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Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

blakewatson.com

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Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#221

Post by Timwi »

maxlin wrote: post #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 subscription…

> When a blog post starts with saying "twitter is dead"

That's not what they said. They said “it’s the day that, for me, Twitter died.” I read that as meaning “I personally don't want to use Twitter anymore.”

I personally feel the same about Reddit. I was a very regular reader and contributor, but since the big brouha about third-party apps I decided that it's dead to me. I'm no longer using it. That doesn't mean it has died as a platform, but it does mean that I personally have moved on from it.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#222

Post by snailmailman »

maxlin wrote: post #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 subscription…

“Better than ever” when it’s constantly promoting hate speech? And Elon is too? And advertisers are dipping out?

And Twitter definitely doesn’t have free speech. People still get banned, or have their posts artificially limited, but they do allow more hate speech.

Nearly everyone I followed on Twitter is on Mastodon now. It works great. Conversations still happen there on news topics.

I deleted my Twitter account a while back because my feed stopped being people I followed and became people promoting conspiracy theories. The site doesn’t even work properly anymore. People link to threads of tweets but only the first tweet displays. And profiles never show latest tweets. (I think these might work when logged in? But also don’t show any errors when logged out? I don’t know as I’ll never login again)

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#224

Post by metabagel »

stevebmark wrote: post #170

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.

Discoverability is Mastodon’s Achilles heel.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#225

Post by joeross »

shusaku wrote: post #131

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

> I’d like to see which accounts are using the services for a better community

It’s more like after you use it for a little while you look up and suddenly realize you’re in a new but familiar feeling community. It definitely skews developer/blogger/liberal, is openly inclusive and mindful of accessibility (not perfect, but always trying), there's a lot of overlap with various micro.blog/IndieWeb/fediverse communities, a lot of folks with active GitHub accounts doing interesting stuff, a strong photographer contingent, an overarching “positive vibe” as the kids say, and a clear sense that you don’t have to remind the kind of folks who enjoy using omg.lol that there’s a person on the other side of the keyboard.

Maybe that still doesn’t make much sense to you, but while I’m happy to pay for cool stuff people make on the internet, I’m paid up with omg.lol through 2030, which just isn’t something I would do anywhere else.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#226

Post by metabagel »

jszymborski wrote: post #193
stevebmark wrote: post #170

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

It doesn’t work for me. A lot of people don’t realize that their posts won’t show up in searches on other Mastodon instances unless they include hashtags. I found it to be a huge chore to find people posting about topics I was interested in. I pretty much gave up.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#227

Post by metabagel »

AlexAffe wrote: post #103
jayveeone wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, he's just a deeply unlikeable jerk

To you. That's your opinion. Maybe it's mine. But I will never go as far as to state something like my opinion as universially true. You do that. What makes you do that?

Does everything have to end with “in my opinion”? Isn’t that implied?

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#228

Post by smsm42 »

Opened the front page of the "community of the nicest, most interesting people". Here's what I found, omitting some jokes, "dear diary", etc (profanity omitted, light rephrasing to keep it short):

AI is taking our jobs

Trump is a liar

MAGA republicans are plotting against democracy and Trump is Putin's puppet

Trump is bad

AOC is cool, she's showing that evil GOP

Twitter is dying

Christians are hateful bigots

Republicans are Nazis

Republicans hate women and want them to die

Ayn Rand is stupid and I already realized it as a kid

Hunter Biden is an innocent victim of a vast right wing conspiracy

Elon Musk is evil and stupid

Trump is stupid, while Obama is smart

I didn't search for that on purpose or anything, didn't time it, just opened the first page at the random moment and scrolled for a couple of screens. It's not 100% of content, but what I described is the majority of it. Maybe I got particularly unlucky. But if I haven't, I fail to recognize how it's different from 99% of reddit or anywhere else on the internet? Which is the part I am supposed to be impressed with, where was my nostalgia for the Internet of the olden days supposed to wake up (and yes, I was there, Gandalf)? I'm just not getting it. I mean, I have nothing against people getting together and having one more place out of millions to discuss all the ways Trump is stupid and evil, but I feel like that's not exactly what the description in the article promised me.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#229

Post by teknico »

Novosell wrote: post #188
Always_Anon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where I grew up, that was called being polite and it didn’t automatically rule out anything other that liberalism. Where I grew up, that was called being polite and it didn’t automatically rule out anything other that conservatism. >There’s a ton of room between disagreement and harassment. There was a time where that may have been true, but we're far away from those times.

Mind you, he said liberalism and not liberal. Modern day conservatives tend to be very pro-capitalism, which liberalism loved. Not sure when things got all turned around in America. Liberalism = smaller government and a free market. Yet in the US a "liberal" dislikes capitalism and wants more government? It's odd.

It’s a long story.

Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty - Murray N. Rothbard

https://mises.org/library/left-and-right-prospects-liberty

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#230

Post by computerex »

Arch485 wrote: post #192
footlose_3815 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>... we have not restricted contractors’ own use or disclosure of that information or data. We are not responsible for the conduct or policies of Stripe, or other contractors.

I mean this seems pretty suspect for anyone privacy focused.

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