I love it. There’s a poll ongoing about whether folks would ban a Meta (Instagram/Facebook) instance and people are like “well, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.”
I really have no words.
Is it learned helplessness? Stockholm Syndrome? Masochism? Something else?
And here’s what’s saddest: the question itself is moot.
Because mastodon.social wouldn’t block it.
Instead, we’d hear about how Meta joining the fediverse is a Good Thing™.
This would be about a year or so before Meta or some other major instance with major Silicon Valley money displaces mastodon.social as the primary fediverse instance.
At which point maybe a certain someone will realise that legitimising Big Tech-style scale and centralisation is a silly strategy when you’re not Big Tech.
I don't want to be one of those cretins shouting WAKE UP SHEEPLE but Jesus Mary and Jehoshaphat that is the most niaive thing I have ever read. The fact it's Eugen himself....
@aral I'd argue that the whole idea of the fediverse is that people will sooner or later flock to another "Gmail". It happened to any federated protocol, e-mail is the best example for it. If mastodon.social, Meta or any other would be the next "Gmail" is not of importance, because it's that instance that grew too big. People will never go to the smallest/closest instance, they would rather flock to something that is very big and interconnected. It's a behaviour you can't stop. People will choose what's the most successful and not what's the best and this is what people expect to see. If mastodon.social would go down or has a security breach people would assume the whole network is flawed, because they can't think outside the box. It's easy as that.
“This would be about a year or so before Meta or some other major instance with major Silicon Valley money displaces mastodon.social as the primary fediverse instance.”
You are right, this is definitely a risk. Now it should be the time to think about controlling this risk without losing the opportunities.
@aral I think this highlights the need to make ActivityPub a more diverse network where Mastodon isn't the only big player, but also things like #Castopod, #PeerTube or the efforts of #ForgeFed.
@aral
It's troubling the wonderful sanctuary here is looking the other way and allowing #Meta/#Facebook and all it's bad influence to infect us here
I don't want to even know what meta is doing
But this is inevitable. It’s written into the design of ActivityPub.
It could be delayed using social pressure but I’m not seeing that from those from whom it would matter.
So it’ll last for as long as it does. Hopefully, that’ll be long enough so we can use the fediverse to bridge off to actually decentralised alternatives like the Small Web.
(I know I’m working against a deadline here. I just wish we’d do everything we could to keep the fediverse as a stopgap for as long as possible.)
@aral isn't "Small Web" a case of "everyone runs their own servers"? Or have i misunderstood it? I don't understand how that'd be a better alternative to mastodon.
@powersource It’s “everyone runs their own servers and I got started in 30 seconds without any technical knowledge and I don’t need to maintain it and, gosh darn, isn’t it cool that my local municipality pays for it? (for example/one possible scenario).”
@aral@powersource My current belief is that the long term eventual outcome is that google sets up a server and gives all gmail users an account, they get to monetize all that data about people for ads. Because of the sheer number of people w/ Gmail & their competence at running stuff at scale they'll do to Mastodon what they did to email: embrace, extend, not-quite-extinguish but instead set up a new API that everyone codes against & it becomes hard to find a client that isn't Gmail specific
@aral@powersource Well... plenty of clients that aren't but the ones with all the cool features that you want to try out, or useful helper services, are usually GMail specific.
@powersource yup. but unlike Microsoft (historically) Google doesn't seem to try and kill off the original thing after getting everyone to use their variant, they maintain compatibility. Although maybe that's more a testament to the power of email & MS Office products than Google's desires.
@aral Thank you for an interesting long read by bringing this subject on. Makes an owner of the first Apple Webserver running on a broadband modem, later on in a serverpark curious. These days: What kind of server do you have and where do this run, on what kind of connection to internett/www/fediverse? Seems to be some easy kind of software involved? Also.
@aral@powersource fwiw I’m working toward this. The two linked essays at positivesum dot net are the roadmap. Plus use of SQLite via OPFS (powerful in-browser DB) to power rich data apps without needing a “server”. Subscribe to APIs etc for the rest. whosum dot com is my test kitchen. Open source and happy to chat/collaborate.
@aral it is quite simple as this - you might not like it, but internet and it's protocols is open to everyone, including corpos. Some people just want to work with what we got, instead of trying to create make believe bubble.
I understand sentiment, but I feel some reality check is really needed.
Also blocking sites is completely valid response, but demanding other instances to do so is a bit strange.
@peteriskrisjanis
It's not about open vs closed. @aral is entirely correct that as participants our behavior matters. I'd recommended getting more familiar with his concept of small tech. It's not about just being different, it's about making radical change actually possible.
Spinning up a new server to help onboard 100s of people onto the fedi is great and fantastic, but it's a mistake to forget that the ideal scenario is that people have the tools to do it themselves without being tech wizards.
He's one of the people who hates big tech not just as much as they deserve but also for what it actually is. It's a very fine distinction but an important one.
@tedb there are promising attempts. There are a couple of major blockers.
I think this is actually why a lot of projects try to sidestep DNS because it's a barrier.
That said, I think Aral and others are doing some great work getting us closer and closer.
It's totally doable if everyone didn't mind using .onion or .i2p domains.
EmbassyOS (a paid project) basically gives you everything you need, but it's crypto/Tor focused.
This is something I thought about when setting up this instance. DNS alternatives. But it’s too hard to get people to use an alternative when they don’t even know how DNS works. It works for them now because it’s mass adoption by all ISPs and systems.
@tedb@aral@gabriel@peteriskrisjanis thats both a good and bad thing, people who should spin up a instance should at least of some semblance of computer literacy.
@dcc
I think we're not far off from it being reasonably safe. The same could be said about people storing their own files.
Again, if DNS wasn't an issue it would be trivial for a social media / website generator app to also serve the content.
A lot of the web is bloat, but I think webtorrent is a very powerful idea that outside of peertube is underutilized. @tedb
@dcc
I agree that people should know, and I think education users is a huge part about providing better tools. But to take this to the extreme, I'm glad that people who don't know math very well can still benefit from encryption.
There's a basic level conceptually you'd want them to understand, but you still want the tools themselves to be as streamlined as possible. @tedb
@aral All I want for the time being is to prevent Facebook from getting away with a “we helped the Fediverse reach a larger scale” narrative.
Just like ProtonMail, it's market abuse. It has to seem legitimate in order to survive. OMG I wrote everything here in https://océane.fr/la-maltraitance-numérique and too few people will read it because I'm too tired to translate it in English, and it would take like, 3 or 4 hours for me. If you think I should do it anyway, I'll do it.
But the point for Facebook is to seem legitimate so it can abuse more people before pulling the rug. It was always about pulling the rug, just as late as possible.
@davidgarywood@aral I genuinely want federated socials to work (I’ve tried Mastodon several times before the Twitter exodus). It genuinely didn’t work well for me. I didn’t find people and there where a lot of problems. Things are better now, to the point that for nerd-focused stuff it’s much better than Twitter for me (even before Elon started messing with it).
But for a lot of people it still isn’t, so I’m keeping my eye open to anything federated. I want something easy enough use that it get’s mass adoption because:
I have non-nerd friends and I think non-nerd perspectives matter too. (Only valuing nerd perspectives is pretty much a tech bro mindset no matter how lofty your ideals are.) Also I have a bunch of (queer) friends who just aren’t technical and many really tried Mastodon (they hate Elon), but it just didn’t work for them. I want to interact with them too (preferably outside traditional social media).
More importantly: I actually think non-technical people also deserve alternatives the traditional centralised systems.
I think it’s just incredibly arrogant of people here to act like Mastodon is so good that anyone bouncing off it, seeking an alternative or anything like that must be morally flawed people or something. I don’t know if you actually believe that, but it kinda sounds like it. Even if you don’t believe that I’d at least consider what how you’re perceived by others.
For a lot of people it’s problems are serious enough that they’re looking elsewhere, and please understand that can occur for other reasons than them being bad people.
I apologise for my tone here, I just get so frustrated by what I sounds like as a strong disdain for people who haven’t been able to make Mastodon work. I guess it’s probably not actual disdain and probably more complicated. I really try to not be negative and obviously I’m failing hard at that here.
@torb thanks for your perspective on this. I really got into the "why are people still using twitter for anything" mindset - and it is good to have another reminder, that what works for me might not work for others, and that is just the way it is and not anybodys fault. I was so hopeful when coming to fedi but decentralised will always mean that everybody will not be connected to everybody,
@torb Please be advised that I wanted to like your reply more than one time and it’s not possible but just for the record I hit that star button like 100X
@davidgarywood@aral PS: Neurodiverse is an umbrella term, it doesn’t mean only autism, or only autism and ADHD. There are conditions that fall within neurodiverse which means that Mastodon is simply too difficult for people to use. Cognitive issues are an aspect of accessebility of too!
I appreciate that Mastodon certainly is better for some people within the neurodiverse umbrella (I think that probably includes me), but we need to be aware that the exact opposite is also the case for others within said umbrella.
@davidgarywood@aral I was concious of the ND stuff since I’ve done that myself and I just recently learned of it’s wider definition (I’m still learning honestly!).
@torb@davidgarywood
thank you, Torb and David, for this conversation. I’m learning a lot here, and most of all I really feel joy seeing how honest and fair discussions can be had.
Just a footnote. I don’t consider myself a tech person. I was never on Twitter so don’t miss or expect it. I didn’t find it difficult to curate my feed to show an inspiring selection of from this amazingly rich banquet: from art & science & climate to just friendly chitchat. It’s possible.
@davidgarywood@aral Well I think we’re all frustrated by the situation (but maybe by different aspects). Like, we care, and we really want things to be better, and then they quite aren’t! And then some of us maybe see different solutions, and because we care we get into a bit of conflict maybe.
Anyway, I’m glad I was able to reach. I know I sometimes in my own frustration I get express myself in unfair ways (I had the foresight to rewrite my reply 5 times haha).
For what it’s worth, I’m actually pretty optimistic on federation as a whole. I don’t know exactly which network will take off, but the concept seems pretty well established by well… techies. And for all my complaining, techies at least sometimes do point to the future.
And even if Mastodon goes the way of RSS, relegated to a niche nerd thing, I think it’s a pretty great niche nerd thing and I’m very happy it exists. (I just want something like that, for everyone!)
Ich teile diese Befürchtungen nicht. Entweder die Menschen möchten das oder sie möchten es nicht.
Instanzen können nicht verdrängt werden. Jedoch könnte ein attraktiveres Angebot Nutzer zum Umzug bewegen. Also auch weg von den kommerziellen Angeboten.
Die Vor und Nachteile verschiedener Instanzen zu erklären, dass zu kommunizieren, ist imho der einzig richtige Weg.
Wenn jemand Bock auf Selbstausbeutung hat und erwachsen ist, ist das Selbstbestimmung.
@aral I also believe it's a good thing. At first we have to see how they join. In what way and how much they are compatible to the services we use. It could end up like lemmy, where you can find the posts if you search for them but they wont show up in your timeline.
Other than that, yes, it will be a competition. We still should welcome them. We're not the hateful fediverse that hates everything new.
@fabiscafe Yes, let’s see how the trillion-dollar, publicly-traded mass surveillance machine joins. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’ve changed.
Sheep who can’t recognise a wolf are destined to become its dinner.
@aral They'll do the same thing as they always did. Still - we, as the fediverse, need to learn to deal with them outside of fediblock. We want to grow, we want to normalize interaction between services.
If we start this by blocking hugh services with "normal" people, because the provider sucks, we're going in the same direction like they did once.
@aral and then that's when they start modifying the protocol to "improve user experience," and every instance that federates will have to fall in line or fall behind.
How long will users withstand messages like "Sorry, but you cannot view this content because your server is not compatible with the latest Mastodon/ActivityPub protocol. This version includes important security updates. Click here to move your account to meta.social to take advantage of the latest blah blah blah?"
@aral really what is the harm. Let them join in! Bringing their users to the Fediverse is a plus for us. I'm not going to use their servers, others already do. Most of the world does.
@aral the people who participate on Facebook are still people. If FB leverages it's userbases, it is understandably tempting for some to see that as a chance to sway others away from FB. Facebook is not a person, it's a psychopath and people should absolutely not trust it–but you have to admit that it is tempting to try to breakdown some of those walls and get people out.
@aral i don't want to see meta folks around here but let people choose their instance knowing which instances are blocked. I see more and more fedi people saying which instances to block and what people has to think. I find it goes in the bad direction.
@aral Probably an aspect of a desire to avoid partisanship. A lot of people value "giving all sides equal space" above "not giving proven assholes a platform". I don't think it's a good policy (But then I'm speaking from a position of old-white-male privilege; I profit from gatekeeping), but I understand how that principle effects what we're observing here.
@aral What would that even look like? Like, would it just be Meta employees posting about Facebook? Like, I don't get it. Makes about as much sense as Facebook having a Twitter account (which they do).
@aral human nature is passive at worst. Most people don't give a damn unless it affects them in person. Thus they vote for Republicans and allow google/fb/meta to do whatever they want. "As long as I don't have to worry about it, it's fine.."
@aral We have a shared mission. Here’s my thread on the topic and the work we’re doing via our non-profit. Would love to chat with like-mindeds…
To end: #surveillancecapitalism
@aral They would have to decentralize and prove that there's enough interest in that type of experience for a healthy ecosystem of instances. Then the question becomes which Meta instances to allow, just like it is with Mastodon or [insert AP platform].
@aral
Seriously. Meta-would probably be a cool thing and give great features and suck everyone in. And once it had us in its grip, the abuse & data mining would begin. Letting meta in would ruin Mastodon.
That is a deep question I cannot answer. I see it as our (us on the left, that is) weakness, and our strength. Strength, because we are welcoming, open, and willing to embrace complexities. Weakness, because it makes us vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation.
We do best when we admit that, no matter how open-minded we want to be, some questions really are closed.
@aral Can you explain the question to those of us who are dim end-user Twitter refugees? Does this mean banning the platform from having an account to cross post, banning live-links to such a platform (if that is even possible)?
But I don't think it is necessarily as simple a calculation as you are making it out to be.
If the fediverse is now growing powerful enough to induce actions from the once all powerful big tech companies then that indicates that the tectonic plates of the internet are moving.
No matter how distrusted Facebook are the fediverse should be trying to facilitate the onboarding of their billion? 'users' into the fediverse.
I have no doubts about Meta’s intentions but what about blocking GMail?
No email provider prevents you from interacting with GMail users, of course. But at least GMail being based on SMTP let us use our own email provider (to some extent, GMail sometimes blocks hobbist servers) with both GMail and non-GMail contacts.
If a person on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter notices that they can move to a FOSS instance without loosing their contacts maybe they will do so, reducing the data Meta & Co can gather (like what you are looking at while scrolling timelines).
This is why I think Meta & Co will never adopt ActivityPub, because they would make it too easy for people to move away.
@aral I guess the way I was thinking about it was that I'd love to see some of my close friends Instagram posts federated into a Pixelfed instance so that I could avoid Instagram entirely. I know this probably isn't likely with the competing ethics.
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