BobQuasit

joined 2 years ago
[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

But aren't Squabbles and Tilde both not federated, and therefore potentially subject to changes or even an IPO by the owners?

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

I don't really track my reading. Maybe I should have, but I never really saw the point. Besides, most of my reading predates the web. I've been reading since 1966. That said, I did a TON of book recommendations on Reddit at r/booksuggestions and r/SuggestMeABook. I ended up creating a Google doc to store the recommendations I wrote for re-use. That turned out to be a good idea; I separated the recs into genres, and polished them as I noticed mistakes or areas for improvement.

Eventually someone asked me to make that Google doc public, so I did.

Meanwhile I'm on BookWyrm. I was part of a group that left GoodReads when Amazon took over; we set up a community on Google Plus (RIP) to search for alternatives to GoodReads and Amazon (see what I mean about greedy corporations destroying one community after another?). We set up a research project to find and test replacement services. If BookWyrm had existed back then, it would have been far and away the best choice. It needs more development, but I'm willing to wait for that to happen. Meanwhile I'm having fun with it.

One thing for sure: I will NEVER trust a service owned by a plutocrat or corporation ever again.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

I'm on StoryGraph too (and BookWyrm), but I've been burned WAY too often by profiteers. GoodReads in particular is seared into my memory; their owners lied to users to get tens of thousands of free hours of labor out of us (to "save GoodReads from Amazon"), all while they were negotiating to sell out to Amazon! And then Amazon immediately started censoring and shadowbanning reviews to suit their corporate bottom line.

I've seen far too many great digital communities destroyed by greedy vulture capitalists. I'm done. If a service has a single owner - plutocrat or corporation - it automatically goes to the bottom of the list. I'll stick with BookWyrm, thanks! It may be a little light on features so far, but I'd rather put my work in there and wait for improvements.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm another old school early adopter who was on the internet since the '80s. No way the enshittification and souring of Reddit was caused by boomers and Gen xers. Most of them wouldn't know how to get on, and those who would... Honestly, I'm the only boomer I know who is on there. Well, unless you go to some of the subreddits that are specifically for people over 50. And those people are incredibly nice! One of the few things I will really miss about Reddit.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

I'm off my primary account, and have no desire to go back. I did check on my alt today, but only to catch up on correspondence.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

Because the system gives them no other real choice. When all major parties serve the interests of the oligarchs, the people know that they're being screwed. Which makes them angry. And since the powers that be absolutely will not allow the emergence of a truly populist movement or leader, the people have no other option but to support a charismatic authoritarian leader who promises them whatever they want. I suspect that most of the people know that those leaders are lying, but at least they acknowledge that the people are being screwed!

Note that while the establishment never allows a leftist populist movement, they're fine with an authoritarian one. Translation: our owners won't allow their cattle to run free, but they're happy to have us all choose a leader to send us to the slaughterhouse for their profit.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Chi1d p0rn posters, among others. According to them, and I have no reason to doubt them.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

I never really cottoned to Mastodon, possibly for the same reasons I never took to Twitter. Perhaps I'm just too much of a chatterbox to accept their post length limitations. 😆

Bookwyrm is outstanding for book reviews, and it allowed me to import the CSV of my reviews from GoodReads. If Mastodon can do that, I wasn't aware of it.

Paper.wf was recommended to me as a Fediverse boxing site. Mastodon is too short-form for me. Beehaw doesn't seem to have a personal blog as an option. BookWyrm, oddly enough, does - and I just discovered that I can see my BookWyrm blog (called "Direct Messages" there, which really doesn't make sense) from kbin. I have no idea how that works, since my accounts are separate.

Paper.wf is elegant, but seemingly skimpy on features, though. Currently I can't figure out how to find other blogs there or follow them, and as far as I can tell there's no way for anybody to comment on blog entries there. If anyone wants to check out my blog there, here it is. Maybe you can tell me how to comment on entries!

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I can't speak for other instances, but Beehaw requires a convincing explanation of why you feel that you are right for Beehaw and Beehaw is right for you.

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 27 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I'm a Beehaw member; also a kbin member, but I wasn't able to get on here until tonight because it had been so laggy a few days ago that I'd given kbin up as unusable. To answer your question, I don't like it but I do understand it. It sounds from what they've said that they basically had no choice; they were overwhelmed.

That said, I'm now VERY glad that I have a kbin account. I just re-created my subscription list (including magazines from both of the banned instances) here. I just hope kbin isn't going to ban them too?

And just in case anyone is wondering: I expect to keep using both Beehaw and kbin (and my other Fediverse accounts, for that matter; I'm on Mastodon, BookWyrm, and Paper.wf). It's nice to have a low-stress refuge like Beehaw sometimes But I want to be able to access the whole wide world when I choose, too!

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 20 points 2 years ago

Ironically enough I had just added several communities from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works to my feed on Beehaw. Luckily I can still see them on my "Subscribed" list - not the content, the community names - so I'm adding them to my kbin subscriptions instead.

I'm glad to see that kbin has gotten stable. I'd been trying to use it for days, but it kept freezing and crashing!

[–] BobQuasit@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

BookWyrm. I'd searched intensively for a replacement for GoodReads, and been stuck with LibraryThing despite it's extreme user-hostility (by which I mean the opposite of user-friendliness, not that the people there were hostile). BookWyrm was what I was looking for all along!

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