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Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

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Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#51

Post by lifthrasiir »

S-E-P wrote: post #27

I 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 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.

The same argument works with Twitter, and I genuinely believed so a decade ago (Twitter has been the only social network I still continuously use). I don't buy it at all after the decade-long experience. Your favorite followers will fight to each other no matter you've carefully chosen them. No amount of filter solves your timeline being messed.

All social networks do not work, federated or not. I'm going back to the good ol' IRC or whatever it follows.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#52

Post by andrewzah »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #47
INTPenis wrote: post #13

I'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'…

I really don't get why the concept of mastodon is so confusing.

It's basically twitter/microblogging* with multiple hosts, and you can see posts from other hosts. So instead of just @andrewzah, my handle becomes @andrewzah@. You could visualize twitter as @andrewzah@twitter.com, but it's redundant as twitter is the only host. This is basically how email works, no?

The only other difference is federation, so you have two timelines instead of one: the entire** federated timeline, and the local timeline to your host. Plus the timeline of users you follow.

So unlike twitter, the user must decide what host they want to use. Or they can self-host an instance. I'm not sure if it's up to date, but https://instances.social has a wizard for this.

*: IIRC mastodon's default limit is 500 chars, and pleroma's is 2,000.

**: One exception: Hosts can block other hosts. So if you use i.e. mastodon.social, you won't see posts from users on blocked hosts unless you specifically follow them.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#53

Post by TheJoYo »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #26
centimeter wrote: post #11

As someone who’s never used any fediverse software, I found this post entirely uninteresting and irrelevant. It sounds like the author had some beef with random people they found online and want to portray this as a systemic issue.

The title starts with "Our experience with the Fediverse", so your criticism seems misplaced. They are describing their experience, and don't seem to claim that this will be everyone's experience.

They make some systemic criticisms about the security of decentralization on top of making recommendations to potential users:

- Use RSS feeds generated by mastodon / pleroma. - Contribute to stackexchange and hacker news.

If it wasn't for those recommendations the title could better represent the content.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#54

Post by pseudalopex »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #45
Ericson2314 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Austin isn't Houston.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#55

Post by richard_todd »

INTPenis wrote: post #13

I'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…

Fidonet used to provide the federation across message boards in the BBS era, so there is literally nothing new. Really the new thing was smartphones opening up microblogging to average people who want to track celebrities and pretend what they had for lunch is worth sharing. (Edited to clarify fidonet was in the BBS era)

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#57

Post by ankit219 »

Part of the things that you mentioned in your experience, "us v them" ideology, reverse burden of proof are all a defining characteristic of any forum that thrives. And, arguably, its not a bug it's a feature.

Typically, a forum has a lot of registered users, but very few who are active daily. (Reddit reported 52M MAU in Oct 2020, an increase by 44% post pandemic. Their MAUs in Dec 19 were 430M. So, about 7-10% users are very active, others are lurkers). The most frequent users (power users) gain kind of an influence which is suited to their experience the most (not talking about HN per se, not as frequent here) and they come to define the rules of the forum. It's not specific to mastodon, and forum moderators allow it because they are the users (and many a times mods themselves) and it does not really break a rule. The us v them mentality in particular is key for the forums since it invokes an emotional response in using that forum. Many lurkers stick to the forum if they cant find a better alternate to stay in touch with the topic, and they leave when they do.

The other problems you highlighted may not be a platform problem but a human problem which will happen on almost every other platform. I don't think there is a solution to this except finding other smart people who are more self aware, though that is easier said than done.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#58

Post by TheJoYo »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #33
INTPenis wrote: post #13

I'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…

Mastodon and the Fediverse have often been advertised as "microblogging" tools, and the post length is mainly around the same as one would see on Twitter. That is a big difference from old-time message boards, where longform text was welcome and normal. (Even if the Fediverse does support long post lengths, that matters little if the community has not embraced it.)

writefreely has a better UI for reading long form posts and is quite popular among the academic communities on the fediverse.

personally I host a gitea server and link to my longer documentation on my federated account. that gives me a bit more freedom to edit the content and easier to reference. matrix servers are also great for hosting federated long form content.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#59

Post by bluesign »

andrewzah wrote: post #52
hombre_fatal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I really don't get why the concept of mastodon is so confusing. It's basically twitter/microblogging* with multiple hosts, and you can see posts from other hosts. So instead of just @andrewzah, my handle becomes @andrewzah@ . You could visualize twitter as @andrewzah@twitter.com, but it's redundant as twitter is the only host. This is basically how email works, no? The only other difference is federation, so you have…

I guess problem lies in this part mainly.

Choosing host is more important than it should be. Mainly because hosts are trying to do 2 things at the same time: being identity provider and being some kind of content host in federated environment (moderation etc).

Because of this when you choosing a host, you are investing too much. Their future policy changes etc will effect you, you cannot afaik move to another host. (like moving your email)

When you give people choice, things are much harder. On other platforms we have few choices depending on what you will publish (media type mainly), but here more like topic based separation, which is making things tricky, as we are humans with many different sides.

Re: Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

#60

Post by TheJoYo »

richard_todd wrote: post #55
INTPenis wrote: post #13

I'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…

Fidonet used to provide the federation across message boards in the BBS era, so there is literally nothing new. Really the new thing was smartphones opening up microblogging to average people who want to track celebrities and pretend what they had for lunch is worth sharing. (Edited to clarify fidonet was in the BBS era)

I agree but I think there's potential for celebrity owned and managed federated instances.

Twitter doesn't really give handlers the tools to manage their celebrity client, otherwise we would have seen things with Trump go very differently.

An owned and managed instance can invest heavily into moderation and image cultivation in ways that Facebook and Twitter will never provide.

The whole thing with Wil Wheaton on mastodon.cloud was a good example of what goes wrong, however.

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