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The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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

#111

Post by justinpombrio »

zoogeny wrote: post #92

This is a very interesting concept and one I think most comments here are missing. This isn't a question as to why Mastodon (or "Fediverse") has yet to catch on in the wider public. It is more a question as to why scholarly societies are still organized around paid journals. I think the answer to that isn't inertia or greed. I would argue that the tools of federation aren't necessarily suitable to that specific probl…

Don't conflate peer review with paid journals, they're very different things. The money received by paid journals doesn't go to the reviewers. The reviewers are mostly professors who have their own funding. I reviewed a paper recently; I certainly didn't get paid for it!

Some disciplines are switching to open access journals, meaning that anyone can read the articles for free, and there's no big publisher sucking up tons of money. But there's still peer review.

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

#112

Post by INTPenis »

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…

This is exactly what's happening. I never thought I'd make a positive comparison to twitter but twitter threw everyone into one big melting pot. People could block each other but by default they had to listen to a lot of differing opinions before they blocked anyone.

In fedi borders are being drawn and they're creating these little bubbles of opinions. So you know that within your border your opinion will never be challenged because the admin already took care of that for you.

If I were to find any glimmer of hope in that it would be that certain instances will be more inclusive and perhaps some borders will be drawn around that, but I'm not sure.

I actually ran a node since 2017 but left in 2022 because of this very reason.

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

#113

Post by boudin »

anigbrowl wrote: post #69
sleepybrett wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

There is still no replacement for email though. It still very much work today and is the only solution to send message over the Internet, regardless of the person you want to reach. Non federated networks will never reach the adoption of email.

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

#114

Post by thaumasiotes »

zoogeny wrote: post #92

This is a very interesting concept and one I think most comments here are missing. This isn't a question as to why Mastodon (or "Fediverse") has yet to catch on in the wider public. It is more a question as to why scholarly societies are still organized around paid journals. I think the answer to that isn't inertia or greed. I would argue that the tools of federation aren't necessarily suitable to that specific probl…

> It is more a question as to why scholarly societies are still organized around paid journals.

That is a decision by granting agencies and administrators who distribute funding. The scholars will organize around whatever the people who pay them tell them to.

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

#115

Post by INTPenis »

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.

That's just like, your american opinion man. Outside of the states we see very little problem with it, and actually twitter made me think of twat all the time.

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

#116

Post by LasEspuelas »

justinpombrio wrote: post #111
zoogeny wrote: post #92

This is a very interesting concept and one I think most comments here are missing. This isn't a question as to why Mastodon (or "Fediverse") has yet to catch on in the wider public. It is more a question as to why scholarly societies are still organized around paid journals. I think the answer to that isn't inertia or greed. I would argue that the tools of federation aren't necessarily suitable to that specific probl…

Don't conflate peer review with paid journals, they're very different things. The money received by paid journals doesn't go to the reviewers. The reviewers are mostly professors who have their own funding. I reviewed a paper recently; I certainly didn't get paid for it! Some disciplines are switching to open access journals, meaning that anyone can read the articles for free, and there's no big publisher sucking up…

In my experience open access still includes a big publisher sucking up tons of money. It is just money paid up front by authors. Do you have an example of open access were that is not the case?

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

#117

Post by kaffeeringe »

Mastodon isn't for everybody just like Twitter never was for everybody. Millions of users joined Twitter and silently left, because they didn't know what to make of it.

But the Fediverse could certainly offer services that fit the needs of the sciences. Wordpress can be connected to the Fediverse. There are other, more long form services.

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

#118

Post by kaffeeringe »

INTPenis wrote: post #112
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…

This is exactly what's happening. I never thought I'd make a positive comparison to twitter but twitter threw everyone into one big melting pot. People could block each other but by default they had to listen to a lot of differing opinions before they blocked anyone. In fedi borders are being drawn and they're creating these little bubbles of opinions. So you know that within your border your opinion will never be ch…

What borders? Do you mean the basic rules of good behaviour?

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

#119

Post by kaffeeringe »

p-e-w wrote: post #89
marcinzm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bubbles are safe until the day you realize a bubble that would like you dead has now grown large enough to vote in a like minded government in your country. Then nothing is safe.

Jesus Christ the hyperbole. Name a single example of a country where a government that "wants certain people dead" has been voted in recently, other than such countries where this has been happening for decades anyway without social media even existing.

Myanmar.

USA. They only didn't succeed with their coup.

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

#120

Post by getynge »

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 always thought the idea of federation from the users perspective is something of a middle ground between small community forums and social monoliths like twitter. Small-ish communities that for the most part see content that is part of that community but is not entirely isolated from other communities either. Also means that if somebody comes along and screws up one instance it just gets defederated and the people that want to move do so.
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