Lemmy has one significant problem that platforms like Reddit and Mastodon don’t, and I don’t see that problem easily going away.
The companies who use raw data as a source of their wealth steal everything that isn’t bolted down. Platforms like Reddit and Twitter realized this, and put their content and APIs behind restrictive paywalls.
Lemmy and Mastodon content is free for anyone to hoard and add to their pile.
I guess technically you might be able to create some kind of “firewalls” (distinct from network firewalls) that heuristically kill AI harvesters, but it will be a perpetual battle.
Is this actually a bigger issue for Lemmy / Mastodon users than on other platforms? In case of commercial social media, the data is sold, here it’s freely available. In both cases my data is potentially used by third parties. This might not be perfect, but I see very little alternatives rather than not publishing any data in the first place. Which would somehow contradict the idea of social media, wouldn’t it?
I don’t think that all data on Lemmy is available for everybody. As far as I know all private messages between users are only visible to the involved users and (as there is no end 2 end encryption) the technical administrators of both instances involved. Same with user passwords, the sign up mail adress etc.
All other content on Lemmy so far is public. As there are no closed communities, I don’t think anybody would expect the information published here to be somewhat private.
On Facebook, Reddit etc. we do have closed communities that may trick users into thinking that whatever they post there is only visible to the target audience while in reality it’s heavily analyzed and sold to third parties.
Please enlighten me, but I currently can’t see any inherent issue that is specific to Lemmy and Mastodon.
Lemmy has one significant problem that platforms like Reddit and Mastodon don’t, and I don’t see that problem easily going away.
The companies who use raw data as a source of their wealth steal everything that isn’t bolted down. Platforms like Reddit and Twitter realized this, and put their content and APIs behind restrictive paywalls.
Lemmy and Mastodon content is free for anyone to hoard and add to their pile.
I guess technically you might be able to create some kind of “firewalls” (distinct from network firewalls) that heuristically kill AI harvesters, but it will be a perpetual battle.
Can you elaborate why that is a problem for Lemmy?
Is this actually a bigger issue for Lemmy / Mastodon users than on other platforms? In case of commercial social media, the data is sold, here it’s freely available. In both cases my data is potentially used by third parties. This might not be perfect, but I see very little alternatives rather than not publishing any data in the first place. Which would somehow contradict the idea of social media, wouldn’t it?
No. Nothing about the concept of social media dictates that all data must be available for everybody.
I don’t think that all data on Lemmy is available for everybody. As far as I know all private messages between users are only visible to the involved users and (as there is no end 2 end encryption) the technical administrators of both instances involved. Same with user passwords, the sign up mail adress etc.
All other content on Lemmy so far is public. As there are no closed communities, I don’t think anybody would expect the information published here to be somewhat private.
On Facebook, Reddit etc. we do have closed communities that may trick users into thinking that whatever they post there is only visible to the target audience while in reality it’s heavily analyzed and sold to third parties.
Please enlighten me, but I currently can’t see any inherent issue that is specific to Lemmy and Mastodon.