Today I spent several hours trying to help a friend think up ways to take control of the messaging for his dance organization. It's more or less just him running it at the moment but it's on the order of 100 people who are interested and sometimes come to his dance events. Right now it's communicating mostly through Facebook and Instagram. We talked about ways to make a website, forum, blog, sell subscriptions, calendaring 1/
It quickly became obvious how much "enclosure" there is in tech. You can't even add a webcal .ics file to your android calendar! (Not directly, requires login to desktop Google calendar). And you can't export a Google calendar as an ics! (At all). In any case lots of companies want to be the middleman in your business eventually taking a huge chunk of revenues for what is essentially a trivial service.
One drawback of POSSE is that you’re bolstering the value of the silos. Instagram grows more powerful with your pictures on it and GitHub thrives on your repos.
Sandra, I'm really glad I had the opportunity to catch your review, or rather, observation of POSSE, especially the long term ramifications from the PoV of #DeSoc.
For quite some time now, I've been advocating for something that describes a not so dissimilar modus operandi for extricating subjugated chattel from that of the #Borg_Collective.
POSSE has merit, being a partial design for disrupting the deprecated monolithic silos, but IMO actually falls short by only seeking to coexist with it, instead of completely obviating them.
As a dedicated FOSS and Privacy Advocate, here's my take on how we can follow a best practices modus operandi, achieving what can eventually relegate today's monolithic silos into the marginalized zone, sending them into the abyss of downtrodden insignificance.
The model can work from any Fediverse platform, but platforms that support a rich feature set with longform authoring capabilities work best, having the greatest impact. For those stuck using masto for the time being, their impact will be less dramatic, but nonetheless still valid.
The model I've been advocating goes like this:
) Create original content on Fediverse enabled properties you own, or cite (link to) content NOT residing in the deprecated silo space (Twitter, Medium, TikTok, InstaSPAM, YouTube, Faceplant, Reddit, Linkedin, Etc.). You can do this from pretty much any Fediverse platform - even masto, with its paltry 500 character limit. A paragraph or so as a rule of thumb, just a teaser/headline to create interest for the reader to follow the link.
) Optional: For added impact and if you have any, from your traditional silo account(s), as well as from less capable clones like masto, offer up a teaser, perhaps a paragraph or so, with a link to the URL of this original content.
) If you're merely pointing to an article or resource created by someone else that exists independently, that's it. Well done! If you created your original content in long form on a more capable Fediverse platform than masto - there are many excellent Fediverse platforms for doing this. A few of those are:
) Endeavor to never publish any actual content (articles, news, photos, videos) on platforms in the deprecated monolithic silo space. Instead, it is preferable to publish your photos, videos on demand, and textual content on a Fediverse Platform well suited to this. i.e., PeerTube for VoDs, Pixelfed for images, and one or more of the platforms mentioned above for textual or multimedia based content such as news articles, HowTo's, tutorials, recipes, Etc.
) Occasionally, you may find it necessary to link to content in the deprecated silo space - a video on YouTube, for example. You may be able to clone videos (depending on licensing) to a PeerTube server, but if not, then make sure you sanitize those videos by using tools such as Invidious that shield the viewer from tracking and other privacy disrespecting constructs built into those silo systems.
The philosophy here is to ensure that anything posted into the deprecated monolithic silo space entreats the reader/viewer to leave that space in order to consume the content.
This practice insures that the consumer of that information does so in a protected, privacy respecting place, presumably built on FOSS, and in the Fediverse. It further serves to familiarize the consumer in an easy and unassuming way, with Fediverse platforms that do not track them or mine their privacy.
For the Fedizen however, it provides a one way transit - anyone seeing a teaser/headline/intro on say, Twitter or Faceplant, is immediately catapulted away from those denizens of commodification that packages and inventories the consumer as the product for sale, depriving those platforms of the necessary revenue that sustains them - death by atrophe. No blissful coexistence, every single post inside the deprecated monolithic silo space is in fact an egress point bringing the consumer into a free and privacy respecting environment.
Obviously, an article on the New York Times website isn't ideal, but it isn't strictly one of the monolithic silo systems listed above either. In this case specifically, it's a walled garden however, so you're directing the consumer to a place where they'll be privacy mined anyway, which offers three other possibilities:
You can, and should unless you feel you absolutely must, elect not to send someone to that resource
You can, under certain circumstances, copy that data verbatim elsewhere and provide a link to that place where you copied the data.
You can also probably check with the AP, since we're talking about a newspaper outlet, most of which actually pull their news from the Associated Press and other similar networks that provide free access, which you can link to instead.
There's simply no way to completely ensure being so mindful of your consumers without precluding yourself from linking to some forms of interesting content - but the point here is that almost without exception, you're not sending anyone into the deprecated monolithic silo space - you're sending them into the Fediverse, where they'll begin to become comfortable with, eventually creating their own accounts here.
I recently had some discussions with a few folks who completely turned their back on things like Twitter, which is good because it is one of those social networking systems that engages in tracking and privacy mining. Those individuals have made it easy for themselves by simply putting the existence of those privacy disrespecting resources completely outside the real of consideration - it's not like anyone is going to suffer because they didn't visit Faceplant. They may suffer a bit of withdrawals, but bear the following in mind:
There are liquor stores on virtually every corner in the real world. They sell booze at liquor stores. An alcoholic must come to terms with this and learn to live with this fact, making a conscious choice to buy, or not to buy booze in those stores, or even go outside where the temptation is even greater.
That's not the greatest metaphor I know, or maybe I just didn't deliver it well. Either way, I hope that in understanding this death by atrittion model, that people can make better informed decisions about privacy for themselves and others.
I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts on the matter, and any tools that help assist folks in addressing privacy concerns. Please feel free to share this by boosting to raise awareness within the Fediverse (and beyond) of all the excellent platforms available to everyone in the Fediverse. I realize I left out large sectors of the Fediverse that can be factored into this formula - the link aggregators and forums like #NodeBB, #Lemmy, #Kbin, #Mbin, #Discourse, and more. I didn't even directly address the purpose built single user instance platforms. Maybe we can give them some coverage in a later edition :)
For those who prefer a bulletin board interface for the #Fediverse, this is pretty darn attractive. Anyone who was active with Internet forums back in the ‘90s and ‘00s would love this quite a lot.
As many of us know, the problem with old Internet forums is that, while they provided a cozy community for folks who liked to follow specific topics, they often died because the likes of Facebook simply had a larger network effect.
But with NodeBB and ActivityPub, Internet forums may soon find that they have a network effect of hundreds of millions of people.
If you ever used Internet forums but have since stopped, would NodeBB’s foray into the Fediverse have you increase your participation with them again?
@davidbisset most of my stuff is RSS now, but more sites need to really support it at a standard. It makes them less money, but hopefully they can get over that. I'm hoping #Discourse integrates #ActivityPub more, they have it in the early stages as an extension. There's also the #phpbb forum software that is working on polished Activitypub support as well. So I'm hoping we get the start of a revival of forums in 2024. I already saw momentum with #fedi blogs last year as well.
I moved from #reddit over to #lemmy last week... Much like I said here when I first got this account... it very much feels like the early internet.
Know what else it made me realize?
Redditors are fucking ASSHOLES.
I think I shall stay here and Lemmy, where true conversations can be had as opposed to snarky responses to... literally everything... for no good goddamn reason.
Thinking about Hacker News but sprinkled with #activitypub
imagine being able to reply and participate to any #HN post from the #fediverse and with #webmentions have fediverse comments mingled with native HN activity.
One thing cool about the progress of the #ActivityPub plugin for #Discourse is for haxians, that will mean that not only can one of the main communities (https://community.haxe.org/) interact with the broader Fediverse, but it could after some improvements to the plugin, hook up with any other Discourse-based forums, like https://community.openfl.org/.
The lemmyverse sounds perfect, but it ignores alternatives like kbin etc. It would be better if we didn't end up with the situation we have with Mastodon where people assume Mastodon is the fediverse....
It’s getting closer and closer. Soon enough groups from #mastodon, channels from #calckey, magazines from #kbin and forums from #discourse and #flarum will all talk to one another.
Discourse ActivityPub currently allows you to establish a Discourse category as an ActivityPub “Actor”. This means that any other “Person” in the ActivityPub network (such as a Mastodon user) can “Follow” the category on their ActivityPub service....
🤔 I never ceased to be amazed how many #MastoAdmin feature requests waiting on design could be easily and effectively implemented by just copying #Discourse.
I have been permanently spoiled by #OpenSource software that empowers people who run it, rather than purposely limiting them.
@fediverse What type of social media do you feel is lacking most in the fediverse?
To elaborate, there are a lot of different types of social media already on the fediverse such as microblogs, regular blogs, image sharing, link sharing and video sharing.
Personally, I'd love to see a gaming-focused social media platform on the fediverse.
A federated #forum software. But most likely there are a couple in the works. There's The Pavilion cooperative working on a plugin for #Discourse and some time ago a #Flarum maintainer told me they are working on adding #ActivityPub support too. And there's #LemmyBB which has forum-like aspects.
The #balloon is ascending to #memehood as we speak, isn't it? A weird kind of emergent entity created by the tension between paranoia and irony, the two fundamental forces of 21st century #discourse
Funny, you can almost feel it happening, a scalar tension like a static charge in the collective psychic midair
I feel like it's worth mentioning, re; quote-boosts/QTs, that we can't "just add the feature to Mastodon" in a federation - it's a lot more complicated than a lot of people seem to realise?
The argument about whether or not we should add QTs is an important one, but once we get past that there's the issue of federation.
Mastodon is one software of many using the ActivityPub "skeleton" code. If ActivityPub doesn't have QTs in its code and Mastodon adds a QT feature, any non-Mastodon software (or even server) has to work out how to interpret Mastodon's QTs. If it isn't Mastodon-compatible, QTs will just break. They might even break in a way that harms the person being QTed. And what if someone on another server boosts/reblogs that broken QT?
Also, since we on Mastodon can follow people who are using federated software that isn't Mastodon (e.g. instances/softwares that look and behave like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc), how does that work? Would people on Mastodon be able to QT people on not-Mastodon? How are the OPs going to feel about that? Would they even get notifications about it, since QTs aren't in the ActivityPub "skeleton" of federation?
And since we're a federation of separate servers even "within" Mastodon, there's also the question of how older/outdated Mastodon servers will handle incoming QTs. If you're on an older version of Mastodon and you follow someone on a newer instance and they QT someone, what would that look like? Maybe someone has intentionally chosen a fork of Mastodon with QTs turned off. Can people on other softwares QT them, and how would they feel about that?
evacide@hachyderm.io shares the Litany of Discourse (hachyderm.io)
I must not engage with the discourse...
What do we call the Lemmy/Kbin Universe?
The lemmyverse sounds perfect, but it ignores alternatives like kbin etc. It would be better if we didn't end up with the situation we have with Mastodon where people assume Mastodon is the fediverse....
Discourse ActivityPub Plugin (meta.discourse.org)
Discourse ActivityPub currently allows you to establish a Discourse category as an ActivityPub “Actor”. This means that any other “Person” in the ActivityPub network (such as a Mastodon user) can “Follow” the category on their ActivityPub service....