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The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

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Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#61

Post by naasking »

jdlyga wrote: post #4

The main issue with Fediverse is the vast majority of people don't know what it is. And I would suspect that most readers of Hacker News only know about Mastodon. The Fediverse needs the same kind of evangelical missionaries that made the free software movement such a big deal.

> The main issue with Fediverse is the vast majority of people don't know what it is.

Who knew what the Internet was when it started spreading into the mainstream? People don't need to know what something is or does to start interacting with it, it either needs a smooth enough onboarding process that people can easily experiment, or it needs some compelling value that they've heard about from others to make the extra effort worth it. Not sure where the Fediverse is on either of these points.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#62

Post by creer »

calamari4065 wrote: post #44
jmyeet wrote: post #5

Federation is an example of solving an imaginary problem by creating a bunch of very real problems. Tech people care about the idea of a federated service to avoid a walled garden but this always ignore the practical implementation issues and the lack of a value proposition to users. Take Twiter as an example. It's rapidly deteriorated under Musk's stewardship [1]. Bias aside, quality is down to support a subscriptio…

I'm not sure how much you actually know about this stuff, but this take reads like you fundamentally don't understand the subject. Most of the problems you pose exist with every social media platform, and only get worse as scale goes up. We can all agree that as user count goes up, abuse and moderation scales as well. A centralized platform takes all of that moderation load at once. You need a team of people or some…

So this is one thing that I don't understand:

> No matter which node [...] you get roughly the same experience.

How do you mean this? Besides HN, I'm on some big guys, a few discords, and some private groups. Some of the big guys delegate moderation to private participants in each sub-forum - of course. NO TWO of these have the same rules. Not even close. Some have fundamentally different basic rules of conduct. Many of the moderators enthusiastically want to block "the bad guys" but they mostly agree to each other's label on that in spite of their rules being all different. Basically if someone was lynched by some other group, that's good enough for them.

I'm willing to be amazed that it works but for now I do not believe that two of these systems actually will agree long term to use the other guy's forum rules.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#63

Post by globalnode »

kromem wrote: post #53

After spending a number of months on Lemmy as my primary social media, I actually think the fediverse makes one of the biggest issues of social media much worse. There's a very real and dangerous trend towards extremist positions as a result of social media bubbles. I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a…

humans can't be trusted to not censure information they dislike. corporate or private people will all follow their own self interests. there is no version where this ends well.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#64

Post by OccamsMirror »

sleepybrett wrote: post #60
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #33

The Fediverse is something that we already tried in many different fashions and it was never mass-adopted because it doesn't have the features that people want. It's the API equivalent of people asking for iPhones while nerds keep on throwing Raspberry Pis at them and pretend that they're the same thing if you squint hard enough. It is not the same, it will never be the same, you will never get the masses to adopt it…

... yup, email was a total failure.

Do you think email would be a success if it was invented now?

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#65

Post by threeseed »

coldacid wrote: post #41
threeseed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Fediverse needs the same kind of evangelical missionaries Weirdly enough this is likely to be Meta with Threads. Once it adds ActivityPub integration we should start to see a lot of cross-pollination with Mastodon users.

Don't be too sure of that. Plenty of instances have preemptively blocked Meta and it's likely that if and when Threads goes AP, more will follow. Some of us still remember Eternal September and would like to avoid a repeat.

People always talk a big game.

But by then there should be well in excess of 200-300m people on Threads.

Many of them will want to converse with Mastodon users and vice versa and I am sure there will be instances available that will be happy to allow that conversation to happen. Because ultimately it's all about users not instances.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#66

Post by anigbrowl »

chmod775 wrote: post #59
kromem wrote: post #53

After spending a number of months on Lemmy as my primary social media, I actually think the fediverse makes one of the biggest issues of social media much worse. There's a very real and dangerous trend towards extremist positions as a result of social media bubbles. I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a…

> I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a result of social media driven shifts. So because of social media bubbles, people split their families into bubbles too? If even in a real life setting, where no algorithm curates who they interact with, people choose to segregate despite of family bonds, then that…

This is normal human behavior, per Schelling. Social media has made everyone's opinions more visible to others, which often turns out to be antithetical to maintaining friendly relations.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#67

Post by threeseed »

candiddevmike wrote: post #50
jdlyga wrote: post #4

The main issue with Fediverse is the vast majority of people don't know what it is. And I would suspect that most readers of Hacker News only know about Mastodon. The Fediverse needs the same kind of evangelical missionaries that made the free software movement such a big deal.

You could run a battery optimized, opportunistically available mastodon instance from your phone, but Apple and Google won't let you. The amount of wasted compute in everyone's hands is staggering.

Apple made a guide for how to use Mastodon on iOS:

https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1668483560

So conceptually they are fine with it. And there is nothing you stopping your running servers on your devices.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#68

Post by Centigonal »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #37
wolfendin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Twitter” and “tweeting” also sounded stupid in 2007.

How is this relevant to avoiding boring/formal names? I missed something here.

GP is saying that a good product can carry a bad name, and that opinions on what names are "bad" change over time.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#69

Post by anigbrowl »

sleepybrett wrote: post #60
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #33

The Fediverse is something that we already tried in many different fashions and it was never mass-adopted because it doesn't have the features that people want. It's the API equivalent of people asking for iPhones while nerds keep on throwing Raspberry Pis at them and pretend that they're the same thing if you squint hard enough. It is not the same, it will never be the same, you will never get the masses to adopt it…

... yup, email was a total failure.

Email succeeded because there wasn't anything better, and of course it's become baroque in the meantime as the need for security and other features have been added.

What worked 50 years is not going to work today just because it's technically similar, the environment has changed and it's foolish to ignore that.

Re: The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

#70

Post by ParetoOptimal »

kromem wrote: post #53

After spending a number of months on Lemmy as my primary social media, I actually think the fediverse makes one of the biggest issues of social media much worse. There's a very real and dangerous trend towards extremist positions as a result of social media bubbles. I'm sure most people have noticed how large family gatherings have shifted over the last 15 years, and how some family may no longer even be invited as a…

> The fediverse makes these bubbles so much worse, with servers of like minded moderation creating a trend towards groupthink as opposed to representing a variety of opinions.

You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed.

> regression towards the normal mean.

Yeah, the normal mean is something to strive for... If it already benefits you.

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