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CaptBobbers

@alersis @davidrevoy
Should social media be run for-profit? Maybe not. I think the Fediverse shows that it can be done, at scale, and all (or even just mostly) volunteer.

2 Jul 2023 at 13:17 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mas.to
6 comments
TheSoftCoco

@CaptBobbers @davidrevoy

That's more or less what the web used to be at the beginning of the 2000s when people would build their own websites, host forums and develop online communities.

I don't think I'll be exactly like that, but self hosted instances and communities are an interesting old twist on this current state of the web.

2 Jul 2023 at 13:49 | Open on mastodon.social
CaptBobbers

@alersis @davidrevoy
Oh I'm almost 40, I remember all that. The halcyon days of my youth.

This is a screen capture from an episode of the animated television show Family Guy. In the image an elderly man, on a horse drawn carriage, is holding a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies.
2 Jul 2023 at 14:02 | Open on mas.to
CaptBobbers

@alersis @davidrevoy
What capitalist corporations can do in a for-profit mode is hosting. AWS and Google have some of the best, efficient, and scalable hosting services out there... these companies do a good job at hosting.

Everything else needs to be user driven, derived, and designed. This is to say because we've seen what the companies who own social media platforms, driven by profit, have given us.

2 Jul 2023 at 20:42 | Open on mas.to
CaptBobbers

@alersis @davidrevoy
I can't think of the last time Meta created a genuinely new and innovative product anyone actually wanted that wasn't just a competitor they purchased. Instagram, WhatsApp, Occulus, the list goes on. All purchased and integrated, not built natively. Others created a new platform, then Mark and Co placed a bid in buying it out.

2 Jul 2023 at 20:46 | Open on mas.to
CaptBobbers

@alersis @davidrevoy
Take a look at their now mostly defunct Metaverse concept... who was asking for that? What real problem was it solving?

I bought a new mop, it's one of those spinny ones that wrings itself. Didn't need a new mop, but this one actually solved a problem. Where's that in Zuck's Metaverse? No where, because it wasn't meant to solve any problem, it was meant to be another commodity for consumers to buy. That's an incredibly unstable footing for the profitability of any product.

2 Jul 2023 at 20:50 | Open on mas.to
JojoTheWolfBoy

@CaptBobbers @alersis @davidrevoy I don't necessarily know that it had to solve a problem, per se. It would have been fine if it was just cool/fun (like video games - they don't really solve a particular problem, they're just fun). The Metaverse failed mostly because Meta did a terrible job of explaining what it actually was and why we should care about it. Even the handful of commercials that I've seen for it don't even really tell you what it even is.

3 Jul 2023 at 2:32 | Open on mastodon.social
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