Yeah I can definitely say for a while that was the case for me as well. It’s honestly why I like Lemmy, since by the nature of federation it can both be self-contained and owned by the people actually using it, but still kept around even if the specific instance doesn’t last forever.

I’m sorry to hear that, that’s a shame. My experiences are more with gaming communities from the early 2000s, so perhaps my view isn’t universally applicable to other hobbies, professions, and such.

I’m sorry to hear that. For me I’ve seen far more (relatively) big forums either turn into a discord, a subreddit, or just die out altogether due to being unsustainable for it’s cost. Just seems more logical to me that the less personal places have more trouble sustaining themselves, but we can disagree on that.

I hate to ruin this for you, but if you post nonsense, it will get downvoted by humans and excluded from any data set (or included as examples of what to avoid). If it’s not nonsensical enough to be downvoted, it still won’t do well vote wise, and will not realistically poison any data. And if it’s upvoted… it just might be good data. That is why Reddit’s data is valuable to Google. It basically has a built in system for identifying ‘bad’ data.

What makes you think so? I read hardcore as ‘small and tight-knit’, exactly the kind of forum that could survive easily on user donations and due to the more personal relationship there’s more loss in leaving it. I know some forums that fit that description that are still around now.

Exactly, thinking that is what I was getting pulled me over the edge, I sometimes remember a music video I want to listen to on my phone during my commute and I don’t want to spend 30 minutes either getting on my PC to download it with a tool, or using a third party downloader which can at times be shady. So upgrading that to a single click in the app seemed like a great deal. Crushingly disappointed when I found out how it actually was. Turns out the real answer was NewPipe, which I don’t even have to pay for.

I gave Premium a shot. Then the one time I wanted to use the feature Google said I was paying for - being able to download videos - I found out that it was just a glorified pre-buffer.

• Can’t view the video outside the youtube app or the website, source video file encrypted ✅️
• Can’t view the video if you havent connected to the internet in 3 days ✅️
• Does less than your average youtube downloader that you can find for free with one search ✅️
• Literally just saving Youtube bandwidth because they destroyed every benefit you would get if it was actually reasonable ✅️

Enshittification isnt just limited to free users folks. Slammed that cancellation button right then and there. Good luck earning back my trust, I’m happy to pay if you didnt scream so loudly that even if I paid, you were going to treat me like shit anyways.

Finally. A human readable format. And pretty too.

Lets be real - This isn’t going to change on it’s own. The only way for it to change is if everyone collectively took a stand against it. Which simply just won’t happen. The most reasonable thing to do is to focus your energy on collectives that actively reject such practices. Oh hey, you’re already in one: Lemmy, good job. As long as we work together to create a small corner of the internet that remains true to what the internet should be, we can grow it and create a better internet in the long term.

Doesnt really say anything - there have been plenty of products that were designed for specific people that ended up being adopted by others because it just was a better product for them as well

Like how Coca Cola was originay created for people with a morphine addiction. Unless morphine addiction became a lot more widespread recently while I wasnt looking.