Didn’t the admins for Lemmy[.]world post their expenses recently-ish? I can’t remember how much it would be for a single user to donate. I’d want to donate, but I’d like to know how much of my contribution would affect operation of the server.

With how shittily Chrome has been running for me lately, I’m feeling like making the switch to Firefox sooner and sooner.

They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.

And there are portions of people in our society that will pay for those minimal prices either because they can’t afford anything else, or strictly because it’s convenient for them to spend that little so that they have more money left over to do more stuff in their life elsewhere.

But there are also people that are willing to sacrifice and make changes to their lifestyles and spending practices to accommodate the impacts of their actions.

The same is true with corporations. Some large corpos in the world are actively trying to move towards sustainable, circular economies. I’m doing a lot of research right now into the textile industry, and two of the biggest corporations in that space that I’ve seen are doing decent work on the two fronts I previously mentioned are Lenzing (TENCEL™) and Aquafil (ECONYL®).

Lenzing uses wood of various species from places in Europe, all managed well and FSC/PEFC controlled, to draw out fibers and filaments that are just as fine and useful as polyester fibers/filaments, yet with the added bonus of biodegradability. They also recycle cotton clothing from collection centers in Spain and some larger textile service companies in southern Europe and mix that in with their wood-based feedstock to produce the same rayon fibers.

Aquafil runs on a similar model to Lenzing, except they base theirs on nylon instead of rayon. Aquafil collects ghost nets from around Europe and South America, along with other corporations’ scrap nylon (pre-consumer waste) and post-consumer waste from a number of brands (e.g. sunglasses, jackets, etc.) to regenerate nylon back into the same quality as you would find in virgin materials. Now, I don’t think that plastic is sufficient anymore thanks to the non-degradable waste associated with it, but it’s better than nothing.

Are there flaws with those 2 companies: of course. Their chemical processes might not be 100% closed loop and their claims might be overexaggerated in ways, but it’s better than nothing.

Anyways, what this examples shows is that there are corporations and even people on the ground that are willing to make more sustainable choices because they legitimately see the benefit of doing so compared to convention. Someone else might describe this as a form of an adoption life cycle, where you have those more willing to change and those less willing to change as practices and habits shift over time.

Could government help with that? I believe so. I think that’s just one lever of change though. If you’ve been following solar PV growth over the last decade and a half, then you know about the “contagion” phenomenon: some early adopters pick up solar, only for considerers and even late adopters to do the same as word of mouth and other social drivers influence decision making at a people level.

Could the same happen with other sustainable choices in the economy? I fall more into the early adopter camp, so I would say yes. I think corporations spend a lot of time and marketing convincing their customers that said corporations are the best and only options and that no other alternative exists out there: when there absolutely is or might be. Perhaps all it takes is demonstrating to people, doing, not talking, walking the walk, to change their minds. I think the same tactics could be used, in addition to government intervention.

Bottom-up + top-down is the strategy I’ve heard described by many proponents of sustainability, most notably Al Gore, and I’m all for it too. Luckily humans, at least in some countries around the world, live in free societies and can divide and conquer to work on both of these fronts to affect change.

So fucking stupid, we can’t wait for corporations to fix our systems. It’s one thing to allow rezoning so that such a project can be built and then offer the project/bid it out to someone like Musk to build, but it’s another thing to place all expectations in a corporation on for them to completely drop the ball.

Hope this gets put on the ballot again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, fuck me

Edit: ballot not ballet :)

Lenny ftw, so much better than Reffit

I was here!!!

I sort by TopDay and that seems to get me quite popular content, but Hot is also good for new stuff. Love the options for sorting on Connect for Lemmy

Yupp, older zoomer here. The thought of decentralized anything seems cooler to me so I thought I’d give it a try

Sub-30 yo but super-20 yo

STEM equal, just not tech

Windows user (although I have Linux installed on my PC)

Close, but rly close enough

Holy shit, the head on this person must be as hard as Earth’s core got dyam

Retweet

Or should I say, Rethread

Instances work for me, as an engineer that verbage comes naturally

Holy fuck, and this is coming from France

And the fancier cups/stronger or bigger wire that Meta has the resources to build is the “Extend” part of EEE where their instance seems better than all the others, so inevitably some users (i.e. humans) will migrate if anything but out of sheer convenience. And then when it’s convenient, Meta defederated, closes the data channels, and people are left in their convenient instance where they are happy with the content being fed to them. Meanwhile, Meta uses all the tactics in the book to make the rest of the fediverse seem like the dark web to scare away non-technical users.

Definitely a scary thought.

Defederation is definitely the play here at first because it doesn’t give Meta a chance to Extend, but it does rely on the admins making that decision and holding that position for as long as Meta exists on the fediverse.

Can we hold? Depends on ideals, money, effort, and time.

I know that I as a user will just choose the next biggest instance to jump to as soon as the biggest instance ever federates with any corpo platform. It’ll take more and more effort to vet more and more instances over time, but it’s worth it.

Users can still block instances though with Lemmy, yeah? So even if admins of instances don’t block Threads, I’d imagine users would be able to. Maybe I’m misinterpreting the capabilities of the software, however.

And then if you as a user don’t agree with how the admins are running the instance you’re a part of, you can make a new account under a different instance with admins that run that instance differently (i.e. by federating with corporate platforms).

Reddit, in my opinion, has become mainstream due to its ability to be searched via engines such as Google. I think Lemmy would need to have that same level of discoverability if the platform should take off. I’m not sure if doing this risks Google or others threatening the platform via “embrace, extend, and extinguish”, but perhaps Lemmy needs to be accompanied by a decentralized search engine itself that can browse the entire Fediverse. I’m new to the fediverse so I’m not sure if such a software exists, but clearly I think discoverability is paramount for giving new users a reason to see Lemmy and maybe stick around

Disclaimer: see the bottom of the post for any corrections.

Imagine two spheres: me and you. Now, say we can talk between each other by uploading and downloading data back and forth with each other, like what you see when you check your internet speed on Speednet. I say “hello” in a text chat, and you say “hey” back. We can both see these messages. This is mutual federation: you and I both agree to communicate with each other.

Now imagine you defederate from me. I can no longer download data from you, data either in the form of comments, posts, etc., nor can I upload my responses to those comments, posts, etc. I’m blind to you, and you’re blind to me. This is 2-body defederation.

Now imagine a third sphere: some stranger that creates a post. Say I comment on the stranger’s post, and you respond to my comment. If we’re all federated, we’re all downloading and uploading each other’s data, meaning everyone can see every interaction: 3-body federation.

Let’s say now that I defederate from you. I can’t see your activity and you can’t see mine. I can comment on the stranger’s post, as can you. We may be the only commenters on the stranger’s post. The stranger can see that 2 other Lemmy users interacted with their post, but on our side it looks like only one comment was made by you or me. This is an example of 3-body “relative” federation (quotes are mine).

Now let’s imagine that I know that the stranger hasn’t defederated from you, and that bothers me. Maybe I don’t appreciate your data and don’t want to associate myself with you or any other actors that tolerate you. I may want to close myself off and save my effort for other Lemmy users. In this situation, it would make sense for me to defederate from both you and our mutual stranger. After defederation, I’ve completely cut myself off from your network. I can’t see your guy’s interactions, and you can’t see mine. This is a case of 3-body “absolute” or “total” defederation.

Of course you can extend this idea to a server/instance/community that has thousands of users. Within an instance you can create little blobs of users that can and can’t communicate with each other. This activity happens at the user level as users choose who to block or defederate from.

The next step would be extending this idea to multiple instances that each have thousands of any number of users. The communications between entire instances on Lemmy are dictated at an admin level, but the capabilities are essentially the same as those at a user level. Admins can defederate from other instances relatively, or even absolutely.

When relative instance defederation happens, the entire user base of the subject instance can’t communicate with the entire user base of the admin’s instance. Notice that here we may have a third sphere in the form of a stranger instance that both communities can interact with. The admin’s instance can’t see the defederated instance, but the stranger instance can see both.

Lastly, if we take this system to its final conclusion, then admin’s can absolutely instance defederate from other instances that they deem counterproductive, a threat, or for any other reason. The admin’s instance is blind to both your instance, and the other instances that federate with you.

You can imagine that doing this can greatly fracture the global user base of the fediverse. However, Lemmy users are free to make accounts on any instance, and in doing so can bypass the decisions of admins of other instances to absolutely defederate.

I guess a final case with absolute defederation would be to do a global instance defederation where one instance’s admin cuts off all communication with all other instances and fully insulates their community. They can do this, but it might not be sustainable depending on the size of the cut-off community and whether that user base can tolerate the amount of traffic hitting their news feeds given the population size (Facebook and Twitter might be examples of this - since they aren’t part of the fediverse, they’re technically globally defederated). A user can do something similar on their level by defederating from all other users on the fediverse, but that would be very impractical. Ideally, though, you would want every instance to federate with all other instances. In reality, there are islands and continents of social networks all throughout the fediverse.

If this doesn’t explain it, there are lots of YouTube vids out there on this concept. I’d watch the ones that explain the recent Beehaw defederation as well as the one case that happened in like 2019 with Gab.

Good luck! Stay Fediversal yo 😎🤙

Edit: After writing this, I think I misunderstood defederation. I believe in relative defederation, either at the user or admin level, you can still see the other user’s/instance’s activity, but you can’t engage with that activity. You’re like a ghost that can see other people around you, but you can’t interact with them. Absolute and global defederation I think still makes sense.

Also, I didn’t mention the idea of parent users/instances, but someone else might have explained it already for you. Basically parent = stranger in my examples above, but that the way information moves is different than what I imply.

Cheers

This is outrageous!

Chef’s kiss also that aged wine be mighty fine!