Patatoa

It's easy to complain about the obvious problems with today's social internet, we all need to be part of the solution. But some of the solutions out there, as we would say in the academic world are straight trippin'. I want to briefly introduce you to, and summarily tear down free and open source alternatives to Twitter, YouTube, and Google. I cannot recommend these enough at all, as hard as I squint and want to.

First off is Mastodon. This is easily the most polished of them all, and at first glance seems superior to its big brother, Twitter. What you quickly realize though, that the killer app of Twitter isn't intuitive design, or novel concept, its the personalities. Even though Mastodon is federated, meaning you can host your own instance of the app and can choose to be a closed community or be a part of the larger Mastodon-web — there's only two types of people active on there. And I hope you like Linux if you want to dig any deeper than that. Out of all of these, this the most recommendable; pretty easily. It's slick, and surprisingly large. Its still a ways away before you impulsively want to check for updates though.

One of the things that I love-hate is when YouTubers make videos where they whine about, and plot ways to game the "algorithm". What if I told you there was away to put your content out there, and not worry about fickle, programmatic advertising schemes. And this place was also so skeezy you need to compulsively wash your hands and face after even a cursory visit? Ladies & gentlemen, let me introduce you to PeerTube. It is federated, just like Mastodon, which is awesome. It also has a torrent component which helps distribute the load needed to serve the videos, which is also awesome. What is not so awesome are the videos you will find there. At best, more Linux evangelists that re-upload their YouTube videos. But what you'll also get is stuff thats just too real for YouTube.

Okay, here's the icky part with the FOSS world right now. By definition and principle you have the freedom to say what you want. Everyone has the right to their own platform. So naturally some of the loudest voices on a platform like PeerTube are those that get banned from YouTube. Long-winded introduction for Alt-Right knuckleheads. In principal, these dopes are free to host their own iteration of PeerTube and peddle their various grifts and slop. Other iterations can choose to carry or not those videos as well. Bug or feature? As wonderful as the technology is, there is nothing easy-breezy to be found on the entire network. Maybe one day.

In fairness, I don't have a problem with Twitter. I'm not a creator, and have no problem with YouTube. As much as it irks me that they changed their motto from "Don't be evil" to "Do good," Google makes more things easier than they make problems. This is all to my personal taste anyway. But as I've expressed before, I am not so comfortable with how centralized the internet of today is. I'm not overly concerned about my own privacy as I treat the internet as the public forum that it really is. For the most part, what Google knows about me is fine. When I'm looking for a gas station, it's helpful that it knows where I am, and when I search "what was Limbo about?" its helpful that it knows what I mean. But for about a month I switched my default search engine to Searx.

For the most part, I barely noticed. Most of my web searches are programming related, and Searx had no trouble directing me to StackOverflow or the right, official documentation. General stuff like, "Who is Anya Taylor Joy?" was also excellent. It got stuck on my gas station and Limbo questions though. Also its ranking is really weird. For whatever reason, wikiquotes or wikitionary is always seems to be the first match and is at all relevent 20% of the time. It also heavily favors Russian sites, which makes me suspicious. Lastly, while a Google results page gives you at least a page of relevant hits in descending utility; Searx seems to prefer a scattershot approach where two of the first three links are what you wanted (just like Google) but then goes completely off the rails with results that I can't fathom how the Searx algorithm thinks are related. The great thing though, is that I can get the Searx code, figure out why, and tweak to improve it. While Searx has room for improvement, out of the three solutions I've discussed, it is the one that can actually fit into your daily routine.

The technology isn't the problem; PeerTube is fantastic, for example. The problem is the invitation. Twitter didn't copy Facebook and MySpace, it offered a different experience. "Twitter but open source" doesn't cut it. Instead, we need to focus on the hook first, and make it FOSS from the get-go.