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Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Nonprofit organizations that moderate a website should stay nonprofit, because at least they’re not prone to making crappy business decisions that’ll end up hurting them in the long term.

trash80 ,

Has he ever built anything?

frostinger ,

he defo be flexin’ with them mad dumps he be droppin’ on the throne

EatMyPixelDust ,

This guy seriously has the mentality of a three year old.

Beetschnapps ,

Don’t mistake intent for ability. Elon doesn’t feel cost or expense, he’s that rich. So while we can all laugh at the money it takes to wreck the communication platform called twitter, a person so rich could be doing exactly what they want; silencing and platforming anyone they choose, while swaths of people can be silenced or deplatformed for Saudi investors all while Elon muddies the waters of “free speech”. The cost is what we laugh about but consider the actions of someone who could dump that money for their own political ends and at the end of the day their feet still haven’t touched the ground.

It’s not a surprise if he were to eyeball Wikipedia and the thought should be a terrifying.

Kevin11 ,

Actually, if it would mean that they’d stop asking me for money every time I use it, I could get behind that

1847953620 ,

it would also mean a massive blow to our wealth of information, which would be replaced by calculated manipulation of it, including spreading falsehoods and promoting whatever political agenda benefits him in particular.

confusedbytheBasics ,

Wait… you would get behind ruining Wikipedia just so you wouldn’t have to see fundraising banners when you use it?

Kevin11 ,

Is there an r/woosh alternative?

1847953620 ,

it might be /c/timetoexplainyourself - poe’s law

CouncilOfFriends ,

He’s still in this stage

diffuselight ,

Just facists destroying faith in everything that’s not them. Normal modus operandi. These people need sheep who are so confused what to believe that they don’t trust anyone anymore and instead substitute trust for blind faith.

nixcamic ,

So he says he’ll give them a billion dollars if they change their name to dikipedia. As someone who has donated to Wikipedia in the past I’m 100% in favor of this move.

Schadrach ,

I agree. Then change it back after the check clears.

Liz ,

With Musk you shouldn’t do anything until after you get your money. Musk must pay in advance.

wabafee ,

I agree, changing the name won’t change that much, more money for dikipedia I mean Wikipedia.

RGB ,

😜 😅 😂 Let him be mad!!!

RGB ,

it is an engine ;0]

hal_5700X , (edited )
@hal_5700X@lemmy.world avatar

Too late it already ruined itself.

EDIT Wikipedia is bad place to learn about politics and history.

Sources:

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

He’ll probably rename it “X-pedia”.

JackbyDev ,

Dot commmmm

FakinUpCountryDegen ,

Ah, yes. Another intellectually impartial post. lmfao

It’s not possible to make liberal cesspools any worse, so… Things are looking up!

catgirl2005 ,

Is there anything that stops Elon Musk from buying Lemmy or Mastadon? Even if everyone were to migrate over to the Fediverse, what stops these websites from being bought as well?

GoosLife ,

Why would he pay for something that’s free…?

Zehzin ,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

You can’t “buy” Lemmy or Mastodon any more than you can buy email or World Wide Web

catgirl2005 ,

Isn’t Mastadon run by an organization started by Eugen Rochko? Could this organization not be bought? Or does it not make a difference who controls Rochko’s organization? Sorry to ask such basic questions - I find the Fediverse pretty confusing.

wizardbeard ,
@wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

He could buy a specific mastodon instance, or a specific lemmy instance if the person running the instance decided to sell their instance. It wouldn’t effect any other instance directly.

By buying the mastodon org he might be able to influence development of the mastodon software, but the software is open source and someone would just make a musk-free fork and thungs would keep moving.

Also, an overly simplistic summary of the fediverse is that instead of one reddit run by the reddit corp, anyone can run their own reddit (lemmy) instance. Each instance can talk to each other instance and access data from each other instance. So instances that talk to each other effectively function like one big combined instance.

catgirl2005 ,

So if Musk said to himself, “I’m going to buy Mastadon from Rochko and fill all the instances with ads!”, he would be able to do that but we could always just fork and create “Mastadon 2” and then everything would be normal again? Would our content and followers and stuff follow us from Mastadon 1 to Mastadon 2? Or would it just be that the instances would have to switch from 1 to 2 and nothing would really change in terms of user experience?

Schadrach ,

The best comparison here is email. So Google created an email service and serve ads with their email. This, of course, has no effect on anyone not using Google’s email service and since Google still follows the standards protocols for mail servers to talk to each other it doesn’t even impact their ability to communicate with other remail servers or vice versa.

The same idea works with Mastodon and Lemmy - there isn’t one centralized service that can be bought, the same way you can’t buy “email” or “the web”.

The absolute worst case would be Musk buying the rights to the server code and changing the license for all future versions to something closed. At which point, everyone else just forks the last open version and builds on it from there. So long as neither changes the underlying protocol this has no real effect on end users. If one of them does, then it creates a split between Muskodon and whatever the new fork is called akin to both sides defederating each other.

catgirl2005 ,

This makes sense, thanks for the explanation!

Armacadia ,
@Armacadia@lemmy.world avatar

Mastodon is just one of the many frontends for ActivityPub, the protocol behind the whole thing. While Mastodon software indeed is written and maintained by an organization, it is nonprofit, and doesn’t have any control over the actual Mastodon instances since those are basically run by enthusiasts

catgirl2005 ,

This makes sense, thank you. I’m becoming so aware of how little I know about software (I had to look up the term frontend).

Is this right: Mastadon is an open source frontend and ActivityPub is the open source backend. And Mastadon is kind of like a tool that people use to create instances. The instances keep all of their data on their own servers, but the servers can talk to each other so every server has access to data from every other server. So if Musk bought Mastadon, he wouldn’t have control of all the individual servers’ data, and if Musk bought a server, all the users who wanted to could switch to another server without losing any of their data. Does this mean that every server holds a copy of all of the data from the whole network of servers?

Armacadia ,
@Armacadia@lemmy.world avatar

The instances sync data only as needed - for example, if a user on a specific instance is following someone on another instance, and that someone posts something. Fetching and storing data from the entire Fediverse would require an absolutely enormous amount of bandwidth and storage, much more than most people will ever be able to afford and maintain :) (This is also why instances often purge old cached data - to reclaim storage space that is unlikely to be taken by useful data, per the nature of minuteness of social networking, and if you ever need a deleted resource, it can just be requested and synced back up to your instance, as long as it’s still available on the original one.)

As the end user, you should be aware that this synced data may, and most likely will at some point (not many instances achieve absolute 100% uptime, after all), get incomplete - especially if you’re using a smaller instance. When browsing user profiles, it is generally a good idea to look up their profile on their own instance, as it is guaranteed to have all of their data.

Also note that my explanation regarding “frontends” is oversimplified and technically inaccurate: a “frontend” is the user interface part on top of the software that implements the protocol. This, basically, means that you don’t have to stick with whatever UI your instance offers - there are other web and native clients that will talk to your (Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, whatever they come to support) instance, and your instance will still handle all things ActivityPub, such as fetching data from other instances to it and vice versa.

Thelaststandn ,

I don’t really know the legalitys, but there’s a few things in elons way:

  1. Whoever has control over Lemmy would have to be willing to sell it, pretty sure Elon couldn’t take over lemmy like he did twitter
  2. It’s open source, how/can does one even turn something like lemmy closed-source?
  3. If it was made closed source by Elon, what of the forks that already exist? Can anything be does to threaten their ongoing existence?

I don’t know the answers to 2&3, but I’m pretty sure 1 holds true; Elon can’t buy something if the owner refuses to sell.

JackbyDev ,

Lemmy cannot be made closed source due to the irrevocable perpetual license and the viral nature of GPL licenses, especially AGPL.

jtk ,
@jtk@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

That seems exactly like something Elon would try to do, just like the idiot that tried to takeover freenode. I’d love it if the creators of Lemmy and Mastodon were able to swindle some money from him.

RGB ,

it is an updated blog concept.

FangedWyvern42 ,
@FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world avatar

Because it’s FOSS. You can’t buy open-source software. You can use it commercially, but you can’t buy it.

Sidyctism ,

The fact that lemmy and mastodon arent websites, they are collections of connected instances which are managed by individuals and collectives. Elon could set up his own instance, or try to buy all the existing ones, but that wouldnt stop others from setting up new ones as well. The lemmy website is just an aggregator, each instance has its own website as well.

d00ery ,

I’ve donated in the past and, thanks to the big baby, I think I’ll make a donation again

PM_ME_FEET_PICS ,

Why? Wikipedia makes a huge profit from donations that get put into trustees pockets. Fuck them.

MaryAnna ,

[Citation needed]

Zehzin ,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

“People will come up to me during fundraising season and ask if Wikipedia’s in trouble,” said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of journalism at American University and the author of “The Wikipedia Revolution.” “I have to reassure them that not only is Wikipedia not in trouble, but that it’s making more money than ever before and is at no risk of going away.”

In the fiscal year that ended last June, WMF reported net assets in excess of $77 million.

source

Suggestion: Donate instead to long time contributors directly

BeardedBlaze ,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

that was 8 years ago, have anything more up-to-date?

Jumi ,

It still exists in our capitalist world so probably even more now

PM_ME_FEET_PICS ,

Just look at the data Wikimedia releases themselves.

rustbuckett ,

This sounds awesome! Just think what it will do for the fediverse! Is anyone working on a decentralized Wikipedia yet?

Iapar ,

Why should someone decentralize Wikipedia?

Jomega ,

Wikipedia is a non-profit that exists for the betterment mankind. It already embodies the spirit of the fediverse, and has before the fediverse had existed as a concept. There’s no reason to burn it down for the sake of rebuilding it. Not to mention that Elon would do so much damage in the time it takes to get a working site off of the ground.

rustbuckett ,

It’s created from publicly created content, which is great and was a revolutionary move. It embodies not just the fediverse ideal, but the original purpose the internet itself. I use it almost daily and I even make a small monthly monetary contribution to keep it going. But, afaik, it’s still centrally hosted and managed. All I’m saying is decentralize it so that Musk has nothing to “buy” or whatever he’s trying to do.

affiliate ,

we should make wikipedia into an everything app

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