I’m not familiar with the details of that, but it seems like more of a red herring to me. A form of controlled opposition to divert people away from truly revolutionary platforms.
Of course it has to seem like a plausible alternative, but is it actually decentralized or altruistic enough to make a meaningful difference? I think not.
I wish he had mentioned Lemmy, but it’s understandable that he didn’t. Also Bluesky isn’t an alternative to big tech, it IS big tech. I wish it wasn’t stealing so much of our publicity lately.
But beggars can’t be choosers, and we have seen some nice growth over the past couple months. John Oliver fans are the perfect candidates to join the fediverse, hopefully some of them find their way to Lemmy.
If you have only been here for a month it’s not enough time to judge if the culture is changing, no?
Also you’re saying two different things, that people are negative and rude and that they aren’t expressing any passion. I think some users are negative and rude, but they definitely still express passion even though it isn’t always positive. Lemmy users have always held strong and passionate beliefs, it’s part of why we decided to leave mainstream social media and use Lemmy instead.
Sometimes those beliefs clash, but I don’t think it’s gotten any more negative lately. Plus it varies so much from server to server and community to community. It’s pretty foolish to paint all of Lemmy with the same brush because really it’s a bunch of independent communities with different attitudes and behaviors that are also able to interact with each other.