I don’t have an issue with downvotes on the face of it - I came from Reddit, and found their system pretty good. The issue I have is that it seems to be used as a “disagree” button a lot more here, which discourages discussion regardless of the quality. For example, even on this post, anyone who said they’ve had a negative experience has been downvoted.

I’m asking because I’ve personally found it far more hostile than Reddit (the only other platform I’ve put much time into). What I’ve mostly seen is that people downvote quickly and tend towards eliteism relative to Reddit. That said, I recognize that this could be just by instance or community, so I’m curious how others have found it.

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Edit 2: I loaded it in an incognito window and it just says “youtube watch history is off” with no recommendations. I really think it’s you man

Might be something to do with Chrome or that. I’m on Firefox and get a filled out home page when first loading youtube (no history or cookies, mid levels of fingerprint blocking). After logging in, I get the notification for disabled watch history, but not before.

Yep. Every time I open YouTube, before signing in, the much of the front page is just far-right conspiracies, blatant misinformation, and other sketchy content.

For a bit more context on what others have already said, Lemmy is more decentralized, akin to email. Lemmy.world is the biggest website for Lemmy, in the same way Gmail is for email, but like email, there are tons of smaller or even personal sites that can all network together. If one site goes down, only content on that site and its users are affected, others are not.

I think you’re misunderstanding how copyright works. Losing the copyright doesn’t mean they won’t be able to make new works, nor does it mean those new works won’t have copyright. Copyright is only lost on the original work, so while others can use Steamboat Willie, and that very specific version of Micky Mouse, Disney still owns modern updates to him. Either way, the end of that monopoly opens more avenues for newer authors to build on it, while again, doing nothing but reducing Disney’s passive income for work their founder did a century ago. Its a more physical example, but along the same line of logic, if I cure cancer, it might make sense to give me time to get a head start on profiting from it (so I am rewarded for my work) but it would be ridiculous to say no one is else is allowed to use my cure for cancer or build on it for the next century or longer. Theres absolutely no reason not to allow the ideas to spread once the author has had plenty of time to make a profit.

Well, why should the government protect their monopoly? The original creator is dead, so he doesn’t benifit from it. The cartoon is 95 years old, and I doubt Walt Disney factored in the profit his company would make 60+ after he died, when deciding to make the original animation. The only reason to let Disney maintain their monopoly on it is to allow a massive coorperation to get more money without doing any new work.

Copyright isn’t just paying for an idea, its giving a complete monopoly over a concept. We came up with the idea of copyright to give creators a much easier way to profit off their creation (not having to compete after its created) to make sure innovation is very rewarded. That said, its still a government enforced monopoly, with all the issues that come with that, and with how much its been extended, its far past the point of encouraging innovation and instead just works to cement large companies in place, resting on their laurals rather than making anything new. Even when a copyright ends, the current copyright holder wouldn’t lose the idea, they just no longer have a monopoly on it. Disney can and will keep making Micky Mouse content, and the mouse will probably keep being accociated with them for centuries to come unless someone makes something that dwarfs the impact of Disney’s work with the character, in which case its best that it was released anyway.

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Odds are, because its cheaper than a cardboard box.

Maybe I’m on the wrong instance or something. I already follow most of those hashtags, but only tend to get like one post a day per hashtag. I also found most of the content was spam and low quality posts, which was part of why I was trying to find people to follow; I was hoping to find sources for more consistently good content.

I’m personally more intro the more popular geeky hobbies, likes video games, Warhammer, History, and building computers, but like I said, I’m open to other quality content as long as it isn’t too niche.

I’ve followed a few, but basically everything I’d be even remotely interested in seem to be near-dead (at least in English).

I’m guessing this is what they’re referring to:

I’ve personally seen it served identically at a few different unrelated places. I’m guessing its sold pre-made, considering that the appearance is always identical.

I’m admittedly not the best person to talk about it, since I don’t really get the appeal, but in general, Twitter/Mastrodon is for following people you care about. Its largely about people rather than content or discussion, similar to a list of blogs rather than a forum. To find content you can look at tags (mostly to get a general pulse on the topic) but will mostly want to find people to follow, who’s content you want to read, such as friends, politicians, celeberties, or influential figures in your field.

Unfortunately personally, I found no one on Mastrodon that consistantly interested me (beyond a couple bots copying Twitter feeds) but hopefully you’ll have more luck.

I do, but I keep default settings within Ublock. I figure theres probably enough other Tor users using Ublock that it won’t stand out too much, and frankly, the internet feels unusable without an ad blocker nowdays.

I know people who hate some music and are apathetic at best to all the rest, but I feel like theres enough variety that no one would hate all music.

Its effectively unlimited trialware, like WinRar. Its provided free and has no payment verification, but if you use it regularly, you’re expected to pay the approximately $10 price tag.