It's absolutely absurd that in 2023, the largest tech company in the world cannot find a way to not show me recommendations for books it knows I have already read.
I also get irrationally enraged anytime Goodreads gets confused about multiple formats of the same book. Oh, I have read the paperback version of The Way of Kings, but surely I need to be recommended the Kindle and leatherbound editions, too, as those are completely different books!
But how does blockchain, as a technology, help with that? The Fediverse already has a mechanism for distributing content across multiple instances.
The big difference is that the Fediverse, like Reddit and Digg before it, are not communication platforms between individual that know each other IRL.. They are content sharing and discussion platforms. The content that mainstream Meta or Twitter users are interested in and generating is largely not what I am interested in, so how is it a bad thing if most of them disappear from my platform?
Plenty of us have already gone through the most painful part of the transition and are now focused on building something new. If we can do that once, we can do it again, but it'll be even easier to divorce from Meta if I don't care about what I'm "losing" in the split.
This might all be true, but personally I don't care about Twitter or any alternative version of "microblogging". That's not the kind of content or engagement that I am looking for.
If Mastodon and other instances like it throughout the Fediverse are taking the majority of Meta's attention, even better. Let them be the army at the Black Gate distracting the Eye from two little hobbits approaching Mt Doom. Totally fine with me!
It's not even that, just change your perspective so whatever Meta is doing or not doing is irrelevant. They can't "win" if we are on a different field playing the same sport with different players and our own equipment. Even if they have better equipment and 40,000 fans to our 1,500 that doesn't mean our thing isn't happening and meeting our needs.
The first step to fixing a problem is identifying it. If we know the threat is coming, all we need to do is not do that thing.
It doesn't require users to enforce. Individual instances should probably start having caps and close signups/invites occasionally.
I think it's more that Amazon hasn't done anything to improve it since purchasing Goodreads years ago. Some minor design changes, but the algorithm for recommendations is arguably worse and there have not been any significant features added.
Instances could do what Beehaw does and defed one direction but still allow their content to be seen by other instances. I think Meta could decide to defed and block that, if they wanted to, however. (Beehaw doesn't seem to care if other instances see their content as long as they can control posts/comments on their end, which doesn't bother me at all since it doesn't effect me in any way. And I still get more content!)
But fracturing is not necessarily a death sentence. I don't necessarily want a billion users part of my echo chamber.
I assume the parent commenter referred to the EU because they seem to be the only governing body on the planet with enough influence and an actual desire to actually stand up to major corporations. The US sure ain't going to be doing it, and the list of other options is essentially zero, so that's the only hope we have in terms of legal protections or regulations.
I had been using Podcast Addict for a couple of years after switching from BeyondPod which I used for many years.
But now I'm using the open source, community-built AntennaPod. There are a few quirks I had to get used to, but that is true of every app and especially something I use so frequently throughout the day. Performance has been great, especially with audio casting which has always been buggy and inconsistent for me with other apps.