I have closed my public instance, finecity.social, binned my account there and moved back to mastodon.social. My bots will keep running on calckey.bloonface.com but I won't use that site for anything else any more.
I have fallen out of love with #Mastodon and #fedi in a big way, I don't intend to use it much any more. The past couple of weeks has crystallised that this isn't really a platform I like much.
@Bloonface Do you see Bluesky’s technical approach to decentralization as somehow better able achieve the goal of avoiding corporate and big-tech fuckery, or is it simply an opportunity to explore a fresh approach that is less mired in 6+ years of group think and purity battles that make solutions all that much harder to find or discuss?
@shoq At this point I do not care about decentralisation in the abstract, or about "avoiding corporate and big-tech fuckery", to be perfectly honest with you, I've kind of had that beaten out of me
@Bloonface Fair enough, but if it could have happened more to your liking, what would have been different? And are you predicting that Sky will probably scuttle the decentralized part?
@shoq Sky simply doesn't prioritise the decentralised part or put it front and centre. Meta's new thing probably won't either. Mastodon confronted new users with a bunch of jargon and bullshit they don't care about and then made clear that that jargon and bullshit was going to actually meaningfully impact their experience.
Users don't want decentralisation. They want a fun social network. These two exist in opposition.
@Bloonface I agree with much of what you say about Masto’s mistakes, but it’s not at all clear that Blue is not prioritizing decentralization.
They only released a federatable server a few days ago. And while I agree that users mostly “want a fun network,” it’s also true that many loved smoking cigarettes and consuming tons of trans fats, and voting for MAGA shitbags, too. User desires can be quite self-destructive, and less toxic paths for them should always be considered.
I could not find a way for Calckey to gracefully exit federation on the level of tootctl self-destruct. As such, you will possibly have dead account or domain records on your server relating to finecity.social. You can delete these, the server is dead and not coming back.
I am basically kind of sick of my social media feeds revolving around pointless inter-instance squabbles and hyperbolic Chicken Little shit about Meta.
It's not going to be Meta or Project 92 or whatever that kills fedi, it's the fact that every time anyone suggests a way in which normal people can use it in the same way that normal people use social networks, the entire network shits the bed and starts screaming about keeping the outsiders out
But then also the same people heap judgment on people for still using Twitter when Twitter actually gives them what they want
Meta doesn't give a shit about killing ActivityPub because the entire system of ActivityPub speaking servers is quite literally a rounding error in the user numbers of Meta's user figures
"Oh but I don't know anyone who uses Instagram or Facebook, they must be dying networks" then you're fucking weird, sorry, they have two billion - with a B - users
I have tried plugging away at fedi for so long and it's a waste of time, effort and money
Bluesky came in and ate Mastodon's lunch simply by not presenting itself as an overly-complex user-unfriendly network full of hostile people who can cut you off from your friends because the admin of your server thinks the admin of their server thinks they are a poohead, on which the number one subject of discussion is fedi itself
Meta might actually be able to solve that problem for you but apparently that's going to make the sky fall in so that's bad too
@ngmi@Bloonface It is closed invite and in beta only since Feb. It has over 100K members and over 1 million people on the waitlist. Idk about your circle but I personally have about 600 + person waitlist for bsky invites
lol you'd think "this place actually kind of sucks" would have more weight coming from someone who's literally invested a decent chunk of money and time into running instances and trying to make it work out, but you know keep accusing me of seeking clout or being stupid or not really understanding fedi, dipshits, your dumb replies only make me more powerful
"Everyone who thinks Fedi is kind of shitty as a social network is just whining because they want clout" is the sort of dumbshit attitude that made user activity fall off a fucking cliff after the November surge btw, as is "everyone else on other social media is why I came to Fedi!", please do continue being exclusionary supercilious holier-than-thou thin-skinned pricks, it really does help make Masto look good
@Bloonface I'll admit, I came in November and then stopped, and then decided to come back. I didn't know what my expectations should be, without a doubt. The problem is people are used to wildly inflammatory, addictive, and mysterious algorithms. There's none of that in the #Fediverse. It's a breath of fresh air. #TwitterMigration
@Bloonface@zoocoup the fediverse is in an unknown state, it is both immune to corruption and so delicate that a billionaire’s sigh can remove it from existence.
@Bloonface Sorry you are gone. I think the fracture you mentioned is real but relatively small, and the fedi has had them before and gotten past it. I share your concerns about insular reactions to Meta when we have all the tools we need to protect our people without preemptive mass blocks.
@eric@tchambers@Bloonface The killer feature of ActivityPub isn’t that it’s not Twitter or Meta, but that it allows different social media platforms to talk to each other. I would be really annoyed if my email provider started blocking incoming and outgoing mail to Gmail accounts just because it’s owned by Google; I still want to talk to those people and don’t want to switch platforms to do it. Big tech and small tech interoperability can only be a good thing
It just says that when Meta jumps in "our Fediverse", they will do what they want like they did before with xmpp or Google with other protocols. And we cannot do anything about it.
And I don't want racists, right-wing
people here. Yes, I know, we must stay "open", but it's like freedom : you are not allowed to kill your neighbors. There are rules.
@eric@Tchambers@Bloonface The issue with Facebook/XMPP is not that they used it, it’s that they defederated. It was actually really cool when you could message people on Facebook from other platforms through XMPP. But they didn’t do anything to ruin the protocol, it still works great.
@ischrankthekids@eric@Tchambers I'm honestly a bit bored of people trotting out the XMPP "example" (not you, to be clear) because implicit in it is the idea that everyone was using XMPP (which they weren't) before Facebook and Google killed it (which they didn't)
That stupid Ploum piece is key in that, it really glosses over that XMPP was niche, and honestly also a pretty shitty protocol that wasn't good in 2008 and by 2013 was hopelessly un-featureful compared to other big IM services
@ischrankthekids@eric@Tchambers like sure it was nice to theoretically talk to Google people from Facebook but realistically very few people did that, much less actually adopt XMPP outside of those platforms, before or since
@tchambers actually wrote an article about exactly that and pointed out that actually, XMPP was overcomplicated, not very good, had poor app support and not enough users to justify adoption of the network... (I wonder what that reminds me of?)
There's another commonality neither of us mention: a significant group of diehards bitter about the fact that their chosen solution is an also-ran, and willing to blame absolutely everything and everyone except a) themselves and b) the solution itself
Every IM service can do that... Except XMPP. That's not Google or Facebook's fault, nor is it clear why Google should have continued to ship what is ultimately a less competitive product simply because of a standard that was relevant to maybe 0.1% of its users
@ischrankthekids@eric@Tchambers@tchambers The same applies to Mastodon, the discovery is plain bad, the technical implementation of the protocol hinders any meaningful steps in fixing that, and the things the die hards tell users to do are all things that make user experience worse. It's like they think that users are there to serve the ActivityPub and their dream of decentralised everything, rather than the other way around
@Bloonface You make some really good (and sometimes depressing) points. Most will elicit howls of anger that you’ve probably already heard often by now. That doesn’t mean I think each point is absolutely true, or immutable, but they are true enough that more people should have coherent rebuttals for them if they have a different take. Also: I asked Chris Messina for his view of yours.
@Bloonface To be honest I think ActivityPub may end up eating Meta itself in the long term (Meta=AOL for Mastodon/ActivityPub just as AOL was for email), and Twitter's a dying network that's always lagged well behind Facebook (now stagnating if nothing else) and Instagram; Twitter's heading past the point of no return as with Myspace. You may also see me on Bluesky at some point even though I personally don't think it succeed versus Meta. Anyway, good luck with whatever you choose to do.
@htw I'm willing to give BlueSky a shot now I have an account (will happily DM you with an invite as and when I get access to them), although in all honesty I'm not sure how much patience I have with the whole Twitter-like model any more
@Bloonface Feel free to send me an invite; I signed up with BlueSky ages ago and have so far received nothing. Plus very recently I suddenly realised that Mastodon in its current form is fatally flawed as a social network in that it's almost impossible to stop disinformation, as seen recently as part of the supposed discussions between Mastodon instance owners and Meta. Unless this problem's urgently fixed then Mastodon is more than flawed in that respect; it's actively dangerous.
@htw That matter is kind of what the final straw was, because Mastodon allows for the creation of Twitter-style "main characters" but largely based upon hearsay. Everyone decided that Eugen & co had "sold out" or whatever, and that their increasingly lurid imaginary ideas about what happened in these meetings was what actually happened, and here we go. Lucky it was only about something trivial that doesn't matter, as opposed to, well, just think about it.
@Bloonface We do not have to let in institutions who are proven to use our information for profit, deem us not important enough to protect, and also trying to destroy Democracy!
If that makes people not wanna join, fine!
ps: "the way normal people use social networks" is what made the entire #fediverse LEAVE those social networks....
@tbridge@jann Wow you're really selling me on the idea of staying on a social network by being supercilious
Sounds so much better than those other social networks where people have fun and talk to their friends, why would I want that when I can be sneered at?
@Bloonface@tbridge I am only better than others on other social networks in that I do not condone hate, I am not trying to destroy Democracy, and I'm kinda enjoying a world free of massively targeted ads!
So Bloon, as long as that is the definition, yes, I'm being supercilious.
@Bloonface that’s your truth not mine. You may state it as the ‘blunt truth’ but it is your blunt truth. Others have a different blunt truth which recognises that #Meta is a grotesquely evil organisation who will try to monetise the #Fediverse in ways which will change it completely from what it is today.
For sure it is not perfect now.
If that’s ‘shitting the bed’ - ok. If that makes me “abnormal” then ok (though that’s kind of othering those you disagree with). 1/
I do agree with @Bloonface that people who still use Twitter shouldn't be judged. Mastodon's toxic reputation for racism is a huge problem; Twitter's still a better platform that the fediverse for activism; the fediverse can be hostile to people who use social media to support themselves; etc etc etc. But that's a different topic.
I stopped using IG when Zuckerberg bought it. I hardly use FB because of the Nazis he has running it. I foolishly severed ties with Twitter when Musk took over. I am now sitting here, suffering on the fediverse, and worrying that it will only get worse.
@InayaShujaat The good news is that many here share that worry -- look at how many signers are on the #FediPact -- so there will be more than enough critical mass for a non-Meta alternative. Of course that doesn't address all the other issues we're talking about in the other thread but it creates the opportunity for a reset. I talk about that some in the "In Chaos there is Opportunity" section of https://privacy.thenexus.today/should-the-fediverse-welcome-surveillance-capitalism/
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