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Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

matduggan.com

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Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#181

Post by xigoi »

__d wrote: post #167
xigoi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, obviously you’re not going to be on a platform you dislike. I have signed up for Mastodon several times, but always ended up finding the instance dependency off-putting. I wish for a protocol where the instance mostly doesn’t matter and you can trivially switch to a different one, like with e-mail.

How is ActivityPub instance migration worse than switching email providers?

E-mail providers allow you to use a custom domain, so if the one you’re using suddenly goes away, you can just point your DNS records at the new one and that’s it. If the ActivityPub instance you’re using suddenly goes away, you can say goodbye to your account.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#182

Post by xigoi »

philistine wrote: post #162
xigoi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is a federated service, like e-mail. Would you use an e-mail server where the admin reads messages delivered to your inbox and deletes the ones they don’t like?

Mastodon is exactly like email. Try running a nazi newsletter off of Gmail and see what happens.

Gmail, maybe. There are a plenty of providers that respect your privacy and don’t read your e-mails.

Also, I’d like to see if anyone has ever been banned from Gmail for sending an e-mail saying that hating all men is not nice.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#183

Post by robinsonb5 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #177
robinsonb5 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds really good - though obviously less automated than what I had in mind. What's needed is something with less friction - which could be achieved using a browser extension - but also needs something to prevent shilling and other forms of abuse. (Or, more to the point, a method by which any user who shills can be easily canned by other users.)

> though obviously less automated than what I had in mind. What's needed is something with less friction - which could be achieved using a browser extension Yes, I completely agree with that but I suppose making a browser extension (for linkhut) is infinitely easier than the previous attempt and something which is more easily doable There is already an extension which can do the first part of adding a website into li…

> I am not quite able to think of what you mean by that but I do think that there are some ways to do it but its a problem that internet faces at large of abuse in general and its a careful line between privacy and abuse.

My main goal is that my deciding that someone's recommendations aren't valuable to me should only affect the recommendations seen by people with similar interests to mine. There's not as much objective truth about what's valuable content and what isn't as many people would like to believe: I have no interest in seeing some influencer-led product recommendation but my niece very well might want to see that. Meanwhile she'd have no interest at all in some deep-dive into TMDS signalling and TERC4 codes!

My gut feeling is that, if we could get that system right, it would effectively "shadow ban" (for want of a better term) anyone whose content you don't want to see - but just for you and (to a lesser extent) those who hold your recommendations in good standing.

(I should also mention that my original idea here wasn't so much about discovering new stuff as getting an at-a-glance idea of whether a given page has high-quality content or just low-effort surface-level SEO-farming slop - in an age where the former is being drowned out by the latter.)

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#184

Post by cykros »

boriskourt wrote: post #10

I’ve had an awesome experience the last five years running instances for me and friends. So many nice interactions. I recommend running an instance for people you know well. It can still connect to everyone else, but you have your own little corner to feel more connected in.

Everyone else, as long as they don't defederate your server as petty tyrants.

Which has always been the drawback of the Fediverse.

Nostr has delivered what I had hoped to get from the Fediverse: actually decentralized, censorship proof social media (and then some), wherein you actually maintain full ownership of your own identity (as it's a keypair, not an account). Where if you get banned from one relay or other, you just move to a new one, and everything comes with you. Where if nobody wants to platform you, you can literally run your own relay on your PHONE and stay connected to the network.

And yea, there is at least one bridge between Nostr and Mastodon (Mostr), so you don't even have to give up on talking to your Mastodon buddies.

That it also does so much more than social media is icing on the cake. Really leverages its existence as a protocol rather than a platform to use the Internet as it was always meant to be.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#185

Post by cykros »

brookst wrote: post #71
darqis wrote: post #33

The Fediverse has one problem, concentration of users on few instances, mastodon.social being the largest. And cancel culture. Highly politically motivated cancel culture. What right do they believe to have to dictate to their users what the can and can't read? That should be solely in the user's hand. The irony of writing this in HN is ... whatever the right word is Also, fragmentation and visibility. It's neigh imp…

I’m pretty close to being a free speech absolutist (side-eye to the guy who ruined the term), but IMO one of the worst things to happen to free speech is this conflation of “right to speak” with “right to be heard”. People have a right to ignore speech, and to establish standards for speech on their private property. If there is market demand for a service that filters out content based on ideology, whether mastodon.…

"Market demand."

If I've got a profile on let's say, mastodon.social, and I have a following, and people I follow across other servers, and then mastodon.social decides that due to a few people over on outrageousposts.social, I can no longer access their content, nor they mine, I am left with exactly two choices: write that portion of my network off as a complete loss, or create a completely new profile on a new instance, and build up a new network from scratch.

That anyone puts up with this state of affairs suggests to me that people just don't know Nostr solved this problem 3 years ago.

I get that compared to Facebook, Twitter, etc, Mastodon does seem like an improvement even with this state of affairs -- after all, you at least CAN just create a new profile rather than getting booted off of the network entirely. It was handy for a few years. But a better alternative has been created, and I for one won't be looking back.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#186

Post by cykros »

scoofy wrote: post #157
croes wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Why where all the others on the same instance blocked? They did nothing and their only connection to me is we are registered on the same instance. BTW You have the right to speak, not the right to be heard is nonsense. By that logic even North Korea has freedom speech. Freedom of speech just doesn’t mean unlimited reach and limitless speech

In North Korea, you can’t start your own instance to say what you want. They will still jail you for what you say. That’s the actual point. The fact that other people want to be on a system that blocks you is their business, not yours. The point of the fediverse is you get to choose your own censorship.

If you got to choose your own censorship it'd be nice. As it stands, other instances can decide to defederate with what you're on. Sometimes, even knocking off servers you had connectivity with that were indirect.

The Fediverse is to Nostr what the legacy telephone system was to the Internet.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#187

Post by rsynnott »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #143
krapp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The only people I've ever heard complain about the slight difficulty are techies Because everyone else has never heard of mastodon or this fediverse shit. Of course you don't hear complaints from people who don't know what it is. > I'll take normies over There are no "normies" as you call them using federated services. They don't want to need to think about server to server federation rules. They want a global cent…

I suppose define 'normies'? There are plenty of non-techies, but they're often primarily using it for a specific community.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#188

Post by rsynnott »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #155
krapp wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those differences are not so complex and confusing that you need deep technical skill to figure them out. You can follow anyone from any instance (per the rules, if you're on someone else's instance) or follow hashtags or use relays if you run your own instance (for which numerous services exist.) The most difficult part of Mastodon is linking to other instances but even that just involves using the search bar.

> Those differences are not so complex and confusing One might ask why Bluesky has more sign-ups and monthly active users acquired in less time even without the facestagram login power funnel that Threads has. And of course Threads has waaaaaayyy more. The evidence of what people want from a social media service is right in front of us and very clear. This reads to me very much like the timeless words of Seymour Skin…

Bluesky is, as the article mentioned, basically trying to be old-Twitter. More people want that than want the fediverse. That doesn't mean that nobody wants the fediverse, and they won't necessarily appeal to quite the same audience.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#189

Post by idiotsecant »

xigoi wrote: post #114
idiotsecant wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'cancel culture' is when you decline to federate content users don't want, I guess?

No, it’s when you decline to federate content that some users don’t want (and many do).

If the users wanted the content it's accessible, I'm not sure what your issue is. Do you use mastadon or is this a feelings issue?

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#190

Post by boriskourt »

cykros wrote: post #184
boriskourt wrote: post #10

I’ve had an awesome experience the last five years running instances for me and friends. So many nice interactions. I recommend running an instance for people you know well. It can still connect to everyone else, but you have your own little corner to feel more connected in.

Everyone else, as long as they don't defederate your server as petty tyrants. Which has always been the drawback of the Fediverse. Nostr has delivered what I had hoped to get from the Fediverse: actually decentralized, censorship proof social media (and then some), wherein you actually maintain full ownership of your own identity (as it's a keypair, not an account). Where if you get banned from one relay or other, yo…

Then I don’t really care about them if they don’t want to hang out with me. It works as intended.
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