Emacs.ch Admin (@emacs@emacs.ch)
emacs.ch
After careful consideration, I have made the difficult decision to discontinue the operation of Emacs.ch. After almost two years of dedicated service to our community, I'm tired. Tired of taking the legal responsibilities of hosting potentially illegal content, proactively removing CSAM and porn, hate and racism. Tired of remembering adults that they should stick to our server rules. Tired of yet another personal attack by random people who hide behind their pseudonyms, yet eagerly dox others and threaten their families. Who demand, but never give. Who think they are better, because they are different. Yet have nothing better to do than destroy what they can't agree with. In accordance with the Mastodon Covenant, we are providing a three-month notice period. Emacs.ch will officially cease operations on December 9, 2024. So, take your time to find a place that reflects your values - I'll keep the engines running until then. For those who have recently made donations, I will be reaching out individually to discuss appropriate arrangements. I want to express my sincere gratitude to all who have contributed to making Emacs.ch a unique and valuable space over the past two years. Your participation and support have been deeply appreciated. A big "Thank you" goes to our four moderators, who have spent a lot of time approving sign-ups and handling reports swiftly and in a fair manner. And to all users of the first hour, who helped to make this such a great place. Thank you for your understanding and continued support during this transition period. Emacs.ch was a very special place for me. ❤️
    • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      I actually kind of enjoy the “scrappy diy effort niche” thing.

        • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
          1·
          14 days ago

          Well, I guess it’s priorities. Destroying Big Tech would be pretty nice, but I’m really just here for the community.

          • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
            1·
            14 days ago

            Not to single you out, but this attitude is unbelievably frustrating. Everyone here loves to waste hours of their day signaling their virtue and complaining about all the evils done by the corporations, but so few are actually willing to put any skin in the game. they complain about entshittication from Spotify and Netflix, but religiously continue paying their subscriptions while refusing to support smaller, independent businesses.

            • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
              2·
              14 days ago

              Well, at this point I would like to point out that I religiously avoid paying anything to hostile services, and that I do support the small independent instance I’m on.

              • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
                01·
                14 days ago

                Nice, I just hope that you are contributing with more than $1-2 per year. ;)

                Also, if you understand the importance of support it the instances, why don’t you wish that everyone did the same?

                • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
                  1·
                  14 days ago

                  with more than $1-2 per year. ;)

                  More than my own share for sure, regardless of the result of the other argument.

                  why don’t you wish that everyone did the same?

                  I do. But a paywall adds a considerable barrier to entry.

        • matcha_addict@lemy.lolEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          The fediverse will never destroy big tech unfortunately. In their worst case, they will incorporate it and easily dominate.

          • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
            2·
            10 days ago

            If not completely destroy it, at least make it irrelevant for those who want to avoid it.

            The FOSS movement never destroyed Microsoft, but it arguably made it possible for us to live in a world where Bill Gates owned every PC software that we run.

            • matcha_addict@lemy.lolEnglish
              1·
              10 days ago

              In my opinion, the fediverse as it exists today is very vulnerable to domination by big tech. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is it is too small for them to care that much.

              If the fediverse ever becomes mainstream, big tech will dominate it. If we want to fight big tech, we need to rethink our strategy and the fediverse, because right now, the fediverse is not ready to take it on.

              • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
                1·
                10 days ago

                How would that happen? If the core idea of “the Fediverse” is to have a loosely-connected network of servers and applications speaking a common protocol, how is it that they would use to “dominate” it?

                I am not saying that Big Tech couldn’t try to use it “open wash” their solutions, like Facebook and Google did with XMPP before. But what I am saying is that (like XMPP) I think it’s virtually impossible for them to “dominate” something that is open.

                I’m also not saying that the software we have is ready for the masses (it isn’t) but all the issues I see are just a matter of implementation, not a fundamental design flaw.

                • matcha_addict@lemy.lolEnglish
                  1·
                  10 days ago

                  There’s several vulnerabilities:

                  • the fediverse unfortunately remains quite centralized. Most users wanna join the big servers. If it wasn’t for the big servers literally driving people away, we would’ve been even more centralized
                  • most people have no issue with corporate presence in the fediverse. They’re okay with blue sky and okay with threads. In fact, clearly Gargaron is okay with meta and threads.
                  • big tech already has a federated server that dwarves the rest of the fediverse combined: threads. Yes it’s still not quite there yet, but if they complete its federation, they will dominate it.
                  • gargaron showed he’s okay selling out to Meta. What prevents another instance admin? A corporation could easily offer enough money to a handful of instance admins and control all these instances.
                  • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
                    1·
                    10 days ago

                    This is not answering my question, or we have different ideas of what it means to dominate.

                    80% of email traffic is either Gmail or Outlook, yet none of Big Tech is able to control it fully. They can not force you to use their email server, and smaller providers still exist and are actually healthy business.

                    Is it hard to run an email by yourself? Yes. Is it impossible? Absolutely not. To me, that is what matters.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      I totally get where they’re coming from with that shutdown announcement. I’ve had to “talk myself off a ledge” a few times to not go the same route and shut mine down. Ended up making some server policy changes that helped, but there’s eventually going to be something else later.

      If we keep treating the Fediverse as just a scrappy, amateur effort, it will never reach its full potential and it will be forever just a niche thing.

      What suggestions do you have to change the way we’re treating/running it currently?

      • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        What suggestions do you have to change the way we’re treating/running it currently?

        Plain and simple, instances should require some form of contribution from all members. Let’s stop pretending that the people here can not pay a dollar or two per month.

        • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
          0·
          14 days ago

          I think a dollar or two per year would suffice if all users paid it.

            • Bezier@suppo.fiEnglish
              0·
              13 days ago

              The thought was that it’d be closer to that, than the 12 times larger suggestion.

              And yeah, I was definitely only taking hosting costs into account, because every instance is maintained by volunteers. I was also only thinking about large instances that benefit from economies scale and smarter management.

              I took a quick glance at that thread, will have a more thorough pass later.