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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

#151

Post by _0ffh »

richard_todd wrote: post #75
skybrian wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was replying to a post claiming the only novel part of mastodon compared to old message boards is federation. I’m merely pointing out that many old message boards did have federation. To your points (1) yes, everything was slower back then (2) people could and did post streams of their work within the BBS framework, everything from multi-part posts to “owning” a message-board topic, to text/ansi e-zines, but back t…

> yes, everything was slower back then

Right, and still I was super amazed that I could send a message to someone halfway around the world, and it would arrive there only a couple of days later! Compared to a letter that's really fast!

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

#152

Post by crocodiletears »

gargron wrote: post #137
crocodiletears wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

> 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. Are you sure? On Reddit, membership of one subreddit often results in bans from ot…

I consider those kinds of bans petty, but hardly a platform issue.

Reddit exposes group affiliation by default through public post histories. One can lurk in any public subreddit without consequence. Even banned, you can still consume public subs, though you can't interact with them.

The simple act of account creation (choosing the wrong node) is enough to exclude you from otherwise public content in the fediverse.

Joining Mastodon is often described as joining 'mastodon the network', when in reality there is no cohesive network (though there may be a canonical network). You're joining your instance + an opaque number of unknown nodes, with much of the content arbitrarily disappeared for any number of historical reasons to-which you may not be privy.

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

#153

Post by mariusor »

TheJoYo wrote: post #150
mariusor wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself to be pretty plugged in the AP ecosystem, yet I have no idea about what you're talking about. What happened?

I remember 3 or 4 projects that were abandoned but Prismo is the one that stands out to me. https://fediverse.blog/~/Prismo/on-prismo-data-loss

My project predates prismo I think, and I'm committed to bring it to fruition. That might not be for a while though as I'm working on a lot of low level stuff that might help other developers with writing activitypub services.

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

#154

Post by rbanffy »

dsr_ wrote: post #99
richard_todd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was replying to a post claiming the only novel part of mastodon compared to old message boards is federation. I’m merely pointing out that many old message boards did have federation. To your points (1) yes, everything was slower back then (2) people could and did post streams of their work within the BBS framework, everything from multi-part posts to “owning” a message-board topic, to text/ansi e-zines, but back t…

At this point, the Usenet servers which took massive amounts of bandwidth and disk space take tiny amounts of bandwidth and disk space (assuming you don't allow binary posts). Maybe it's time for Usenet to come back. - Truly federated - Topic focus instead of people-focus - Killfiles! - Proper threading - Standards-based servers and clients

I really like NNTP, but spam was becoming a huge problem in the Usenet and its nature makes it harder to assert the identity of a poster.

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

#155

Post by TheJoYo »

gargron wrote: post #141
TheJoYo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I did reply back when I noticed it. They seem to be collecting other people's posts on the topic at the moment. My main concern is the misconception that federated protocol provide ambiguous "security" that is: > Safer social media experience https://joinmastodon.org/ There's noting safe or secure inherent to federated social media.

"Safer social media experience" refers to user safety, i.e. moderation and safety tools like content warnings, phrase filters, mutes, blocks, and the various quality of life improvements to those features.

I know what you mean and I agree.

That's not what I think is being conveyed to the people I link that page. They take those descriptions as it applies to their own posts, "your messages are safe".

When I am put in the position to need to explain that Mastodon isn't an end-to-end encryption platform I've lost them completely.

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

#156

Post by rglullis »

sneak wrote: post #149
rglullis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant XKCD: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/constructive.png Dealing with millions/billions of people online, it's impossible to know who I can/can not expect to have nuanced, respectful conversations beforehand. So, yes, I think it's not a bad idea if we took deny-by-default approach with new connections and treating them as hostile, unless they can have some backing social proof from one of your peers. I would also…

Sadly, these sorts of bond-posting antispam systems are rendered mostly illegal due to financial surveillance requirements in the US: you can't really do micropayments like this without going through full KYC/AML on everyone you're receiving from or paying, which is a huge barrier to entry and adoption. The intense regulatory requirements for total financial surveillance in the USA are holding so many insanely cool a…

https://kleros.io/ can do it on ethereum. Alas, it's still too expensive to do due to gas fees. I wouldn't be surprised if they come up with a Layer-2 approach for it, though.

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

#157

Post by buo »

amyjess wrote: post #109
joe_the_user wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Twitter/"microblogging" isn't just post length. The problem with Twitter/"microblogging" is also lack of hierarchical structure. A BBS has a series of subboards, those subboard have posts and the posts have comments. Sure, things can degenerate to just a series of "mega-threads" but if it's done, everyone the topic and the subtopic and so you can good contextual discussion. Facebook has a three level…

And I guess this is where I go into full old lady "get off my lawn" mode and mention that I still remember when forums used WWWBoard and its clones (anyone remember CyBoard or VIPBoard?) that provided full comment threading. Any comment can be directly replied to and have its own tree of comments. Like... well, like HN, or Reddit. I really thought forums lost something when UBB and its clones (vBulletin, phpBB, etc.)…

I agree 100%. Threading is essential and I can't understand why modern (and otherwise fine) tools like Discourse don't support it.

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

#158

Post by kstrauser »

curtainsforus wrote: post #140
kstrauser wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure, but even if not I still feel like that’s a silly complaint. Party A says something on the Internet that offends party B. Party B says something on the Internet that offends party A. Party A complains that they’re being asked to self-censor. I see it as both parties using the service as designed to speak their minds. Party A also has the tools to mute Party B if they don’t like what they have to say.

I mean, it's Party A says something on the Internet that offends party B. Party B asks party A to self-censor/tells them to shut up, which offends party A. Party A complains that they’re being asked to self-censor. When party B is asking A to self-censor, there's nothing wrong with A complaining about what B is saying. If A's lying or being dishonest, oh well.

I do get that, but really, B doesn’t have any special sway. They’re just some randos saying that they don’t like A’s posting. While annoying, that’s going to happen on every social network. If I went on Gab and started posting a lot of pro-Biden content, I’m certain plenty of people would tell me to knock it off.

So sure, it’s alright for A to be annoyed by it. That’s definitely not a unique feature of the fediverse, though.

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

#159

Post by arendtio »

I expected something more technical, but instead the points are mainly based on culture (which seems to be a problem for most social networks). In addition, I find it weird that there are several parts where they argue against decentralization. I mean, those are just examples for specific situations, but putting all examples together tells a story of itself.

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

#160

Post by bluesign »

rglullis wrote: post #126
bluesign wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about pleroma, I will definitely check. But when you self host your Mastodon, aren't you losing the benefit of local. What is the point of local if I will be alone there?

Local timelines are at best an attempt to help with content discovery and really too overrated. If the instance is too big, it feels like reading from the firehose and if the instance is too small it is better to just browse the directory and find the profiles that seem interesting to you. To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a co…

yeah I replied in sibling thread, mostly topic based instances and federation is the problem. (when identity is bound to host)

When I first saw Mastodon and topic based servers, I was thinking "photography" hosts will federate between each other, "developers" between each other etc. If you are a photography liking developer, you will have 2 accounts, one in "photographers in SF" instance, another one "developers in SF" maybe.

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