this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Fediverse

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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 8 months ago (4 children)

This feels like a hasty "solution" to an invented "problem". Sure, Wikipedia isn't squeaky clean, but it's pretty damn good for something that people have been freely adding knowledge to for decades. The cherry-picked examples of what makes Wikipedia " bad" are really not outrageous enough to create something even more niche than Wikia, Fandom, or the late Encyclopedia Dramatica. I appreciate the thought, but federation is not a silver bullet for everything. Don't glorify federation the way cryptobros glorify the block chain as the answer to all the problems of the world.

[–] jeremyparker 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

So you're saying you want a federated wiki that uses a blockchain??? Genius.

Kidding aside, you're absolutely right. Wikipedia is one of the very few if not ONLY examples of centralized tech that ISN'T absolute toxic garbage. Is it perfect? No. From what I understand, humans are involved in it, so, no, it's not perfect.

If you want to federate some big ol toxic shit hole, Amazon, Netflix, any of Google's many spywares -- there's loads of way more shitty things we would benefit from ditching.


Edit: the "federated Netflix" -- I know it sounds weird, but I actually think it would be really cool. Think of it more like Nebula+YouTube: "anyone" (anyone federated with other instances) can "upload" videos, and subcription fees go mostly to the creator with a little going to The Federation. Idk the payment details, that would be hard, but no one said beating Netflix would be easy.

And federated Amazon -- that seems like fish in a barrel, or low hanging fruit, whichever you prefer. Complicated and probably a lot more overhead, but not conceptually challenging.

[–] derpgon 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Federated Netflix? We already have federated YouTube, it's called PeerTube

[–] jeremyparker 5 points 8 months ago

Yeah I was thinking more of a paid service, I guess more like Nebula then Netflix, since Netflix just shows TV shows and movies made by big companies. I don't mind paying for things if they're good things, and I know the right people are getting the money for it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

There's a wiki program that natively uses a version control repository, Fossil. You can fork a Fossil wiki and contribute updates back to the original.

It wouldn't be too hard to for example create a few Fossil repositories for different topics where the admins on each are subject matter experts (to ensure quality of contributions), and then have a client which connects to them all and with a scheme for cross linking between them

Peertube already exists for video, it's more like a different take on bittorrent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I've just realised that I independently came up with the idea for federated services while imagining how to make yt better over 5 years ago.

Cool!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wikipedia is incredibly unreliable for anything related to history and geopolitics for non-Anglo countries.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The neoliberal moderators make that impossible. The talk pages for anything even remotely political is radioactive, with the mods flagrantly abusing their power in reverting any change they personally find disagreeable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Unfortunately, not possible. CIA ensures Wikipedia remains a pro-Anglo outlet, and its admins remain under control.

https://archive.is/E1GwQ

https://hongkongfp.com/2021/09/14/exclusive-wikipedia-bans-7-mainland-chinese-power-users-over-infiltration-and-exploitation-in-unprecedented-clampdown/

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/6ANVSSZWOGH27OXAIN2XMJ2X7NWRVURF/

I had a reddit post about it with links, none of which exists today since reddit admins also censored me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

first article gives the example of the biden-ukraine-smirkov thing, thats a proven hoax by the kremlin so no wonder it wasnt accepted by wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I mean we have seen how the Lemmy devs approach certain topics, and it is definitely not with a preference for openness or free exchange of ideas. There are certain topics here which have a hair trigger for content removal and bans, for extremely petty and minor "transgressions," so the motivation here seems pretty transparent.