this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by andobando to c/lemmyworld
 

There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.

Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you've been.

I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren't talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive "community" ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.

If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.

Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don't need to focus on it.

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[โ€“] hydra 6 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Absolutely. And as much as I am saying this, I would love to see a proven alternative to massive corporate tech.

Cannot stress enough how organic this place feels in comparison to Reddit, no "your post was removed due to karma" bullshit, no dumb comment chains, no "sponsored" or "related" fake posts embedded in the sub listing. Only raw user participation and community building. Feels wonderful.

I worked at one of these companies before, and I despise the them with a passion

Which one? And how was your experience?

[โ€“] andobando 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

Which one? And how was your experience?

Tinder. It was and probably still is, a great place to work. One day at the height of BLM, someone posted an article how another one of Match's companies was removing ethnicity filters in their app to keep out racists. I said wait, who are we to making these kind of societal decisions? Why are we removing users personal decisions because we don't like it? It turned out into a huge argument but it got me really thinking. Were not philosophers, sociologists, etc. Its a couple people from a very certain background making decisions that affect millions of people globally. Who are we to decide?

Then I thought about the fact that these kind of decisions were not even made for ethical reasons (which I don't even trust them to get correct), but were fueled entirely by money. Every single decision was entirely based on how much money it earns Tinder, with zero regard as to how it affects its users, in a very personal and important aspect of their lives. All the KPIs were money, internal projects called "Project Whale", zero discussions on relationships, experiments to get users addicted to the app as possible, etc.

If there ever was a decision that would help people but would compromise profits, profits will win, and if there ever is a concern that a decision is hurting users, it wont ever enter into the discussion.

Reddit, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, etc is all the same in this regard. Corporate tech is a terrible future.

[โ€“] hydra 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Damn, I knew dating apps were a shitshow and that corporations rigged them to make them as addictive as possible, but this is a whole another level of sinister. Tinder is known for being engineered from the ground up to keep people dependent on it with all sorts of dark patterns and obscure algorithms. This is just a reflection on how big tech's business model is ruining Internet and society as a whole.

Reddit, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, etc is all the same in this regard. Corporate tech is a terrible future. You're right, the corporate web was an absolute mistake and I managed to experience a sliver of the old web. Nowadays websites and software are getting slower and worse with each update when it used to be the opposite.

[โ€“] andobando 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh one more example.

Tinder advertised a ton globally with the message of "Single, Not Sorry". Does Tinder know if being single is actually good for everyone? Is this a message you'd blatantly tell all your friends without knowing them? If there was a study saying this was harmful, would they care enough, cut back and tell people to use the app less/more considerably? No because like I said, if it interferes with profits, these kind of considerations will never be talked about.

Few other things. We released a feature where you pay $3 to see if someone responded to you, and the other user would know. Clearly you're fucking yourself over doing that but they don't care. We released a feature where you can see if someone is online, because it increases engagement.

You'd never see shit like this in any organization or community run by people.

[โ€“] hydra 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You're goddamn right. I've been single until very recently for a real long while and I didn't enjoy it at all. Profit driven business and infinite growth is harming everything.

How the fuck can you paywall LIKES? Tinder seems not too different to gacha games and lootboxes. This is why I'm so blatant on actually moving to federated services. These do not need to be run by megacorps since costs can be distributed through instances.

Small services that aren't federated eventually become too expensive to run and that's why I dislike Tildes in favor of Kbin/Lemmy. What is the next step? You already know.

[โ€“] andobando 5 points 2 years ago

How the fuck can you paywall LIKES? Oh btw the whole "gold" feature for example, absolutely useless. They charged $5 a more for a lie. The feature would tell you who liked you, not mentioned is that if someone likes you they'll be in the top of your list of people to scroll so its absolutely useless lol.

This is why Iโ€™m so blatant on actually moving to federated services. These do not need to be run by megacorps since costs can be distributed through instances.

Me too, really hoping this stuff works out.

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