Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mastodon 2.5 released

blog.joinmastodon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#81

Post by profalseidol »

wdewind wrote: post #6

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. It's why we have representative democracy instead of direct democracy: people don't want to be involved. Governing is a pain in the ass.

People don't want to be involved? Do you have any evidence for this?

If this is true then all the stuff about Agile and autonomy I hear a lot isn't true then? Richard Hendricks should've just stayed as subordinate to Gavin Belson. Why start a startup?

Colonies should've stayed colonies and kiss the Queen's feet. Being able to decide for our own selves is a pain the ass huh?

You may genuinely don't care what Trump decides for you. But I'm pretty sure many who can barely survive cares.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#82

Post by calimac »

rainbowmverse wrote: post #14
wdewind wrote: post #6

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…

>> 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. Define work. By many valid metrics, it's already a resounding success.

100% AGREED! @rainbowmverse . It is a success and it will seen reach critical mass to serve authentic social interaction.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#83

Post by davepeck »

wdewind wrote: post #78
davepeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I don't quite understand the point you're trying to make (and I'd like to!) Perhaps this will clarify things: I think "decentralized by design" is linguistically ambiguous, because "decentralized" has a bunch of odd baggage -- do you think it's reasonable to say that email is "decentralized by design", and why (or why not)?

Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or l…

Got it, thanks.

I'm fully in agreement with you on this, given that you take "decentralized" to imply "uniform (or nearly uniform) distribution of power/influence".

As an aside, this exemplifies why I tend to avoid the term "decentralized" in the current context: not everyone makes the assumption of uniformity when they read this word.

As a double aside, in case you haven't run across it, I highly recommend this book: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#84

Post by drb91 »

wdewind wrote: post #47
drb91 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure how you could conclude that given that FB is essentially a growth engine designed to drive MAU numbers as high as possible. Meanwhile, people continue to seek out communities that do represent the types of interactions people want. I’d say it’s succeeding as much as facebook is.

> I’d say it’s succeeding as much as facebook is. Maybe I'm defining succeeding too narrowly, and sorry to be rude, but what universe do you live in where this is even close to true? Some quick googling shows the network hadn't even cracked 100k users in Feb: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/99469840739197657 > FB is essentially a growth engine designed to drive MAU numbers as high as possible Right, and it does that…

I was referring to phpBB, actually, but it doesn't matter in this case.

But I'm measuring success by people going out of their way to visit the site--something facebook does not provide. Half the sites on the internet link to it.

> Right, and it does that by providing a better (a matter of taste, perhaps), cheaper product than Mastodon via specialization of labor, and through network effects, both of which depend on centralization.

I can't elect my moderation style on facebook.... so it's not at all equivalent. Centralization is central to why facebook isn't going to be a general purpose forum of use to anyone.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#85

Post by profalseidol »

wdewind wrote: post #78
davepeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I don't quite understand the point you're trying to make (and I'd like to!) Perhaps this will clarify things: I think "decentralized by design" is linguistically ambiguous, because "decentralized" has a bunch of odd baggage -- do you think it's reasonable to say that email is "decentralized by design", and why (or why not)?

Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or l…

That's just out-of-scope of the tool in question (Mastodon). Any tool is helpless against Human control. If that is the case the I think I know what you mean by "not meaningfully decentralized".

BUT, if we can at least break the monopoly of FB and Twitter into at least a hexapoly, then that has still meaning. The internet's design allowed for many to use it meaningfully decentralized for many years.

Also, BitTorrent got lots of gov't regulation, but I can still use it since I'm outside the west. And rutrackerDOTorg is so good. I think that is meaningful.

The long-term solution for this Human problem -I believe is to for employees to own corporations. Gov't is corruptible by private companies that is run by modern feudal lords called Executives. The larger the domain of these companies, the more influence it can do to the Gov't. And we have now reach a point in history that these Modern Feudal Lords has acquired all their competitions (Oracle, Disney, that rich dirty old man who owns all new corporations, Bezos, etc.) and is ready to reincarnate Hitler but with orange skin.

And by employees owning corporations. I mean 1-person-1-vote, instead of 1-share-1-vote. Managers and CEOs can still exist, but is not permanent. Employee-owners can recall them anytime, and they can agree for a quarterly or semi-annual evaluation. Employee-owners also decide how much to pay Managers and CEOs, how to use the profit. You may ask if this company can survive? This has been done in large scale by Mondragon, a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. Not perfect but it has done good progress.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#86

Post by setr »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #34
Crespyl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're maybe forgetting that the goal of Mastodon, or any federated (as opposed to distributed) system, is not to have every single user run and administer their own instances, but rather to enable users to freely select from a wide variety of compatible interconnected peers. > 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 d…

"while the design of the system still preserves their freedom to move to another instance if they later decide to do so" No, it doesn't. It allows the user to start over completely from scratch on another instance. This is very much not the same thing.

With a twitter-like system, is there that much to lose when starting over, other than the community itself? I don't use twitter at all, but I'm imagining a twitter migration similar to a * chan mass migrations; the only baggage to take is the people and their way of doing things. I suppose with twitter you get a history of tweets, but as I understand it, tweets are only accidentally preserved, much in the same way * chans are by archival services. But they're not really meant to be referenced 5 years from now, as a longer-form document might.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#87

Post by jxcl »

wdewind wrote: post #78
davepeck wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, I don't quite understand the point you're trying to make (and I'd like to!) Perhaps this will clarify things: I think "decentralized by design" is linguistically ambiguous, because "decentralized" has a bunch of odd baggage -- do you think it's reasonable to say that email is "decentralized by design", and why (or why not)?

Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or l…

> Email exists well within our very centralized federated political and cultural system, and so no, it is not meaningfully decentralized.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this, especially since you go on to say that artist communes in the US qualify. Surely these artist communes exist within our centralized political and cultural system as well? These communes presumably refer crimes such as murder to the centralized authority, the police, rather than lynch mob.

I actually suspect that any significant regulation of Mastodon would in fact increase decentralization. Since the software itself is open source, it will be hard to regulate, if not impossible (is code speech?). That means regulators have to go after hosts of instances. Perhaps some instances will comply with regulation, but I suspect many will not. The largest of the non-complying instances will be shut down.

If the complying instances are seen as inferior to non-complying instances, instead of flocking to the complying instances, the users of the instances that were shut down should distribute themselves amongst the remaining non-compliant instances. Some of these instances will be outside of the centralized authority's jurisdiction (for example, after SESTA, many sex workers flocked to a mastodon instance that was specifically set up for them; this instance is hosted outside the jurisdiction of the US).

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#88

Post by wdewind »

jxcl wrote: post #87
wdewind wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or l…

> Email exists well within our very centralized federated political and cultural system, and so no, it is not meaningfully decentralized. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this, especially since you go on to say that artist communes in the US qualify. Surely these artist communes exist within our centralized political and cultural system as well? These communes presumably refer crimes such as murder to the c…

> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this, especially since you go on to say that artist communes in the US qualify. Surely these artist communes exist within our centralized political and cultural system as well? These communes presumably refer crimes such as murder to the centralized authority, the police, rather than lynch mob.

Yes, that's definitely true. There's a no true scotsman element to this, I know. What I meant by that was that the artist communes were meaningfully decentralized in terms of individuals artistic contributions (even then, only some of them are), not entirely, politically etc. I would still argue that they can be more "meaningfully" decentralized than email based on how much easier it is for the government to control email than physical space, but this stuff is difficult to discuss without lossy abstractions as you've pointed out.

> I actually suspect that any significant regulation of Mastodon would in fact increase decentralization. Since the software itself is open source, it will be hard to regulate, if not impossible (is code speech?). That means regulators have to go after hosts of instances. Perhaps some instances will comply with regulation, but I suspect many will not. The largest of the non-complying instances will be shut down.

This is true, but only until physical server location becomes the relevant attribute for jurisdiction. Mastodon instances within the US will be hosted on AWS, Azure etc., and will have no choice but to comply with regulations.

> Some of these instances will be outside of the centralized authority's jurisdiction (for example, after SESTA, many sex workers flocked to a mastodon instance that was specifically set up for them; this instance is hosted outside the jurisdiction of the US).

I keep seeing this pointed out, but I don't think it's a positive. Not only are you still aggregating vulnerable people on a service not designed for secure communications, that can certainly be surveilled by US law enforcement even if it can't be shut down, you're also increasing the incentive for the government to regulate the international internet.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#89

Post by wdewind »

profalseidol wrote: post #85
wdewind wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or l…

That's just out-of-scope of the tool in question (Mastodon). Any tool is helpless against Human control. If that is the case the I think I know what you mean by "not meaningfully decentralized". BUT, if we can at least break the monopoly of FB and Twitter into at least a hexapoly, then that has still meaning. The internet's design allowed for many to use it meaningfully decentralized for many years. Also, BitTorrent…

> The long-term solution for this Human problem -I believe is to for employees to own corporations.

We're right back to confederation. No one wants to deal with this shit otherwise they already would, hence federation instead.

> And by employees owning corporations. I mean 1-person-1-vote, instead of 1-share-1-vote. Managers and CEOs can still exist, but is not permanent. Employee-owners can recall them anytime, and they can agree for a quarterly or semi-annual evaluation. Employee-owners also decide how much to pay Managers and CEOs, how to use the profit. You may ask if this company can survive? This has been done in large scale by Mondragon, a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. Not perfect but it has done good progress.

No one would ever agree to this except employees. Mondragon works because it pays basically what would be paid regardless. The actual executives managing the Mondragon foundation are not constrained to the same pay structures that the people working in the coops are. The number of non-owning employees is also growing fairly rapidly.

Re: Mastodon 2.5 released

#90

Post by TylerE »

Crespyl wrote: post #23
wdewind wrote: post #6

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…

I think you're maybe forgetting that the goal of Mastodon, or any federated (as opposed to distributed) system, is not to have every single user run and administer their own instances, but rather to enable users to freely select from a wide variety of compatible interconnected peers. > 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 d…

Aren't you then condemned to either suffering the lowest common denominator (Since the value of a network is n^2 - if even a margin chunk of the network can't sue something, it's value rapidly decays) or are doomed to a bunch of kinda-federated-but-not-really cloud of almost compatible ponds instead of one large ocean.
Post reply on HN