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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 28th, 2023

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  • I wonder if it’s a problem with branding.

    Forgive me if I’m a bit incoherent, this idea isn’t fully formed, but… Do you think they are doing this stupid crap to differentiate their brand? Like, the push for Unity GUI and the push for Snap. Those don’t solve problems, do they? They are just different. Just things that others don’t do.

    If I spun up a fork of Debian, the first question everybody would ask is “why not run Debian instead?”

    …is that what they are trying to accomplish with this? to answer the question of “why not run Debian instead?”

    EDIT:typo


  • we already have slop cars. Nothing looks all that unique anymore, since fuel efficiency designated we all drive eggs and insurance companies designated we don’t get fun colors. Combined with manufacturers cutting out all the dashboard customization, replaced with tablets to cut costs… nothing is fun.

    You go to buy a new car, you get to choose white egg, silver egg, black egg, or tan egg. These two cars are different manufacturers 5 years apart:

    Image Image


  • Microsoft isn’t exactly doing anything new. It’s the same strategy that’s worked for them forever ago:

    Get kids used to Microsoft products by vendor locking K-12 schools with cheap contracts.

    Monetize those kids when they graduate (they never had privacy to begin with, so there is little pushback) and hope they don’t switch to Apple’s subsidized MacBooks in college.

    When all else fails, lean heavily on corporate contracts, since corporations can’t change their ecosystem set up 40 years ago.

    Linux wins factor very little in the equation… and anyone switching to Linux is quickly replaced by the next kid who has had a Microsoft Windows keyboarding class every year since age 9.







  • Lemmy suffers from the same discoverability issue… so we aren’t exactly the best place to tell others about obscure websites. From the start we’ve inherited an open-source community that leans liberal, and aside one very large recent shift that means that the community also leans mostly Democrat.

    What does that have to do with discoverability? Well, one look at a front page can clue you in. (gosh I hope these screenshots shrink in size for display)

    IT, Politics, and Star Trek all over the front page of my instance. Possibly worse on others. Imagine if your 80 year old great-grandma landed on this page. All she knows is what Fox News says. Instant close on the website. Not even going to open one discussion. But let’s say she did open the one about the FBI director being missing:

    oh my

    Now let’s see a competing website:

    Oh, new Chinese food place! Remote work isn’t working? Carrying your dog to pick up food? that’s silly! 2.7 million of wine! She must have really hated that job!

    So what is my point? How can Lemmy increase it’s discoverability? I feel like community diversity would be the #1 concern. Well… one obvious action is to sanitize the front page of the popular instances. I’m going to assume that’s a highly unpopular opinion, because then it wouldn’t be Lemmy anymore. Maybe perhaps there is a different frontpage for logged out and logged in users? With politics being an opt-in for active sessions? Or maybe we should just post more cute cats.

    What do you guys think? Am I completely wrong about community diversity? What changes would you make to Lemmy? It’s not an easy answer.



  • Even if the post is true, it was the worst way to present it. It reads like trolling:

    Call out people’s politics with grandiose rhetoric, not backing up any claims with links to evidence.

    Declare the other side is unbiased.

    I mean, Internet 101 would dictate you downvote and disengage. It’s not going to generate a discussion that would change minds or be constructive. Even now we’re not talking about small website discoverability, but instead downvotes.

    EDIT: I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. I’ll try the same post.