The appropriate sequence of events would be:

Trump starts tariffs > People switch to FOSS > Trump cuts funding to FOSS

This really isn’t double-speak and, if anything, clearly shows the hostility of the admin. They are just incompetent, short-sighted, and overall an enemy of the people.

Agreed. There are many facets to this problem, so it’s difficult to get in one post, so I’ll try to reconcile the main points.

The core of what I’m trying to say, is don’t kill Linux trying to become Windows. Linux is great because it diverse, but it also has difficulties because of this. We should not change (nor destroy) the ecosystem for people who do not care to understand it.

That being said, we can also make it easier for people who do care and cooperate to make it over. But if we do this we, as Linux users, have to look at this from the right lens. The question is not “Linux users, what do you find difficult?”; this is survivorship bias. The question is “Windows users, why can’t you get Linux on your machine?”. From this framing, the real issues become a lot more apparent:

• Not savvy enough to set up USB stick
• Driver, and other hardware, issues
• Programs needed for work, or general daily usage, are unavailable
• Too much tinkering required (this is related to, but not the same as RTFM and CLI)

The first two points can be solved by purchasing a machine from a Linux OEM (i.e System76). If this is not possible, then you are going to have to do research; if this burden is too heavy, Linux is not for you.

AI has a good and valid use-case here, as it can significantly ease this process (even if it’s only right 60% of the time).

Linux may not have an alternative for your preferred programs; if this burden is too heavy, Linux is not for you.

Developers should follow open guidelines (i.e POSIX). If they refuse to, there is nothing Linux can (nor should) do about it.

The last point can be solved by distro choice, we completely agree here. The problem is finding said distro, which is difficult. For example, I’ve never heard of Ublue until your post. I appreciate distros that handle defaults and don’t push breaking changes. The community can make this better by having a dedicated website (with a decision tree) for choosing a distro, but this has its own set of issues.

No matter, the responsibility falls on the user to pick the right distro; if this burden is too heavy, Linux is not for you.

Linux Mint is a great distro, and I’m happy it works for you.

In terms of mass-adoption though, the fatal point is probably putting a Linux ISO on a thumb drive. Like I said prior, we must be aware of survivorship bias. You don’t care much for the terminal - but you made it through.

The people that didn’t make it through probably failed from the thumb drive step. I only say this from personal experience, because when I first installed Linux, I was very determined and came extremely close to giving up at this step. And I only got through because I happened to find an obscure forum about how Rufus needed a special setting for my machine.

P.S. I also was not tech savvy, but I wasn’t completely lost either - and I still struggled really hard here.

This is actually a really deep rabbit-hole. To avoid typing a novel, I’m going to cut out a lot of nuance.

Windows is installed by default on machines. Since people do not change defaults (many studies have been done on this), this is checkmate. As long as this is true, Linux will not have a major (20%+) market share.

So this has to start from the OEM. Several Linux OEMs exist (i.e Tuxedo Computers, System76, Framework) but they cannot compete with the Microsoft network. Those who are interested in Linux, but are not tech savvy, really really really should buy their device from a Linux OEM.

Driver issues are near non-existent on Linux OEM hardware. So software is the next step; and let me tell you, developing for Linux is rough. There are 2 window servers, 2 graphic stacks, 2 desktop environments, 2 coding standards, 2 C libraries,… you get the point. A lot of this can be abstracted, but it takes genuine work to do - and may be obsoleted in a month; meaning no company will do this.

All to say, creating “magically working” apps - even with a lot of monetary support - is a herculean task. Even Valve (who is FLUSHED with cash) gave up and just decided to make their own distro (SteamOS).

A lot of issues also just require personal tweaks due to open-source software being extraordinarily bad at setting sane defaults. With something like Windows, you can hire people to make this better. Who do you hire to fix the defaults for 300 independent projects? And will the devs even listen to them?

I could keep going, but you get the point, the buck is going to have to stop at the user for a lot of things.

The best solution (in my opinion) is to have specialized distros and have people choose from them. Want to game? SteamOS. Want to dev? Fedora. Want to surf the web? Linux Mint. Creating, and more importantly accurately listing, specialized distros will make lives easier. Leave the defaults to the devs, just download the “vibe” you want.

Windows users and Linux users are not seeking the same thing from their machines. The common mistake I often see from Linux advocates.

From personal experience, when I was a Windows user, I didn’t care (or even know) about privacy, open-source software, nor owning my machine. I didn’t care if I had to sign up for a Microsoft account, and I never changed defaults ever (except for my wallpaper). I just wanted the machine to turn-on, work, and play some games.

Why am I bringing this up? Because Linux requires the user care about their machine and defaults. You need to know your architecture, graphics card, and threat-model. You need to know what your apps are called and where they come from. You need to know what tools you need to troubleshoot (and devs will not help you). This is the biggest the pain-point of Linux. Do not succumb to the survivorship bias of RTFM or command-line.

This issue cannot be fixed from simplifying Linux interfaces (though we should do this anyway!). The soul of Linux is adventure, collaboration, and tinkering. To get the most from your machine, you’re going to have to interact with several communities. This is what makes Linux great, and frankly I do not think we should kill this for the general public - this is how you get enshittification.

The general public needs to understand that incompetence (being brain-dead) will lead to misery. It is simply the rule of the land. You need to care and you need to collaborate. We should not welcome nor accommodate users that refuse to do this.

My favorite iteration of the first point is “we take your privacy seriously” to “we take your privacy. seriously.”

So you’re telling me 2% of new Window’s users won’t be forced to make an account? Neat!

This is not about the technically savvy. The populace is being conditioned into not owning what they purchase. This will in turn make everyone’s life worse.

Therapist: Stop being silly, you can’t hear emojis.

^ the emojis

Just no man.

Yes, JavaScript has been the most popular language but it is exclusively because of the front-end. Many companies do not want to pay for separate back-end devs and ask their front-end devs to do it instead. These people (ab)use JS because they’re most comfortable with it and are under crunch; so we end up with the abomination that is back-end JS.

It is NOT rivaling much lower-level languages; it can’t even rival C#.

First off, it is interpreted. You are never going to be faster than competently written C, C++, Go, nor Rust. Secondly, the resources it takes to exist makes in a non-option for embedded machines - which Social-Security facilities are all but guaranteed to use.

Not to mention the horrendous (and insecure) package infrastructure, and under-powered core libraries - it would be the fullest extent disaster.

The saddest part? The larpers at DOG(shit)E are all but guaranteed to pick the worst tools for the job, over-engineer, and have extremely poor management. Meaning whatever they ship WILL collaspe the system day 1; and all of the people refusing to pay attention will be like “hOw CouLd THis HaPPen”

Yeah, the world is sliding into global fascism, and fast.

Even “Never Again” Germany has a major political party sympathetic with Nazis (AfD). If you talk to the average person in America, it is okay to have all of your rights stripped as long as you can use TikTok. We’re in very dark times right now.

If anything, I think that people from around the world are very disconnected on average. The average person can barely care to support Ukraine, when Putin is clear-as-day running Stalin’s playbook.

Lemmy and Reddit are not real life.

You make great points, and I will not necessarily refute any of them. This is why I said prior that I wanted a bunch of mathematicians to work towards a solution to this. There are many small and careful considerations that have to be made.

I think a heuristic (simplified model) may work better than trying to flat out solve it. As I said, this is not to refute, just a thought.

First, the problem is fundamentally chaotic (as you’ve said) there is no point in trying to accurately predict (solve) the outcome. Choosing “properties” that tend to be consistent, and then basing “success” off of those may be the more practical option. What these “properties” are would depend on consensus - models have elements you deem important, which may not actually be (as you’ve said). This is just something that needs RFC - hence needing a group of mathies.

Secondly, whatever the solution turns out to be needs to actually be do-able for the average joe. If there is a straight up solution, and it turns out to complex, I think it would be less valuable than a simple-to-do heuristic. If people don’t follow up it’s just worthless - and seeing how long it takes people to do very simple things, we’ll be waiting hundreds of years.

I’ll read the two articles you linked (I’ve read the abstracts) but it’ll be a slow burn.

Just guessing, it likely failed due to:

• Being relatively unknown
• I2P being relatively small
• Java being a non-standardized language
• No data verification (malicious host can corrupt data)
• Poor UI and UX
• The main developer leaving

These are killshots to this type of service as people need to develop/extend/use it - for it to be viable. It is in the right direction, but (similar to many cornerstoning attempts in FOSS) is not handled gracefully.

Yeah the uni-directional relationships are also significant. It also happens to translate well; if Mr.Beast goes to randomcorp.com he is almost guaranteed to pull more people over than if SchmoeJoe went. Those people in turn would cause the website to be a more attractive option (less weight on the edge).

That would mean that there even is nuance within tyranny, which is funny to think about.

There’s also the possibility of cycles! What a fun rabbit-hole. Definitely worth a thesis paper or large-scale open discussion.

P.S. Also agreed that with a “limit” it is not TSP, and is much simpler. It evolves into TSP only when you think about a message originating from a source and making it to everyone - with the same effect for responses.

First off, agreed that monkey brain + internet = unsolved.

Second, I think that this overall is a math problem and what you’re describing is metadata. Before I continue, there are many ways to solve and interpret problems - this is just how I see it.

If you think about this as a graph, it makes a lot more sense as a math problem. People want to communicate and the message has to reach each of them once through the shortest route. In essence, this becomes the “Traveling Salesman Problem”.

Next, imagine the distance between points on the graph become longer (when people group together) and shorter (when people split apart) - we now have described tyranny of the majority.

What you are describing (from my perspective) is the cost of going from one part of the graph to the other. This indeed is a very important part of the problem and directly relates to the tyranny, but does not solve it. Instead to solve this problem, we would have to find a way to standardize the distance between any two points in the graph (i.e it cannot take more than 30 feet to reach any given destination).

I cannot begin to describe how difficult this would be, but my brain is telling me it’s solvable.

The comments (and your github post) helped me think about this a bit deeper. This is why discussion is helpful.

There’s a lot of nuance to be had here, but it’s a conversation for another time.

You bring up something interesting though

IRL you would leave but on the internet you want them to leave.

I wonder if this is because people view these spaces as a home or a “third place”. Like if someone did something offensive in your home, you would indeed ask (or force) them to leave.

People also find it insanely difficult to “leave” because all of their friends are on the platform. Since it’s almost never open-protocol, that means being locked to said space - so you can only get people you don’t like to leave.

We generally agree the moderation has become overbearing. I would argue most of it is straight up ineffective and performative. We need actual data and science backing moderation policies, not just “this feels good”.

This is interesting perspective.

If I’m interpreting what your saying correctly, this becomes an alternation of the “Traveling Salesman Problem” - where people are the nodes, sending information is the destination, and medium of communication is the weight. The goal being finding the shortest path for two-way communication (go to destination and return).

If this is the case, “tyranny of majority” is indeed a very difficult problem to solve. This phenomena causes the weights of the graph to become change based on the number of surrounding nodes. Higher when less nodes (i.e Lemmy) and lower when more nodes (i.e Reddit).

To go even further, companies are manipulating their weights (creating closed ecosystems, etc) to make is so two-way communication is only viable within their bubble (think an edge of infinite weight). And it would also mean that it truly is unreasonable to expect laymen to “memorize the graph” (know a forum for everything) - it indeed would be just easier to know a subsection (i.e Reddit, Facebook, etc)

I’m just spitballing here, but a lot to interpret if true.

Reddit was is a peculiar position, flooded by the masses isn’t really what I would call old reddit. Known by them yes (for answers), used by them no.

I think that development is fairly recent, maybe from 2019? And around that time, Reddit started to go to shit.

I agree with the government portion. I’m not really sure what the solution would be, which is why I want math folk working on it - but discussion is always helpful.

The problem is engagement - which in turn means building a community.

If someone goes to your forum, hijacks your posts, and them puts them on Reddit; there is no incentive to use your platform, which stifles and dies since no one is communicating on it. This is also part of the tyranny, as people can figuratively walk into your house, eat all your food, and then expect you to restock.

On the old internet, this was not really an issue since there was a better culture. But if all your friends use Reddit, and all the content is reposted there, why use the internet forum?

I agree that we need solid alternatives, but this doesn’t really tackle the tyranny of the majority problem. We need people to use the platforms for communication, otherwise it has not solved the problem.

For example, if you use Signal but every single one of your friends use WhatsApp and refuses to switch (which is common), then you are forced to use WhatsApp. This is why it is tyranny.

EU can facilitate thousands of platforms, but if the masses don’t use them it’s pointless.

Federated-platforms are kind of a step in the right direction, but they’re extremely weak to internal bad actors. If lemmy.world gets one million normie users, then cuts off the entire federation - then Lemmy has effectively been hijacked and set back 10 years.

It’s frustrating but true.

To use an extreme example, if I saw someone just spamming the hard-R I would want their comment immediately removed. The rhetoric makes the space becomes completely unserious; just not a good environment.

The funniest part is that this mirrors real life. If someone did that IRL, I would just leave.

I am not going to argue in terms of right/wrong because I’m just not equipped to. But in terms of platform result, I do not want to participate on a 4Chan clone - because it always leads to unserious discussion, bad faith, and death.