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The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

berk.es

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Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#191

Post by berkes »

phoe-krk wrote: post #6

> (...) the fediverse, the network of mastodon servers, (...) This sentence at the very start already makes no sense. The above snippet makes as much sense as calling Web a network of nginx and Apache servers since nginx and Apache combined serve the majority of all web traffic. There are services like Pleroma, Friendica, Misskey, Pixelfed, Write.as, PeerTube, and other Activity-Pub-speaking software which are NOT Ma…

You are right. But I deliberately kept this simple. I know I'm technically incorrect. My initial version had a whole paragraph on this. Then I moved it to a footnote. Then scrapped it entirely.

It matters exactly nothing for the point of the post. It's entirely irrelevant for the story.

I know that "technically correct is the best kind of correct". And you are technically entirely correct here. But it still doesn't matter.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#192

Post by berkes »

doener wrote: post #100

I think the author idealizes a bit strongly here. Internet infrastructure is not a garden, so I don't think the metaphor fits. And the exponentially growing requirements for hardware and power consumption are at least a real challenge - although certainly not as extreme as with proof-of-work blockchains.

I really tried to convey your exact point. That gardening is inneffient. That I'm probably spending more CO2 because I have a rake. My neighbor buys a rake. The other neighbor buys one, etc. All with a footprint. That farmer producing millions of zucchinis probably has one rake. A tiny footprint, compared .

But energy and Co2 make the article even more convoluted. Bitcoin (PoW) even more so. And there's a major difference. In which PoW deliberately burns energy. Whereas the fediverse at least tries to burn as little as possible while remaining decentralized.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#193

Post by irusensei »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #139
irusensei wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. I don’t want to sound lazy but can you give me a time stamp to the relevant part? Thanks in advance.

https://youtu.be/vnciCz83t70?t=878

That sounds great for verification. It would be great if users could automatically follow that pubkey across other nodes in case the pubkey owner decides or is forced to migrate.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#194

Post by irusensei »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #130
irusensei wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who moderates offshore content Whoever is in the pilot seat and that’s beautiful. Although if things start to get a bit too edgy we might see entire servers blacklisted from store apps. Also server-wide block done by administrators. If I’m not mistaken the largest mastodon instance is Pawoo.net and that’s basically a japanese board for posting controversial hentai artwork. Pawoo.net is blacklisted from most popular…

I'd be surprised to learn that it's blacklisted from any feed readers. That illustrates the usefulness of separating reader app and hosting.

Pretty sure it happened to Gab nodes. In this case justified (and probably with a bit of push from Apple and Google) but the precedent exists.

Slightly related Google blocked Element a few years ago because something posted on a federated instance. I think they strong handed matrix.org to implement moderation on the default servers.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#195

Post by irusensei »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #164
irusensei wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who moderates offshore content Whoever is in the pilot seat and that’s beautiful. Although if things start to get a bit too edgy we might see entire servers blacklisted from store apps. Also server-wide block done by administrators. If I’m not mistaken the largest mastodon instance is Pawoo.net and that’s basically a japanese board for posting controversial hentai artwork. Pawoo.net is blacklisted from most popular…

> Although if things start to get a bit too edgy we might see entire servers blacklisted from store apps I believe - although have not verified lately - that Tusky will not connect to some specific instances that host degenerate people. I use Fedilab instead.

Gab comes to mind, before they forked the code to become their own thing. The Tusky case was notable because the app rickrolled users trying to log in to Gab.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#196

Post by FormerBandmate »

tedunangst wrote: post #187
kazinator wrote: post #162

Here is a UI issue that could be a deal-breaker for many would be Mastodon users: broken search. When I type a hashtag into the search box of any given instance, I get useless search results. For instance if I search for #lisp on fosstodon, I get some hash tags that begin with #lisp, not #lisp itself. They all have very low activity, from several years ago. If I do the same on another instance like mstdn.ca, I get no…

Mastodon search is intentionally broken as some sort of abuse deterrent. Like you can't search for Fetterman and then reply to every post with an angry rant. Of course, also makes it impossible to find good content. This is somehow considered a feature.

It’s a feature in the same way desktop Linux’s reliance on commands and confusing user interface is a feature. It stops anyone but a group of cliquey antisocial coders who developed it from using it, and make sure it’s exactly perfect for their needs. They are then shocked when corporate alternatives that actually try to serve a general userbase (as well as having much more resources) take over everything.

It’s practically the history of open-source, unfortunately. Mozilla was able to resist that for a while but is unfortunately falling into the same trap

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#197

Post by lifeisstillgood »

thrown_22 wrote: post #168
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (limited) understanding of the book is that basically during the 19C in Britain, poor uneducated (and unproductive) people died off leaving space for the middle class to grow. Which leads to the conclusion that killing the ooor leads to economic growth. As a thesis it may be short of ... something. I may have misunderstood the tweet of the review of the article based on the book. Anyway, my general conclusion is t…

Rather the opposite actually. During the 19th century for reasons that have nothing to do with demography the British learned how to use the poor who would have died to do productive work instead. Then for reasons that have everything to do with child mortality people stopped having 7 children per woman _before_ contraception became widely available. This is the reason why France is smaller than Germany today. Their…

Yeah your approach is the more usual commonly accepted idea - poor people stopped dying moved to cities got educated became a productive middle class.

The above quoted book tried to argue that the poor dying continued and the middle classes of victorian briton had more kids and hence took over - a sort of poorly argued eugenics wrapped in the usual "it's culture innit" argument.

However Like I say I have only read enough of the book to decide it's in my reading list only after I discover immortality.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#198

Post by kazinator »

tedunangst wrote: post #187
kazinator wrote: post #162

Here is a UI issue that could be a deal-breaker for many would be Mastodon users: broken search. When I type a hashtag into the search box of any given instance, I get useless search results. For instance if I search for #lisp on fosstodon, I get some hash tags that begin with #lisp, not #lisp itself. They all have very low activity, from several years ago. If I do the same on another instance like mstdn.ca, I get no…

Mastodon search is intentionally broken as some sort of abuse deterrent. Like you can't search for Fetterman and then reply to every post with an angry rant. Of course, also makes it impossible to find good content. This is somehow considered a feature.

But the issue I'm getting at is completely separate from that.

And anyway you can search for users by substring and then follow them and harass them.

Like in my example whereby I was searching for a dog and it found the user "Musk F___ Dogs".

I think the restriction is on searching for posts by substring of content.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#199

Post by anotherrandom »

> ___ is inefficient but that's a good tradeoff

Everyone who knows that a technology where decentralization is one of the requirements will know this, and they will also know that this is a required tradeoff when it comes to decentralization - no free lunch.

A lot of people skewer blockchain-based tech for ineffeciency, but not a lot of those people realize it's supposed to be like that.

I'm glad that people are at least starting to realize that a lot of decentralized tech has the prerequisite of forfeiting efficiency.

Re: The Fediverse is inefficient but that's a good trade-off

#200

Post by ImaCake »

irusensei wrote: post #52
ImaCake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit dubious to trust twitter with my data anyway? Mastodon at least is not trying to shove politics and celebrities down my throat.

Two wrongs do not make a right. Enjoy Mastodon but be conscious of your federated benevolent dictator if you are not running your own instance.

No, but OP was arguing that lack of trust was reason not to use Mastodon. But if both Twitter and Mastodon both have the same trust issues then their argument is moot.
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