None of the issues they bring up are any better on big tech's social media. And of course we should all work to "other" big tech and its employees.
Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
41–50 of 224 posts
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#42I've hosted a mastodon instance since 2017 and I see one general misunderstanding over and over, on mastodon or on fediverse related subreddits. People think it's a completely new concept. People seem to have forgotten, or not been part of, all the message boards we used to have during the late 90s and all throughout the 2000s. The ONLY thing Mastodon brings to this is federation. You used to have accounts on over a…
You don't have 'sort by most recent replied to topic' and a forum subtopic view like most message boards do although. There is a hard enforcement of posts sorted by initial post time.
Posts can be sorted any which way the frontend is configured to do so.
There isn't going to be a fediverse wide "topic" because of the nature of nodes but whatever the instance can see can be presented in any matter desired.
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#43I would argue that what is described in this post is inherent in all social networks. The wonderful thing about the Fediverse is that depending on the node you connect to, or the people you choose to federate with (in the event that you have your own instance) that your experience will be vastly different. It’s given me some of the most enjoyable interactions I’ve ever had online in the last ten years. You need to ha…
The wonderful part is also its Achilles heel. Mastodon is advertised as an alternative to social networks, but since your identity is tied to your node, its much closer to joining a web forum structured like twitter with the possibility (but not guarantee) of interacting with similar forums. From that perspective it's great. When people offer it as an alternative to conventional social media, it comes up massively short for anyone not trying to live in a bubble.
Contrasted with facebook (or a twitter with groups), if you join a group of motorcyclists, there's little to no risk that you'll be excluded from the Scooter group of-which you're already a member because a few bikers got into a spat with scoot-gang, nor will you be excluded from any of the groups that get along well with scoot-gang.
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#44I would argue that what is described in this post is inherent in all social networks. The wonderful thing about the Fediverse is that depending on the node you connect to, or the people you choose to federate with (in the event that you have your own instance) that your experience will be vastly different. It’s given me some of the most enjoyable interactions I’ve ever had online in the last ten years. You need to ha…
> You need to have a thick skin
Actually we need the rest of social media to have this, and then we don't need these alternative platforms.
There are simply too many people who have grown up without having any meaningful opposition in their lives - without having someone challenge their ideas and values and making them defend said ideas and values, and they simply do. not. know. how to cope with it.
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#45They joined mastadon not the "fediverse". Like saying you used the internet but then only visited Facebook. Point 2 and 3 are identical on Twitter BTW.
That analogy is a bit too harsh. How about like saying you went to Texas but then only visited Austin?
No, it's not too harsh. A Mastodon instance doesn't even give you access to Diaspora* users.
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#46I also want to leave the internet because there are bad opinions on it.
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#47I've hosted a mastodon instance since 2017 and I see one general misunderstanding over and over, on mastodon or on fediverse related subreddits. People think it's a completely new concept. People seem to have forgotten, or not been part of, all the message boards we used to have during the late 90s and all throughout the 2000s. The ONLY thing Mastodon brings to this is federation. You used to have accounts on over a…
I don't see how it's the same. Message boards are all silos that don't mingle with each other in any way. You're saying the only part where Mastodon diverges is this thing that makes it markedly unlike message boards. I don't see the connection at all, not even to Proboards/Ezboard which had one global account across many boards.
I'd summarize Mastodon as a confusing version of Twitter that most technical people don't even understand. Drawing such a bad analogy like "it's basically like 2000s message boards" just drives this home even further.
It's like nobody can explain what it is. Though I suspect it's like monads where people need to drop the belabored metaphors and use simple language. Though then you just end up with something like "it's Twitter but the same UI shows people registered elsewhere."
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#48My experience with the fediverse was that enjoying the benefits of federation encountered the same issues with content and user behaviour that can be found in silo'd services. That is to say, fediverse sites increased their likelihood of replicating/serving hate, pornography and illegal content in correlation to the number of external sites they were connected to and the size of their user base. It left me wondering…
There’s a growing misconception that sites like Twitter are a good representation of unfiltered, unmoderated content, or that the only moderation actions from these sites is against famous figures like Trump. In reality, sites like Twitter and Facebook remove a lot of terrible content posted by people who deliberately enjoy terrorizing shared spaces with abhorrent images. Anyone who has been involved with the moderat…
> There are a lot of people on the internet with infinite free time
This is what we have to fix. We need to find employment for these people. When you're busy working on something, you don't have time for shitposting.
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#49I’ve had critiques about the fediverse for a long time. I’ve also had critiques about urbit for a long time.
It seems to me that Zot improves pleroma/mastodon to solve their problems (server extinction, account migration). It also seems to me that Urbit improves Zot to solve their problems (user experience, global naming).
Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left
#50I'm upset that they're painting these social issues as Mastodon-specific ones, and that they're painting the Fediverse as just Mastodon, but they do have a point about RSS.