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Flipboard Begins to Federate

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Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#101

Post by Dalewyn »

esperent wrote: post #90
simonw wrote: post #6

I'm excited about this - and about Threads too. I've been on Mastodon for just over a year now. It works really surprisingly well, especially considering it's stitched together from so many independent, non-profit open source instances. But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I'd love to see efforts from organizations like Flipboard, and Threads, and Automattic make an impact here. I want to b…

> But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I made several attempts to get onboard with Mastodon about a year ago when I stopped using Twitter. I used a tool to copy over as many people I follow on Twitter to Mastodon. Technically, it's fine. The issue I have is that it felt exactly the same as Twitter, and I always disliked Twitter. However, Twitter had reached a network effect threshold where…

I doubt the specific communication medium is going to impact the conversations therein much if you're talking with more or less the same group of people on any of them.

Or to put it another way: You interacted with people who post hot takes on Mysterious Twitter X, you went to the Federation of Mastodons and followed the same people who post hot takes. Now you're saying all you get are hot takes on both of them. Is anyone supposed to be surprised?

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#102

Post by Reason077 »

latentcall wrote: post #97
simonw wrote: post #6

I'm excited about this - and about Threads too. I've been on Mastodon for just over a year now. It works really surprisingly well, especially considering it's stitched together from so many independent, non-profit open source instances. But... it's still not easy enough for non-nerds to get onboard. I'd love to see efforts from organizations like Flipboard, and Threads, and Automattic make an impact here. I want to b…

As a nerd, Mastodon wasn’t useful for me. All of my friends are on Snapchat or Instagram, so my mastodon social account sat with zero followers, which means if I post something there is no engagement from anyone and unlikely anyone would see it. I’m not an online personality by any means, so no followers makes sense. I think Mastodon is great for people who exist online, just not so much people who exist in real life…

Presumably people will find stuff you post based on searching, keywords, etc. Some might follow you if they find your posts interesting enough?

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#103

Post by RF_Savage »

indymike wrote: post #30
apitman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who never really used XMPP, was it worse off after Google compared to before? I mean sure a ton of users lost access to XMPP after they ended support, but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place.

> but surely most of them never would have used XMPP in the first place. There was a time that Facebook messenger was XMPP and Google chat was XMPP, so there was a time it was gaining a lot of traction. Most people just think their email is email. They don't see it as using SMTP/IMAP/POP3.

WhatsApp was also XMPP and I had friends using it with 3rd pary clients.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#104

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

threeseed wrote: post #52
egypturnash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time you could follow someone's public Facebook posts from any RSS reader you liked, whether or not you had an account. Now the only way to follow someone's Facebook posts is to have an account there. And Facebook will probably only show you a small fraction of the posts by the people you actually follow, sorted by what Meta thinks is most likely to make Meta money. If you trust Meta to not follow a simil…

You can't blame Meta for shutting down RSS given how many companies e.g. Cambridge Analytica abused open data access features for nefarious purposes. It is still possible to access the data just via the official Graph API.

Open data like RSS is by design intended to be used by anyone for any purpose, yes, including analytics. If you aren't ok with that, what's next you want to move to some closed garden, websites?

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#105

Post by exodust »

sigmar wrote: post #91
calamari4065 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The present moral outrage is over the Threads ToS stating that if your account interacts with or receives a Threads post in any way, Meta will scrape all available data about your account to build a shadow profile of you for tracking and advertising purposes. I'm not even paraphrasing, they're very explicit about it. Which is exactly the thing people were afraid of when Threads was first announced. But really the cor…

>But don't downplay the extreme seriousness of the debate. If you post a profile publicly on the internet, people/companies can easily scrape it. Regardless of what is in the threads ToS and whether you're federating with threads... am I missing something?

Perhaps it's "all available data" causing concern. All available data includes the stuff that isn't public and can't be scraped, such as your IP address.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#106

Post by SiempreViernes »

iteratethis wrote: post #80
rchaud wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself. Or you just create a different account on any one of the several Mastodon instances out there. Mastodon doesn't have the ability to ban you from all of the fediverse. It doesn't take away choice, it simply gives an additional option to the instance admin. Don't like it? Start your own instance.

This is the default "just move to another instance" take of Mastodon. It's impractical if not hostile. It masks the reality of the situation which is that instance moderators have too much of a say in what individual users get to see or do. This attitude is exactly why there's a trend towards ever larger instances.

> It masks the reality of the situation which is that instance moderators have too much of a say in what individual users get to see or do.

Uh, instance mods don't have more power than admins on other platforms. dang can Thanos snap you from existence on this platform at any moment: how is that for having a say on what you can do?

What you complain about is that you hear a lot more about the moderation on the fediverse than you do on HN or Youtube, despite Youtube moderation practices impacting a lot more people than the sum total of what happens on the fediverse.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#107

Post by SiempreViernes »

iteratethis wrote: post #37
SiempreViernes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean it "takes away choice"? Did you mean "imposes annoying bureaucracy"? Because I have a hard time seeing how forcing people to make a choice is taking away choice. Also, the people who have accounts away from the big instances have actively declined to use them, so they are clearly more likely to move to some other mid scale instance if they need to migrate than to head for the big ones.

When your instance moderator makes the choice to block Threads at domain level, you're fully blocked from seeing any Threads content or interacting with any Threads user. It could be that as an instance user you like this decision, but it does take away your choice to moderate Threads users and content yourself.

The service admins implementing broad blocks to some off site resource is not unique to the fediverse, but the federated nature is there explicitly to mitigate that sort of problem by allowing you to move to another instance.

So on the fediverse your choices is: endure, switch instance, leave service. This is one more option than on other platforms.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#108

Post by rusk »

threeseed wrote: post #50
nocoolnametom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem comes with "Extend." "We've got this new awesome feature, and we asked nicely if it could be put into the ActivityPub docs but they turned us down/didn't act fast enough. So we're proud to announce MetaPub, a superset of ActivityPub that will still communicate with regular ActivityPub, but to get the best and latest features you'll have to implement MetaPub in your clients. Or just use Threads, where it's…

This ignores the role of regulators e.g. EU. ActivityPub is the first glimpse at a future where social media networks are interoperable over a common standard similar to mail. And from recent history the period we are in is one in where governments are looking for open standards as a hedge against big tech. The idea that Meta would deliberately harm a standard, shut down competition and invite anti-competition invest…

> similar to mail

and Telecomms. Don’t forget Telecomms, an area where the EU hasn’t been shy about dipping it’s oar in.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#109

Post by iteratethis »

calamari4065 wrote: post #87
iteratethis wrote: post #29

Threads is also testing federation, it supposedly is close to being enabled. Interesting dynamic is that Mastodon's community is such a sour bunch that likely most instance owners will block federation with Threads at the domain level. Because "Meta evil". This takes away choice at the user level. Normal people that just want to connect with people and content no matter where it is hosted, which is the very purpose o…

The present moral outrage is over the Threads ToS stating that if your account interacts with or receives a Threads post in any way, Meta will scrape all available data about your account to build a shadow profile of you for tracking and advertising purposes. I'm not even paraphrasing, they're very explicit about it. Which is exactly the thing people were afraid of when Threads was first announced. But really the cor…

"But really the core issue is that most people on mastodon are there specifically to avoid corporate social media."

This statement cuts to the heart of the matter and is at best a half-truth. "Most people" on Mastodon are Twitter refugees. Well over 80% only joined after November 2022. This is a fundamentally different group from the much smaller longtime users.

I do agree that the hardcore users dictate the culture and that this culture emphasizes privacy, safety-ism, is anti-corporate, and so on.

That's fine, but this same mindset pretty much ensures that the status quo of the Fediverse (or Mastodon) remains: niche, tiny, anti-growth.

Re: Flipboard Begins to Federate

#110

Post by iteratethis »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #106
iteratethis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the default "just move to another instance" take of Mastodon. It's impractical if not hostile. It masks the reality of the situation which is that instance moderators have too much of a say in what individual users get to see or do. This attitude is exactly why there's a trend towards ever larger instances.

> It masks the reality of the situation which is that instance moderators have too much of a say in what individual users get to see or do. Uh, instance mods don't have more power than admins on other platforms. dang can Thanos snap you from existence on this platform at any moment: how is that for having a say on what you can do? What you complain about is that you hear a lot more about the moderation on the fediver…

"Uh, instance mods don't have more power than admins on other platforms"

False. Instance mods have 100% power over you, which is not true for other multi-community platforms. HN is not a multi-community platform so a poor comparison.

To compare with Reddit: a sub admin can ban your account from a sub, but it cannot do anything with your account at network level. A sub admin cannot decide what you see or do not see outside of the sub. A sub admin cannot nuke your account. A sub admin cannot nuke your followers.

A Mastodon admin can do all of those things to your account.

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