21–30 of 31 posts
It's amazing how far off the mark so many talented coders are when it comes to understanding the masses, how they think and what they want. Guys...it's not that hard to do. Stop thinking so hard. Stop thinking you know a better way. CLONE REDDIT, just without the idiot running the place. It was working great until he screwed everything up.
Worried that you'll lack a way to differentiate yourself from all the other clones? Well, don't be, because it's the same situation as with Android—every handset vendor seemed to think they couldn't possibly just take this free gift and ship it stock as-it-comes, since their competitors would come around eat their lunch! In reality, nobody else was doing that, so being unadulterated was a differentiator. This didn't seem to stop anyone, though, who all went on and poured enormous resources into the pursuit of an elusive value-add that in reality was more like value-addn't.
So, I agree: JUST CLONE THE THING.
(Still not convinced? Fine, try this instead: start working on a stealth clone right now, and then in 6 to 18 months when you've reached your goal and the real thing changes which makes everyone hate it, well then hey, look at you! You've got exactly what everyone wants. Alternatively, if you chance upon something that gets shuttered, go ahead and help yourself to the abandoned trademark, too. Trademark law is not like copyright law, after all; it doesn't last forever—only so long as there's someone willing to enforce it.)
Would love to see it without having to install it. Is there a public running instance somewhere?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand at all what problem ActivityPub actually solves. To my mind it's a similar spirit as Blockchain which is equally as impressive as it is useless. There are tens of thousands of people smart enough to clone the basic functions of Twitter or Reddit but features don't make the platform. Unless you are a master at digital marketing and can solve moderation and monetization better than everyone else, you…
With apologies ahead of time because I suspect this post will end up as an incoherent rant about capitalism. So activity pub is the common language of a federated system sort of like smtp is the common language of a federated system. or html is the common language of a federated system(html is strange however as it's transport model is inverted compared to the others, it moves the user to the message rather than the…
I think there's two avatars I'd look at for having "solved" most of this. One is Craigslist. They don't really occupy the same place in the world they used to, but they scaled by orders of magnitude without changing their core identity. And they did it because Craig Newmark was content to walk away with $100M and his reputation in tact rather than chasing every penny. The other is Wikipedia. Probably the single most valuable thing on the internet and operated purely as a non-profit. A non-profit that rakes in like 10X it's operating budget in donations. Neither of these do everything right, but they work. And they do it with a very centralized framework for operations that sets clear boundaries in which their volunteer contributors can operate. I really see that as a more promising goal. We need a fully non-profit internet. Ones that set really clear and explicit guidelines for usage and are beholden to their mission above investors. But also, organizations with publicly accountable leaders who set policy and stick to it. And leaders who can still run their orgs like a business with a tech team, a marketing team, accountants, HR, lawyers and all that jazz.
I always considered reddit as a "forum as a service". Give up a little freedom and we will take care of your forum for you. And as such I have to admit I was initially baffled where federation(activity pub) enters into the equation. as forums don't really need federation. But was stuck in the mental model of the web forum, I think what is going on is that this is more like usenet, the ur forum, which is pretty cool.
I don't understand at all what problem ActivityPub actually solves. To my mind it's a similar spirit as Blockchain which is equally as impressive as it is useless. There are tens of thousands of people smart enough to clone the basic functions of Twitter or Reddit but features don't make the platform. Unless you are a master at digital marketing and can solve moderation and monetization better than everyone else, you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With apologies ahead of time because I suspect this post will end up as an incoherent rant about capitalism. So activity pub is the common language of a federated system sort of like smtp is the common language of a federated system. or html is the common language of a federated system(html is strange however as it's transport model is inverted compared to the others, it moves the user to the message rather than the…
I think 80% of complaints about capitalism are complaints about the fundaments of economics. Audience is scarce, network effects are scarce, advertisers are scarce, quality contributors are scarce, brand recognition is scarce. How do you acquire all of these at enough scale to make a compelling product and sustainable platform? I don't see how ActivityPub actually does any of that. I can very clearly see how venture…
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My guess is it's a Magic: The Gathering reference.
While we are at magic: What is the problem of "using imagemagick in 2023"?
Crucial: https://www.imagemagick.org/script/security-policy.php