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Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left

infosec-handbook.eu

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

#61

Post by andrewzah »

bluesign wrote: post #59
andrewzah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. (…

This is why I recommend self-hosting via pleroma if possible. Mastodon is a huge resource hog compared to pleroma, which can run nicely on a raspberry pi.

But yes, the issue gets outsourced to the user, and you have to trust a random individual instead of an entity like twitter.

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

#62

Post by riffic »

TheJoYo wrote: post #60
richard_todd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mas…

I'd really like to see Twitter white-label their app as a managed SaaS on custom domains.

Perhaps that's what Bluesky is intended to be.

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

#63

Post by skybrian »

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)

Fidonet boards exchanged messages overnight so the propagation delay was much longer. Also, the topology was different. I don't think the idea of each user publishing a public stream of messages that others subscribe to was a thing back then? Instead you would post messages in forums.

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

#64

Post by TheJoYo »

bluesign wrote: post #59
andrewzah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. (…

Users have to make the same choice with any other social media service.

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

#65

Post by TheJoYo »

riffic wrote: post #62
TheJoYo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mas…

I'd really like to see Twitter white-label their app as a managed SaaS on custom domains. Perhaps that's what Bluesky is intended to be.

I don't have much hope for Bluesky.

Twitter could re-enable RSS if they really wanted to show that their interest was genuine.

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

#66

Post by mark_l_watson »

I think that the author of this and I can just agree to disagree, which is OK with me.

I am on mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mark_watson and I get a lot of value from it.

re: “I’m privacy-friendly; please donate”: I donate but don't mind identifying myself. If you want anonymity then don't donate to whoever runs the server that you use.

You are free to follow and un-follow (if you see toxic material) as you wish.

I hope that I don't sound like I am lecturing or otherwise being obnoxious, but if you don't think that the large Internet platform companies have too much power then I recommend reading "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" and "privacy is Power."

The great thing about the Internet is that anyone can get a domain, get creative, share their stuff, meet people, make business acquaintances, etc. I see the Fediverse as another tool to use.

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

#67

Post by rakoo »

riffic wrote: post #2

This article doesn't discuss why the organization in question didn't just self-host their own fediverse presence, perhaps using a CMS plugin like one available for WordPress. I'm not familiar at all with this "InfoSec Handbook" group but what I'd like to see at some point is a software platform that allows organizations to spin up fedi presences at their own domain (Write.as does this, but it'd be nice to have other…

That would solve the migration problem, but not the others which are definitely social problems and not technical problems

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

#68

Post by phone8675309 »

cbozeman wrote: post #48
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wishful thinking. Several of the best/most successful trolls find plenty of time at work to shitpost.

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

#69

Post by kstrauser »

proc0 wrote: post #34
riffic wrote: post #2

This article doesn't discuss why the organization in question didn't just self-host their own fediverse presence, perhaps using a CMS plugin like one available for WordPress. I'm not familiar at all with this "InfoSec Handbook" group but what I'd like to see at some point is a software platform that allows organizations to spin up fedi presences at their own domain (Write.as does this, but it'd be nice to have other…

yeah I thought that was the point of it. Sounds like the article authors don't get the Fediverse, and use it interchangeably with Mastodon. It's like saying Linux sucks because it's so complicated, having only tried one distro (i.e. Arch)

Absolutely. “People are asking for money to host our timeline!” Well, run your own server and don’t charge yourself.

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

#70

Post by bluesign »

TheJoYo wrote: post #64
bluesign wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. (…

Users have to make the same choice with any other social media service.

Sorry maybe I couldn't explain my point clear.

Think Mastodon instances (hosts) as reddit subreddits.

Basically you are creating an account in not universe (reddit) but on instance (subreddit)

And this subreddit is deciding, which other subreddits you can see with your account. (fediverse)

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