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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

#71

Post by Exoristos »

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…

It's a mental health problem. Social media etc. are actually driving people comparatively mad.

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

#72

Post by anigbrowl »

redserk wrote: post #49
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…

What features are missing? The big barrier to adoption is people and content. Mastodon has been an okay twitter replacement with its feature set, it’s just missing people. Threads appears to have succeeded by bootstrapping their platform with major accounts, brands and popular personalities. This isn’t a thing more feature development can solve.

It's missing people because 98% of people can't get past the 'pick an instance' stage, when it's not at all obvious why you should pick any given instance or what the repercussions will be.

Imagine if you had to pick a particular node to access Facebook, or select a particular data center before you started shopping on Amazon. Consumers just want to find people and exchange a mix of public and private messages, they do not want to be bothered with the dogma of federation.

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

#73

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Folks, a perfect & ideal new way of life is not going to spring fully formed from the head of Zeus.

The main issue with the fediverse is the pervasive naysaying. Merchants of FUD are abundant. They all have their "the main issue" why it's hopeless. Few bother sparing even a second to contemplate the possibility of success - however faint it is against the meteor of doom which surely is careening through the sky right at us & will obliterate us all momentarily that they see.

There's so many criticisms & critiques, and so much lowly & pervasive nattering of fediverse & alternatives. I think though that what's important now isn't getting everything right & tackling each and every problem first. What's important now are strong solid bases for innovation. We need early adopters & innovators trying things.

We need to grow our capabilities, to figure out how to iterate again, after being well served by free with surveillance systems. The nattering can be constructive, once we have a base. I think we are losening things up, greasing into fluidity capabilities that have been ossified into place by titan sized ultra-captive industry. Making the connective online space fluid again is more important than anything. We can find wins, and the titans will keep stumbling & making errors. Innovation from the edge is going to shed some blood, but it will also allow iteration & evolution, will drive future wider forms of meta-moderation that will help us all suss & grok each other in ways that these highly centralized walled gardens can never be open enough to allow.

The paradigm here, of connectivity being participative and evolvable and changing: that seems like something we forgot a while ago, and in the hours of such discontent about so much being decided for us, I think the commonality should be more important than the quibbles. No one is leaping to defend the creaky status quo. We haven't figured out all the safeguards and onroading we need to get to the world scale that the titans are at now, but it sure seems to me like we have some viable starting places to work from now. We can iterate and change, socially direct ourselves, and that hope for iteration and ownership is what is at stake here. Scant criticism is on offer that has constructive alternatives, offers any rays of hope.

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

#74

Post by jmyeet »

dale_glass wrote: post #13
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…

> 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. Federation IMO solves problems on the developer side: 1. We want to write software, not to wrangle with the laws of a hundred countri…

> Federation IMO solves problems on the developer side:

I couldn't disagree more.

First, nobody cares about this. This has no value proposition to users. It shouldn't even be a topic of conversation.

Second, IMHO it's not even true. It's a bit like how you split a monolithic into microservices. Now you've created a bunch of versioning and orchestration problems where you have to deal with network issues. Federation means talking to third-parties, dealing with them being unreachable or behaving badly. It's a whole new class of problems.

> f Twitter were federated with other services, basically you'd have a way to reach select Twitter users from a saner place.

There's a ton of hand-waving that goes along with this statement. It's like if you tried to cut out talking to Verizon on your POTS exchange. Well, technically you can do that but then you can't talk to the customers on that service and they can't talk to you.

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

#75

Post by BirAdam »

wolfendin wrote: post #29
Eumenes wrote: post #12

How about not naming it the "Fediverse" .. sounds like some .gov thing nobody wants to be part of unless they have to pay taxes or register a car.

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

Still kind of does.

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

#76

Post by 673457e347 »

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…

[flagged]

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

#78

Post by tired-turtle »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #70
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.

What you described as a safe space can quickly become, ironically, an intolerant one, albeit not for you, as you self-selected by joining.

I think OP is addressing the paradox of tolerance, hence the call for differing but not hateful opinions. There’s a fine line between the two and cloistering oneself among likeminded people seems to inevitably lead to some form of intolerance.

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

#79

Post by nindalf »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #70
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.

No one questions that living in a bubble is comfortable. But your comfort comes at a cost, which is that people you disagree with aren’t exposed to disagreements with you. They’re now in a bubble (or “safe space”) where everyone agrees with them, so they’re more convinced than ever that they’re right.

And yeah ok, you say that’s not your responsibility. That’s fine, but then you shouldn’t be surprised when society is torn apart by these differences.

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

#80

Post by abdullahkhalids »

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…

People have always grouped together into communities with extremist views in the physical world. And I am not even talking about fringe elements. Many sects of all major religions for thousands of years have thought the entire outgroup is going to hell.

The problem with social media is not that. It is the feed algorithms that make expressing any extremist position the only way to get other people to talk to you. Fix this problem and many of the problems will go away.

Unfortunately, as it is a social coordination problem, the only way for this to happen is government regulation that either bans feed algorithms altogether, or ensures that users individually have full control over the algorithm for their own feed.

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