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Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

matduggan.com

81–90 of 217 posts

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#81

[flagged]

But Elon Musk literally made the website unusable because now it no longer shows profiles in chronological order and posts are now essentially just screenshots. 12 years of using twitter without an account and in a few months he made the site completely unusable. Ignoring anything else this is a massive change that was implemented shortly after he took over and now I cannot use the site anymore.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#82
post #71
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.…

one of the worst things to happen to free speech is this conflation of “right to speak” with “right to be heard”

Thank you for this tight summary. As a greybeard, I'll note this conflation was present from very early on, and it was partly responsible for the heat death of Usenet. No amount of logical, prepared rebuttal budges people from the idea that the two things are the same. The conflation might be a human tendency, a cognitive bias that almost everyone has.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#83
post #71
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.…

I have no problem getting blocked but my only block on the Fediverse was accompanied by a block for all users on the same instance as me.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#84
post #81

[flagged]

But Elon Musk literally made the website unusable because now it no longer shows profiles in chronological order and posts are now essentially just screenshots. 12 years of using twitter without an account and in a few months he made the site completely unusable. Ignoring anything else this is a massive change that was implemented shortly after he took over and now I cannot use the site anymore.

That's not been my experience at all. I only view the "Follow" list because I don't care about the "algorithm". I keep my follow list pretty tight and am pretty aggressive about removing people that post too frequently or without focus. It works just fine for me, but I'm very casual in my usage.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#85
post #71
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.…

[flagged]

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#86
post #71
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.…

why not let people say whatever they want? you already hinted the appropriate solution which is that you don't have to listen.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#87
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Elon Musk literally made the website unusable because now it no longer shows profiles in chronological order and posts are now essentially just screenshots. 12 years of using twitter without an account and in a few months he made the site completely unusable. Ignoring anything else this is a massive change that was implemented shortly after he took over and now I cannot use the site anymore.

That's not been my experience at all. I only view the "Follow" list because I don't care about the "algorithm". I keep my follow list pretty tight and am pretty aggressive about removing people that post too frequently or without focus. It works just fine for me, but I'm very casual in my usage.

I don’t have a follow list because I never had a twitter account. Over 12 years of using the site without an account and now that isn’t possible.

Re: Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse

#90

I just tried to check out the Fediverse and found utter confusion. I'm not saying its bad-- I'm saying I am bewildered. There are communities I can join, but I can't tell how I should choose a community. I could find no way to search for communities that might be a fit. Apparently there are a lot of different kinds of social media under the broad banner of the Fediverse. How should I choose, and what are the implicat…

It’s a little wild to read comments like this because this was just how the Internet worked before Twitter got popular. I still get “happy birthday” emails from forums I joined 20+ years ago.

I still host one of those 20+ year old forums. The Fediverse is different. With forums (and HN/Reddit) you immediately had good sense of them being for you or not. With the Fediverse to have to commit to servers and even then you don't know if they are right for you unless you try and spend time customizing your feeds/follows. It's a lot of work and you don't know if it will pay off. I tried again today and so much of it has no focus at all. It reminds me of this exchange from the Good Place TV show:

Chidi Anagonye: So, making decisions isn't necessarily my strong suit.

Michael: I know that, buddy. You-you once had a panic attack at a make-your-own sundae bar.

Chidi Anagonye: There were too many toppings, and very early in the process, you had to commit to a chocolate palette or a fruit palette. And if you couldn't decide, you wound up with kiwi-Junior Mint-raisin, and it just ruins everyone's night.

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