Message boards etc. still exist but I generally have thought of them as distinct from "social media". The distinguishing characteristic is algorithmic feeds. Also, Lemmy is mostly link aggregation, which is much less of a thing on message boards. Lemmy is even more like that than Reddit was, despite the implementations being similar.
The culture shift is from communication to entertainment. Author describes some fediverse issues as symptoms, though they aren't always perfect matches.
The premise isn't about the fediverse, it's about a culture shift. And re "join another one", um no, there are 14 competing standards and we don't need a 15th.
No idea about Pixelfed, which I don't use. I thought the article gave an interesting perspective on the internet in general, not just the fediverse. So the concrete stuff about Pixelfed, cross-fedi accounts, etc. didn't seem that important.
There are some interesting posters on Mastodon and also on Lemmy, but I think the fediverse in general is nowhere near what Usenet or Reddit used to be. No idea about Facebook or IG, both of which I stay away from, though there is a musician on IG who I was thinking of emailing to suggest cross-posting on Youtube.
My buddy's folding Samsung phone is really cool and you might look into it. It unfolds to a single screen of maybe 10" diagonal and square perspective. I think for full page PDFs though, I need something bigger so I've given up on pocketability.
I'm still looking for a good answer myself! There are lots of possibilities but all have drawbacks from my perspective. I guess the 13" Onyx Boox sounds nice if you don't mind the cost. I haven't tried it though. Same with the 14" TCL Android tablet if you don't mind Android.
It's just 10" and looks like an old design. Micro USB, oops. The Inkplate is 10" ESP32 epaper so it uses very little power. Alternatively there are tablet-style x86 laptops and I almost bought one last year. Now the price is way up due to DRAM shortages and so on, oops. I have some scrounged HDMI monitors so I want to try using one in portrait mode with my raspberry pi 400. If that works I could see getting one of the Waveshare dual screen monitors and maybe a Pi 500+.
Oh hmm, I just use my phone for that. It doesn't seem worth having an additional, limited purpose device. I assume a 7" e-reader is too big for a pocket.
The Inkplate 10 isn't pocketable but it's very light, easy to put in your backpack or whatever. I just wish they had a 13" version. The 13" Ipad Air is really very nice if you don't mind Apple products.
There are also some folding phones now with largish screens. A buddy of mine has one and it's nice. Too expensive for me though, and it's more Android.
Um lol no. I could see using a pair of Inkplate 10's connected by (at least metaphorical)) duct tape. Doesn't seem worth mucking with special hardware.
Every affordable e-reader I know of is simply too small though. I mostly want to read stuff like ArXiV preprints (A4 sized pdf's) so would want at least a 13" screen. Someone a few days ago posted a link to a 14" Android tablet with a semi-reflective display at around $300. It seemed interesting but I'd rather degoogle.
There are some hinged Waveshare displays that look nice but they are regular TFT displays so wouldn't be great for a portable e-reader with long battery time:
GNU Jami though I had trouble getting it to work reliably, and you have to install an app. YMMV.
Jitsi is decent, especially if you don't mind using their server meet.jit.si (may have changed by now). It uses WebRTC (i.e. you can use it with just a browser) which I think is preferable to a mobile app.
I think there will inherently be some lag if you're using a mobile phone at the client side, because of all the codecs, wifi latency etc.
This shouldn't be that hard a technical problem especially if you're ok with audio-only. I don't know why the existing programs all have probs in some areas. Jitsi is nice to use but a pain to self-host from what I can tell.
I have a self-hosted nextcloud that has a video chat feature (Nextcloud Talk) but it's not great.
I have been wanting to spend a chunk of time looking into the situation and finding a good answer, or at least identifying the trade-offs clearly.
Message boards etc. still exist but I generally have thought of them as distinct from "social media". The distinguishing characteristic is algorithmic feeds. Also, Lemmy is mostly link aggregation, which is much less of a thing on message boards. Lemmy is even more like that than Reddit was, despite the implementations being similar.