Nice anecdote, I barely used Usenet back then, and I get your point. But I also think that federation is a key element of Lemmy, and it should be made to work as smoothly as possible, for better or for worse. There could always be some obscure communities or instances only accessible "for those in the know", just not the base system.
I'd file this one as a bug, or at least a feature request.
You're not wrong, but not all crypto is the same. Some have switched to "proof of stake" which removes all the energy wasted on mining, some allow to write programs into it that can execute automatically to do some interesting things, and some allow sending fractions (thousandths, millionths) of a USD with barely a transaction fee.
Even in Europe, free bank-to-bank transfers take a couple days to execute (there is a paid option for instant transfers), and have a minimum of 0.01€ which might or might not be what you want to tip/pay someone for their content.
Back in the day, you could set a site, have the webserver write whatever log, and not worry about it. Whether you used for access statistics, or forgot about it and deleted, nobody cared.
Nowadays, depending on the legislation of wherever you live, there might be requirements for a minimum amount of information you need to log and preserve for a minimum amount of time, and restrictions on what information you can't log and need to remove after a certain amount of time, or upon request provide to users, delete, or save apart.
That's some nice Lemmy drama. The admin seems like an anti-vaxx doctor, no sympathy there. The alternatives they mention, (like calling Twitter good), would you say they're all best to be avoided?
Nowadays there is crypto, some of it is already perfect for micropayments. But it needs to be integrated into the browser/app to be truly frictionless, and there should be a "get your money back" option for the content that's click bait and not worth the asking price. Unfortunately the largest browsers are Chrome and Edge, by companies who aren't all that interesting in changing the way things are.
The "web3.0" is also an attempt to escape the nightmare that "web2.0" has become, just centered on Blockchains and the technologies they allow. Technically, the web3.0 is not at odds with the fediverse, it might even be that some day both might end up working together.
For example, one of the alternatives to Reddit that's being worked on, is a Blockchain + IPFS solution that already has some features like user migration between instances. It's a bit hard to expect to onboard the average user to a full crypto experience, but things like Lemmy could be the "base service", while someone looking for something more could look into integrations with other solutions.
Anyone can set up a website and share it with others
Not as simple as it used to be. Thanks to the abuse from ad, social media, and other tracking networks, now you need to comply with the cookie laws, personal information laws, data retention laws... and so on. It's no longer as simple as setting up a website and just sharing it; just having an uncontrolled log, or lacking one, can land you in trouble. Allow random users add content (like comments) to the site, and you can get drowned before even realizing what's happening.
There are balanced ways to use ads, and a few places use them... but most soon get onto the "maximize income" bandwagon, and turn their site or app into an ad infected cesspool. They don't get penalized for that, all to the contrary, while advertisers see their ad conversion go down from sites over-infected with ads, so they don't want to offer deals good enough for those who only show a reasonable amount to survive.
I think data protection, retention, access, rectification and deletion laws are going to hit anyone hosting an instance. The EU is also in the process of introducing a "data migration" law, that is mostly targeted at "large" social media, but we'll see what ends up getting approved.
I'm not a compliance expert, but wha Mt I know about them makes me fear setting up an instance just to get hit by whatever fines.
I know how to program, I also know how to wonder how many instances are running off the docker-compose with publicly exposed postgres... that would make import/export really easy, wouldn't it? 🙄
Anyway, would you say this isn't the right place to discuss this stuff?
That's kind of wrong though, isn't it? What about stuff like GDPR data exports? Users should be able to export their data, then import it into another instance, effectively migrating instances.
Nice anecdote, I barely used Usenet back then, and I get your point. But I also think that federation is a key element of Lemmy, and it should be made to work as smoothly as possible, for better or for worse. There could always be some obscure communities or instances only accessible "for those in the know", just not the base system.
I'd file this one as a bug, or at least a feature request.