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Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

pixelfed.social

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Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#101

Post by jcfrei »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #99
jcfrei wrote: post #71

I think I understand the mission: A federated alternative to instagram where anybody can create a server which is accessible to other users on the fediverse network (doesn't have to be pixelfed). But I don't think this is the right approach. If the public really wants to compete with large internet corporations then there needs to be a single non-profit organization akin to the Wikimedia Foundation which runs these s…

> Wikimedia Foundation which runs these social media applications. Then you just moved the centralization to a different entity. Wikipedia has plenty of problems, power plays, politics, bullshit process, bias etc.

The goal of such a foundation wouldn't be to remove these issues - which are inherent to any type of organization - it would be to stop the ongoing erosion of privacy.

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#102

Post by wicket »

beachwood23 wrote: post #64
wicket wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is a different kettle of fish. It got in there first and only really competed with snail mail. Other alternatives were arguably more complicated. There was no easier alternative to fall back on. If you wanted to communicate on the internet, you had to use email, and by the time there were alternatives, it had a large enough user-base which meant that it was never simply going to be displaced.

I could be wrong here, but I believe that for most ordinary people, AOL messaging and even CompuServe boards were in common use before Email. The email "standard" had to displace those.

I never used CompuServe forums but my understanding is that they were public internet forums, not exactly something that could be used for personal/private messaging. Newsgroups (often used with an email client) pre-dated CompuServe forums by a decade and I'm pretty sure they had a much larger user-base.

AOL Instant Messenger didn't come out until 1997, email was already in heavy use by then.

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#103

Post by jedberg »

acct1771 wrote: post #97
jedberg wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently most people just took the provider that cane with their isp because they were usually tied together. It was either that or AOL. Nowawadys it’s either hotmail/office365/whatever other name it has or gmail. It used to be a federated system and still sort of is, but your experience is vastly diminished if you aren’t using one of the biggest providers because you’ll have deliverability problems.

I've had these issues myself, and know the "stereotype comes from somewhere", but...does anyone work off of anything besides anecdata in discussion re: the stats behind this position? It's very defeatist.

I worked in email deliverability for years. It's absolutely true. Mainly because the big providers work together to make sure that their mail is successfully delivered to each other, and they also work with big corporations.

I was working on it when I worked for ebay and PayPal. I was working with Yahoo (who was big at the time) on what became DKIM, which was created to make sure that Yahoo mail was delivered successfully and that ebay and PayPal mail would be delivered successfully, among lots of other big corps.

Sure, anyone can use those technologies, but only the big players run interoperability tests on a regular basis, and provide reporting to each other, and other big corps.

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#104

Post by riffic »

riffic wrote: post #86
wicket wrote: post #23

> Registrations are closed. I think the lack of a common name/URL is the biggest problem that is preventing federated open source social networks from gaining mass popularity. I remember when identi.ca came out as an alternative to Twitter. It seemed like it was starting to gain some traction, then they switched to pump.io and closed registrations. I haven't heard of anyone using either since. Look at Diaspora, that…

> Which [instance] do I choose? The one your employer provisions your account on. Your account will be @user@company.domain

in an ideal environment, of course. Forgot to preface this statement, unable to edit it now.

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#105

Post by aasasd »

acct1771 wrote: post #96
aasasd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, choosing a node wasn't such a show-stopper for users ten years ago and before. I've used local email services in my backwater town, hanged out on local forums. The entirety of Fidonet was built on people connecting to their acquaintances—and it was rather popular here almost until the 2000s. As for the present, I'm sorta baffled that the anarchic dream of decentralization turned into not-quite-that-cool…

That's easily done now with personal backups, and can be added onto any federated network that gains enough popularity. Mastadon is probably approaching that.

I don't see how any sort of backups would permit me to browse and post as ‘aasasd@something.xyz’ after something.xyz disappears down Lethe.

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#106

Post by acct1771 »

jedberg wrote: post #103
acct1771 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had these issues myself, and know the "stereotype comes from somewhere", but...does anyone work off of anything besides anecdata in discussion re: the stats behind this position? It's very defeatist.

I worked in email deliverability for years. It's absolutely true. Mainly because the big providers work together to make sure that their mail is successfully delivered to each other, and they also work with big corporations. I was working on it when I worked for ebay and PayPal. I was working with Yahoo (who was big at the time) on what became DKIM, which was created to make sure that Yahoo mail was delivered success…

Sorry if you've touched on this elsewhere, but...how do "we" fix the paradigm?

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#107

Post by acdw »

Kovah wrote: post #53
acdw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share a bit what VPS you'll use to host your ActivityPub? I've been wanting to do this too, but I have no idea at all where to begin.

As there are simply no providers yet who offers ready-to-install packages of all these services (at least I don't know one), you go with that service you trust and that suits you best. Some examples for relatively cheap VPS are Digitalocean, Vultr, Linode or, if you want to host somewhere "safe": Exoscale, which has datacenter in Switzerland and Germany.

Thanks for the tips! I'll look into them.

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#108

Post by skinnymuch »

tgragnato wrote: post #40
skinnymuch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s made you sick of IG? Besides the news feed not being chronological order, nothing has susbtaintially changed for my day to day casual IG usage in a pretty long time. Yeah there are stories and more ads. If I don’t care about those, they can be easily ignored.

E.g. some people don't want to be forced to ignore things.

Just seems a bit extreme to be sick of something for things you want to ignore that aren’t even that bad. You could say except ads but businesses need to make money

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#109

Post by tgragnato »

skinnymuch wrote: post #108
tgragnato wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E.g. some people don't want to be forced to ignore things.

Just seems a bit extreme to be sick of something for things you want to ignore that aren’t even that bad. You could say except ads but businesses need to make money

> businesses need to make money

This is another reason to prefer federation: your social graph is not owned by (at the mercy of) a business whose interests may not even be aligned with yours (bad advertising is only one of the many consequences of this).

> extreme

I'd not call "there's something better" an extreme approach. The maintenance burden is what makes federated services difficult to operate. That's the issue right now, but people are working to resolve that too.

> https://blog.datproject.org/2019/03/22/three-protocols-and-a... > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19466929

Re: Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

#110

Post by skinnymuch »

tgragnato wrote: post #109
skinnymuch wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just seems a bit extreme to be sick of something for things you want to ignore that aren’t even that bad. You could say except ads but businesses need to make money

> businesses need to make money This is another reason to prefer federation: your social graph is not owned by (at the mercy of) a business whose interests may not even be aligned with yours (bad advertising is only one of the many consequences of this). > extreme I'd not call "there's something better" an extreme approach. The maintenance burden is what makes federated services difficult to operate. That's the issue…

I’d love federation to work out. I’ve unfortunately lost most hope.

The comments there show other problems too. Other problems that may never be solved. For example not being able to take your social graph with you if you change Mastodon instances. Having issues with the admin or an instance seems like it’ll happen often enough. But you’re essentially punished for that. That’s just one example.

It is good though that people are trying to solve the problems. Hopefully my cynicism will be proven wrong and I’ll only be happy about that.

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