Based on two unscientific polls I conducted here, people's biggest fears about the future of the Fediverse are: 1) volunteer moderator burnout; 2) too much defederation causes fragmentation; 3) people are driven away by racism; and 4) Mastodon.social gets too big.
@annaleen without getting into rankings of fedi-wide sentiments, a great piece of data we've gained from this informal poll is that plenty of people care about volunteer moderator burnout.
That positioning is incompatible with the anti-commerce sentiment I've noticed around here. I suspect a confounding with anti-capitalism. Cooperative commerce is in fact anti-capitalistic in nature.
To mitigate moderator burnout, we simply have to increase the commercial viability of #fediverse development.
Yes, at calckey.social, we blocked mastodonapp.uk. This was not an arbitrary decision.
We received multiple reports of transphobia from mastodonapp.uk, with no action being taken from their mods. For the safety of our users, many who are transgender, we had to initiate defederation.
This was not a choice we made lightly, but our community’s safety comes first.
private places are great. the problem is servers that appear to prospective users like they want to be part of a #fediverse diverse as the #openweb, but act more like private spaces. that's the confusion we should all want to avoid. maybe we need new terms. I want lots of smaller servers focused on moderating harassment, not bad info or opinions. only block servers that want to harbor assholes, not weirdos. reading public timelines will always be sketchy.
@aiefel Once again, I'm glad for the #Fediverse and #Mastodon. This shows that it works without billionaires, without advertising, algorithms and data collection. Thanks to all who made the Fediverse possible. 👍
@hamishcampbell@mathew OK its mastodon, but from a Eurocratic institution, question have they added some security or admin option to increase security/control at their end? Remember the #Fediverse works on trust, so easy to break from this locking down? Just a thought?
OK. :: sets down suitcase :: Looks like I've moved over here from mastodon.social.
Seem to have lost my follows, but I think I can rebuild that.
So how about a little introduction post? I'm a woman in her '60s, living in Southeastern Pennsylvania. I have a partner, a 10-year old son, two Schipperkes, and five hens.
The question I ask myself a lot these days is, how do we survive the next century cooperatively? I'm alarmed by the risk of authoritarianism here in the US.
So.. the situation as I understand it and please correct me if I am wrong, 70,000 users or whatever in mastodonapp.uk, as the UK's main server are now permanently blocked because there was a misbehaviour by someone at some point 5 months ago (I really don't care about specifics).
Therefore is it the intention that the UK effectively be blocked from the #calckey project?
If you're on the #Fediverse from the UK you will have friends in mastodonapp.uk - 100% - but being prevented from communicating with them in any way from the flagship server kills UK adoption of #calckey.
It's a bit like Mastodon.social deciding to block Canada for example.
I think it’s really important to reply to comments like this to raise awareness that #Fediverse is absolutely not outside the reach of #bigdata collection.
In fact, given how the core protocol is set up with few privacy controls, it arguably makes #Mastodon content even more likely to be vacuumed up by big data.
People need to realize that they have only limited control over their content here. Anything they put in is effectively broadcast to the world, no matter privacy settings, and if you’re worried about big data, well, big data operators are happy to vacuum that up.
I see two conversations talking past one another. One is concerned about how to ‘scale’ various aspects of the #fediverse. The other is expressly trying to avoid contexts where getting things to #scale is a priority. I would argue it is a delusion to think a scaled-up algorithm-driven platform shows you everything that is happening at that minute. Most of what is happening in the world is not visible on social media. #Twitternever showed us the world.
So WHY is #BlueSky building its #AT protocol around #bigdata collection? I see big data as antithetical to #fediverse. I’m here on #Mastodon expressly to be out of the firing range of the big data obsession. My entire Internet device ecology at home is designed to foil data tracking. Why would I stay on the fediverse if I knew it was feeding into some megalomaniac’s big data obsession?
@Green_Footballs l still find the #Fediverse a breath of fresh air but even some of the other new #Twitter clones are already bad and I expect not going to improve.
So when #Bluesky adds federation and there is a bridge into the fediverse is there anything stopping it from becoming part of the #fediverse? Reply now to start a hell thread!
@atomicpoet A few thoughts from a non-technical wonderer:
Does the announced profound need of recoding #Twitter imply it's going to apply and absorb AT-protocol, to federate first with #Bluesky and perhaps within itself too – on multiple server centers.
Who governs the AT-protocol, if it's not open-sourced (like #ActivityPub'ed #Fediverse )? Who owns it? Who's going to buy the core infra of such walled gardened #federation? 🤔
I'll follow with great interest Mozilla's moderation policy for its Mastodon instance. This won't be easy; there will be disagreements; there isn't a textbook for determining disinformation. But as @alex said on TWiT, what you buy into in a social network is its moderation.
cc: @leo https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/social-content-policies/
But it's also not entirely @gruber's fault because the media doesn't really talk about the Fediverse, and when they do, it's as a synonym for "Mastodon".
How would @gruber know about the massive development efforts to build more user-friendly alternatives to Mastodon?
No one in the media talks about the growth of *key apps, and how they're now the #2 most used Fediverse platform.
We need to follow and boost journalists so that they have a positive experience in the #Fediverse, tell their colleagues, and write about it. They are excellent #multipliers for marketing.
Looks like @gruber ‘s position is predicated on design, #UI, and onboarding. I have no invite for bluesky so it is clearly not an inclusive media, or open to all and inviting, and Gruber clearly does not care about inclusivity.
But even on the grounds of design, UI, ease of onboarding, there are star examples that incorporate #ActivityPub protocol and in #Fediverse. I am partial to #Calckey and calckey.social, and Calckey does provide a good example. Perhaps the design gurus and social media pundits need to browse a little more of the Fediverse before their pronouncements.
Bluesky is going to skyrocket to mainstream popularity and actually replace Twitter, and Mastodon cannot, because Bluesky is being designed to be simple, fun, and — most importantly — easy to understand.
@gruber@codinghorror unless you're identifying particular subnetworks that will structurally end up better on the #fediverse, Metcalfe's law dictates you're saying BlueSky will be better.
Are there particular topics you would identify that everyone should give more bandwidth to on Mastodon than mainstream networks?
As much as I would like to believe that indie vibes are better than mainstream bustle I don't think that happens by accident.
It will depend on the platform. For example, #Friendica (and to an extent #Hubzilla and #Streams), the owner of the group (and anyone else given moderation access) can block accounts. There is also chirp.social which can also block accounts.
Then there is #GNUsocial, which is a rebranded #StatusNet itself a rebranded #Laconica (the first #Fediverse software, c. 2008) have built-in groups feature; which IIRC, can also block users if needed.
Personally, services like Guppe really need to add moderation features, otherwise, what you just described will more likely happen.
Although I don't like to give much information because I have given enough information to the internet already, I have something that I feel I need to let out: I am #disabled. I won't disclose much else other than that I am #LegallyBlind, which means that I cannot get a driver's license. Now, I know everyone's asking how much I can see; luckily, I am near-sighted, meaning that my near vision is sharp, but I couldn't see a stop sign a block away, even with glasses. I would appreciate if y'all don't ask questions about this here because the #fediverse is antonymous with privacy.
Welcome to a new edition of the roundup. For the next few editions I´m experimenting with adding some more context to most news, to help you give a better understanding of why all the links are there. Lets get to it!
Crypto spam
Mastodon.social experienced a crypto spam wave attack. The attack took roughly an hour, and was one of the largest spam wave attack lately. This event brought multiple discussions to light again: the fear that mastodon.social is getting too big, leading to a re-centralization of the fediverse. This discussion has become significantly more pronounced since Mastodon decided to suggest mastodon.social as the server for people who register via the official Mastodon apps.
While this fear is understandable, the spam attack hightlights the conflicting forces in the debates about (de)centralization of servers. During the spam wave, an admin of another server publicly stated that they wished to be able to block mastodon.social during the attack, but couldn’t because of how large the server is. Other server admins opted to mute mastodon.social instead.
The difference between muting and blocking is highly relevant in this case: muting allows messages to pass between people who already follow each other. Blocking permanently separates the servers, meaning all follow and followers between accounts on the servers are lost permanently. This got someservers in trouble when they realized they did actually block mastodon.social instead of mute, and lost all their follow-connections from mastodon.social.
In other news
Bluesky continues to be a large subject of discussion, both on culture and about interoperability. The biggest change of this week is update to the Ikuradon app (Android and iOS). This Japanese app is a client for Mastodon, and the latest beta adds Bluesky support, allowing you to read messages from your Bluesky account all in the same app.
The Universeodon server has updated their signup process, helping people with the onboarding process and getting them to follow some accounts. Any process that helps new users with onboarding is always great to see. It also is an indication of a slowly building trend of servers trying to individually distinguish themselves with the technical services they offer.
The discover.fedified tool is rapidly getting upgrades, and now all Mastodon users can sign up for the directory. These discovery tools have historically been overwhelmingly focused on Mastodon, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can make the switch towards server-agnostic fediverse discovery tools. In an early encouraging sign is the fediverse.info directory, which is now advertizing that it supports Calckey too. The VerifiedX project (such as verifiedjournalist.org)is now expanding to third party applications as well, with the verified.thecanadian.social directory.
Mozilla is opening up the beta for their mozilla.social mastodon server. The announcement post is worth reading, and so is the coverage from The Verge. They position themselves clearly on the issue of content moderation. They are not trying to build a neutral platform, but instead are making opiniated choices about content moderation, with the goal of providing a nicer place to be on the internet. They do also mention the possibility of giving their server some UI love. What is not mentioned is their signup flow, as you log in directly with your Firefox account. This will make signing up to the fediverse significantly easier once the server gets out of beta.
Mastodon makes changes to the signup flow, setting mastodon.social as the default server if you sign up during the apps. This choice went live a few weeks ago, and has continued to be majorly controversial for a variety of reasons. In the end the argument is best summarized as a choice of decentralization versus ease of signup: the new design increases both centralization as well as user inflow, and it is a matter of personal preference to what extend they feel it’s worth making this tradeoff.
The blogpost also announces quote posts, search and groups, three features that are also sources of major discussion. It’ll be interesting to see in what format they will be shipped, and in what timeframe. One of the more interesting responses is by GoToSocial who sees it as a cutoff point regarding them supporting the Mastodon API.
The links
IFTAS (International Federation of Trust and Safety) has put out an open call for 12 active moderators to join their moderation panel.
@supakaity, a contributor to Calckey who also runs her own fork, is experimenting with adding Content Warnings to boosted and quoted posts. Calckey is under rapid development, and new features that help with user safety are great to see.
@dansupposits a question on which servers should be included as being part of the fediverse, when servers host illegal content.
@erlend has put out two blog posts this week that are both worth reading. Juicy clients is about how clients can become real clients for the fediverse and not just Mastodon. Sense-making in federated discourse is about how to organise information in an overload of posts that are hard to organise.
Erin Kissane’s (@kissane) essay ‘Blue Skies over Mastodon‘ has generated quite a lot of discourse on the feeds. It is an excellent critique on Mastodon’s issues with user focused product design, and what can be learned from Bluesky.
The poll
Annalee Newitz posted two polls with peoples biggest fears regarding the fediverse. The responses where quite varied with no excessive winners, which indicates that people see and fear quite a few potential struggles that can hurt the future of the fediverse. The result that stood out most is that of monetization, which got by far the lowest amount of the votes. People are clearly more worried about culture, such as volunteer moderator burnout than about building businesses on top of the fediverse.