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Fediverse

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Re: Fediverse

#51

Post by lynndotpy »

taurusnoises wrote: post #22

I have tried to wrap my head around how this works as a total outsider noob, and I just can not get it! But, I want to. I get the email comparison (different platforms can all speak, so why not have social media be the same?). But, then the white sheets are just all php and python and all this stuff that doesn't make any sense (I know what they are, just not what to do with that info), and for better or worse doesn't…

I don't think you need to understand anything about php or Python to understand this. I think the email comparison is the best metaphor.

Gmail and Yahoo and whatnot all speak the same language, "email". They've friended one another ("federated") and have unfriended spam mail servers. They've also settled on roughly the same design for their mail clients, but they didn't need to.

Unlike Gmail, there are a zillion Mastodon servers, because anyone can make it. And unlike email, the "ActivityPub" protocol can be used for a bunch of different uses. Mastodon cuts it up to look like Twitter, Pixelfed cuts it up to look like Instagram, PeerTube cuts it up to look like YouTube, etc.

Basically, Gmail is just one email server, and it speaks SMTP .

Similarly, Mastodon.social is just one Mastodon server, and it speaks ActivityPub.

In practice, I don't think you really need to understand it any further than the email analogy. I just tell those interested to sing up for Mastodon.social and see if they like it.

Re: Fediverse

#52

Post by rapnie »

hbn wrote: post #48
kevingadd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a typo? This post doesn't make sense to me. The latter isn't true, because individual instances can ban you and instances that allow bad behavior will be defederated. Elon has indicated a desire to unban users, not ban them.

Yup, it was a typo (edited now). I meant that if they want everyone they don't like to be banned, the fediverse doesn't seem like the place for that. Getting banned from a fediverse instance isn't as impactful as being banned from twitter, and I think those people would want it to work like twitter. Not too sure about instances being defederated though, that's the first I've heard of that.

You can watch "Decentralized networks vs. the Trolls" to get a sense of how it works. Good video.

https://conf.tube/w/d8c8ed69-79f0-4987-bafe-84c01f38f966

Re: Fediverse

#53

Post by gpm »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #13

Is having both a normal social media account & a federated version okay ? I've seen a lot of people delete their Twitter and then hop on Mastodon because they're worried about Musk. Whether their concern about Musk is valid is another question. How do people see his acquisition of Twitter as a bad thing? If anything he will try to improve it no?

Twitter was a space with a set of rules, Elon has publicly indicated his intention to change those rules, and many of the people who came to it with the understanding that those rules existed don't really want to be there without those rules in place.

Improve is subjective. Some people want to go to a coffee shop, others a Bar. Elon is buying the space and turning it from one into the other, of course there's going to be turnover in the patrons of the space.

Re: Fediverse

#54

Post by ancientsofmumu »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #27
taurusnoises wrote: post #22

I have tried to wrap my head around how this works as a total outsider noob, and I just can not get it! But, I want to. I get the email comparison (different platforms can all speak, so why not have social media be the same?). But, then the white sheets are just all php and python and all this stuff that doesn't make any sense (I know what they are, just not what to do with that info), and for better or worse doesn't…

Basically you have e-mail, which is a protocol (actually a set of protocols, but ignore for now). Thus you can e-mail a protonmail user from your gmail/corporate account without any issues. However Twitter and Facebook are proprietary black box services and beyond using a Facebook-provided identity to create a Twitter account, there is no way to 'friend' a Twitter user on your FB account or interact with content in a…

> So far Mastodon and their goodreads clone

Had to look this up, I think you mean BookWyrm(?).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28420580

https://bookwyrm.social/

Re: Fediverse

#55

Post by jwarden »

taurusnoises wrote: post #22

I have tried to wrap my head around how this works as a total outsider noob, and I just can not get it! But, I want to. I get the email comparison (different platforms can all speak, so why not have social media be the same?). But, then the white sheets are just all php and python and all this stuff that doesn't make any sense (I know what they are, just not what to do with that info), and for better or worse doesn't…

This might help. If Twitter for some reason decided to migrate to the Fediverse, then you could login to their mastodon.social account, follow @elonmusk@twitter.com, and reply to Elon's tweets, all without having a Twitter account. And Elon and other people on Twitter would see your reply (coming from, say, @taurusnoises@mastodon.social) and could reply to you.

Re: Fediverse

#56

Post by rglullis »

fsflover wrote: post #37
moron4hire wrote: post #36

General purpose social media will be considered the greatest mistake of the early 21st century. Go back to topic-oriented discussion boards. When you have no common topic around which to organize, then people have to search each other's personalities for commonality. And in doing so, they stratify along political lines. This isn't enough, so then they micro-stratify into various, rabid subgroups within those politica…

> Go back to topic-oriented message boards. This is essentially what Mastodon instances are. As a bonus, they can interact if they want it .

No, this is how a subset of its users treat it, and there is a significant amount of people (myself included) who think topic-based instances are a poorly conceived idea for federated systems [0].

[0] https://raphael.lullis.net/federations-and-identity/

Re: Fediverse

#57

Post by pat2man »

rglullis wrote: post #8
Ambolia wrote: post #3

Which are the platforms that let you own your data cryptographically and let you move your account around seamlessly for yourself and your followers? Basically the network should be in the data and the servers should be replaceable. I think those are very obvious bottlenecks that affect most of these alternative networks. On the other side, censorship is also very important, nobody wants to have to dwell into spam an…

I believe this is possible with ActivityPub already, and the servers just need to start making a distinction between the identities from its users and the "federation": https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825107786781891

Its interesting that DNS doesn't come up more often as the solution here. Owning a domain (or subdomain) seems a whole lot easier than most of the other "decentralized" solutions that get discussed. And if DNS is too centralized for you then something like ENS can replace it without needing very many changes to the rest of the stack.

Re: Fediverse

#58

Post by layer8 »

moron4hire wrote: post #36

General purpose social media will be considered the greatest mistake of the early 21st century. Go back to topic-oriented discussion boards. When you have no common topic around which to organize, then people have to search each other's personalities for commonality. And in doing so, they stratify along political lines. This isn't enough, so then they micro-stratify into various, rabid subgroups within those politica…

This gives me the thought that the focus should be on federating communities (boards/subreddits/forums/newsgroups/whatever you want to call it), and user identities only as a secondary aspect. The instances would choose which boards they want to host, and the contents of the boards would be synchronized between instances. The contents of the boards would be controlled by the community (board owners/moderators). Instances would decide which instances they want to synchronize with. Communities can also decide to fork. That’s actually similar to how Usenet works, except that we want built-in moderation, and cryptography for content integrity and cross-instance authentication.

Re: Fediverse

#59

Post by vidarh »

echelon wrote: post #10

A Twitter replacement shouldn't be federated. It should be fully P2P. Federated platforms can still be censored and walled off. Not all Mastodon instances are peers, and your data isn't portable. It still has most of the same pitfalls as the platforms we complain about today. P2P is naturally efficient. The best ideas will gain traction within their memetic networks, and you can branch out and explore anything and re…

ActivityPub is mixed. It's peer-to-peer for follow/follower relationships, with you yourself deciding whether you want to sign up to an instance operated by someone else, or your own. It only need the federation for the "firehose" of public messages. But you don't need that to be 100% distributed, as long as there are enough publicly accessible endpoints. Nothing also stops you from gatewaying between the current federation mechanism for it and a fully peer-to-peer model if you invent a more distributed model.

Re: Fediverse

#60

Post by rglullis »

pat2man wrote: post #57
rglullis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is possible with ActivityPub already, and the servers just need to start making a distinction between the identities from its users and the "federation": https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825107786781891

Its interesting that DNS doesn't come up more often as the solution here. Owning a domain (or subdomain) seems a whole lot easier than most of the other "decentralized" solutions that get discussed. And if DNS is too centralized for you then something like ENS can replace it without needing very many changes to the rest of the stack.

Exactly. That's the approach defended and promoted by the indieweb thinking heads: start with identity and structure things bottom-up. Machines are quite good at translating between the different protocols. If I want to publish my content using RSS and you want to consume it using ActivityPub, it is easy to write software that makes the bridge, provided your identity doesn't change.
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