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The Federated App Problem

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Re: The Federated App Problem

#51

Post by eggnet »

memefrog wrote: post #29
7e wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all problematic users don’t congregate on the same server. Problematic users can pop up anywhere. However, a server could fail to moderate effectively and become a source of misinformation and trolling. That’s the benefit of federation: it ensures a minimum level of moderation quality. Servers that don’t moderate are blocked, which sets up the proper incentives.

What's misinformation? Things you don't think are true? Things the instance admin doesn't think are true? Things officially deemed untrue by the State? Or by the UN/WHO? Is is considered Misinformation if it was deemed Untrue in the past by State Officials but is now Official State Policy? We have always been at war with Eastasia. We have always recommended the wearing of masks. We have always seriously considered th…

Signal to noise ratio. When the admin of a server thinks the ratio of another server is too low, the admin will block it.

What's the definition of too low? Up to the admins of that server.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#52

Post by ajdude »

drdaeman wrote: post #48
JoshTriplett wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for both email and the Fediverse, there's an ideal answer that requires only marginally more work: have your own domain. In both cases, you don't have to host a server yourself, you can pay for email hosting and use your own domain. For email, services like Fastmail let you bring your own domain. For the Fediverse, https://togethr.party/ works well.

This works with email, but not so much with Fediverse. There is no standard or - AFAIK - even attempts domain/account sharing (unless you hack your way around), you'll have to be you@mastodon.your.name and you@lemmy.your.name and you@peertube.your.name, but not [at least not easily] you@your.name if you want to use it with multiple systems.

I had absolutely no issues with hosting my own mastodon, I pay $7 dollars a month for a VPS with backups. I'm the only user that can register on my instance so it's just me.

I'm `@aj@s.aj.immo` and I can follow and have conversations with other mastodon users of various servers seamlessly. I was just doing it this evening in a thread while tagging four different people on four different servers. When people tag me in posts it just looks like `@aj`

This is the right way to do this stuff in my opinion.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#53

Post by shadowfacts »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #49
class4behavior wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way people manage to decide whether to buy buns at the bakery on the right rather than the one on the left or donate to the NGO1 rather than NGO2 doing exactly the same, you ought to manage to judge which instance is a better fit or if it even matters in your case. >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 numero…

But why force people to categorize themselves? There's no special type of Twitter for people who are musicians, for example, or people who do airbrush paintings of squirrels. Who knows what you might want to send messages about tomorrow or next year or in half an hour? Having "themed" instances implies that you're committing to whatever that theme is, but all you want to do is share whatever is on your mind from day…

No one's forcing people to categorize themselves. You can be on a non-specific server, or you can be on one for a particular community—but even then, nothing precludes you from talking about other things. It may be the case that instance pickers/lists/descriptions aren't clear enough that you don't _have_ to limit yourself, but there's nothing forced about it.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#54

Post by tedunangst »

armchairhacker wrote: post #39

A big problem is that you don't actually see content on other instances. Also, you can't link accounts between instances (EDIT: you can post and subscribe to communities on other instances, but it's not obvious. You can't link 2 accounts on separate instances though) There are several rust instances: https://lemmy.ml/c/rust , https://programming.dev/c/rust , https://lemmyrs.org/ , and probably more. Why aren't they l…

Nobody owns rust, except as it may exist on their server. This is basically like asking why (e.g.) rust, and rustcode, and rustnews are all different subreddits and why don't the same links appear in all of them. Because they're different. If you want to see all of them, you subscribe to all of them.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#55

Post by kornhole »

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…

Mass federation is the best solution to resist mass surveillance and censorship. I never have a problem picking an instance because I just create my own instance whenever I want to use different SW. In a few minutes I can usually spin one up. and I have a few running on my SBC sitting here on my desk. I rarely ever block anyone as unfollowing is good enough.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#56

Post by Stephen304 »

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…

Problematic users do tend to congregate on certain servers because they keep getting banned from better moderated ones. Eventually they find the ones that won't ban them, and now well moderated instances have an easy target to block them wholesale. That's how you end up with instances like explodingheads.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#57

Post by jeroenhd »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #7

The problem with federation is that “HTTP browsers” simply just don’t work that way. There is nothing you can do to make Firefox or Chrome to understand what a “federated network” even is. For a browser, an “Origin” is an extremely well defined concept. You can’t just decide to amend it because that’s how you feel it ought to be. If you can’t make mastodon.social be relates to social.mastodon in the browser, then you…

There's absolutely nothing stopping browser vendors from implementing ActivityPub. I don't think the browser is the right place, but browsers also implemented automatic RSS feed detection for more than a decade so it's not exactly unprecedented either.

Browsers don't need to care, anyway. There are some problems that need solving (notably, following/interacting with users on other platforms) but there are ways to do that. I'm not quite sure why nobody has come up with a good standard for a web-activitypub: URL handler, but once everyone agrees on a format adding support for cross-server stuff should be easy.

Web browsers can access webmail clients and mailing lists just fine. They even have mailto: as a means to cross the federation gap. All of these problems are implementation issues, not conceptual impossibilities.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#58

Post by jojobas »

sxg wrote: post #36
jojobas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another Who runs the server? On what kind of funding, and how long can it last? Are you served intrusive ads? Are your a customer or a product for the people running this instance? How hard is it to run an instance yourself, and what happens if you suddenly post a video that attracts 10M views? So many questions, I know, that's too hard, gimme somethin…

At the time I signed up for Mastodon and a server, I didn't consider and wasn't presented with any of these questions/answers or other points of differentiation among servers. I guess that's part of the issue: when an ordinary user signs up for Mastodon, they're unaware of what they should even consider when picking a server. As an ordinary Mastodon user myself, I just wanted to get on the platform and start using it…

Well signing up for anything important (or anything at all really) you should consider all of that, federated or not (especially if not). Yes, it's a problem that the majority of people "just want to start using it" and wouldn't consider any of the above when exposing, I assume, their lives to strangers.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#59

Post by qball »

lopatin wrote: post #5
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…

Maybe each subcommunnity can be it's own server? Or will that not work because a user can belong to multiple communities?

>Maybe each subcommunnity can be it's own server?

The need to do this obviates the utility of federation completely.

Re: The Federated App Problem

#60

Post by ikt »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #7

The problem with federation is that “HTTP browsers” simply just don’t work that way. There is nothing you can do to make Firefox or Chrome to understand what a “federated network” even is. For a browser, an “Origin” is an extremely well defined concept. You can’t just decide to amend it because that’s how you feel it ought to be. If you can’t make mastodon.social be relates to social.mastodon in the browser, then you…

> Federated services have so, so so so, many usability issues

I like how you're talking about it like it's some abstract underground BBS style system that requires a modem, ISDN line installed, custom software running on a unix subsystem

I mean I found https://fosstodon.org/home signed up, clicked on local, liked posts, followed people, now I get a stream of posts to my home feed every day

Maybe your everyday facebook user might struggle with the idea of signing up to a site and interacting with it but I'm just not seeing why anyone who can sign up to discord or reddit would struggle with it

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