Pika

Fully Agree.

Mastodon, Lemmy and the likes are all enthusiast platforms in my eyes. Their primary userbase of the more savvy folk who are early adopters. I also believe it’s why many don’t fully get how complicated the fediverse really is to comprehend. To many the hurtles are just costs of being in the field/having a tech passion, hopefully it will be adopted but like, I still think the UI and general behavior and mechanics of it will be a fairly big roadblock.

IOS has had native RCS since they launched IOS 18 back in like August/September-ish, I haven’t had much issue with support from IOS to Android RCS side, but I’m not sure what my family in Florida use for their iphones, I expect older models might struggle. I have however had issues with communicating with my mom, but I believe it’s because she doesn’t understand that when she has RCS enabled, and she turns off data, it wants to try using RCS, then fails, and then falls-back to SMS, which for some reason Samsung Messages struggles with.

Personally speaking though, my S20 hasen’t had any issues with RCS period, its always been other devices not actually sending proceeding to error and then the person not noticing it so therefore not retrying

Whatsapp isn’t really a thing in my area but man is Facebook messenger is, but yeah nice that you were able, I didn’t have much luck with my relatives to switch over to signal or Discord back when it took off, they just sort of stayed on Facebook.

My online friend group had a higher adoption rate for discord from skype at first but, that might just be because I refused to give them my phone number so they couldn’t access me elsewhere.

Really the only group that I had really have an interest in other alternatives, was my cybersecurity class in college, but even they tended to straight towards Discord more than signal (which is insane to me)

that would be an instant block on my pihole server. Yea that site doesn’t need any of my traffic

Yeah I believe that, the people I have on my signal are generally ones that are worried that the cops are going to track them or something. I fully agree that privacy is important, unfortunately my family and the general public care is significantly less

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with everything you’ve said here.

SMS and MMS are an antique technology, I can’t argue that. But it’s not going to change the fact that my family is not going to install another messaging app on their device in order to talk to me. They’re going to text me or call me anyway so therefore there’s no point, and hopefully with the improvements on the RCS standard the issues that have occurred with SMS and MMS will go away.

As is I have four different messaging apps on my phone ignoring my messages app, signal (which I can count on one hand the amount of my friends that have an account), Discord which the majority of my online friends are on, and less than a handful of my relatives are on. Telegram which I mostly have for artists, and Revolt which I really should uninstall but like I really want that project to go somewhere.

My family is almost exclusively on Facebook messenger, I do not use Facebook Messenger, sms/rcs is the only system that my relatives and I both have, and they’re not about to install another app, to talk to one person which would be me.

So yes I fully agree with everything you’ve stated there, 100%. But it’s a perfect example of how on paper it sounds amazing but in practice it doesn’t work. At the end of the day my family is going to text me regardless if I tell them that I’m on Signal, because I’m not on Facebook and they already have SMS on their phone

I believe you’ve hit the nail on the head, the only people I’ve noticed that really want such a social media account are generally people who were older than millennial, out of Millennials, gen Z and gen A, I don’t really see much interest in a social media account that is directly linked to your actual identity. Most of them are more interested in a pseuado-anonymous style account that only asks for a username and doesn’t actually link you to a real world identity.

Facebook was great in principle, it was intended as like a college student community and evolved from there, it was never meant to fill the goal of what the platform is doing today.

As such as Facebook deteriorates, there isn’t a huge demand for a Facebook alternative, because the people who are leaving the platform aren’t actively seeking to replace what is lost.

Indeed it is, that is such a weird block

This right here, the everyday person doesn’t know what federation is let alone believes that it’s an alternative to federated platforms. They see it as a better Twitter that’s not run by Musk and honestly that’s all they need to know.

I’ve never understood why people just can’t send messages through text. Like why do they need a special app in order to do it.

I don’t use Facebook myself and my family members just started texting me and honestly it’s so much easier

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think that signal is more secure. I just don’t understand why people just install another app in order to communicate with their family, just let them know you’re available through text

edit: I want to clarify that I may not have been clear/missed saying in this post, I’m not saying people shouldn’t(if people would change I would love it), I’m saying I don’t understand why people do knowing that your family members aren’t going to care and are just going to text you anyway as has been my experience

My issue with the ruling wasn’t the ruling itself, cause I can understand the argument. It was the non-equal enforcement of it. Games with actual gambling in it were rated lower than a game with the similar aspects but no actual monetary aspects. That’s ridiculous. If you want to make poker 18+, then just do it across the board instead of picking and choosing your ratings.

It’s probably too late to do anything about it, but what you described there does directly violate Indiegogo’s TOS in regards to perks, so I’m surprised that people weren’t able to reach out to the platform itself and issue chargebacks against the Creator in order to get their backers payments back.

They are actually obligated under the campaign owner obligations that in the case they can’t fulfill a perk, they are supposed to issue refunds to any contributor that was not fulfilled

not the person you replied to but, that’s better than I figured it was tbh

I’ll probally wait quite a bit longer though myself. It even says on the main screen it’s not ready for mainstream/non Enthusiast consumption. which tells me that I’ll have to tinker with it constantly for it to function right.

I’m super excited for the project still, it has massive potential. I might look into a second hand one when I have more disposable income

nope, I’m the only one I know irl that uses any type of the fediverse

letters aren’t going to do anything, neither will striking.

The current System does not legally give many ways to impeach an elected official.

It is impossible to legally remove a president from power outside of election season without the legislative branch.

Furthermore, there is no federal level system in place to allow for a recall of anyone in the legislative branch, some states have successfully implemented state level recall laws to revoke their elected officials but this is not a universal thing). Disciplinary functions in the legislative branch is predominantly decided by the branches themselves, which works fine if you have a functional branch, but if you have a branch that really doesn’t care then no punishments get done

The most the everyday citizen can really do is:

1. if you are in a state that has an elected official that is being toxic/against what your state actually wants, try to encourage a state recall petition (if you are in one of the 36(12 of which need specific actions to occur to trigger it) states that allow for it AND something has occurred that was ground for your states requirements for it)
2. try to add such a system to your state if one does not exist (which would likely have to be on the ballot as well so would take awhile)
3. or further educate yourself on what is going to be available on the 2026 midterms and vote accordingly.

I don’t think there is much else anyone can immediately do that might actually get anything done.

huh, I learned a few new words today

for others who want to know

• Jingoism: noun

  1. Extreme Nationalism characterized by a belligerent foreign policy

  2. A bellicose patriotism; aggressive chauvinism; belligerence in international relations

• Bellicose: adjective

  1. warlike or hostile in manner or temperment

  2. inclined to war or contention

  3. warlike in nature/aggressive;hostile

• Chauvinism: noun

  1. Militant devotion to and glorification of one’s country; fanatical patriotism.

  2. Prejudiced belief in the superiority of one’s own gender, group, or kind.

  3. Blind and absurd devotion to a fallen leader or an obsolete cause; hence, absurdly vainglorious or exaggerated patriotism.