An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore…
Each social media giant is slowly becoming a walled garden, only allowing you to play inside, but not permitting anything out. We saw it with Facebook, now Twitter. Next up, Reddit is now disallowing any outside access without a tollgate.
Lemmy I see more like the German Schrebergarten. These are plots of land, usually not wanted by the major players, or on the outskirts of town. You get a plot portion out of this and build your garden/community out of this. There are no walls in Lemmy, but fences with gates, and you decide which other gardeners have access. There are other plots of land in other parts of the city, and you also decide which of those gardens you’ll trade seeds and plants with.
I hope we’ll never put up walls.