It’s ironic, because the WWW always was decentralized by nature. Websites were people’s social media profiles and decentralized platforms. Email was the decentralized instant messenger. But then business realized that it would be more profitable to sell ads if they can target them, and targeting only works well when the users stay on your site, and not someone else’s.
I can’t blame the people for flocking into these walled gardens. They made a lot of sense in the beginning. Instead of having to learn how to code (or use MS FrontPage, and figure out wtf is an FTP), you could just click a button to insert your photo on “your” profile page, change the texts, add some links… Ease-of-use is a major driving force when it comes to mass-adoption of technology. Companies do this well, because they recognize this issue, but the FOSS community tends to be too homogenous and tech-minded to execute it as well as commercial players do, because they operate largely on a volunteer-basis, and aren’t exactly easily approachable by folks who aren’t tech-minded.
But now we’re getting to a point where all this has gone a full circle. The overwhelming majority of websites have evolved to have horrendous UX, because money and the marketing dept. speaks louder than users’ needs. And now the users are slowly beginning to realize that these companies don’t serve their interest like they did 10-20 years ago.
With some luck, the open, decentralized models will gain more traction again, as long as the people making the software manage to attract UX-people and designers.
It’s why I think Lemmy has great potential. First and foremost, it’s well-designed and the UI is very easy to use. There still needs to be a lot of work in terms of making it palatable and understandable to first-time users and newcomers. Because right now, it’s a bit hard to grasp what exactly is going on at first. But once you get the hang of it, it can easily work as an improved reddit. I’m legitimately thinking of never going back to Reddit at this point. There’s no reason to do so, especially when decentralized communities have much more potential to create more specific spaces with specific types of people.
Like, I was thinking that with a decentralized system, you could for example create communities exclusively for professionals in one area. Like, you could have a community that required professional credentials to create an account, for example legal or medical communities, and that way you could raise the expected level of discussion. But at the same time, you can create safe spaces for say, neurodivergent users, or ethnic, sexual, racial minorities in online discourse, and so on. This has so much freedom, I legitimately think this is the way to go.
@axo10tl Well said. The problem with WWW was that the decentralization part didn’t evolve with time. We needed new protocols to approach the modern user. We have the protocols now then UX has to catch up a bit but I’m sure it will. And another thing as always - users have to get used to new ways of doing things.
It’s ironic, because the WWW always was decentralized by nature. Websites were people’s social media profiles and decentralized platforms. Email was the decentralized instant messenger. But then business realized that it would be more profitable to sell ads if they can target them, and targeting only works well when the users stay on your site, and not someone else’s.
I can’t blame the people for flocking into these walled gardens. They made a lot of sense in the beginning. Instead of having to learn how to code (or use MS FrontPage, and figure out wtf is an FTP), you could just click a button to insert your photo on “your” profile page, change the texts, add some links… Ease-of-use is a major driving force when it comes to mass-adoption of technology. Companies do this well, because they recognize this issue, but the FOSS community tends to be too homogenous and tech-minded to execute it as well as commercial players do, because they operate largely on a volunteer-basis, and aren’t exactly easily approachable by folks who aren’t tech-minded.
But now we’re getting to a point where all this has gone a full circle. The overwhelming majority of websites have evolved to have horrendous UX, because money and the marketing dept. speaks louder than users’ needs. And now the users are slowly beginning to realize that these companies don’t serve their interest like they did 10-20 years ago.
With some luck, the open, decentralized models will gain more traction again, as long as the people making the software manage to attract UX-people and designers.
It’s why I think Lemmy has great potential. First and foremost, it’s well-designed and the UI is very easy to use. There still needs to be a lot of work in terms of making it palatable and understandable to first-time users and newcomers. Because right now, it’s a bit hard to grasp what exactly is going on at first. But once you get the hang of it, it can easily work as an improved reddit. I’m legitimately thinking of never going back to Reddit at this point. There’s no reason to do so, especially when decentralized communities have much more potential to create more specific spaces with specific types of people.
Like, I was thinking that with a decentralized system, you could for example create communities exclusively for professionals in one area. Like, you could have a community that required professional credentials to create an account, for example legal or medical communities, and that way you could raise the expected level of discussion. But at the same time, you can create safe spaces for say, neurodivergent users, or ethnic, sexual, racial minorities in online discourse, and so on. This has so much freedom, I legitimately think this is the way to go.
@axo10tl Well said. The problem with WWW was that the decentralization part didn’t evolve with time. We needed new protocols to approach the modern user. We have the protocols now then UX has to catch up a bit but I’m sure it will. And another thing as always - users have to get used to new ways of doing things.