Our experience with the Fediverse, and why we left • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:09 AM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #179

rglullis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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 company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership" Wow yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It's too bad nodes became associated with niche hobbies or interests. E.g. a fraternity/sorority that hosts a node would make perfect sense for…

But even then, you can only pick one server per account, which seems asinine in this day and age. I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.

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

#182

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:11 AM UTC

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. (…

It’s even worse than that: it’s coupling a third thing as well: moderation/curation.

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

#183

Post by vkou » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

coderaptor wrote: post #176

sdenton4 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if people want to give out helpful information about gland enlargement alongside links to where supplements can be purchased for the astonishingly low price of $12 a pill, who are we to try to stop them? Provide an unfiltered free speech platform and the stronger ideas will win, right?

Just provide more effective tools allowing users to tune their own feeds.

With a profit or ideological motive, I can spam you, and shout over all meaningful communication much faster than you can block me.

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

#184

Post by logicchains » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #125

TulliusCicero wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that people act in bad faith online, a lot. I think the fundamental problem is that people's values and perspectives can be too different to be in the same room together without going at it. Most people couldn't handle being in the same room as an avowed neo-Nazi saying Nazi things, for example, without at least picking a verbal fight, even if the Nazi wasn't addressing them directly. If they're talk…

Sure, but I think your example of a neo-Nazi vs. non-Nazi meeting up in a room describes a minority, extreme case. Most people are not Nazis, and most of the bad discourse on the internet does not involve Nazis. Two somewhat-reasonable people, even if they're complete strangers, could have a productive discussion (or at least resolve to agree to disagree, if it gets a little heated) if they were to meet in person to…

>most of the bad discourse on the internet does not involve Nazis.

A corollary of Goodwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of one participant viewing another as a Nazi approaches 1".

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

#185

Post by lmm » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

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.

Not really, because the account is less coupled to the topics. I have one reddit account even though I'm in a bunch of different subreddits (and I'm not even in the subreddit that I originally joined reddit for). I have one discord account even though I'm in a bunch of different discords (and even have different usernames in different ones).

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

#186

Post by lmm » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:25 AM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #102

cbozeman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why is grinning-and-bearing harrassment by people who want you dead virtuous? “people who have grown up without having any meaningful opposition in their lives” always feels like a dogwhistle to me, because the people saying this tend to have far more privileged backgrounds than the people being harassed.

> Why is grinning-and-bearing harrassment by people who want you dead virtuous?

Because it's what makes society possible.

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

#187

Post by rglullis » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #181

andrewzah wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership" Wow yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It's too bad nodes became associated with niche hobbies or interests. E.g. a fraternity/sorority that hosts a node would make perfect sense for…

But even then, you can only pick one server per account, which seems asinine in this day and age. I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.

> I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.

You can. Who said otherwise? Where did you get that idea?

An account at Mastodon (or Pleroma/Misskey/Pixelfed/anything) lets you follow anyone you want. There is no restriction about server talking with each other at the protocol level. If the server is federating and its admin is not trigger-happy with federation, you are good to go.

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

#188

Post by jjoonathan » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #162

rbanffy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, if people want to give out helpful information about gland enlargement alongside links to where supplements can be purchased for the astonishingly low price of $12 a pill, who are we to try to stop them? Provide an unfiltered free speech platform and the stronger ideas will win, right?

Yeah, and the idea of a spam filter won.

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

#189

Post by rglullis » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #179

rglullis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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 company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership" Wow yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It's too bad nodes became associated with niche hobbies or interests. E.g. a fraternity/sorority that hosts a node would make perfect sense for…

> people would still find it too if people's handles kept on changing.

Will they? Isn't it the same case with email? I used my University email when I was a student. I have a different company email for different jobs? Those that needed to communicate with me because of the job, I would give them my company email. When my work at company X ended, no one expected me to still message me at raphael@x.

The same with addresses from "email providers". They change less often, but it is still possible. My first account was probably at yahoo, but when gmail came up, I migrated, started to tell people my new address and auto forwarded any message that went to the old email.

"Well", that may be a lot of work to some people. To which the answer is "the only way to have absolute stability regarding your identity is if you own it". You can buy a domain a use a managed email service, you can have a domain and have a managed activitypub service provider.

I really don't get people's confusion over federation. It's just like email.

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

#190

Post by saurik » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #188

sdenton4 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if people want to give out helpful information about gland enlargement alongside links to where supplements can be purchased for the astonishingly low price of $12 a pill, who are we to try to stop them? Provide an unfiltered free speech platform and the stronger ideas will win, right?

Yeah, and the idea of a spam filter won.

Spam filters can be opt-in. Spam filters can be federated. Spam filters can be local. It simply isn't true that decentralized censorship resistant systems fundamentally require users to be inundated with spam.