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The Federated App Problem

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Re: The Federated App Problem

#191

Post by friend_and_foe »

The "federation is unintuitive" is not an absolute problem. URLs are unintuitive. ".com"? What on earth is that? All new systems require you to learn. If the content is there people will use it.

People cluster around one or a handful of servers... that doesn't make federation pointless. People keep thinking of federation as an absolute, everything must be evenly distributed, but it isn't. Email is the perfect example. Most people use gmail or outlook. Imagine if outlook stopped sending or receiving from anyone else. The point of federation isn't to ensure even distribution of content, it is that it can and must be accessible from outside. It cannot be siloed without becoming useless. Even if 90% of users use one or two servers, the minute that server blocks outside access that server becomes a pariah.

Authentication... Why would one server let you login to an account on another server? I see the problem from a user perspective, but this is simply a misunderstanding of the architecture. In any case, hubzilla (zot protocol) has an interesting solution to this, and Nostr, which is not a federation, doesnt have this problem at all. I think both of those protocols are fantastic.

SEO, with only one engine mentioned... That sounds like a google problem. This technology is cool, if the content is there and google doesnt deliver it, it will affect them in the long run worse than the federated system.

I personally don't like the way activitypub works, or even like federation. I don't think community creation, maintenance and engagement are very good use cases for federation. I don't see why a server in a federation needs more than one community, as is the case with Lemmy, and I don't think communities, let's say HN for example, benefit from federation, because it encourages drive by engagement from people with no real commitment to the community. Reddit has this problem, spillover engagement, and the subreddit where it is not a problem aren't really communities, theyre just tags. "Memes" isn't a community, "chicagobears" is. The former could just be a tag in a federated system, the latter doesn't benefit from being in one. At best, two autonomous communities that have overlap could benefit from it, so having software that supports it is good, but on by default federation is not a good paradigm for forum like community software.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#192

Post by egypturnash »

Zak wrote: post #154
egypturnash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would all problematic users congregate on the same server? Isn’t it far more likely that you’ll have to block individual users across numerous servers to keep the platform sane? The fediverse is not one unified whole, the fediverse is a bunch of loosely-connected communities that can very easily throw up walls at a moment's notice. Admins are actively incentivised to kick problem users off. If a server becomes…

At least as big an issue for Lemmy and Kbin is community migration. A server that hosts a popular community shutting down is a very real risk, and simply telling users to switch doesn't scale. (No, not everything needs to scale, but it would be better if that did.)

I just did a quick search, and users have opened issues asking for both user and community migration on both. So they're certainly aware of it. When it will be added, I dunno - it took a while for Mastodon to get user migration, and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that community migration is a larger problem than user migration.

Here's an issue for Lemmy user/community migration: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3057

And here's one for Kbin: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/382

Lemmy seems to have a lot more contributors than Kbin, but who knows, maybe someone will dust off their god-tier 100x PHP skills and Kbin will get it first.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#193

Post by MichaelZuo »

pixl97 wrote: post #165
MichaelZuo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence a real name requirement, and/or a real money pseudonymous account requirement, seems to be pretty much the future.

Authoritarians are salivating at the idea of real name requirements.

Possibly, how does that relate to my comment?

Re: The Federated App Problem

#194

Post by cubefox »

eggnet wrote: post #189
cubefox wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem. It's enough when people choose themselves whom to follow.

It's not enough if those people's posts are flooded with low quality replies.

That seems to be only a problem for a few people with a very high follower count or for viral tweets. Both are quite rare relatively speaking.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#195

Post by cubefox »

eggnet wrote: post #190
cubefox wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Mastodon puts a second filter bubble on top of the old who-do-I-follow filter bubble. Except this additional filter bubble isn't controlled by yourself.

There is always a second filter bubble. In the case of non-federated sites, that filter is in the form of the policy of the site and also the algorithms used to sort feeds and replies. With federated solutions, users have a choice.

They have a choice? Is it transparent for average users what is withheld from them and where? And where their own posts are withheld? If no, they don't really have a choice. If such a choice even exists.

Twitter is fairly lightly moderated I think, and the "following" tab gives a raw timeline.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#196

Post by Frondo »

cubefox wrote: post #181
Frondo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be an assumption in your writing that people should use social media to challenge themselves, be exposed to different views, to "discourse" and so on. Nearly everyone I know via social media wants to hang out with their friends, not debate people. Whether something is an echo chamber is sort of beside their goal, they want to have fun. If one seeks out something that explicitly isn't an echo chamber, I…

The problem is that Mastodon puts a second filter bubble on top of the old who-do-I-follow filter bubble. Except this additional filter bubble isn't controlled by yourself.

I'm not being snarky--in the context of people wanting a place to make jokes and have fun with their friends, how is that a problem?

Re: The Federated App Problem

#197

Post by kazinator »

sxg wrote: post #4

I agree with the premise of the article. I’m a new Mastodon user trying to give the platform an honest shot, but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social? If I’m forced to choose another server, is that choice actually meaningful? I feel like I’m randomly picking between Hachyderm and TechHub.io and others. One advantag…

> Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social?

- Because might not be accepting new users.

- Because some other server has a local timeline that is interesting, perhaps catering to certain interests.

- Geographic: it may be closer to you.

- Language restrictions. You want to toot in certain languages, but some instances are English (or whatever) only.

- Some instances run hacked software with useful features.

> why would all problematic users congregate on the same server?

Because they behave in a way that gets them banned in other servers.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#198

Post by kazinator »

jojobas wrote: post #125
burnished wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isnt a caveat so much as a fearure

Imagine being unable to email someone because he holds an opinion that was the only one possible some 15 years ago, and think again.

Bzzt. The article is wrong; e-mail isn't federated. It's decentralized.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#199

Post by mariusor »

assbuttbuttass wrote: post #173
mariusor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept that you get wrong is that nobody mirrors content. Servers receive the content from the one of the original content creator, if they exist in its recipients list. Public content usually is distributed to all servers that the original server knows about. However it's always a PUSH of the content.

How is that different from mirroring? I just meant the same content is available on multiple domains.

To me they are entirely different, mirroring represents a pull model, what ActivityPub does is (mostly) push based.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#200

Post by cubefox »

Frondo wrote: post #196
cubefox wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Mastodon puts a second filter bubble on top of the old who-do-I-follow filter bubble. Except this additional filter bubble isn't controlled by yourself.

I'm not being snarky--in the context of people wanting a place to make jokes and have fun with their friends, how is that a problem?

It's probably not, but it isn't on Twitter or so either.
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