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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

#191

Post by 8bitsrule »

glenstein wrote: post #163
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…

>I would argue that what is described in this post is inherent in all social networks. This is just what I was thinking. I can't imagine any platform that would meet some of the criteria demanded in this writeup. In what universe would you expect to close your account on twitter, move over to a new account, and migrate your history into a newly opened Twitter account? You can't do that on any private social platform.…

>inherent in all social networks

Yep. I've been using Fosstodon for a couple months. It's not much different from the others, except that the typical Fosster is at least as tech-focused as HN. Without room for 10-paragraph expositions.

My daily surf starts with topical sites I know will pay off for me from experience. Later I'll quickly scan HN and various subReddit headlines for items of interest. Finally (time allowing) do I drop into xtodon to walk the seashore and see what the waves left.

Some nice days I like to sit and people-watch. Social media's more like mind-watch. Like BBS's did, sometimes the waves leave some useful flotsam. Mostly it's kelp.

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

#192

Post by bionade24 »

dleslie wrote: post #148
librexpr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said in your original comment: > using Discourse for a private group and Twitter/Facebook for public groups Even if what freeone3000 said about Mastodon is also all true about Discourse (I know nothing about Discourse, but I'll take your word for it), it's not true about Twitter/Facebook. And since Mastodon is aimed more at the public group use case, Mastodon is a useful replacement of Twitter/Facebook even by yo…

Not quite: Twitter and Facebook have _armies_ of community moderation employees at their disposal; the fediverse has volunteers.

No, the fediverse has at least one per instance, often more. I would even go as far saying the fedi has more mods per users. They're still only mods, for the instance they're on, though.

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

#193

Post by marcus_holmes »

klyrs wrote: post #170
richard_todd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was cool stuff, for sure, and I'm glad I got to experience it when it was new. A little extra latency in our online discourse would probably do the modern world some good, not that anyone would go for it.

I've been mulling a "slow conversation platform" but so far my ideas aren't any more novel than Wikipedia with edit delays which just isn't compelling

I've been kicking some ideas around. My favourite so far is that instead of posting immediately, the system comes back to you after half an hour and says "do you still want to post this?". Hopefully any emotion has had a chance to work itself out in the half hour.

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

#194

Post by yborg »

im3w1l wrote: post #88
freeone3000 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no algorithmic advertising, no universal tracking, and your instance's mod team is known to you instead of a faceless automation farm.

> universal tracking I beg to differ. There is no technological hurdle to prevent this. Only privacy-through-obscurity, and who knows how long that will last?

You are speaking of some future state, however likely that may be, this doesn't exist now and exists on the corporate platforms now. Obtaining this information by extracting it from ActivityPub streams is also a far cry from getting the information from a centralized platform that is eager to sell it to anyone with money.

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

#195

Post by etripe »

lmm wrote: post #186
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The operative part is "want you dead". Ignoring murderous intent is decidedly not what makes society possible.

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

#196

Post by im3w1l »

yborg wrote: post #194
im3w1l wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> universal tracking I beg to differ. There is no technological hurdle to prevent this. Only privacy-through-obscurity, and who knows how long that will last?

You are speaking of some future state, however likely that may be, this doesn't exist now and exists on the corporate platforms now. Obtaining this information by extracting it from ActivityPub streams is also a far cry from getting the information from a centralized platform that is eager to sell it to anyone with money.

It has happened and more than once that I have found a fediverse post when doing a google search. So webcrawlers are already scooping the data up. And I mean why shouldn't they? It's a publicly posted (micro)blog. There is no robots.txt telling them to stay away? The servers are handing it out for free to anyone who asks.

The only missing part is using it to build profiles and join profiles. It may already exist, but I haven't heard anyone doing it... yet.

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

#197

Post by wizzwizz4 »

gargron wrote: post #139
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not too harsh. A Mastodon instance doesn't even give you access to Diaspora* users.

Diaspora is not part of the fediverse and never has been. Diaspora is federated but has always used their own, separate protocol.

There are three main sections of the Fediverse: OStatus, Diaspora* and ActivityPub. Most OStatus systems have migrated to ActivityPub, but Diaspora*'s still separate. https://friendi.ca gives you access to all three.

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

#198

Post by TulliusCicero »

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 people are not Nazis, and most of the bad discourse on the internet does not involve Nazis.

Agreed, I just chose an example that most people would be able to empathize with or at least understand.

But the same principle holds for, say, socialists and core Trump supporters, in my experience, and there are a lot more of each of those.

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

#199

Post by finiteseries »

didericis wrote: post #131
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The entire world has been forced to act as diplomats. When coming from vastly different world views and experiences, being charitable in your interpretation of others is essential; it is important to distinguish disagreement, harassment, and true threat so as to avoid false positives and further degradation of the conversation. That charity requires having a very thick skin, and yes, it’s unfair when it’s not recipro…

I think a better solution than forcing everyone to become diplomatic or banning those who violate the norms of others is to have somewhat siloed social groups that are represented by open minded thick skinned diplomatic types that permeate the borders.

This is a genuinely fascinating idea that I haven’t seen before in discussion around Mastodon & co.

Not convinced it’s an actual possibility because of a lack of scarce resources & the like to actually cause diplomacy to happen over in a familiar way, but I have 0 idea of what the fediverse is like from within the fediverse, so perhaps there is something there I’m just not aware of.

Would upvote and read an insider’s “Diplomacy in the Age of Federation” esque article in a heartbeat.

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

#200

Post by dsr_ »

klyrs wrote: post #169
dsr_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Killfiles! Ah yes, censorship rears its ghastly head again. Or, what a quaint approach to spam.

The charitable explanation is that you don't know what a killfile is. It is a personally created and maintained list of subject lines and/or poster addresses that you don't want to see. They can be limited to specific groups or be universal; they can be used to remove entire threads or just the messages that match.

In other words, it's a personal filter on incoming information. It's Joo Janta Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses. If it is censorship, it is a censor who works for you, obeys your commands, and never imposes your opinions on anyone else.

And it's not particularly good for spam, nor does anyone think that is its purpose. A killfile works against persistent trolls and idiots.

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