That's true, an instance would be very tempted by that. I was referring more to the day to day, there's no incentive to squeeze users.
nix
joined 2 years ago
Besides all the discussion of nonprofits and donations, fedi server hosts have way less overhead. They're not generally trying to profit, so they only need to break even (or run a deficit small enough to deal with out of pocket). A corporation is trying to give 6 or 7 digit salaries to CEOs and/or shareholders. So they need to extract more than the cost of hosting.
It can't be ruled out from that picture.
I think some people do this. However, I'm 30, live with my long term partner, and have a bigger friend group than I've ever had before, with weekly events. My partner isn't a stand-in for socialization.
I'll fully admit I have some advantages because I have no kids, and a job that pays decently and isn't too demanding. I've met people through:
-
dating apps. This is how I met my partner and also a very good platonic friend
-
activist/interest groups. Got involved with a local urbanism group, now I know many of the people there
-
house parties. I got lucky here, I met someone that throws monthly house parties, went to those regularly, and made some very good friends that way
-
reconnecting with childhood friends. Again, lucky, but a few of my HS and college friends live in the same city as me and we reconnected and hang out.
The one bit of concrete wisdom I think I have here is that if you go to the same social place regularly you'll see the same people and if you put yourself out there you'll get to know some of those people. Activist groups or meetup groups are great because you probably already have some things in common.
This advice definitely fits OP's specifications, but definitely worth stressing that if you only eat fruits and meats for a while you're gonna have a BAD time when you do finally poop.
I mean google's whims as in they're making decisions on their own and everyone else just has to go with it. I'd rather these problems were solved collectively.
To the email point, it's actually much more difficult to set up your own email than it used to be, exactly because google servers will not accept email from unknown providers that don't meet their own standards. It didn't extinguish email, true, but it did help centralize it around a handful of providers that can keep up to date with google's whims to get reliable deliverability.
Just addressing the cost: Obviously cheap is a relative term depending on many factors, so I'm not going to say it's "cheap" but mullvad is $5 usd/month, which is the best deal I'm aware of, and the best VPN I've used.
They'll make a bespoke federated service, collect all the data of their users (and all the people on other networks their users interact with), make it all shiny and fancy and add a ton of improvements most networks don't have yet. And if they can reach a critical mass of users, they can track a huge cross section of federated activity, and force networks to play by their rules or lose access to their entire userbase. It's the same thing google did to email.
Are XMPP or Matrix really any more seachable? I'm all in on FOSS, clearly, but do they fix that complaint? I feel like the real solution is separating chat and longer term info, and putting the longer term info on a wiki or other public and indexable format.
3 of the passengers were lifelong explorers - the ex french navy guy, the ceo, and the billionaire that had already gone to space. I believe those three probably fully consented to the risks, and I don't have any particular sympathy for them.
But the other guy didn't have an adventurous background, and I wonder if he really understood what he was getting into. Still, he was an adult responsible for himself.
The teengager however... no way he was fully aware of the risks. Teens still think they're invincible, especially rich ones. Him I feel sorry for.
I have the same issue with light, had prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses, and had to switch between the two frequently. Finally got prescription transitions and they're incredible, I no longer have to think about my glasses at all. Just put them on and go.