@rolle I am part of the generation that knew Jabber, that was happy to see Google embrace the Jabber/XMPP protocol: anyone with a gmail address had an XMPP instant messaging account interoperable with all other servers.
And one day gmail closed to other servers. Most users, already on Google, then asked others to create a gmail account to continue communicating.
I don't want to go through that again. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish", again.
Elon Musk is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about its spam bot accounts.
While #YouTube, #Meta, and #TikTok are taking action to combat falsehoods about the climate, enforcement is lacking. But Elon Musk's X (formerly #Twitter) is doing an even worse job, a new report shows.
This is the line that gets passed around among the pro-federation-with-Facebook crowd, that #Fedipact is a violation of individual choice. That's bullshit. Not only are people still free to exercise their agency by switching instances, it's a goddamn lie to say that admins are joining the pact without input from their users or even against their wishes.
You are all fearmongering about being forced to switch instances. Yeah it's a PITA but you're not being violated. Like come the fuck on. Argue in good faith for a change!
And fashjacketing people whose PRIMARY concern is that Facebook does not moderate hate speech is offensive bullshit. None of your excuses make that particular lie remotely OK.
#StrawMan: nobody claimed that every Facebook/Instagram user is a bad person. The argument is that the company is evil and has evil policies and will do evil things based on a long history of doing evil things.
"and I want to be able to communicate with people on #threads of my choosing."
It is literally impossible for someone to take that choice away from you. Suppose Threads were to arrive in the Fediverse tomorrow. Worst case scenario: your admin defederates with them immediately and you have to migrate instances. You don't even have any pre-existing connections with them to lose. All your follows are ported. Stop fearmongering about this!
"I don't want somebody else deciding this for me."
#Barcelona, #Meta's Twitter competitor, will be ready by summer.
And lest you believe #ActivityPub integration was just some rumour, think again. In a slide, Meta confirms that Barcelona will indeed be decentralized and will be compatible with Mastodon.
Everyone who thought that AT protocol would easily win over ActivityPub, and that #Bluesky would kill Mastodon just because a few influencers joined doesn't understand the sheer marketing power and pull that Meta has at its disposal.
But believe me, I'm not exactly cheering on Meta here. Generally, where Meta goes, shenanigans happen. I simply don't think Meta is capable of releasing a product without dark patterns.
Nevertheless, I don't think the Fediverse is even close to preparing for what will happen once Barcelona starts federating.
last year i discovered that law360.com required a "professional email address" to sign up for free, which is how i came to be the proud owner of fartbag.lol
@molly0xfff I am the equal-parts-proud-and-ashamed owner of fisting.horse for the same reason. the domain was the result of trying to come up with the worst possible thing to have on a business card (without being outright offensive)
I've decided to ACTIVELY decouple from Twitter: Every day, I go back and DM at least 10 of my followers, telling them I've moved here and to follow me here instead (I remove them as followers after that DM). A number of them have set up accounts as a result.
Please do the same if you're more active here than on #Twitter That's how you can help the #twittermigration
@TNLNYC I left my account over there up for about 7 months encouraging others to exit the platform, then finally left. I’m glad I’m out of there now.
Welcome to Mastodon!
Point blank, a mass Fediblock isn't going to work with #Meta.
The cold truth is that people will use #Barcelona whether it federates or not. Even if it fails, Barcelona will probably have more users out of the gate than almost every project save Mastodon. Hell, it will probably eclipse #Bluesky too.
And even if you convince every server to defederate -- which you won't -- this will not be a PR coup for the Fediverse. Newspaper headlines won't blare "Fediverse successfully resists Meta." Instead, they will probably follow @gruber take with "Open source zealots complain that an open protocol is open."
Again, as I've said countless times, I'm not saying you should federate with Barcelona or any Meta-owned property. If you want, defederate. The joy of the Fediverse is freedom of association.
But a mass Fediblock doesn't solve a few important problems with Meta, and perhaps makes them worse.
The most critical problem is that Meta users need to migrate away from Meta-owned social networks. Until now, a migration path has simply been unfeasible to most. But when Barcelona gets launched, it is possible that many of them will become aware of a greater Fediverse.
How to build that awareness? By interacting with them through services beyond Barcelona.
This approach works. I've interacted with many Mastodon users through services beyond Mastodon, and this has resulted in adoption of other Fediverse software. #Calckey is a case in point.
However, there's a bigger problem concerning Meta: Fediverse replacements for Meta-owned social networks aren't getting mass adoption. And it's not because these apps aren't good.
#Pixelfed is an #Instagram replacement. It is also one of the slickest apps on the Fediverse. Yet, Pixelfed only has 150,000 registered accounts.
#Friendica is a #Facebook replacement. It's been around since 2010. It is a mature product that does many things very well, but Friendica only has 17,000 registered accounts.
The software is great but we are failing to effectively market the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Now I'm trying my darnedest to change this, and so are many people. But facts are facts. Fediverse alternatives to Meta are a blip on the radar.
Refusing to federate with Barcelona won't change this. How do I know?
Because we don't federate now, and the status quo remains intact.
Meanwhile, Meta is practically gifting Pixelfed and Friendica an opportunity for federation, and it would be foolish to not consider broader implications.
How is it that more people aren't considering this opportunity?
Dare I say that most people -- including devs -- suffer from myopia concerning what the Fediverse is. The Fediverse is not Mastodon, and it is wrong to view the Fediverse solely through the eyes of Mastodon.
And I'll go further: by focusing Barcelona on text, I suspect that Meta is likewise making the same mistake of viewing the Fediverse as a "Twitter killer".
What they may not be considering is that the Fediverse might be a "Meta killer" too. And connecting Barcelona to the Fediverse is opening a can of worms Meta hasn't entirely considered yet.
If Barcelona is indeed text-based, what will happen when a Barcelona user encounters Pixelfed and asks, "Why does this post show reels? And why can't I do the same?"
Believe me, this is the kind of content that triggers migration.
We need to think bigger than Fediblock. Yes, for your own mental health and safety, you may not want to federate with Barcelona. However, there needs to also be a means for Barcelona users to encounter content outside Barcelona.
Perhaps there needs to be "lobby" servers that help Barcelona users enter the greater Fediverse -- helping them make the switch beyond Meta.
1/ The point of EEE is to grow from the fediverse by siphoning it. But how is that going to work? WHO would ever drop mastodon to join Meta?? Meta doesn’t even need to siphon anything, they have 1 Billion users already. The 1.2M of monthly-active fediverse users mean nothing to them. There is nothing to siphon.
This is what’s going to happen: They give us access to the ActivityPub API, cool. They drop the access, ow too bad, guess we’ll continue without Meta. They cannot absorb 1.2M users when those 1.2M users care more about their values than about growth.
Meta isn’t going to absorb the fediverse, there is nothing they can do to convince us to join. EEE cannot work here. It won’t work.
2/ No, the journalists already know matodon. I don’t know if they’ell understand the fediverse, but "barcelona ≠ mastodon" and "barcelona is compatible with mastodon" isn’t hard to understand.
3/ P92 is literally IG. Advertized as such, same accounts, same follower/following list, same blocklist/blocked keywords, same everything. Mastodon users will not migrate back to Meta. They can defederate it won’t change a thing. They don’t even need our userbase, we’re a dwarf next to Meta.
The reverse is not true, we can drain a lot of users from Meta to mastodon/pixelfeed. Not all 1 Billion, but a decent amount and more than they can drain from us.
4/ This is not true. A lot of people migrate out of mastodon. Alternatives are growing and draining users from mastodon to those alternatives.
5/ This is a good reason to work even harder and make the fediverse an even better place. But when I see that bluesky is considered a good alternative, the number of features required to gain users’ interest might be actually pretty low.
6/ This is an issue. I do not envy fediverse admins.
7/ P92 is IG
8/ Speculation. And even if broken, seeing a lot (even 1% is enough) of @ user@ not-instagram is going to get them curious. People complaining about broken posts will make them curious. People complaining about Meta banning nudity will makee them curious. etc. If we don’t federate, we don’t exist, if we federate we have visibility they can see us, our messages, our complains our struggles, our values, etc.
So, part of the standards process is that we work in the open with lots of different parties.
Meta is a member of the W3C and has participated in other standards. I and other members want to make sure they have the information necessary to implement the standard well.
If Meta is implementing ActivityPub, I'd like to make sure they do it in the most interoperable way possible, so all our Free and Open Source software stays compatible with it.
The response to this thread on Bluesky seems to be, “Saying that regular people should be able to afford a BGS is like saying they should afford to operate a web search engine”.
Indeed, that’s what I’m saying.
Funny enough, the Searx project makes this possible.
@BlippyTheWonderSlug@cloudguy I've similarly deleted my accounts, but it's very clearly apparent that nothing is being fully, irretrievably removed from Twitter as it stands, if it ever was.
It’s approximately one year since the peak of the enshittification of Twitter and the big Mastodon influx. Let’s ask again: What is your main microblogging platform? Boosts welcome.
@WTL@rolle It's not a bug. Just not implemented yet. We will have to rework a lot of how our polls work to support multiple choice. We will get to it eventually.
I’m getting real “Linux on the desktop guy” vibes from the Fediverse.
Now if you don’t mind me, I’m going to edit the DNS settings of the TXT record to my domain so I can insert the proper DID value in order to make my #Bluesky handle just so.
Pitihän nyt sitten blogata tästä ronsuinstanssin (miten tämä kuulostaa niin matemaattiselta?) vaihdoksesta. Ja hyvä kysymys on nyt sitten se, että voiko tähän koko höskään luottaa.
@jonne@rolle Mutta blokkilistat saattavat riippua.
Tärkeintä on kuitenkin ymmärtää se, että instanssia valitessa et valitse vain yhteisöä, vaan myös ylläpitäjän/ylläpitäjät. Ja se tekee tästä kognitiivisesti paljon raskaampaa, kuin kadota jonnekin supersuuren, kasvottoman palvelun syövereihin.
Tätä ei lue Mastodon-oppaissa tarpeeksi selkeästi, eikä ole juuri mitään keinoa selvittää, millaisesta tiimistä on kysymys etukäteen. Ja tämä tekee vaikeaksi luottaa jatkuvuuteen.
@jonne@rolle@sivusta Joo täytyy olla mastodo.fi-puolelta laitettu mastodontti.fi estoon. Ei pysty katselemaan sen sivun kautta profiileja toisella. Ihmettelinkin kun kaikki seuraajat ei tulleetkaan siirrossa mukana uudelle instanssille ja tuoreimmalla lataamallani seurattujen listalla ei ollut yhtään tunnusta teidän palvelimelta. Hieman vanhemmalla varmuuskopiolla oli lähes 30, onneksi olivat tallessa.
Tuo onkin tämän softan ehkä vihamielisin ominaisuus, että moderointitoimenpiteet voi johtaa käyttäjien lukuisten kontaktien häviämiseen. Ilmeisesti tuolla kansainvälisemmillä palvelimilla yhden ylläpitäjän hetken mielijohde johti vasta samanlaisiin harmeihin.
@mariyadelano In the late 90s or early 2000s, I noticed that some clever spammer was using a random dictionary approach to generate spoofed names. So rather than hotgirlxx291037 I'd get messages from Binder Q. Thrift or Farrier S. Crawling (I made these up, but that was the pattern they followed). I started keeping a .txt document of ones I found the most amusing. That file is long gone, but I still remember the name that inspired me to create in the first place: Rampaging O. Salsas
If you see an account named thegx.ca/forum (thegx@…) pop up on your servers please suspend it. Some bastard has been setting up spam accounts all over. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve blocked and it’s getting annoying.
Right, well, since the charming person who owns thegx.ca saw it fit to reply so kindly, I’ve gone ahead and reported their domain to both their domain registrar – abuse@promopeople.com – via email and to their web host – https://www.hostpapa.com/ – via chat – “Thank you very much for letting us know about this Aral. I will report it to the appropiate team so we can take care of it”.
When yall wake up in the morning what app do you check first?
Reply and say why if you want.
Preciate if you could boost so we get a good response.
Thank you
Jaden xxx #SocialMedia#Social
@Jaden2 Honestly it's usually ESS Mobile to clock into work. If not that and I use my phone before heading to work, it's either Mona for Mastodon cause notification, or like, oh yeah, Sleep Watch! I love that app. It tells me just how bad, or good sometimes, I slept the previous night.
The obvious recommendation here is to defederate with extreme prejudice any and all #Facebook-associated instance. We know how it will play out, we've seen it happen again and again. It doesn't matter how nice and cooperative they will be in the beginning, this is a power move against the #Fediverse, a move against which it has no chance of resisting if even an inch is given.
"Unless you use Threads, you will not see any ads from Threads. It is also not possible for any third party server to insert ad-like posts into your home feed, since your home feed is calculated by your own server from the people (and hashtags) that you choose to follow."
@mastodonmigration How would they "push" ads? The only way we get stuff from them is by following, following someone who boosts, or getting replied-to/@'d by them. The latter is a possible spam vector but would quickly get blocked.
Yet another question people are asking me: "How can I, a common person, help hasten the demise of #Meta through #ActivityPub?"
Again, I want to re-emphasize this. #Fediblock is not an all-purpose tool. It's useful as a hammer. But in this scenario, we don't just need a hammer. We need drills, pliers, saws, and blowtorches.
That said, we must protect communities that choose to defederate from Meta. Which means that if those servers don't want to receive messages from any Meta-owned services, we must not only be respectful of that, we should make damn sure that those servers are quarantined from Meta. So much of the success of fighting Meta will require safe spaces from Meta.
The next thing we need is lots and lots of nodes. Currently, we only have ~25,000 nodes on the Fediverse but we need more. Preferably, these nodes should be small, agile, and well-moderated. If you have the finances and/or skill to run a node, it's important that you do so. To compete with Meta, we need to build scale -- and the easiest way to build scale is by adding more nodes to the Fediverse.
What will also be key is lobby servers. These will be servers specifically set up for migrants from Meta-owned services to help onboard them towards the rest of the Fediverse. To run such a lobby server, they need to be welcoming, moderated well, and free of the elitists and gatekeepers that poison so much of the Fediverse currently.
How to get people from Meta to try out the rest of the Fediverse? We need people willing to be ambassadors on #P92 who are ready and willing to evangelize the rest of the Fediverse. Folks like @tchambers are very good at this on Twitter, and I have no doubt that we can do the same with P92. Except this time we'll have the benefit of federation already happening 😉
Now if there's one thing I've learned about the growth of the Fediverse it's that bad corporate decisions pay dividends. We've already experienced waves of migration from Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. And I have no doubt that it's only a matter of time before Meta makes another corporate mistake -- as they tend to do.
In which case, we need to strike fast. When another Cambridge Analytica happens, we need to remind everyone on Meta about the lobby servers that are on standby, and ready to take them on. Unlike previous migrations, let's not be unprepared for this. Let's be especially prepared since Meta plans to join the Fediverse.
Finally, we need more devs. Specifically, we need devs willing to build innovative server and client software that takes aim at Meta. And to do that, we need to support the devs that currently exist -- show evergreen devs pondering whether they should invest here that we, as a community, are appreciative of our current devs.
If you like #Mastodon, #Calckey, #Kbin, #Friendica, etc., it's important that you open up your hearts as well as your wallets and fund the next stage of Fediverse development.
This will take a lot of work. But if you want to fight Meta, challenge their dominance of social media, this is what must be done.
Personally, I'm hyped about the future of the Fediverse -- regardless of whether Meta eventually lives to tell the tale.
☝🏾 Encourage family & friends to embrace Threads
✌🏾 Interact with their Thread account with my #Misskey, #Mastodon & #Pixelfed accounts & build desire for the Fediverse proper platforms
🤟🏾 Help them migrate towards the greater Fediverse.
@darnell@atomicpoet@tchambers hear me out… what if the open Fediverse were the ones to embrace [Meta-platform users], extend [the reach of knowledge and understanding federation], and extinguish [by helping people move their data away from corporations who exist to sell it for profit]?
Alright, it looks like #Bluesky is becoming Normie Mastodon, so I’ll have to actually use that account. I’m not leaving this place but I would like a good bridge, which I think already is in the works but does anyone have any details for people that might want to cross post?
#Twitter is a proprietary platform. #Facebook is a proprietary platform. #WhatsApp is a proprietary platform. #Instagram is a proprietary platform. #Telegram is a proprietary platform. #Signal is a proprietary platform. #Mastodon is a proprietary platform.
#Signal publishes its source code, but places a lot of restrictions on it: You can't use a self-compiled binary to talk to their central servers (which is why it is not in F-Droid). You can't meaningfully operate your own server because the official server won't federate with it.
#Mastodon implements #ActivityPub in many non-standard-conforming ways. And because its market share is so huge, it can force other software to copy the bugs instead of fixing them.
"If you want to absolutely destroy a website that is all about building communities and meeting new people, then aim for the site and all communities to always be growing as much as possible. Make that a design goal of the site. Pump those subscriber numbers up."
This means #twitter is now officially, as opposed to "we've known it for months now", a far-right disinformation network.
As the expression goes: Wenn ein #nazi am Tisch sitzt, und daneben 10 andere, die dasitzen und mit ihm diskutieren, dann hast du einen Tisch mit 11 Nazis." ("If you have one Nazi sitting at a table talking to 10 other people, then you've got a table with 11 Nazis").
Incidentally, but not coincidentally, this is days after academics are being locked out of Twitter's APIs for examining social media trends, as well as Twitter declaring they're no longer going to oblige to EU Code of Practice on Disinformation.
