Very good point! He’ll be in a reasonably good place when YouTube goes to shit.

First of all, thank you for the fantastic feedback.

We live in a society that commodifies everything, and as human-made content becomes rarer, more people like Veritsaium will be presented with more and increasingly lucrative opportunities to sell bits and pieces of their authenticity for manufactured content (be it by AI or a marketing team), while new people that could be like Veritsaium will be drowned out by the heaps of bullshit clogging up the web.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make in the last section, except I used MrBeast as an example because I felt like it was easier for readers to accept his propensity for cutting corners to make a buck. But yes, I agree, things will get worse. Before it was common knowledge that cigarettes caused cancer, a whole lot of people had to get cancer.

I also think it’s important to remember that people don’t actually follow Veritasium directly. They follow him indirectly by means of YouTube. If people could actually follow him directly he wouldn’t need to worry about competing with AI crap for the attention of YouTube’s algorithm. But of course, YouTube would never allow that.

I actually did jump into the replies and went back and forth with him a bit and I do think he (finally) understood the FOSS perspective. I think a lot of people get very hung up on this concept of a customer-product relationship and for some people it’s a very hard mindset to break out of. I often forget that while “FOSS” is software, the “free software movement” is not really about software, it’s political.

It’s like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new free house which they get to own

“Hey so my free car that was built and maintained entirely by volunteers who received no financial compensation and was provided to me no strings attached is making a weird noise and I don’t want to learn how to fix it myself nor am I willing to wait for someone else to fix it, nor am I willing to even tell the car-builders it has a problem.”

In this context suggesting they complainer pay for a car doesn’t sound so crazy?

I and a few other people kinda chatted with him a while and the reality kinda seemed to click with him? He was very stuck on “it is a product and I am the customer” mindset that is very ingrained into so many people. He said filing a bug report felt “dehumanizing” and we tried to illustrate that it can actually feel empowering if you view yourself as a collaborator, not a customer. I think he’s coming around.

At least I hope he is because (opinion on FOSS aside) he really is one of the all-time best creators on YouTube right now.

Exactly! I actually talked back and forth with him a bit and eventually said that “complaining about a missing FOSS feature is like complaining to the volunteer ladeler at a soup kitchen about the lack of a gluten-free option. It’s just not the path to getting the change you want.”

In the end he seemed to get what I was saying, but was still irritated. I’ve been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.

I fear for the soul of the person who read this and thought “yup this is all normal ways to feel”

I know, it’s just too technical 😭

FYI you haven’t needed to choose an instance in the official app for a while now. It just defaults to mastodon.social unless you request otherwise.

Not ideal long-term to have it be centralized like this, but it’s still leaps and bounds preferrable to Twitter or Threads.

In this “idiot-proof” guide I recommend the app because it smooths over anything to do with Federation which is where people get confused. Choosing an instance and following people in the app is as easy as any other app.

I did that, thanks. And the “crossposted to…” showed up. Pretty cool!

Thank you! I put a lot of effort into it.

To cross-post on Lemmy/kbin you just… make the new post right?

Well said, your comment reminded me of this essay I recently read by @carl that has a great opening analogy:

Imagine all the squares, streets, parks, and venues you visit or live by in are owned by just one or a few companies. They not only own all these places but also determine what they are to be used for, and who can use them. They decide who can be there and who cannot. Mostly, it’s free rent, for these companies finance everything through advertising.

Because of this, all places are designed so that everyone will consume the advertising. In the town hall, the agenda of the municipal council is adapted according to the length of advertising breaks. In the park, you can hear advertisements over the loudspeakers at regular intervals. At the playground, there’s advertising targeted at the very youngest, and at the retirement home, ads for the very oldest.

Yes exactly! It’s much more “media” and not much “social” these days.

This… is actually a great idea. Memes should be fun. If they’re not, that’s probably a sign I should put the phone down.

When I read comments on Reddit I often see a lot of frustrated and burned out people with short tempers who might not have someone IRL who will listen to them vent. Like you said it makes sense, but that doesn’t make it any better.

What makes me optimistic about decentralized social media is that the communities are (hopefully) small and varied enough where mods and admins can keep an eye on everything much easier, and step in an say “Hey, you’re not being nice right now” when someone isn’t. It’s one thing for communities to have rules, but you can’t make enough rules to maintain a culture of amicability. We ultimately need humans for that.

People who choose not to understand any hint of subtlety

Genuinely not trying to sound snarky here, but you’ve described how it feels when I read comments on Reddit.

Thank you! Your comment really made me smile (I am the author btw).