The Fediverse is better than regular social media(slashdev.space)
slashdev.space
The Fediverse is better than regular social media
https://slashdev.space/posts/2021-01-18-reasons-the-fediverse-is-better
84 comments
I run a small Mastodon instance. It has a purpose - it's a place for me and my friends to socialize, and talk about small things that matter to us.
I grew up with the Internet so I can compare it to, say, Livejournal with its much-missed subtle privacy controls, or a local BBS with a Fidonet hookup, or a PHPBB forum, and find it wanting in some ways - but it's being run like one of those places.
It is not being run for profit. It is not anyone's job. It has no VC investment to pay back. It is paid for about 50/50 by my money and by user contributions. And maybe a little by the fact that it's a nice audience for when I say "hey my commission schedule is open, who wants to trade some money for art?". I don't want it to be any bigger, and actively work to keep its growth slow.
Personally I think the fact that the public sphere is a for-profit affair is a lot of why it's such a terrible thing, all that matters is keeping users around and feeding them more ads, doesn't matter if they're happy or angry, doesn't matter what they're being sold.
I think that's a perfectly fine thing to make. A place to have a conversation without someone trying to turn it into a source of money.
YMMV, if you have more grandiose dreams that you try to build on top of these shared protocols then good luck, and I will probably block whatever you do for breaking the "being or representing a corporation is a bannable offense" rule of my instance.
I grew up with the Internet so I can compare it to, say, Livejournal with its much-missed subtle privacy controls, or a local BBS with a Fidonet hookup, or a PHPBB forum, and find it wanting in some ways - but it's being run like one of those places.
It is not being run for profit. It is not anyone's job. It has no VC investment to pay back. It is paid for about 50/50 by my money and by user contributions. And maybe a little by the fact that it's a nice audience for when I say "hey my commission schedule is open, who wants to trade some money for art?". I don't want it to be any bigger, and actively work to keep its growth slow.
Personally I think the fact that the public sphere is a for-profit affair is a lot of why it's such a terrible thing, all that matters is keeping users around and feeding them more ads, doesn't matter if they're happy or angry, doesn't matter what they're being sold.
I think that's a perfectly fine thing to make. A place to have a conversation without someone trying to turn it into a source of money.
YMMV, if you have more grandiose dreams that you try to build on top of these shared protocols then good luck, and I will probably block whatever you do for breaking the "being or representing a corporation is a bannable offense" rule of my instance.
+1 insightful.
Excellent question.
What I am personally most interested in is sort of flipping the script on this private -> public dynamic: ingesting the content I contribute in Public, aggregating and curating it in Private.
What I am personally most interested in is sort of flipping the script on this private -> public dynamic: ingesting the content I contribute in Public, aggregating and curating it in Private.
Some very good points here! I host a Mastodon server whose users are a small group of close family. We mostly post with the semi-private "Followers-only" visibility since our goal is to share things with each other and not publicly.
However, I do enjoy being able to also follow a ton of other open source projects/enthusiasts on my Mastodon feed too!
The fediverse has become a very interesting place, but there are some features I think it needs to help it more successfully support its "Private sphere purpose" (e.g. private groups: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/139).
However, I do enjoy being able to also follow a ton of other open source projects/enthusiasts on my Mastodon feed too!
The fediverse has become a very interesting place, but there are some features I think it needs to help it more successfully support its "Private sphere purpose" (e.g. private groups: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/139).
> Regular social media platforms like Facebook have a single point of failure. If their servers go down, your content goes down with it.
While I agree with the principle of this argument, I think it's far more likely that any of the publicly available Mastodon instances goes boom long before Twitter does. My different kinds of social media activities might be spread across the fediverse, but all of my toots are only on one point of failure, and technically in significantly more incompetent hands than on Twitter.
I'm not disagreeing with this article per se – I want decentralized social media to succeed as much as everyone else – but it's much too brittle and technically minded for the people I mostly like to hang out with, i.e. non-techies.
While I agree with the principle of this argument, I think it's far more likely that any of the publicly available Mastodon instances goes boom long before Twitter does. My different kinds of social media activities might be spread across the fediverse, but all of my toots are only on one point of failure, and technically in significantly more incompetent hands than on Twitter.
I'm not disagreeing with this article per se – I want decentralized social media to succeed as much as everyone else – but it's much too brittle and technically minded for the people I mostly like to hang out with, i.e. non-techies.
In fact, in support of decentralisation I've been wanting to move my account off of mastodon.social for a long time now, but have not found (or even know where to look - no, the instance picker doesn't give me enough information) an instance that gives me even the confidence of mastodon.social that it will remain around, which already is lower than twitter.com's.
(And ideally one that lets me maintain my own blocklist rather than doing that for me, but I'm already accepting that at mastodon.social, so that's not a deal-breaker.)
(And ideally one that lets me maintain my own blocklist rather than doing that for me, but I'm already accepting that at mastodon.social, so that's not a deal-breaker.)
I'd guess that most instances with several thousand users will be around for quite some time. There are lists that show that.
Most instances have a public page you can check out to see the instance's vibe. EG https://mastodon.xyz/public , https://fosstodon.org/public
Once you've found a new instance, you can transfer your followers to it. This Feditips page tells how to move your 'mutes, blocks etc'.
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/105317854827203241
Remove that number at the end and there are a lot more Feditips. One tip: you can easily subscribe to any Mastodon account through an RSS reader ... add '.rss' to the account's public page, there's your feed!
Most instances have a public page you can check out to see the instance's vibe. EG https://mastodon.xyz/public , https://fosstodon.org/public
Once you've found a new instance, you can transfer your followers to it. This Feditips page tells how to move your 'mutes, blocks etc'.
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/105317854827203241
Remove that number at the end and there are a lot more Feditips. One tip: you can easily subscribe to any Mastodon account through an RSS reader ... add '.rss' to the account's public page, there's your feed!
Yeah I know how to move my account, I just don't know where to yet :) I don't really care about an instance's vibe, since I only check my follower timeline anyway. That said, only a user count (especially without knowing how many of those are actually active users) doesn't give me too much confidence; I'd like to know who's behind it, and how and why they're going to keep it online in the long term.
> all of my toots are only on one point of failure
I hadn't considered this before, but might this be an instance where a blockchain is actually useful? If you want to mitigate the brittleness of a single personal server hosting your toots, distribute/duplicate them across many personal servers? Then I guess we'd need to change our concept of "host" from "physical server" to "private/public key pair that enables encrypting toot history (so writes/edits/deletions) from an author and decrypting them for author+host subscribers".
Admittedly I'm a bit out of my depth here so maybe there's some reason this wouldn't work/would be a bad idea I'm not seeing at the moment (aside from the additional technical overhead).
I hadn't considered this before, but might this be an instance where a blockchain is actually useful? If you want to mitigate the brittleness of a single personal server hosting your toots, distribute/duplicate them across many personal servers? Then I guess we'd need to change our concept of "host" from "physical server" to "private/public key pair that enables encrypting toot history (so writes/edits/deletions) from an author and decrypting them for author+host subscribers".
Admittedly I'm a bit out of my depth here so maybe there's some reason this wouldn't work/would be a bad idea I'm not seeing at the moment (aside from the additional technical overhead).
There are other decentralized social networks (mostly up and coming) that run on distributed networks that aren't as brittle.
For example, a network of nodes that balance all traffic rather than a network of independent servers that federate.
For example, a network of nodes that balance all traffic rather than a network of independent servers that federate.
That looks nice. Let's get back to this once any of those services has reached the kind of maturity that a non-techie is willing to sign up and start building their network. I have no idea what needs to happen for that to become the reality, though.
> once any of those services has reached the kind of maturity that a non-techie is willing to sign up and start building their network
Has the fediverse reached that level of maturity?
A single distributed network is more like twitter, instagram, or telegram. A federated network necessitates teaching about home servers, blacklists, server outages, etc.
I've heard from people that work on Activity Pub though that they are moving towards making things function in a more distributed way (portable accounts for example). So things seem to be converging in that direction regardless.
Has the fediverse reached that level of maturity?
A single distributed network is more like twitter, instagram, or telegram. A federated network necessitates teaching about home servers, blacklists, server outages, etc.
I've heard from people that work on Activity Pub though that they are moving towards making things function in a more distributed way (portable accounts for example). So things seem to be converging in that direction regardless.
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So there's no way to move your data to another instance?
That's possible:
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/
That doesn't move your data to another instance though.
All Mastodon supports is
- Putting a 'I have a new account' notice on your old account
- Exporting your toots. They do not support importing toots, which means if the instance goes boom your old toots are, for all intents and purposes.
there is! see my sibling post to yours.
> I think it's far more likely that any of the publicly available Mastodon instances goes boom long before Twitter does
as long as the admins give a heads-up, you can still move to another instance using the provided feature. If the instance spontaneously combusts, you're a bit out of luck, yes :(
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration
as long as the admins give a heads-up, you can still move to another instance using the provided feature. If the instance spontaneously combusts, you're a bit out of luck, yes :(
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration
That is true, yes. But then there's the fact that my identity is tied to that instance. All of my followers would have to go through the trouble of refollowing me on another instance, and that is only if I'm able to tell them that the instance I'm currently on is about to go bye-bye.
For awhile now, the Mastodon account migration process has supported automatically updating your followers to point to your new account: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration
I stand corrected. I'd still rather have my own personal handle that I could point to any given Mastodon account (kind of like how email aliases work) but it's absolutely better than nothing.
IIRC you can move your account across instances and keep your followers, but the likelihood of that working successfully depends on the software running on your followers' instances.
Silly, but I've never seen an explanation of "Free as in Beer" before. Until now I equated it to the way you might get a free beer from a mate in the pub, but with the understanding that you'd get the next round. Give and take.
Also now really isn't the right time to promote the Fediverse's uncensored prowess, everyone's looking for the next Parler and every time I've looked at the Fediverse it's been fringe weird already.
Also now really isn't the right time to promote the Fediverse's uncensored prowess, everyone's looking for the next Parler and every time I've looked at the Fediverse it's been fringe weird already.
"Free as in beer" means that it is something you don't have to pay for; no monetary cost; free=gratis. It does not mean whatever the article is saying and it doesn't mean that you're expected to pay back. See Urban Dictionary[0], Wikipedia[1].
[0]: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Free%20as%20... [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/free_as_in_beer
[0]: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Free%20as%20... [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/free_as_in_beer
Usually a free beer has an implicit cost... for instance, buying a friend a beer later, listening to a sales pitch, etc... Truly free beer is so rare, there's another joke that goes with it: "Free beer is the best kind."
I always thought "free as in free beer" was a way to make a distinction between freeware and free/libre open source software. That's how the FSF seems to use it [O]
[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
It is. The article is a little odd.
"free as in beer" vs "free as in speech" is already such a perfectly clear way to distinguish between the two meanings of the word "free", that it boggles me that people still manage to be confused by it. That IS already the simple intuitive non-academic small-vocabulary no-riddles way to illuminate it.
"free as in beer" is not about "it's a way to trick you into eventually spending more so it's not really free"
It just means something you don't pay for, that's it.
Maybe another way to say it is "free as in money" vs "free as in permission". I hate how that washes the very last atom of color from it but I guess that's just what some people need.
"free as in beer" vs "free as in speech" is already such a perfectly clear way to distinguish between the two meanings of the word "free", that it boggles me that people still manage to be confused by it. That IS already the simple intuitive non-academic small-vocabulary no-riddles way to illuminate it.
"free as in beer" is not about "it's a way to trick you into eventually spending more so it's not really free"
It just means something you don't pay for, that's it.
Maybe another way to say it is "free as in money" vs "free as in permission". I hate how that washes the very last atom of color from it but I guess that's just what some people need.
Now is as good a time as any. The fact is the media will always be looking for the next Parler because it prints a great clickbait headline like "radical alt-right underground social network {discovered/deplatformed}".
Also they make great scape goats so people don't look closely at facebook et al.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the posts on facebook before the 6th also involved the insurrection.
Parler had 1.5 million daily users or so and I suspect a good portion of these were lurkers/observers and not users actively engaging in rebellion.
Zero moderation is not the way to go though, there needs to be mechanisms to remove posts with illegal material like child porn and the like or you risk blocking the whole network or make it "unhostable"
I'm pretty sure a lot of the posts on facebook before the 6th also involved the insurrection.
Parler had 1.5 million daily users or so and I suspect a good portion of these were lurkers/observers and not users actively engaging in rebellion.
Zero moderation is not the way to go though, there needs to be mechanisms to remove posts with illegal material like child porn and the like or you risk blocking the whole network or make it "unhostable"
> Also now really isn't the right time to promote the Fediverse's uncensored prowess, everyone's looking for the next Parler
Given the precedent set by Google, Apple and AWS all synchronously booting a single company and platform out of existence, I can't think of a single better time to promote open platforms you are free to own yourself.
Given the precedent set by Google, Apple and AWS all synchronously booting a single company and platform out of existence, I can't think of a single better time to promote open platforms you are free to own yourself.
If not now, when is the time to promote uncensored social media?
At this point I can't understand people for whom the answer isn't hopefully never.
People never had better tools to promote their views in human history so it's odd to me to worry about that more than clearly damaging effects of that unrestricted freedom.
People never had better tools to promote their views in human history so it's odd to me to worry about that more than clearly damaging effects of that unrestricted freedom.
Freedom should be unrestricted as much as it can be to the point that it doesn't harm anyone else, and we should be able to disagree with the billionaire CEOs who happen to control every form of media and communication
First they censored Something, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Something (and disliked it).
You could make this same slippery-slope argument for any lawful restriction, but it seems mainly popular for speech and gun rights.
As with many other arguments it is far less persuasive to those who were not already persuaded.
As with many other arguments it is far less persuasive to those who were not already persuaded.
Finally, after years of pleading, they came for the Nazis, and I said "why didn't you do this for the first thousand TOS violations? Now the rest of us can sleep a little more easily."
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Is there any Fediverse member that's more akin to HN/reddit? As in, one where people post to some public wall (sub) as opposed to a personal one. They all seem to focus on microblogging.
Maybe they don't find reddit broken enough to fix (nor do I really) or maybe I'm missing a point.
Maybe they don't find reddit broken enough to fix (nor do I really) or maybe I'm missing a point.
The Fediverse is everything but uncensored--all popular instances have a very strong left-wing set of guidelines and will refuse to federate with you if you don't have the same guidelines.
>all popular instances have a very strong left-wing set of guidelines
Can you point to those guidelines on the top instances? I'm not sure which of the most popular instances prohibit, say, expression of conservative views. Though perhaps you do have a point - they might be more tolerant of far-left views than far-right views.
I also think defederation because of lax guidelines doesn't happen as often as defederation because of users of other instances behaving in ways which heavily go against the guidelines - whether it's harassment or posting porn the major instance doesn't want, etc.
Fedi, moreso than Twitter, is what you make of it, and there are many (but just not as many) users on 'lax' instances (e.g. FSE or SPC or Smug or Weeaboo.space or Gameliberty... you name it) to talk to. I have an account on a major instance, a 'lax' instance, and my own instance. I have personally found I extract the least value from the local timeline 'lax' instance.
I'm skeptical of the idea that defederation-by-association is as common as another commenter here suggests.
I don't think it's meaningful to say a newspaper is 'censored' when there's another newspaper stand right next to it that shows every paper in full.
Can you point to those guidelines on the top instances? I'm not sure which of the most popular instances prohibit, say, expression of conservative views. Though perhaps you do have a point - they might be more tolerant of far-left views than far-right views.
I also think defederation because of lax guidelines doesn't happen as often as defederation because of users of other instances behaving in ways which heavily go against the guidelines - whether it's harassment or posting porn the major instance doesn't want, etc.
Fedi, moreso than Twitter, is what you make of it, and there are many (but just not as many) users on 'lax' instances (e.g. FSE or SPC or Smug or Weeaboo.space or Gameliberty... you name it) to talk to. I have an account on a major instance, a 'lax' instance, and my own instance. I have personally found I extract the least value from the local timeline 'lax' instance.
I'm skeptical of the idea that defederation-by-association is as common as another commenter here suggests.
I don't think it's meaningful to say a newspaper is 'censored' when there's another newspaper stand right next to it that shows every paper in full.
That's my problem with the fediverse, I'm more far-right that far-left and I find nobody that share my opinions on the fediverse. Until it changes to be more open-minded, I will have to find my way elsewhere.
You'd possibly find many people with similar opinions on instances like FreeSpeechExtremist, Gameliberty.club, Shitposter.club, Smuglo.li, etc.
There's massive diversity of political opinions on Fedi.
There's massive diversity of political opinions on Fedi.
Ah, for example, these ToS are very reasonable: https://shitposter.club/about
I wish the Fediverse was like that. Since I got off Twitter I've wanted to look for alternatives, but, alas...
I wish the Fediverse was like that. Since I got off Twitter I've wanted to look for alternatives, but, alas...
That's the right of free association: you don't have to associate with Nazis if you don't want to.
Note that the mainstream Fediverse's federation isn't just refusal to "associate with Nazis". If you maintain a server and are not a Nazi yourself, but you federate with a third server where a handful of people said something offensive (and this got blown up in the media even though it was just a handful of nobodies), the mainstream Fediverse will refuse to federate with you.
It gets to the point where the Fediverse ends up enforcing a pretty narrowly defined orthodoxy not reflective of even many traditional anti-Nazis. For example, the Fediverse has a conspicuous numbers of strident trans activists in influential positions, and e.g. posting the sort of views that J.K. Rowling held (shared by many intellectuals who consider themselves on the Left) may to outrage and refusal to federate.
It gets to the point where the Fediverse ends up enforcing a pretty narrowly defined orthodoxy not reflective of even many traditional anti-Nazis. For example, the Fediverse has a conspicuous numbers of strident trans activists in influential positions, and e.g. posting the sort of views that J.K. Rowling held (shared by many intellectuals who consider themselves on the Left) may to outrage and refusal to federate.
I'm not advocating they associate with conservatives if they don't want to, I'm replying to the comment which talked about how the Fediverse is "uncensored" when, in practice, it's even more tightly moderated than Twitter.
Depends on where you go, there's a lot of places that are blocking all these right-wing instances as they pop up.
lately (2-3yrs) I've found twitter has generally become completely insufferable, I can't simply enjoyably watch a broad twitter stream, the fediverse manages to bring the joy back into this for whatever reason it is _less_ political and less full of influence(r)s shoveling trash into the shared social spaces
> Reason 2: It can't be censored
Unless you own the core network, say a satellite in space with your own IP network there's nothing stopping a country blocking you or lawsuit to subpoena access. I won't mention that such mastodon services are mainly hosted by AWS/Azure et cetera; which was Parlers mistake. If they owned their own infrastructure they've wouldn't of been hit so badly.
Unless you own the core network, say a satellite in space with your own IP network there's nothing stopping a country blocking you or lawsuit to subpoena access. I won't mention that such mastodon services are mainly hosted by AWS/Azure et cetera; which was Parlers mistake. If they owned their own infrastructure they've wouldn't of been hit so badly.
Censorship-free? What are you talking about? On instances there are moderators that can do as they please and the largest federation doesn't allow instances like Gab in it.
You may get banned from instances, but you can also host your own instance.
You can say whatever you want on your own instance. That does not mean anyone else is forced to listen to you.
IMHO this is one of the best parts of the fediverse! Moderation is decentralized, so decisions about what is acceptable can be made at much lower levels. This allows for more flexibility and nuance then trying to globally apply a one-size-fits-all set of standards.
IMHO this is one of the best parts of the fediverse! Moderation is decentralized, so decisions about what is acceptable can be made at much lower levels. This allows for more flexibility and nuance then trying to globally apply a one-size-fits-all set of standards.
If someone deletes an instance, is your content gone? Can one join many instances and, if so, does that mean what you post in one instance is not seen on others? Or does everything you do show up on your profile?
>As mentioned, the great thing about the fediverse is that all of these services are connected with each other. If I signed up for an account on a mastodon instance, I can subscribe to your posts on Pixelfed, and vice versa.
This part confused me a bit. Can anyone ELI5?
>As mentioned, the great thing about the fediverse is that all of these services are connected with each other. If I signed up for an account on a mastodon instance, I can subscribe to your posts on Pixelfed, and vice versa.
This part confused me a bit. Can anyone ELI5?
> If someone deletes an instance, is your content gone?
No. As long as another instance knew about your posts, that data is preserved on that instance. I believe you can file a deletion for those posts, but don't quote me on that. A recent example is the deletion of Drew DeVault's instance cmpwn.org. His web presence is gone, but I can still see his posts from my instance (fosstodon.org).
> This part confused me a bit. Can anyone ELI5?
Imagine having a twitter account and following your friend on instagram. Their posts will show up on your twitter-timeline, and you can like, comment and share them on twitter.
No. As long as another instance knew about your posts, that data is preserved on that instance. I believe you can file a deletion for those posts, but don't quote me on that. A recent example is the deletion of Drew DeVault's instance cmpwn.org. His web presence is gone, but I can still see his posts from my instance (fosstodon.org).
> This part confused me a bit. Can anyone ELI5?
Imagine having a twitter account and following your friend on instagram. Their posts will show up on your twitter-timeline, and you can like, comment and share them on twitter.
> A recent example is the deletion of Drew DeVault's instance cmpwn.org
Interesting, what happened with this? I follow him on mastodon, but I haven't been on in a few months because even my heavily curated feed has become a political quagmire a bit too reminiscent of twitter
Interesting, what happened with this? I follow him on mastodon, but I haven't been on in a few months because even my heavily curated feed has become a political quagmire a bit too reminiscent of twitter
> Can one join many instances and, if so, does that mean what you post in one instance is not seen on others? Or does everything you do show up on your profile?
You can be registered on different instances, but they're all different accounts. The Fediverse "only" allows instances to share content with each other.
> This part confused me a bit. Can anyone ELI5?
If Mastodon instances A and B are connected through the Fediverse, you can _read_ content posted on B if you're registered on A.
The best analogy I've seen is to consider Fediverse servers like e-mail servers. You can post an e-mail from a server only if you have an account on it, but you can receive e-mails from any server.
You can be registered on different instances, but they're all different accounts. The Fediverse "only" allows instances to share content with each other.
> This part confused me a bit. Can anyone ELI5?
If Mastodon instances A and B are connected through the Fediverse, you can _read_ content posted on B if you're registered on A.
The best analogy I've seen is to consider Fediverse servers like e-mail servers. You can post an e-mail from a server only if you have an account on it, but you can receive e-mails from any server.
>I don't want to engage in any political discussions, but the main flaw with this is the violation of freedom of speech.
Someone needs to get educated on "free speech".
Someone needs to get educated on "free speech".
The author raises Donald Trump as an example, I'll counter with Wil Wheaton's experience on Mastodon[1].
It's great that there are moderation teams that will accept inflammatory and controversial characters. But if the userbase doesn't believe in freedom of speech, it doesn't really matter if the platform does.
1 - http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-...
It's great that there are moderation teams that will accept inflammatory and controversial characters. But if the userbase doesn't believe in freedom of speech, it doesn't really matter if the platform does.
1 - http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-...
Wil had the ability to block people, mute people, mute words, mute regex, mute entire instances... If he didn't agree with the moderation of the instance he chose, he was free to find another or even start his own.
Nothing about how the userbase acted restricted his ability to use the platform, publish content or engage with content in any way. He just got annoyed by it, then got banned by an instance admin.
Nothing about how the userbase acted restricted his ability to use the platform, publish content or engage with content in any way. He just got annoyed by it, then got banned by an instance admin.
In the Fediverse, it would make sense to use government servers whose moderation rules are overseen by the legislative branch.
Pretending the Fediverse can't be censored is naive. New Internet protocols plus secure boot chains plus legislation will make it all moot.
The past decade I learned to lose hope in these ideas of freedom, thanks to my friends.
Just like copying VHS and cassette tapes (easy) led to copying DVDs (more difficult) and HDMI (difficult). Every tech makes it more difficult. The same will happen with distributed systems. More work for the users of those systems.
And the discussion over the past decade shows that public support will be lost too.
The past decade I learned to lose hope in these ideas of freedom, thanks to my friends.
Just like copying VHS and cassette tapes (easy) led to copying DVDs (more difficult) and HDMI (difficult). Every tech makes it more difficult. The same will happen with distributed systems. More work for the users of those systems.
And the discussion over the past decade shows that public support will be lost too.
From the title, I was hoping for more "tangible" reasons. Most of the reasons given have to do with mitigating potential problems. Bad privacy, single point of failure, closed, censorship are purely theoretical problems for most people. Moreover, these are points that are harped over everytime mastodon is mentioned. It's not that they are not important, it's just not going to convince many people. I'm really curious: what are some user experience reasons to join?
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The article talks about the technical and political issues but not about the content quality. Can I currently find more accurate and interesting content in the decentralized network than in specialized groups in Reddit like /r/netsec?
In my experience on the fediverse, the content and people found there are definitely interesting. It is a friendly community filled with people talking about all sorts of topics.
If you're seeking highly curated and specific information, I doubt it is for you (at this point in time). With that said, there are some great bots which are helping to fill the place with content from traditional social media so that you don't miss out. For example, I follow a bot which posts HN threads above a threshold of points onto the timeline. This is how I keep up with HN, and it is how I found this post.
New federated apps are being developed all the time, too. A federated reddit alternative exists, which may one day satisfy your need for specialized/focused content on a given topic.
If you're seeking highly curated and specific information, I doubt it is for you (at this point in time). With that said, there are some great bots which are helping to fill the place with content from traditional social media so that you don't miss out. For example, I follow a bot which posts HN threads above a threshold of points onto the timeline. This is how I keep up with HN, and it is how I found this post.
New federated apps are being developed all the time, too. A federated reddit alternative exists, which may one day satisfy your need for specialized/focused content on a given topic.
Orthogonal to this, but I find it terribly ironic that many of the "freedom of speech"'ers are probably the least likely to actually be able to argue their corner in a rational, sensible and polite way.
Consider for example a left wing person trying to have a conversation with a pro Trump group on Parler. They'd get shouted out. That's not promotion of "free speech", it's promotion of "echo chamber of the same opinions as mine".
Same goes on the left - imagine suggesting that maybe immigration should be thought about or you have an angle on the trans community that didn't quite sit well with the wokies...
The point is that life is subtle and nuanced. Free speech in my humble opinion needs to be earned - which means open dialogue where ultimately you might be prepared to admit you're wrong.
Consider for example a left wing person trying to have a conversation with a pro Trump group on Parler. They'd get shouted out. That's not promotion of "free speech", it's promotion of "echo chamber of the same opinions as mine".
Same goes on the left - imagine suggesting that maybe immigration should be thought about or you have an angle on the trans community that didn't quite sit well with the wokies...
The point is that life is subtle and nuanced. Free speech in my humble opinion needs to be earned - which means open dialogue where ultimately you might be prepared to admit you're wrong.
> Reason 1: It's decentralized. Regular social media platforms like Facebook have a single point of failure. If their servers go down, your content goes down with it.
Recently had a discussion broken into nonsensical fragments because one of the participants was banned.
> Reason 2: It can't be censored. Even if everything someone says is controversial nonsense, it is still in his good right to express his thoughts.
Only the admins have rights on their servers, as it should be. And if you run an instance which doesn't publicly state that it blocks right-wing servers, you'll be blocked by some of the big players, a move which is another step that the wider Fediverse is taking towards silencing a lot of speech. Granted, I don't want to hear most /any of it, but the author has conveniently omitted mention of this emergent behaviour.
> Reason 4: It respects your privacy
Admins can read everything you post on their instance, including DMs.
>Reason 5: It's all about the community
Until you say the wrong thing in the earshot of the wrong user and find yourself banned, with no idea why and silence when you try to follow the procedure to regain access. I've never tiptoed around a service like I do the Fediverse.
I like the Fediverse. It's full of interesting people and discussions, art and humour and folk exchanging ideas but it's the utopia demonstrated by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Justice". One wrong move and there may be no discussion about what you may have done wrong, no questions as to what your speech meant, the justice is simply executed. At least there's always another instance, until user reputation is added.
Recently had a discussion broken into nonsensical fragments because one of the participants was banned.
> Reason 2: It can't be censored. Even if everything someone says is controversial nonsense, it is still in his good right to express his thoughts.
Only the admins have rights on their servers, as it should be. And if you run an instance which doesn't publicly state that it blocks right-wing servers, you'll be blocked by some of the big players, a move which is another step that the wider Fediverse is taking towards silencing a lot of speech. Granted, I don't want to hear most /any of it, but the author has conveniently omitted mention of this emergent behaviour.
> Reason 4: It respects your privacy
Admins can read everything you post on their instance, including DMs.
>Reason 5: It's all about the community
Until you say the wrong thing in the earshot of the wrong user and find yourself banned, with no idea why and silence when you try to follow the procedure to regain access. I've never tiptoed around a service like I do the Fediverse.
I like the Fediverse. It's full of interesting people and discussions, art and humour and folk exchanging ideas but it's the utopia demonstrated by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Justice". One wrong move and there may be no discussion about what you may have done wrong, no questions as to what your speech meant, the justice is simply executed. At least there's always another instance, until user reputation is added.
Pro-tip in terms of naming: Calling it "Fediverse" is going to strike a lot of people as meaning "The Feds" not, I dunno, "federated". Gotta pick another name.
Is there real content?
Like other platforms, if you want to be able to socialize on the Fediverse with your friends and family, then they will need to be convinced to join! (I was lucky (strategic) enough to spin up a Mastodon instance and invite my family to join just as Google+ went dark. (Yeah, yeah, we were still using it)).
As far as "real" public content goes, my only real interests there currently are the news feeds for various open source projects/contributors and I can say that there are tons of those on the Fediverse!
- darktable: https://mastodon.social/@darktable
- ubports: https://framapiaf.org/@ubports
- Elementary OS: https://mastodon.social/@elementary
- Endeavour OS: https://mastodon.social/@EndeavourOS
- Blender: https://mastodon.social/@Blender
- Krita: https://mastodon.art/@Krita
- K9 Mail: https://fosstodon.org/@k9mail
- 0 A.D.: https://mastodon.social/@play0ad
- Kodi: https://mastodon.cloud/@Kodi
- ProtonMail: https://mastodon.social/@protonmail
- Fdroid: https://mastodon.technology/@fdroidorg
- Matrix: https://mastodon.matrix.org/@matrix
- NextCloud: https://mastodon.xyz/@nextcloud
And last but not least, sometimes you find random cool stuff to check out like the banjo music from the Capharnaum Counter Magicians Society (https://banjo.town/@magicians)
As far as "real" public content goes, my only real interests there currently are the news feeds for various open source projects/contributors and I can say that there are tons of those on the Fediverse!
- darktable: https://mastodon.social/@darktable
- ubports: https://framapiaf.org/@ubports
- Elementary OS: https://mastodon.social/@elementary
- Endeavour OS: https://mastodon.social/@EndeavourOS
- Blender: https://mastodon.social/@Blender
- Krita: https://mastodon.art/@Krita
- K9 Mail: https://fosstodon.org/@k9mail
- 0 A.D.: https://mastodon.social/@play0ad
- Kodi: https://mastodon.cloud/@Kodi
- ProtonMail: https://mastodon.social/@protonmail
- Fdroid: https://mastodon.technology/@fdroidorg
- Matrix: https://mastodon.matrix.org/@matrix
- NextCloud: https://mastodon.xyz/@nextcloud
And last but not least, sometimes you find random cool stuff to check out like the banjo music from the Capharnaum Counter Magicians Society (https://banjo.town/@magicians)
> You probably heard that the Twitter-account of Donald Trump recently got compromised by the owners of the platform. I don't want to engage in any political discussions, but the main flaw with this is the violation of freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is a deeply political demand. Who gets the right to speak freely and who shouldn't? Does even the US believe in freedom of speech when that speech involves a provocation to harm it? Would the US tolerate this from a foreign entity? A domestic one?
Freedom of speech is a deeply political demand. Who gets the right to speak freely and who shouldn't? Does even the US believe in freedom of speech when that speech involves a provocation to harm it? Would the US tolerate this from a foreign entity? A domestic one?
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There seems to be a gap in the understanding around what the internet is and what it's for, and the gap is a social one around the concepts of the Private and Public spheres. I use caps for them because they are ancient, named concepts (look up "polis and oikos," the private sphere wiki page has been vandalized). The 90's internet was initially an extension of, and a bridge between Private spheres of individual thought, competence, family, niche communities of interest, and preserved this with conventions around both anonymity and tribal, benevolent-dictator style governance.
The Fediverse seems to replicate some of that, but to me it still seems like an anti social media reaction technology and not one that grows organically from a higher-order use case.
Social media was the act of hauling out these Private sphere relationships into a Public sphere, for which they were not adapted, and to satisfy the infinite vaccuum of need for attention that defines the Public. The Public sphere has always necessarily fed on the Private, and the Private used the Public for its civilizing social benefits. I'd go so far as to say that the insanity of the Public sphere right now is the direct result of scarcity of Private sphere culture to sustain it and it's cannibalizing itself.
Viewed through this broader lens, the Fediverse doesn't need social media features, it needs a Private sphere purpose for people to create and build things together, and then it can be more careful in adding bridges to the Public sphere.
Anyway, abstract comment, but the question shouldn't be whether the Fediverse is an adequate social media replacement, it should be, "what are we going to make?"