The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:22 PM UTC

piaste wrote: post #177

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #155

My concern with scholarship on the fediverse would be clash between academic cultures, and potential exclusion. Some fields of the humanities in some parts of the world do not have the absorbing interest in race/sexuality/gender/power that North American and Western European academia does; they look at those developments with bemusement or horror, and frequently complain about how funding gets tied to using Westerner…

This is a truly bizarre critique, because it seems completely backwards in every respect. The ability to not be beholden to the preferences of whoever runs a fedi server is, in fact, the #1 selling point of federated network in the first place. And all other alternatives are far worse in that specific aspect you bring. There is a very mild barrier to running your own Mastodon/PeerTube/etc. instance (you don't even ha…

> The ability to not be beholden to the preferences of whoever runs a fedi server is, in fact, the #1 selling point of federated network in the first place.

Of course that selling point isn't, in practice, what's happening, as anyone observing or participating in the space for the past couple years knows.

Fediverse is a lonely place if no one wants to federate with you, but that's where you'll end up if you don't yield to the specific set of concerns and demands of a small minority that infected the main network, and rules it under threat of "do not federate with those we don't like, lest you find yourself on that list too".

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

#182

Post by noirscape » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

indigochill wrote: post #171

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…

> There is a difference between tweets and feeds compared to peer-reviewed papers in magazine-like journals. > Federation might be a part of a solution to the problem, but no where near the whole solution. To be clear, federation and even the ActivityPub protocol have nothing to do with the tweet-like interface of Mastodon (and ActivityPub isn't the only way to federate, either. Email is federated), although TBF the…

To be more precise, ActivityPub is pretty much just a JSON/HTTP version of email.

There's a few fancy things to have stuff like user profiles and stuff to make it "look nice", but if you look "under the hood", the data structures you find ends up and the methods of communication end up looking more or less like a modernized version of email.

---

Mastodon is a sub-implementation of AP that follows some of the components and then weirdly tweaks some of them in weird ways (because Mastodons internal representation doesn't actually match up with these data structures and Gargron wanted some features like Content Warnings without bothering with the entire process of protocol modifications, so he ended up cannibalizing a different field for it, resulting in an implementation that... mostly results in people yelling at each other for not using CWs "appropriately"), resulting in strange compatibility issues when writing your own AP instance.

Most AP instances typically end up trying to then match Mastodons weird implementation (basically look at the social feed of any AP implementer for long enough and you'll find complaints about how Mastodon doesn't follow the spec), simply because of Mastodons excessive popularity.

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

#183

Post by didntcheck » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

kaffeeringe wrote: post #118

INTPenis wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No. Specific rules of political purity, and the transitive demand that you also cut off any nonbelievers lest ye be branded yourself

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

#184

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #106

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really confused here. Are you saying black people live in a bubble for not wanting slurs thrown at them? It’s not like black people are unfamiliar with that word or the word is particularly enlightening? Who are we making uncomfortable by barring calling black people racial slurs, here? This is absolutely baffling logic when applied to racial slurs and black people.

The parent's point is by separating everyone has a different mainstream imagine they believe everyone else normal lives in. Some of those bubbles may deem your bubble groupthink a certain way. We had segregation at one point. I'm not sure that benefited everyone equally. Why return to that?

Woah, how did we get from “we don’t call black peoples slurs here” to “WHITES ONLY drinking fountains”?? White people arent weird troglodytes unable to be around a black person without slurring them. Calling black peoples the n word is not an essential part of being white!

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

#185

Post by akvadrako » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

crimsoneer wrote: post #156

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #155

My concern with scholarship on the fediverse would be clash between academic cultures, and potential exclusion. Some fields of the humanities in some parts of the world do not have the absorbing interest in race/sexuality/gender/power that North American and Western European academia does; they look at those developments with bemusement or horror, and frequently complain about how funding gets tied to using Westerner…

I mean, surely federalised social media is the solution rather than the problem here. If you think some monolithic worldview is challenging to welcome new people, then being able to quickly create a new instance for your friends and like minded colleagues seems like a win (hence why the tech behind Mastodon is also being Truth social etc)

Distributed, fully-decentralized is the solution, not federated. Each person should have full control over who they follow, without relying on the whims of server admins.

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

#186

Post by Jerrrry » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:46 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #136

Jerrrry wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

#187

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

red1reaper wrote: post #164

rev_simulation wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is some cultural difference, but I kinda don't get why using n-word is different from using any other slurs. Most people would agree (I hope) that slurs are not part of normal, civil discussion, and I cannot understand why would anyone try to create a safe space for discussion with someone who calls them "motherf*** fa**". I think such person has no interest in polite conversation, unless, of course, in ot…

The problem is that like there are safe spaces for people to not hear slurs, there exists safe spaces for people to say slurs without backslash. The first is not a problem but the second very much is. If you can exclude the ppl that say slurs, the ppl that say slurs can do the same, ending up in slurland, were they get worse and worse until they go to the street and kill someone.

I really am not convinced that for the sake of the not-serial-killers-yet racists we have to let them call people slurs everywhere. Choosing to commit hate crimes is purely in the realm of irredeemable pieces of shit and society barring them from calling black people slurs on social media shouldn’t be considered a causal factor to it.

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

#188

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

kaffeeringe wrote: post #118

INTPenis wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by red1reaper » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

red1reaper wrote: post #164

rev_simulation wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is some cultural difference, but I kinda don't get why using n-word is different from using any other slurs. Most people would agree (I hope) that slurs are not part of normal, civil discussion, and I cannot understand why would anyone try to create a safe space for discussion with someone who calls them "motherf*** fa**". I think such person has no interest in polite conversation, unless, of course, in ot…

The problem is that like there are safe spaces for people to not hear slurs, there exists safe spaces for people to say slurs without backslash. The first is not a problem but the second very much is. If you can exclude the ppl that say slurs, the ppl that say slurs can do the same, ending up in slurland, were they get worse and worse until they go to the street and kill someone.

I was being exagerated a lil bit with the go to the streets and kill someone. What I mean is that bad people start creating circles of bad people and people that are slightly bad and would become good otherwise end up joining these circles and going extreme.

It is not that we must allow people to say slurs, is that it is better for those people to say slurs in a public multicultural site, so that good people can essentially social pressure the slurers into simply not saying slurs. This was possible with centralized social networks, but with decentralization is not possible as the nature of decentralization means that those kind of people now can create their own bubbles of hate instead of having to behave to be in the public spaces.

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

#190

Post by OfSanguineFire » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

piaste wrote: post #177

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #155

My concern with scholarship on the fediverse would be clash between academic cultures, and potential exclusion. Some fields of the humanities in some parts of the world do not have the absorbing interest in race/sexuality/gender/power that North American and Western European academia does; they look at those developments with bemusement or horror, and frequently complain about how funding gets tied to using Westerner…

This is a truly bizarre critique, because it seems completely backwards in every respect. The ability to not be beholden to the preferences of whoever runs a fedi server is, in fact, the #1 selling point of federated network in the first place. And all other alternatives are far worse in that specific aspect you bring. There is a very mild barrier to running your own Mastodon/PeerTube/etc. instance (you don't even ha…

In the real world, the #1 selling point at the moment is merely that the fediverse is not Twitter. The supposed freedom of running server instances is an exaggerated benefit. Being federated with the big instances is essential for reaching the general public with your content, and that’s important for any academics doing pop-sci outreach. Moreover, as the other person mentions, even if your server conforms in every way with Mastodon founding-generation demands, your server can get defederated from the big instances if it federates with a server they don’t like.