I used to feel the same way until I actually watched a Formula E race.
The racing is incredibly close at times (I think last race had a 3 wide finish for the podium), and features like Fan boost make for a really engaging overall experience
Agreed, I’ve been to two formula e races in past years, and have tickets to another two this year. I’ve been to Formula 1 which was definitely something, but still enjoy FE for the racing.
In which case the point is useless. It's a pie in the sky statement.
Fediverse instances being too trigger-happy in blocking other instances means the network as whole is less open in comparison to a centralized social network. So, why bother? You have little to no control over whom you can connect to.
Also, "switching" is an alien concept to normal social media users. You never have to "switch" and you never lose your content or followers, exceptions aside when you get yourself into serious trouble.
Decentralization/federation is not about "potential user base". It's about diffusion of control. People need to learn to fish because the SaaS model is a precarious foundation to build a culture on.
We are having this conversation in a more mainstream way now because more people found out how precarious their online cultural foundations are. Your Facebooks and Reddits and Twitters will get ruined by changes of ownership or on the whim of billionaires. You data will be sold out from under you. You will be squeezed for every penny.
The point is to either host your own instance, or use the instance of someone you trust and/or whose moderation policy you align with. It's not to amass a large user base and watch your charts go up.
> The point is to either host your own instance, or use the instance of someone you trust and/or whose moderation policy you align with.
This should be the goal but will never happen with an activity-pub-based fediverse. It just doesn't scale to everyone or even every small group having their own instances because. Current fediverse software is also too complicated and too resource hungry for even most technically inclined people to self host.
You really need a better foundation that is designed for efficient communication between millions of hosts from the start.
Except once instances block other instances for not going along with their blocks. Then you really cannot talk to anyone from a single idenity. This makes the whole system not much better than a bunch of independent sites.
Then there is the fact that you once you choose an instance your identity is bound to that instance. Why would anyone invest in such a dead end network.
Why? Up until now I was entitled to choose a strong platform that forced the developers to play nicely. Now I lost that so indeed as you're saying, not using the app is my only choice.
But that's bad, I want the strong platform back. I left Android just few years ago precisely because I liked the guarantees of the iOS platform - now it's going to be just another shitty privacy nightmare like the hellscape of Android I left.
I don't understand why people can't just buy an Android if that's what they like.
> I don't understand why people can't just buy an Android if that's what they like.
I don't understand why you people can't just use the apps they trust and let me use the ones I trust.
I should not have to buy a different device to have the ability to put the software I want on it, and the hardware vendor shouldn't be able to get in my way.
Why did you buy the device in the first place if it doesn't do what you want? And why do you think you are entitled to force its satisfied users to your ways? Just sell it, make a different choice and let us be happy with what we got.
This assumes there is one and only one reason to buy an iOS device, and it's because the platform is locked down. But that's not true is it? Is that the one and only reason you like iOS?
No, but it's one of them, and imho a very important one. You recommended I don't use the apps - I recommend you don't use the device. It's not like it's not possible to live without iPhone in Europe.
The magnitude of our recommendations differ quite a lot. The phone is the most important thing in your life. Changing it is very expensive, both in money and in your own time.
Changing which app you use is, in most cases, a far less costly endeavor.
If you were upset that an injustice was occuring where you lived, would you want people to tell you to move to another country?
So why did these people buy the device in the first place? They knew what they were getting into. Why do they have to break it for the ones who actually wanted it?
When I open an .apk file from a new application for the first time, I get a popup that asks me if I want to allow installations from unknown sources for this app, with a button that directly takes me to the setting to toggle this, and then immediately allows me to install the application.
Side loading on android is laughably easy, probably easier than installing a program on a Windows device. If we can consider the installers that Windows users need to use to get something as simple as Chrome installed easy to use, downloading an .apk file and opening it and pressing install should seem trivial by comparison.
We all know that sideloading is a well-established method used by millions of people to gain access to software that is not available on the dominant stores.
I didn't think branding them as developers would change anything.
Do we? Which common app is exclusively distributed though a standalone install and used by millions? I can't think of a single example which would validate that.
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