That's not really true. When it first came out, before the ads, before the algorithm, when they embraced 3rd party apps with an open api, it was really great. It was full of techy personalities and interesting folks. Hashtags were fun to follow, live events were amazing in real time, so much more. That was before it got inundated with politics and celebrities though. I think that honeymoon phase only lasted a tiny while, then it all went downhill into the outrage machine pretty quickly. But for a quick minute there, it was glorious.
Twitter was also an important tool for journalists and researchers worldwide. Military targets have come from Twitter posts. It is a reflection of a huge chunk of society. You may as well call all of internet technology "just a porn box" for how wildly over generalized that statement is. The reality is your generalization comes from arrogance. "I never engaged in such frivolous behavior". You're here now. Yes you have and yes you do.
Even your comment is the first cousin of outrage, it's pure disdain. Nothing more or less, and exactly as valuable as outrage.
The interesting thing about Twitter is how it shows how a significant part of our society works. It is kind of about amplifying fame and suggesting that we should all cares about meaningless 240 character posts or what these guys think.
That news media types love Twitter is kind of an indictment of how news works.
Giving reddit exactly what they want, huh, a huge influx of traffic?
They know this shit hypes people up. It gets the app installed... then it's not so bad to just keep it and browse it at that point. Then before you know it, spez was right. It blew over. He can treat his users like shit and they'll just take it like good little idiots.
No thanks. I don't intend to prove that asshole right.
Another, more complicated, possibility would be to include a user editable wiki with each community
This would be my preference. Given some of the big tasks that still need to be done (advanced moderation tools, for example) adding a wiki is relatively trivial - you can piggyback off the existing user authentication and markdown regular expressions which are all the diffcult bits. I wrote my own wiki 10+ years ago and it was pretty straightforward.
I think you're right: a wiki is probably the best place/format for this type of information. I think this post is more interested in the preservation of information than it's formating. In that regard I think the most simple way to get the most copies produced is probably the best.
I'm thinking more in terms of syncing and storage. It all depends on how it's implemented. Does each community have a wiki that's synced with individual users' wikis? A separate wiki per instance? How to handle edit conflicts, etc.
You're right that just making a wiki isn't too tough, but in the case of decentralized, editable, moderated content, it's probably different enough to warrant an approach significantly different from a traditional, single site/many edit centralized version.
(We could always temporarily have a centralized wiki and roadmap out the transition later, too.)
Yes, the technical aspects are straightforward, the conceptual ones might need a bit of chewing over.
The way I see it, each community would have their own wiki but an instance could also have its own wiki for FAQs and the like which would then also act as the top level, linking to all the different wikis so it would appear as one cohesive wiki. Admins could edit any page, moderators could only edit their own wikis. You could either have a system to allow users to submit a draft edit or you could do that in a post in the community. Unlike, say, Wikipedia, there probably wouldn’t need to be large numbers of edits to a page in quick succession, so community members could thrash out a proposed update or addition in the discussion.
So, for example, I started a Home Video community and so I might want one page for a list of boutique Blu-ray releasers and another for a guide to buying a multiregional Blu-ray player. Over on Reddit I created a list of third party suppliers of STLs for the game Star Wars Legion that was well-received (which reminds me I must copy that over) which could be worth a page. Those pages would tend to be relatively static - only getting an update if a new Blu-ray publisher or STL maker popped up.
There are lots of details to be ironed out if we go the wiki way, which is why I think the tagged route would be the best start. Start getting the data and develop the larger structure over time. Once we need the data to populate the wikis/dbs/whatever, any mod can filter the posts pretty easily.
Other problems I see happening - conflicts between mods on entries, keep or throw out entries when an instance defederates (the c/politics folks might not want the entries on Biden being a lizardman from Nova Scotia, but c/iliketohitmyheadwithbricks does), bad blood if some mods want tighter control over wiki content, syncing when federating impact if larger media elements added, multiple wikis covering multiple topics while there are multiple instances covering multiple topics (multiplicative duplication due to the multiple hierarchies of equal importance), and I'm sure plenty more.
which is why I think the tagged route would be the best start.
I think we’d need to do that anyway as a stop-gap measure because you could start that right now. If there’s a will for it, a wiki could be thrown together quickly but there’d need to be testing and the developers of Lemmy would want to be assured it won’t break anything or leave a security vulnerability.
If correctly formatted, the content could then just be scooped up and used to populate a wiki when it arrives.
Other problems I see happening
A lot of those are federation issues in general - for example, the wiki would be clearly part of another instances community, so a post about Biden being a lizard in a humansuit and a wiki entry on the same topic would be essentially the same.
I totally agree on the first point, and might have a response in this thread stating much the same.
On the federation/syncing, I think it might need a more unique approach. Communities already have the problem of multiple posts linking the same article across several instances and communities, which don't sync comments. Making sure the complete wiki for a given community is resilient to instances defederating, shutting down, or vandalizing should be top priority, IMO. I don't know what the solution is, but I think we should be open to it looking different from the basic Lemmy sync setup.
For example, the wiki/extracted posts don't really need to sync as quickly as thread comments. Also, there should be some form of versioning in case of a credentials bug, hack, or intentional mass deletion or vandalism. We could aggregate points of conflict between instances/communities in a topic's main thread/stream/article and assign some for of weighting alongside the choice to continue reading from a particular wiki, which are return to the original thread/stream/article.
So, in the Biden-lizard example, the primary Biden entry that's synced everywhere could have a "Controversy" section with generally agreed on, real issues (like age, which is true for almost all US politicians) and fringe disagreements. Each fringe entry in the list would link to the page synced between instances that subscribe to those beliefs, but that page would not be a part of the larger synced Biden pages' contents. That keeps the lizard lovers' content off the larger, community-focused instances.
I guess I'm worried about conspiracy theories pulling users of the 'realistic' path, while increasing load on dissenting instances. I don't think Biden's a lizardman, so I shouldn't have to host the 12 hour long documentary on it. (We all know he's a reincarnated demon-angel hybrid. Oh, so now you don't agree? Fine, I'll host my 36 part finger puppet reenactment of the situation myself!)
Anyhow, I'm kinda babbling. These are just some general ideas off the cuff I wanted to get out there. I'm not a mod or an admin, so I'm hoping to get the conversation restarted among those with the ability to enact some of these changes. Reddit is still a knowledgebase of useful past discussions, and while new content is great, the more we can pull into the fediverse, the better.
For example, the wiki/extracted posts don’t really need to sync as quickly as thread comments.
Yes, that goes back to my earlier post where I mentioned they would be more static, with few updates needed in quick succession. It’s not Wikipedia, it’s just trying to add pages of information that may be useful to the community. I’d suggest a daily sync would be fine (if there are any updates, worth adding a check to see.if an update is even needed) and keep the server load down.
I guess I’m worried about conspiracy theories pulling users of the ‘realistic’ path, while increasing load on dissenting instances.
I mean, it’s not Wikipedia and I am unsure if a community wiki is the right place to write a dissertation on our reptilian overlords. If, more seriously, there was a wiki page heavily promoting something with real-life consequences, like spreading anti-vax disinformation, it would also be happening in that community and, I believe, an admin can defederate specific communities.
I’m not a mod or an admin, so I’m hoping to get the conversation restarted among those with the ability to enact some of these changes.
In theory,.you don’t have to be a mod or admin to add to the code of Lemmy. A good idea, enthusiasm, an ability to code and some knowledge of working on open source projects are what’s required.
Finally someone who has a clue. That was well written and easy to understand. Thank you for all the work you put into that post!
Defederation is about what an instance allows in, not what an instance allows out. Defederation stops you seeing the defederated instance's content, but it does not stop them seeing your instance's content.
As a final, tiny little point of interest - there is a setting called AUTHORIZED_FETCH (Secure mode) which will force the requesting instance to authenticate. This can be used to stop the data from flowing out.
Of course enabling this is somewhat problematic as it tends to break other things. But it's there.
On Mastodon at least, neither authorized fetch, nor "disallow unauthenticated API requests" really stops the outflow. it does in an ActivityPub sense, however, I have both flags activated on my instance, but Mastodon has an RSS feed for every account, by just adding .rss to the profile URL, and anyone can pull that without authentication.
The option to turn off .rss feeds for accounts doesn't exist in a standard mastodon install. the Hometown fork of Mastodon has the option to disable it.
So while the flags above will help prevent random discovery/propagation by others on the Fediverse, there are still open doors for accessing the data, at least on Mastodon. I can't really speak for the other projects.
Thank you for the clarification. I was also confused by that quote (ie: if you can control who’s data your reading… you should be able to control who has access to your data. Of course, this doesn’t include mirroring content and other shady practices, but I don’t think Meta would go down that path to avoid being defederated)
Please keep in mind that with an open forum you could just as likely be talking to a Meta Employee / Contractor vs a regular human person. So when you start reading things so early on a platform that just separated from corporate overreach and those people you are reading are suddenly pro corporate, do a little critical thinking
Or, and I know this can be a difficult concept to grasp, some people may simply disagree that blanket defederation is absolutely necessary.
I'm certainly skeptical of Meta's intentions, and if they do start federating, I'll probably make an account on a non-federated instance as well, but this idea of "Anyone who disagrees with me must be a shill" really isn't an attitude that's particularly alluring.
No, it isn't a difficult concept to grasp. I'm reminding people that, unless you know who you are talking to personally, they literally could be anyone, especially people who are here with agendas.
Some of it comes from privacy/foss fundamentalism that is very prevalent in fediverse (the entire fedi is basically just a huge nerd circle). People don't really think about more than "Meta bad. Defed". It's a bit of a kneejerk reaction...and it's quite normal around here.
perhaps the goal is simply to split the fediverse into essentially two sides, the Threads side and the non-Threads side
Yes exactly.
I'm unsure how boosts work in this scenario, perhaps those instances are concerned that they'll see Threads content when mastodon.social or other Threads-federated instances users boost it, or that their content will be boosted to Threads users?
Again, spot on.
Consider this:
pure.social blocks evil.meta, but doesn’t block mastodon.social.
A user on pure.social posts something publicly, and since they have a follower on mastodon.social, the pure.social server sends the post to mastodon.social, but doesn’t send it to evil.meta because they're defederated on pure.social.
A user on mastodon.social sees the post and boosts it, and since that user has a follower on evil,meta, the mastodon.social server sends the boost to evil.meta (because evil.meta is not defederated on mastodon.social), and tells the server about the original post from pure.social.
evil.meta receives the boost, and downloads the content of the post from pure.social. pure.social allows evil.meta to download the post because it doesn’t know who is asking.
Beyond the fact that evil.meta was able to see posts from pure.social even though they are defederated, there's also a problem where people on evil.meta start replying to the post - and while the OP on pure.social does not see what they're saying, they might see "half" of the discussion from the replies the user on mastodon.social posts.
This is of course a bit of a moot point, because the OP on pure.social posted it as "public" - and public things on the Internet... well..
I personally think Meta should be banned and regulators should tear the whole company apart. So I'm not too sad about people blocking them. I do think it's a bit premature at this point though. We haven't seen their ActivityPub implementation yet as it didn't roll out with the release version. So I am in the "defederate the shit out of them, but wait and see first"-boat.
Thanks, this is extremely thorough and easy to understand. Very well put. I can see how for anyone with sufficient distrust of Meta and its users, it makes sense to defederate anybody who might serve as a relay between them.
In the meantime, I hope kbin can catch up before Threads starts federating, so I can just interact with people from here. Currently, there's people who I can't see/can't see me from kbin, not due to defederation but simple bugs in kbin's current ActivityPub implementation. If/when mastodon.social gets defederated, there's people I won't have any mechanism to speak to without registering a third account somewhere in the fediverse.
Yep, a lot of my old friends and co-workers aren't on Mastodon. I'm seeing them pop up on Threads.
I really want to be able to follow my friends and interact with my friends and - from my perspective - it's this vocal minority loudly saying "YOU DON'T NEED TO TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, LET'S SPLIT THE FEDIVERSE".
It makes no goddamn sense. If the fedipact holds you're just going to have two separate fediverses now and users are going to fragment. I'd rather interact with my IRL friends than a bunch of nerds talking to each other on Mastodon about the last time they showered. I get that they're trying to avoid "embrace, extend, extinguish" but splitting the fediverse into 2 is actively worse.
EEE is all about a corporation making a product that (to an average user) is better than the free alternative, and making it hard for the free alternative to keep up and maintain parity. Over time, people will leave the free version and go to the corpo version and the free version will have nothing on it but diehard nerds.
Defederating from the corpo instances is literally identical. All these people are just going to shoot themselves in the foot. You are giving people the option of "talk to all of your friends and celebrities" or "talk to us, a bunch of overbearing control freaks who jump at shadows". Of course people are going to choose their friends and leave behind the strangers they hardly know. If the fedipact has its way, Mastodon's core users will dwindle and dwindle until it's just the hardcore. Note that this is the exact same outcome as EEE, but Meta didn't have to lift a finger.
Don't mistake me for someone who likes Meta, mind. I hate the Zuck. Not as much as I hate Elon, but I do not like Zuckerberg. But I'm given the chance to use FOSS stuff to talk to my friends? I can use apps like Fedilab and swap between Threads and Mastodon? I can follow Threads users from here on Kbin? Threads users can subscribe to my magazines and make posts?
I'd much rather make Facebook work on EEE than do it to ourselves for free.
The way I see it, you can still talk to your friends by making a threads account (or an account on an instance that federates with meta). If meta EEE's the whole fediverse, you won't have the ability to talk to unshowered strangers free of big corporations anymore.
If we buy that the reason for meta joining ActivityPub is to EEE it, that means that meta sees the fediverse as a potential future competitor that they want to nip in the bud. I would rather leave that bud un-nipped and give it a chance to one day become an actual thorn in metas side, die out on its own terms or remain a niche community for freedom oriented tech-savvy nerds.
So... I hear you. But think about where it leads if there isn't a unified fight against Meta.
I see two possible scenarios:
Meta is acting in good faith, and they have no intention to EEE, and you get to interact with your friends on Meta/Threads/whatever forever.
You get to act with your friends for the short term, they get used to Threads, Meta gains a lot of traction and a huge chunk of the fediverse as it uses its huge sway and deep pockets to swallow up all the small servers... and then it defederates with everyone who isn't on Meta, and not only can you not talk with your friends anymore, but also there's so few people left to talk to because all the other instances have been swallowed up by Meta. You're left with no choice but to join Meta if you want to talk with your friends.
It's not that far fetched. Look at what happened with XMPP and Google Talk. I used to use Pidgin and talk with everyone using XMPP. Then Google shut it down and everyone went over to Google Talk/Chat/Hangouts/whatever the fuck it is now. Who is using XMPP these days??? It still exists, sure, but.....
I'm aware of the history - I used XMPP myself, for a long long time. I'm mad it's effectively gone.
Heck, on my Windows Phone once upon a time I could have chats with SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Google Hangouts all without leaving the stock native texting app. One by one they all broke and faded away.
But my point is - is the fedipact a better outcome?
My thought is no, it isn't. The intention of the fedipact is to split the fediverse in two - the side that federates with corporations, and the side that doesn't.
But the issue is that in splitting the fediverse when it's still so young and fragile, you're going to inherently kill it. Even if people maintain accounts on both sides of the divide, time is finite. People will make a choice to participate in one side of the fediverse or the other, knowingly or not.
My gut tells me people are going to want to go where the network effect is strongest. They're going to go where they know the people, where Wil Wheaton or Arnold Schwarzenegger might randomly pop up in the replies to a post.
And this is going to cause people to choose the side of the fediverse that gives them that interaction. Some may still choose to stay true to the fedipact - just as people do still use XMPP and IRC - but if the fedipact goes as intended, the fediverse will splinter and most people will go to the side with their friends.
I don't see how that world where the fedipact is successful is any different than the option 2 you laid out. The fedipact has caused 2 fediverses: one that has lost the network effect and is beginning to decay; the other dominated by a corporation. The fedipact side will have few people left because everyone left to talk to their friends on Meta.
The only way forward is to hope for option 1. Is it foolish? Maybe. Meta is a corporation that wants money. XMPP died a bad death. You can even argue that email is dead as an open protocol now - ever try sending an email message on your own server?
But we can hope for a situation like what we're seeing with ZigBee/Matter where an open, clear standard is maintained. And maybe that'll change in a decade, but the only thing the fedipact does is remove any hope for that at all.
I agree. I think people who support the fedipact greatly underestimate the network effect. To be honest, I think this place is never going to get big--it has the same issues that Linux desktop has. It'll only ever be used by a small niche group. I still have some hope but it's quickly draining.
What frustrates me is that it makes total sense for people who want their own corner of the fediverse to defederate liberally and keep their community small. Not every instance is trying to be Reddit; some are basically a special-interests messageboard.
But the fedipact is not a group of people building their own more private network, it's just culture war and bullying. Instead of being a positive, it's all negative.
Will Meta embrace-extend-extinguish the ActivityPub protocol?
There are comparisons to be made between Meta adopting ActivityPub for its new social media platform and Meta adopting XMPP for its Messenger service a decade ago. There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now.
Yes, 5 years from now when Threads abandons ActivityPub, you will be 5 years behind Threads. That is not a good outcome.
XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Mastodon is not exactly a household name.
I really hope for the best. And it's not like anyone can stop Meta from making Threads and enabling ActivityPub. But this reasoning is not very convincing.
large instances like Mastedon and Lemmy.world can defederate....Mastedon already sold out so this could already be a lost cause. If they had any fucking decency they would have refused to work with them in any capacity
I don’t feel like this is a 1-1 comparison with the XMPP issue.
With XMPP users joined servers and then Google started working with the protocol allowing those users contact books to increase by hundreds overnight. Then when Google dropped, many people built work connections through those chats and still wanted to talk so they migrated to Google as it was the simpler platform.
But fediverse isn’t about talking to individuals for the most part. Mastadon gets the closest, but even then it’s about following updates and quickly getting ideas out to large groups, not the 1-1 communication of a chat. Fediverse is mostly about talking in communities. When threads defederates after getting a bunch of users, those users will lose entire communities instead of just a couple individuals that can switch platforms. And asking a community of hundreds to move to your preferred social isn’t how it works. People go towards communities, not companies. When threads defederates (which will happen) they will lose members, many communities will drop in membership, but I think the fediverse will be in the same spot after that it would be in if threads never existed. Not the same as today. But if we ignore threads and try to project the growth out 5 years. That’s where I think we’ll be if threads defederates in 5 years.
Mastodon can be a household name when Threads users question why people have an @user username and are introduced to a platform with no ads. They're gonna complain eventually, and they will find comments mocking them for using Threads.
If they did the contract would be under an NDA. No way for us to find that shit out - you just have to watch the enshittification happen as the early birds get paid.
Meta is a publicly traded company - that doesn’t mean they have business arrangements the outside world doesn’t know about. They’re held to public reporting obligations and have a Board of Directors hand-picked by Zuck (since he still has the majority control of voting shares).
A transaction like that is done in secret all the time, each and every day.
They enabled it, it was broken and the implementation sucked, so they removed it again. But hey if you are pissed about it, feel free to help - you can fork the GitHub project and then fix it yourself :)
Also remember everyone working on it is volunteering. Cut them some slack, all of them have normal jobs as well.
I host a bunch of websites for normal small businesses many of them have contact forms and all of them have captcha.
We've seen a steady rise in spam that gets through it over the last year or so. I don't have any concrete numbers at hand, but we've heard from customers that they used to get a few spam replies once in a while before but get 10-20 a day over prolonged periods of time now.
I wouldn't be surprised if we're aproaching a point where computers are better at solving captchas than human.
Which is funny because these captchas are designed to train an AI, like self-driving cars. So the AI is now training itself, ready for a big divergence.
The main reason to do captchas nowadays is to keep the door closed. Of course they do not deter more expert-ish people, but opportunity "hackers" aka script kiddies. If you're not using captchas you're just inviting them to run a script on your site. Big sites use captchas, there's no reason for the fediverse to not use captchas. We don't need to be "special" in regards to security.
That's why I always liked the captcha that Genshin had on login, just sliding the puzzle piece onto the correct part of the picture. Very easy for a human, has the basest of security against lazy bots.
If you really want to see this, go try to make a post on 4chan.
They have a captcha system that's so hard to solve I think that a significant percentage of people probably simply fail to get through it. There are browser extensions and stuff to help solve it that actually prove it's easier for a robot to figure it out than a human.
It's irrelevant whether they are federated or not. The question is how to stop them sucking the lifeblood out of everywhere else when they can connect 1.6 billion users via their existing accounts.
I don't mind so much, as it encourages me to practise my German. However, it could get troublesome if lots of other languages start popping up. Mastodon has a language filter option, I guess such a feature will eventually make its way to kbin bzw lemmy...
Mastodon’s filter option doesn’t work all that well. I have it turned on and I still get stuff in other languages with the tags that I follow. I don’t mind it much since Mastodon has a translation feature.
I assumed it's because the Germans have robust, well oiled shitposting pipeline infrastructure, and it was trivial to switch it from Reddit to the Threadiverse.
The real question is where are the Dutch. The Netherlands is a small nation, but one that's made it clear they will not be outshitposted by anyone. I haven't heard any G E K O L O N I S E E R D whispers.
Funny you mention that, because the Dutch are who I've been seeing in my feed. Moreso than the Germans. For me, it's largely the Dutch and the Australians.
From what I hear, they're authoritarian communist, not fascist. Fascism is not just a synonym for authoritarianism, it's a specific economically far right authoritarian political position.
Same end result; oppression of the masses, rejection of human rights and personal liberties, concentration of power and corruption. Fascist, authoritarian communist, tomato, tomAto, as far as I'm concerned. Their ideologies all stand directly on the throat of freedom and I want nothing to do with anyone who believes total control of the people is a positive thing.
You can dislike both (I do too) but they are not the same, and with the far right on the rise and making power grabs the world over right now we need that distinction
The distinction between a square and a rectangle is important, even if you don't like right angles and parallel sides. Fascism is a flavor of authoritarianism which is uniquely worse and focused on genocide.
There is no fascism without genocide. It's an idealogical ponzi scheme which promises to an ingroup if they destroy outgroup(s).
Other forms of authoritarianism simply demand obedience, and optionally or incidentally incorporate genocidal policy to that end. But genocide is to fascism as driving is to a car, the reason for all off is components. Not a byproduct to some imagined other purpose
fascism făsh′ĭz″əm noun A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
There is your proof. It’s in the definition of the term with suppression and racism.
If you don’t want to do your own research and information gathering that’s fine, but I suggest doing so in the future. Knowing exact terms and their meanings in a political conversation is incredibly important.
suppression of the opposition != genocide, same with racism.
If you don’t want to do your own research and information gathering that’s fine, but I suggest doing so in the future. Knowing exact terms and their meanings in a political conversation is incredibly important.
Not only you provide a definition, that doesn't prove anything, but you are also smugly passively aggressive. This is not the way discussion should be led.
If you don't want to discuss, do not get into conversations that do not relate you in any way.
So do communist governments (e.g. Holodomor, Uyghurs in China). So do capitalist governments (e.g. Native Americans, Irish). Genocide is not unique to fascism, unfortunately.
Not unique, but uniquely central. Fascism cannot exist without a persecuted outgroup. In other contexts, genocide is generally a state consolidating power or resources, but not the focus of these state projects.
What concerns me is that Meta will likely be on their best behavior at first, making people who are rightfully skeptical look like alarmists. Some instances will then decide that it’s okay to federate with Meta, because they’ve played nice.
If Meta is smart, they’ll only show their true colors gradually and with subtlety. We must expect them to play the long game. It’s vital to remember that no matter how friendly they seem, Meta will always do whatever looks most profitable. There is no profit for Meta in allowing the fediverse to continue untouched.
Which means there is nothing to worry about because admins will continue to shoot their own foot off. Not sure why it's such a big deal for people who will never use it anyway.
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