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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or named their tweets "toots". It's like they want it to fail.
> It's like they want it to fail. This is software -- if you have a better idea create your own implementation of the underlying protocol: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and har…
> People don't want to moderate themselves, they want a larger power to do it for them.
I think people mostly want a smaller power to do it for them, or at least a "smaller than The Platform, or The Government". In the case of Mastodon, I can find a smaller instance with a handful of moderators who I trust, and let them curate that instance. If I later find that they have abused that trust I can disassociate with them and move to a different instance, and all of my contacts or the general public on other instances remain unaffected.
If a user doesn't want to go to the effort of finding a specific instance that suits their desires for moderator activity, they can easily set up on one of the biggest instances (much the way one can easily set up a gmail account), while the design of the system still preserves their freedom to move to another instance if they later decide to do so (as I can choose to set up a yahoo or fastmail account, or even run my own server).
The basic experience for the average user can be just as moderated (well or poorly, by as many or as few people) as Twitter is, if a big instance chooses to do so, and the freedom of users is still preserved in a way that Twitter or Facebook cannot.
The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and har…
So I guess I'd need to ask you for your specific and unconventional definition of what "works." It works for plenty of people already.
[1] That's mastodon slang for Twitter.
The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and har…
All of your questions can be answered with "what does our currrent email system do?".
Sure, most people don't run their own email system. But some do. And you are not forced into a singular option that everyone is required to use.
Despite what people might claim, Hotmail, or numerous other email options are all almost as good as Gmail. Having competing options is good enough, as if you get banned from one, you can move to another (with some friction, obviously).
On expense, well same answer, what does email do? Yes, it is probably more expensive for all these different email servers to exist, but clearly that's OK, as they exist right now.
Now, seeing as tweets and social media posts don't seem like that much more of a difficult problem than email, imagine if those things were federated as well? This doesn't seem to hard to imagine happening.
So tweets are "toots" in Mastodon. Could it be that extinct mastodons grunted or growled instead of tooting? I would rather bark, bleat, caw, croak, howl, quack or screech. Toot? Nah. Too many associations with musical fruits.
The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and har…
If the only people in my online community are people who are willing to put effort into online communities, that's fine by me. Part of why FB/twitter are so draining/unenjoyable is because literally everyone is there.
The broad approach to social networking presented by Mastodon and other federated networks is "spend your time/resources on funding the network instead of paying someone else much less to do it." It wont "work" for the same reason everyone doesn't host their own email service. It flies in the face of a broader cultural movement we have: specialization of labor. For instance, the solution to content moderation and har…
Have you tried Mastodon? You still pay someone else to run the server (or not, if you prefer), you can just choose who you pay, and which server. Sending toots does not require that you set up your own infra, re: the email example. > People don't want to moderate themselves, they want a larger power to do it for them. It's why we have representative democracy instead of direct democracy: people don't want to be invol…
Yes.
> You still pay someone else to run the server (or not, if you prefer), you can just choose who you pay, and which server. Sending toots does not require that you set up your own infra, re: the email example.
Right, you either pay with your time or your money, as opposed to FB for which you pay nothing at all. Specialization of labor reduces costs, federation increases them.
> This is commonly asserted, but I’ve never seen much evidence for it. Was a direct democracy given a good run in the US at some-point?
It's never been technically feasible, though the main issue has changed from scale to security.
> I agree with you that Mastodon is unlikely to ‘take-over’ Twitter or Facebook anytime soon. But that wouldn’t be my criteria for success.
I can understand why that wouldn't be your criteria for success, but it is mine.