This is starting to get embarrassing for Checo. I thought people were exaggerating how precarious his position was but if he keeps performing like this RB might actually be forced to take action.

Imagine if RB had an actual competitor, Checo couldn't support Max at the front at all if he keeps going like this.

They'll kill it by having the largest userbase, and therefore the most and best content, and then finally defederating and forcing everyone to join Threads. At least that's what they'll most likely attempt to do. It remains to be seen whether they'll be successful. The EEE approach has been used before and is well documented. Read more on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

With how unbelievably awful Reddit is without 3rd party apps, all Lemmy needs to thrive is content (and servers not blowing up).

While third party app users probably had a larger proportion of contributors, Reddit is big enough to still have plenty of content. Moderators are more interesting and it remains to be seen over time if an erosion of quality moderation happens which would make Reddit even shittier. Especially since Reddit seems to keep fumbling when it comes to providing good first party mod tools, see the whole r/Blind fiasco.

am I wrong in thinking that the users are the product and the advertisers the customer?

As long as profitability is the goal then you are correct.

I think another reason too is that .world is run by Ruud who is a trusted actor in the space (he already runs Mastodon.world, a large mastodon instance), and so many (including me) probably felt it would be a safe harbor and not likely to get shut down or run poorly.

It's a clusterfuck really, but yeah the lead writer, designer and artist were all fired and lost the rights to the IP. Litigation is still ongoing I think, and hopefully Kurvitz, Hindpere and Rostov can regain the right to at least produce more work in the IP in the future. Heartbreaking for Kurvitz especially since he's built the IP with and for his friends from the age of 15.

You are correct about that, but Spez also created a custom unique Pimp Hat award for the top mod of r/jailbait so I don't think he necessarily hated the situation.

It's run through the Open Collective, and is also run by Ruud who runs one of the larger Mastodon instances as well as some other stuff on the Fediverse I believe. They're a fairly trusted actor in the space and I think pretty transparent with everything they do which is probably another reason many people flocked there.

That's correct though account migration is planned for some point in the future, or at least noted as a desirable feature by the Devs. Maybe even linking accounts across instances?

Having to resubscribe to all your communities is annoying but I imagine third party apps could streamline that process when they get released/refined.

You should consider bringing this up at ![email protected]

More ambitious teams on the grid is always good, and a proper American team (sorry Haas) will lead to more engagement in the US which should help growth. I know the Americanization of the sport is a controversial topic and I too am dreading the Las Vegas GP (though the spectacle will probably be great the track looks dreadful for racing), but I think capturing the American market will be important for the big teams to stay committed to the sport. It would also just be exciting to have more than 20 cars on the grid again.

Now we just need to get rid of Alpha Tauri, though sadly the sale doesn't seem to be happening.

I like the client-side interface and really appreciate the ability to follow users but Kbin seems to have some backend issues still. Remember that Kbin is at an extremely early stage of development and really wasn't ready for mass adoption (it's a couple of months old!)

It's great to see you address this and display good understanding of all the facets and why they are or aren't a problem.

In particular, I appreciate that you recognize the issues with moderation and content monopolization that would most likely occur as a result of hundreds of millions of Threads users flooding the ecosystem.

This is a little corner of the internet that people have flocked to for very specific reasons, either to specifically escape corporate control or to seek an environment that is less toxic than the alternative. This is a nascent community that is taking shape, slowly. Connecting it to one of the largest, loudest and most toxic social media actors at this crucial stage of building the identity of Lemmy sounds a lot like playing with fire.

I think why many people feel so strongly about this matter is that we are dealing with a known quantity. From a corporate perspective, we know what Meta stands for and how they do business. We know they monetize outrage and seek to trap their users in parasitic feedback loops to drive engagement. We know they have no moral or legal scruples.

The same can be said about userbase. This isn't an unknown group of people with an unfamiliar culture that - who knows, maybe they're kind and nice? These are people from Facebook and Instagram, probably supplemented by plenty from Twitter too with how that platform is doing. We already know the culture on those platforms, it's been shaped by the outrage centric monetization and (lack of) moderation.

It's possible that not many of them will find their way over here, but in my brief time here I have already seen interactions with Mastodon users, both in comments and as posts on the All feed. Now imagine a platform with a thousand times more users than Mastodon. Yes, perhaps the tiger won't find its way in, but why leave the front door open and just pray it's docile?

Still, I appreciate the transparent communication once again, and it seems these are issues you are aware of, so I trust that you'll make a good decision when the time comes.

I guess a consensus hasn't been firmly established on memes but I personally wouldn't mind restricting them on this sub, creating a separate Soccer Shitpost sub and linking that in the sidebar.

I've noticed lemmy.world has been much more responsive today so something seems to be working!

This was by far the best on-track product of the season so far. Yes, Max winning by 20+ seconds sucks, but apart from that this had everything. Lots of great battles, plenty of overtakes, drama, tension and even a crucial strategy call. And the camera work wasn't even terrible!

Gutted for Albon, but at least Hulk managed to capture some points from a great performance. Too bad the Haas burns tires like a chainsmoker. Also a little curious about the Aston strategy. I guess it's not hugely important this season, but given the potential for Alonso to fight for P2 in the drivers championship, you'd have thought they'd want to prioritize giving him maximum points possible. This is the second time this season where they let Lance stay ahead if he gets ahead, regardless of pace. To be fair to Lance, though, he was great today and showed that he can hang when he's on it. He had a great start and was solid throughout. Once again underrated in the wet.

My first thought was AstroTurf too but honestly Lemmy is still small enough that I wonder if Meta even cares enough for it to pay for astroturfing here. They got more signups in a couple of hours than Lemmy got users in three years, and by several magnitudes even. Plus it's an inherently hostile demographic for them. They're better off investing in positive posting on Reddit, which I'm sure is what they're already doing.

You're right. Going down through the levels of "okay, and why?" works on a theoretical level but requires both the person asking the right why-question and a level of intellectual honesty from both parties that is incredibly hard to find.

It's not a bad approach for questioning your own beliefs though, if you can muster the strength to be honest with yourself.

Yeah this is one hell of a stress test. Hopefully some wealthy ex-redditors can spend what they used to put into Reddit gold towards donations to the Open Collective instead so they can expand the servers to keep up.

Waiting the whole season for Max to make a single mistake and when it finally happens it's in a Q1 that doesn't matter