[dekatron]

Social networks and platforms that people use to talk to each other should never have been dominated by profit-seeking businesses in the first place. Federated alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin that put community interests first look promising, and could very well be the future.

[nucleative]

Before the web 2.0 style social networks we had community forums, frequently run on phpBB or some other BBS forum tool (before that Usenet, before that... actual dialup BBS systems).

My point is that while most were not profit driven, the VC profit models of myspace, Facebook, et al. attracted massive investment that enabled a much wider reach and therefore a superior network effect and accessibility. Suddenly you could tweet at your favorite celebrities or businesses and they might respond, and in many cases we found this a fair trade for occasional advertising.

From what I can see the advantage of Lemmy is that you can use the same login across multiple forums that are independently operated with minimal central control, and you can take your reputation with you as you move between forums. Hypothetically, like the old days, some could be profit driven while others are fully community supported.

This model does seem to offer many advantages, so long as they can continue to match the accessibility and performance of the centralized social networks.

[blackpill0w]

>Social networks and platforms that people use to talk to each other should never have been dominated by profit-seeking businesses in the first place.

Well, someone needs to pay for the infrastructure needed to run those platforms, I don't think that relying on donations is a good long term strategy, especially when the platforms grows. Also, having knowledge of people's opinions, preferences, likes and dislikes sure attracts some people.

>Federated alternatives like Lemmy and Kbin that put community interests first look promising, and could very well be the future.

I am not sure about this one, federated social networks may have the same community divided across multiple instances, but maybe someone could implement a client which allows you to group communities from multiple instances under one label? This sounds like a reasonable solution to me but I don't know much about the inner workings of federated social platforms.