost like to need! The last time I had…

Github pages is free. A .info domain is $5/year. That's already more than half the features you get with this, and you get to be on the actual internet, not some dude's silo. As the post's age goes on, I see more criticism, and less positive reactions.

It’s just a fun project why are you taking it so serious

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#192

I just joined after reading the post. This wasn't the first time I've heard of Omg.lol but I wasn't entirely convinced earlier. For a long while, I've felt kinda lonely online as all of the communities and little corners online I've been part off have slowly died. I guess I've sort of been digitally homeless. I really enjoy the latest trends when it comes to indieweb and digital gardens, people creating their own spa…

> Section 6.3 We may share personal information in connection with a corporate transaction, like a merger or sale of our company, the sale of most of our assets, or a bankruptcy. >Section 6.5 Except where explicitly stated to the contrary in this Policy, in some cases, particularly given the limited amount and type of information and data collected through omg.lol, we have not restricted contractors’ own use or discl…

Also not a lawyer, but that sounds more like "if another company acquires us, we will give your info to them" and then separately "Stripe might sell your data; we're not responsible for them".

Which is rotally reasonable/expected imho.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#193

It takes blog posts to discover these because Mastodon micro communities aren't discoverable and no one knows which ones to sign up for. Mastodon has no long term potential. We're still waiting for the Twitter replacement.

Just following hashtags and using the discover page works pretty good for me

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#194

It takes blog posts to discover these because Mastodon micro communities aren't discoverable and no one knows which ones to sign up for. Mastodon has no long term potential. We're still waiting for the Twitter replacement.

What is the long-term potential supposed to be? Is Mastodon supposed to replace Twitter, or is it supposed to enhance the lives of people? I'm a member of several small forums that just don't grow. It's the same people each day, and that's fine. It's much closer to how human interactions work in real life. You don't join an ever-expanding pool of people where you strive to maximize your connections (or at least, I do…

Not being indexed by search engines is a fatal flaw in my opinion. There might be some interesting discussions taking place on Mastodon, but I would have no way of knowing.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#195

I love the idea of such smaller communities and the "old web" style of interaction, but for me the issue is one of discoverability. How do I find and follow people? Does anyone still use RSS, or are we relying on Mastodon/ActivityPub? Bavk in the day this was the purpose of search engines, but it seems that now such small pages are scarcely even indexed...

How did we find forums back in the day? Someone said something somewhere and you looked it up. It was less discoverable but less… volatile, because it was just “your” kind of people there, not millions of random people who found a hashtag

I wonder about that myself as someone who grew up on this.

I used webcrawler at the very beginning and I'm probably looking that things through rose lenses but I found what I wanted back then. I think back then in some ways it was easier to find your community because SRO and the like wasn't a thing back then.

The years where I found my niche forums benefited me much more than my college days.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#196
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have your own infrastructure to host all of these services then you're probably not the target audience. It's ok, it's my case too. But you have to admit that $20/year is quite cheap for all of what is provided here, without having to manage it all yourself, and with a "no trackers no bullshit" way of doing things. It's really the kind of services I don't need but would almost like to need! The last time I had…

Github pages is free. A .info domain is $5/year. That's already more than half the features you get with this, and you get to be on the actual internet, not some dude's silo. As the post's age goes on, I see more criticism, and less positive reactions.

How is hosting your website using a Microsoft silo more "on the internet" than using this?

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#197

That’s a fun set of features, but I don’t see the connection with the community. You can browse their mastodon feed and it’s just a bunch of vaguely liberal vaguely tech posts? I’d like to see which accounts are using the services for a better community

That's the shortcoming of every alternative protocol and "indie web" community I've come across. They only attract existing techies and have a weird sheen of forced kindness about them. If you're just chatting with other programmers under American HR communication standards, then how is it any different to work? The true magic of the early web was somebody genius but decidedly untechnical like David Bowie shitposting…

> attract existing techies and have a weird sheen of forced kindness about them.

> If you're just chatting with other programmers under American HR communication standards, then how is it any different to work?

> There's no special line of code that's going to foster that.

> you have to ruthlessly curate a community to avoid a critical mass of sensitive nerds, but guess who the early colonizers of these alt platforms are

Great comment. Aligns with my own observations. On the note of "American HR Communication standards & work" I think most of us don't have experience participating in, let alone, organizing real communities[1]. Since most internet communities are awful, imaginary, transient etc, we default to the only actual experience we have semi-happily working with strangers: our jobs. Adding on top how internet comments are forever, cancelations is right around the corner, and careers hang in the balance, and you get a Bay Area photocopied dialogue.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#198
When a blog post starts with saying "twitter is dead" it doesn't really make it worth reading further. "Twitter is dead" was said pretty much as numerously as "2 more weeks" but it's off better than ever, with Community Notes having proved themselves and X now having proved its capability to serve its main mission by working as the town square on issues related to OpenAI, Gaza, etc, etc.

Eventually, with subscriptions paying most of the bills, I hope the API access per-client is brought back without extra costs too. But even without, X does have pretty much everything it needs, and will only grow with time. You can't put a price on Freedom of Speech.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#199

> In the fall of 2022, I started using Twitter more. I don’t know why; probably a curious desire to see how bad Elon Musk would screw it up. I stopped reading there. I'm not interested in using a product made by someone who regurgitates ESG nonsense without thinking. I want these people and these ideologies out of my life. They need to do some soul-searching. What is bad about Elon that you want him to fail? Anyone w…

> Anyone who thinks that free speech is dangerous or harmful in any way obviously knows nothing about history and has fallen prey to propaganda.

Anyone who thinks Elon Musk is a proponent of free speech has not been paying attention.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the long-term potential supposed to be? Is Mastodon supposed to replace Twitter, or is it supposed to enhance the lives of people? I'm a member of several small forums that just don't grow. It's the same people each day, and that's fine. It's much closer to how human interactions work in real life. You don't join an ever-expanding pool of people where you strive to maximize your connections (or at least, I do…

Not being indexed by search engines is a fatal flaw in my opinion. There might be some interesting discussions taking place on Mastodon, but I would have no way of knowing.

I like the idea of it, but I also have no idea how one would find any of these cited discussions. It seems having an existing social network gives you a strong advantage. As a lurker, introvert, and ruralite, I think I'm going to be naturally disadvantaged on these types of platforms.

Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the whole design.

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