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Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

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Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#341

Post by OkayPhysicist »

mmazing wrote: post #100
chongli wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discoverability and smallness are at odds. This problem isn’t specific to the internet. That quaint, beautiful postcard town does not remain so once it’s been discovered. Eternal September happens everywhere.

> Discoverability and smallness are at odds. Is it really true on the internet though? omg.lol could presumably stay "small-appearing" and "quaint" and have millions of users. How could you really tell the difference? If it were all indexed you could drill down and find people who share your interests, that doesn't necessarily ruin the website, yeah?

For published works (say, a blog), discoverability is probably a good thing. For communities, however, with many-to-many communication (forums, etc.), discoverability is an antifeature. Community building requires some degree of common ground, which obscurity naturally filters for.

The other downside of mass-popularity is that above a certain scale, your community becomes a target. Both for individual bad actors (spammers, vandals, etc.) and for the apex predators of the small community world, commercial interests. Look at Maker Fair transitioning from a relatively niche convention of people showing off their cool stuff they made, and some miscellaneous sponsors and vendors looking to appeal to those people, to an over-commercialized affair with a thousand people trying to sell you a 3D printer, because that's the big moneymaker.

Community norms are what makes spaces worth inhabiting, and they just don't scale well.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#342

Post by _heimdall »

qmarchi wrote: post #333
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I surf over to another (Internet surfing) country because the server is physically located in that country, I again am forced to follow the laws that apply there. on the other hand if you go set up a business that sells to citizens of that other country do you have to follow rules to be allowed to sell stuff there? You see how the analogy is a little closer aligned?

Not really. For Example, I setup a business on the Oregon side of the Portland, Oregon / Vancouver, Washington border. Oregon doesn't have a sales tax, should I have to pay Washington sales tax because I had someone buy something from my shop in Oregon? Same kind of deal, omg.lol have my servers located in the United States, payment processing happens in the United States, in United States Dollars. In no way is omg.l…

If you ever run an ecommerce business, the expectation is absolutely that you pay taxes to foreign governments in compliance with their rules for any customers in their jurisdiction.

Is this usually followed in small scale shops? Almost never in my experience, though if the shop gets big enough or if the business is sold those tax liabilities are still technically owed. Many countries do have a minimum revenue before you have to pay taxes, and some have a minimum before you're supposed to report sales via tax filings even if you don't owe, but you better keep the operation small if you never plan to pay foreign sales tax.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#343

Post by SushiHippie »

JohnFen wrote: post #332
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…

I love the idea of the service, but yes, those terms (and the commentary about the GDPR) are very strong showstoppers for me.

Oh wow, thank you for mentioning the GDPR bit!

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#344

Post by stjohnswarts »

proxyon wrote: post #247
joeross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I on the other hand would happily pay through 2030 to avoid the people you describe on omg.lol. I dislike pretentious tech positivity and HR catladies policing my online life.

x.com might be a good place if you don't want the softer side of the internet...

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#345

Post by stjohnswarts »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #54
PenguinRevolver wrote: post #34

It's nice, the only problem I got with omg.lol is that Wayback Machine archives are unavailable for all domains. I'm concerned that this part of the internet won't be saved for others to see in the future.

I think that's great.. archiving should be opt-in not opt-out You can read and access my work/words as I want. And once I don't or change my mind you can't. Once someone posts something, you don't have a right to it in perpetuity .. That's how things should work - but that's just my opinion

I can't agree. It's much better to have a voluntary opt out like with robots.txt. I would say one of the top 10 observations about the internet is that you should consider anything posted publically there will last forever and treat it as such, otherwise you're doing yourself a disservice. Just one guy's opinion, though.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#346

Post by stjohnswarts »

lannisterstark wrote: post #10
cianmm wrote: post #2

I've been using Omg.lol for around a year now (Cian.lol) and am really enjoying it. It's just so simple - it feels like travelling back in time to when we wrote blog posts and made websites to share with our friends, not to Create Content.

I skimmed OPs post, and then read yours, and I'm still a bit confused as to how it's different than just hosting a mishmash of different but related services yourself. If you could not, yes that's fine. But if you could, what really are the advantages?

I suspect that it's simply ease of use. Sure you can use a mish mash of self hosting, online dedicated services, etc, but this looks more simple and cohesive and for $20 a year you don't have to worry about the overhead of all those other things, you just add the content you want and don't worry about the details.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#347

Post by iteratethis »

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

These alternative networks are mostly lefty Twitter refugees whom indeed carry on their joyless identity politics and everything that comes with it. Everything is political, there's lots of dunking, excessive safety-ism and universal ideological agreement on everything.

Toxic positivity, it's incredibly tiring and alienating. I think the whole world is done with it.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#348

Post by fLaMEd »

alex_lav wrote: post #184
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 made an account and can’t seem to figure out where this magical community actually is? It seems like I can just link other open services? And for some reason I can receive email? Not a single other person(‘s content) in sight though.

https://home.omg.lol/directory

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#349

Post by footlose_3815 »

monkeywork wrote: post #185
footlose_3815 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. "the actual internet" ??

Yes, the real internet where domain names don't cost $20, and where my stuff doesn't need to live on some dude's server.

It's just someone else trying to do what Zuckerberg failed at.

You're paying $20 to go a level-deeper into complexity on someone else's proprietary platform. It's not only going to fail, but it's a bad idea.

Re: Omg.lol: An Oasis on the Internet

#350

Post by footlose_3815 »

ipodopt wrote: post #320
footlose_3815 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s $20/mo, and a lot of people are eager to spend it so it should be subject to due criticism.

It's $20 per year, not per month... and there are promo codes for $5/year available most of the time. I don't use the site but browsed the guy's mastodon feed.

I stand corrected, but ICANN names are cheaper.

Anyone can start their own omg.lol with a $10/yr domain name, and charge others for OSS and basic features you can find elsewhere for free. It's a scam to those who criticize it, and it's a privileged club to those who pay the money.

But the social circle is polluted with brains who think this is a good deal, so it's not the kind of network I'd even want to be on.

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