@aral@mastodon.ar.al
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aral

@aral@mastodon.ar.al

I make small things.

My posts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

šŸ‰šŸŒ» šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ šŸ³ļøā€āš§ļø

#SmallWeb #SmallTech #web #tech #privacy #humanRights #personhood #democracy #aral #fedi22 #searchable

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aral, to random
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You know what, donā€™t @ me if youā€˜re going to defend Facebook joining the fediverse or whatnot. Seriously, Iā€™m not here to debate you. Iā€™m sick and tired of pointing out the obvious. Do what you like. Thereā€™s a reason Iā€™m building something thatā€™s actually decentralised. It would just be nice to have the stopgap in place long enough to serve as a bridge.

Oh, and if the largest servers donā€™t end up blocking Facebook/Meta, a boycott will not work.

Iā€™ve said my piece.

Over and out.

aral,
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@davew Hey Dave, I call it the Small Web. Just updated what Iā€™d written about it with the latest work as it had gotten a bit out of date:

https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

aral, to fediverse
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Myth: The ā„¢ Is Decentralisedā„¢

I run my own instance just for myself. An instance of one. What does that mean on todayā€™s fediverse?

It means Iā€™m on mastodon.social.

What?

That makes no sense!

Let me explain:

Since I have my own instance, surely I decide who I follow and anyone can follow me, right?

Wrong.

For ~1M accounts, Eugen decides. If he blocks my instance, a large number of people who follow me today will no longer be able to.

So I may as well be on his server.

aral,
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The same goes for other large servers.

Look at how many of the people you interact with are on the handful of the largest servers and imagine that just those handful of servers blocked your server.

Come, letā€˜s take this furtherā€¦

Apparently Facebook/Meta is ā€œjoiningā€ the fediverse. How nice of them. Now imagine that the largest instance is run by Zuckerberg. (Or <insert your favourite Silicon Valley billionaire here>.)

Imagine they become large enough to do the same thing to mastodon.socialā€¦

aral,
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@Howard Letā€™s ask mastodon.social and just the ten most popular servers to block your instance and see :)

(They have the power to control whether or not you reach a huge percentage of the people on the fediverse. So theyā€™re not just moderating their own servers, theyā€™re moderating the fediverse. The larger they or others get, the more pronounced that effect will be. Itā€™s about power differentials.)

aral,
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@phoe And whatā€™s the trend towards centralisation and the growth of the largest servers? And how will that be influenced by the entry of centralised trillion-dollar corporations with money to burn?

Letā€™s see in a year or two whether this was FUD or not.

I hope that unlike the web, XMPP, and email that this time, for some reason unbeknownst to me at this time, it will be different and I will have been wrong. Will be celebrating if thatā€™s the case.

aral,
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@mihira Iā€™m saying that the larger instances get, the more power they have over the whole network.

aral,
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@Howard Yep.

aral,
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@RassBariaw @stevelord Exactly. Itā€˜s about whether the people themselves get to decide whether they can follow me or whether an admin decides. And the number of people that that admin decides for is the power they have within that network.

aral,
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@jherazob Well, hereā€™s hoping thatā€˜s what happens. I guess weā€™ll see soon enough.

aral,
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@phoe Yeah, man, Iā€™m making a conscious lie, Iā€™m terrible, blah blah blah. Wonderful. You really showed me. Congrats on choosing the right target to unload on. Go feel good about taking a dump on someone working to make things better.

Seriously, fuck off.

aral, to random
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ā€œHey, some fediverse instances are growing larger and larger, isnā€™t that great? Yay!ā€

Stop and think about what this means. Youā€™re celebrating the creation of fiefdoms and feudal lords. Mini Zuckerbergs, if you will.

Thereā€™s a reason Iā€™ve been shouting from the rooftops about limiting server sizes for as long as I can remember.

e.g., If mastodon.social blocks my instance of one, they block 1,196,910 accounts from interacting with me. If I block themā€¦ I do the exact same thing to myself.

aral,
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@jaystephens No, but there should be.

aral, to fediverse
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Dear @stux, if you have a problem with @welshpixie, block their account from yours, not the whole mastodon.art domain with 32,038 accounts from mstdn.social, the sixth largest fediverse instance*, with 199,388 accounts.

You just decided that 800 people who want to follow WelshPixie from your server will not be allowed to do so because you have a personal issue with them.

Not cool.

Please reconsider.

https://mastodon.art/@welshpixie/110570245041679356

aral,
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@manualcookie Apparently so. Good to hear.

aral,
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@stux Appreciate it.

aral, to fediverse
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Some fediverse instance admins: ā€œHow cool, Meta invited us to the adult table.ā€

Yes, they did.

Because youā€™re whatā€™s for dinner.

aral,
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@sanjay191_18 No idea. Have my suspicions from threads Iā€™ve seen but Iā€™ll keep them to myself until thereā€™s proof.

aral,
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@Bossito There is a world of difference between them implementing a protocol and the community that already uses that protocol welcoming them with a red carpet.

If you donā€˜t see a problem, you havenā€™t been paying attention. Look at what happened to the web. XMPP. Email. Look up embrace, extend, extinguish.

None of what weā€˜re worried about is conjecture. It is based on past experience with the enclosure of the commons by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, startups, and public corporations.

z428, to linux German

bubble in my environment: Immutable distribution for developer desktop use - yeah or nay? Which one if so? (Generally, I'm fancying the idea of trying something - mainly/only at the moment, not sure if this is a good idea...)

aral,
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@konrad @z428 Iā€™m enjoying Fedora Silverblue.

aral,
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@z428 @konrad If you want to avoid surveillance capitalist influence, you need to drop Linux altogether and roll your own OS. Sadly, thereā€™s only so much I can do :)

panos, to internet

There is another reason I find the discussion about blocking 's project interesting:

I've been saying for a while now that the is a new and different beast, and whoever tries to understand it simply as a direct social media replacement misses the whole picture. We're also federated communities, just as much.

Today we see a lot of concern about "what will the do" with . Wanna know what we will do? Everything and nothing. Because the Fediverse is not one entity. This is the essence of its decentralized nature - and that's cool. If your server intends to block Meta servers completely - cool. If not, cool again.

But if you expect a unified response on something like that, you're in for a disappointment.

This is not a "schism", a "problem", something to "solve". This is just decentralization in practice. We don't need to have the same blocklists, and that's ok. Open protocols are not something you can control, so chill. When the time comes for this subject, choose a server with a policy that you agree with. But if you're worried that we won't all have one unified stance... are you sure you actually like ?

aral,
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@panos @luthien1126 Oh I agree. The greatest value of the fediverse has been to get people (some people; itā€™s not mainstream as you say, but itā€™s far more mainstream than any of the other attempts have been) thinking in the right direction. And yes, once it becomes commonly accepted that it has been Web 2.0-ified by Silicon Valley, thatā€™s what will drive folks to the Small Web. Iā€™m just saying itā€™d be nice to have enough time to make sure itā€™s there when that happens.

aral, to random
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I love it. Thereā€™s a poll ongoing about whether folks would ban a Meta (Instagram/Facebook) instance and people are like ā€œwell, Iā€™d give them the benefit of the doubt.ā€

I really have no words.

Is it learned helplessness? Stockholm Syndrome? Masochism? Something else?

I just donā€˜t get it.

aral,
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@tedb Working on it. (Not for fediverse, thatā€™s impractical. For Small Web.)

aral,
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@fabiscafe Yes, letā€™s see how the trillion-dollar, publicly-traded mass surveillance machine joins. Letā€™s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe theyā€™ve changed.

Sheep who canā€™t recognise a wolf are destined to become its dinner.

aral,
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@fabiscafe I donā€™t. That was sarcasm.

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