This opinion is a bit extreme, but take the “Science” subreddit for example. Reddit is full of rules, but “Science” in particular only lets you post links from trusted sources and is very uptight about the rules.

I was thinking about that yesterday. What if corporations decide that the way the Fediverse does things (especifically Lemmy and Mastodon) is the right way to go? By that I mean chronological order of posts, community-centered and small web). It doesn’t have to be big corporations, just people financially interested enough to bring money without really wanting to change things. That would be chaotic to the current state of the Fediverse.

There are several layers to this: maybe the government of Austria thinks it’s a good idea to put money into this; or maybe Philips (from the Netherlands) decides to pour money on the current state of the Fediverse or make its own real Fediverse (not faux-Fediverse like Bluesky).

I like what you said. But categorizing and labeling media websites is not at all as contributing with knowledge to a corpus of information. Contributing with more information brings more freedom, while restraining something to a label diminishes freedom.

Edit: For example, if I tell the person that a news website is left leaning, I’m telling her what she needs to know about that website. And it will also shape her opinion about the website, in ways that could be limiting.

When a person visits a website without a formed opinion about it, she can construct her own opinion and have a personal relationship with what the website has to say.

Let’s say you have two chemical processes. Process A and Process B.

If Process A has an efficiency of 95% and Process B an efficiency of 97%, does that invalidate process A? Something similar can be seen in Bamboo scaffolding in China. Is Bamboo scaffolding better or worse than metal scaffolding?

Now let’s say that Process A has an efficiency of 97% and Process B an efficiency of 97%. Which is the best method?

If centralization in technology and science were the optimal way to go, these questions would be invalid. But things that work only in one way are dumb.

I understand people and entities having wikis for countless reasons, as we see lots of wikis all over the web. And it’s awesome that MediaWiki is open sourced to create these places. However, it doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that Facebook had open sourced its code and now anyone can create a new Facebook. Let’s take a real example: Mastodon is open source and Truth Social is based on Mastodon. Does that make Truth Social any more linked to Mastodon core guidelines and philosophy? It doesn’t. Because Truth Social is more like Twitter than it is like Mastodon.

So, why would I want to start a wiki? No, I want a decentralized go-to place that I can check many points of view over a subject, just like the Fediverse works today. I use an instance that is already set up and help that community grow its direction and contribute. It isn’t that hard to understand. A place that is already built up where you can contribute in different ways and it is at the same time decentralized.

There is nothing to fear. It isn’t as if people could create a new wolfballs instance that would ruin the thing; the community can be better than that. Things don’t have to spiral out of control, in the end teamwork would make for it and it would be a nice place. It doesn’t have to be a Truth “Social” Wiki.

That’s not true. More opinions means more people searching for truth together and finding new things.

If someone finds something new and share it, that could be reviewed and researched by people faster.

Centralizing truth has a much more destructive aspect when dealing with truth. This can be seen practically on the difference of reach between the Fediverse and Facebook, for example. Facebook (centralized) is ground for fake and hateful news, while the Fediverse (decentralized) brings meaningful diversity and insightfulness.

More information also means quicker double-checking for what is true, regardless of political spectrum, even though Ibis main instance took care to add a “No politics” rule. Regardless of this, I see potential for including political debate as well.

Truth is a constructed entity. A heated debate in Brazil for more than a decade. I’m from Brazil, but Brazil is central on this in the sense that it is leaving the western spectrum to join the Global South, so this topic has been very heated for the last decade, generating real economical and political crisis (economy down 3% and impeachment in 2015/2016). It is felt around these parts in a very special way. So I’m sure that what people called “post-truth” on the original Ibis post is the way to go.

Also, it just occurred to me using the Lemmy “Search” function to look for it. It is there. The name is “Ibis”.

All people could contribute to the different instances and create a web of knowledge. If someone thinks a certain instance opinion of Robert F. Kennedy is wrong, they can contribute to another instance on the same topic giving references (even if different) as well.

I really think this is a better way of contribution. In this way, everyone gets to have their opinions preserved and at the same time contributing together. And to Truth, no less.

These instances would be connected by the ActivityPub or other.

Anyway, I’m sure there is a project like that out there already, and I’m also sure someone posted it here. I just don’t remember the name.

I support it. But you will need the streaming software to fetch and listen to webradios and the like.