I don't think people are realising the danger the Fediverse is in.
The only thing stopping corporations and VCs taking over this place is that the Fediverse is spread out on many different servers, which makes it very difficult to purchase.
If most of the Fediverse ends up on mastodon.social, which is now a strong possibility, there will be nothing to stop most of it being sold to Musk or Zuckerberg or whoever.
The bigger mastodon.social becomes, the more likely a buyout is to happen.
@atomicpoet Shared this morning with my Instagram followers. It’s a fine line, wanting to lure people over while not being a broken record. I talk about #Mastodon a lot on #Meta platforms. It may be 1/3 to 1/2 of what I share there 😬 I dunno. I don’t care if I drive away followers really & I’m an artist. I’ve always shared a mix of my images, ideas, & #mentalHealth journey. Choosing to spend time on the #Fediverse instead of #Facebook & #Instagram is part of that. #SocialMedia
I'm still #writing independent scholarship on #theology and pop culture, and also lots of #fiction. Presently working out my own take on "dark heroic fantasy".
If the rumors are true about #meta implementing #activitypub for their #Barcelona twitter clone I think it is a huge win for the fediverse. Think of all the collateral development for activitypub-supporting apps that will happen, other platforms will follow suit, enriching the entire space. Media companies that have been holding out will take it seriously. Even if #meta ends up not playing nice and getting blocked by some servers, the groundswell their entry will create will pay dividends
@ConserveChange agreed. We would have to introduce some important mitigations and protections to prevent activity flooding as well as any EEE tactics, but Meta joining the fediverse is ultimately a major compromise on their end, not the other way around.
Getting their currently very locked in users plugged into the #fediverse would give them an incredible new avenue to move off of it completely. Hence why it’s all the more important that we get to work on #nomadicidentity asap.
Here's what I expect, and/or kinda hope, for when (or if) Project Barcelona comes to the Fediverse.
A lot of queer-oriented servers will block it immediately. It'll be done to minimize their visibility to the less-moderated wild west of Instagram users.
Instances like fosstodon.org which are aimed at the widest audience possible will likely keep them federated, at least until their moderation inevitably falls far enough below Fediverse standards.
Other instances might end up defederating them for being corporate, mostly anarchist/anti-capitalist instances like Kolektiva or Astral Camp. These are most of the servers that have defederated raspberrypi.social.
Most other instances will probably not consider it worth the effort to block the instance and will keep it open until the slightest hint of trouble.
Journalists should have their own Mastodon alternative to use on the #fediverse. Make sure it has all the stuff like QTs and better search they say they require to be here. It would only take one big media corporation to build it, and all these smaller outlets could run their own instances. Call it something like #Newswire.
Looks like #Nextcloud Social might be getting a big update soon. Nextcloud Social was my intro to the #fediverse many years ago before the Social project went stale. It's not #Mastodon on the software side, but an #ActivityPub implementation that is trying to achieve a similar goal. That means you should theoretically be able to interact with #Mastodon soon using your current #Nextcloud instance as a server.
I've been seeing some speculation about Project #Barcelona. I think they real concern should be that it will be a play similar to the old Microsoft book: embrace, extend, extinguish. Why do I think this is what #Meta is planning?
First, if they were just building a straight #Fediverse applicaaion, it would have been a no brainer to grab #Mastodon, #Misskey or any of the other platforms, tear apart the code and write their own. If all they were looking to do was have feature parity, and maybe add a bit of their own spin on it this would have only taken a few weeks with the manpower they have.
Second, their business model is one that requires them to dominate a space to sell advertising. Currently the big social media sites (FB, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) dominate the attention of pepole. This means that they will extend the ActivityPub model by using an algorithm based model to keep people's attention.
Third, they will do what they can to build the largest market share - ie, they will try to dominate the Fediverse by doing what they can to drive users to their platofrm. This will be done through extending the functionality in ways currently supported (which will later go to the W3C to become part of he ActivityPub spec).
Now, as to the "cultural change" this will cause in the Fediverse... I don't think we'll start seeing a big impact. They do have moderation, and I think they will learn quickly that if they don't moderate things pretty tightly they won't be able to enact all of the parts of their plan. And I think those plans are going to be more important.
And yes, I do think data scraping from the messages and profiles, will be an issue. Something that the #Fediverse should take seriously.
Oh, also, I will speculate they won't support profile migration...at least not out from Barcelona, but probably in-bound.
Not sure how to phrase this, but can we learn from or replace #NextDoor? Like the #fediverse, they have local human moderation. While they are a closed platform, maybe our path towards greater decentralization could be lots of servers based on location. Instead of recommending mastodon.social, give them a drop down based on country, city etc. And provide local information/value on these instances. Build real communities. The extras #Calckey provides might be perfect for this.
I am always fascinated that I can take a link for a completely different platform (#Lemmy), stick into #Calckey or #Mastodon and have the ability to reply to it, boost it or whatever.
Like, I have been using #Fediverse services for a few years on and off (Pretty much full-time since November 2022) but those small things make my mind go...
An example: Trying out how a Quote (-boost) flows between two Calckey servers
social.calckey (me) <-> blahaj.zone (another)
As the creator of the original post (social.calckey) I get a notification 💡 that I have been Quote-boosted (from blahaj.zone)
The layout looks pretty decent too
Any comments and replies back to the Quote-boost (blahaj.zone) go against that, not my original Post so I don't see those comments, but at least I got visibility that I was QB-ed in the first place
As trans 🏳️⚧️ this kind of functionality can matter in how it is implemented. TERFs and nutters dogpile us on the birdsite in 95% of cases this way. Also I feel it's a simple courtesy in general anyway to know if one is Quote-boosted - on Mastodon I always manually add in the original poster, for exactly this reason
In my experience, truly committed volunteers are special people and are either angelic and rare or are driven to do good by something that can make doing something like being a social media admin/moderator a very poor or at least unsustainable choice.
In this moment, having now seen a few admins just flame out and leave, i feel that there’s a serious question about how much the #fediverse can scale on the back of voluntary admins and moderators.
A small reflection that has no intention of hurting anyone's opinion.
We all have our own mail provider here, each one more "private" and "secure" than the other. And we don't care if people use Gmail, as long as we can use the provider of our choice, and we can communicate with the majority, who use Gmail.
It's the same and will be the same with #Mastodon/ #Fediverse/ #ActivityPub, as long as we can communicate with other, what do you care who has the biggest?
How is it that #AdamConnover isn't on the #fediverse? He has spent so much energy over the past few years ragging on big corporations, and Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc. in particular, but his website...
I feel for @nova who is exiting #Fediverse and fast paced microblogging type of social media in general (based on the statement on Twitch). I myself not long ago thought about leaving social media behind all together.
The "social" media today is garbage and often only leeches energy out of you, bit by bit. I wanted to rid myself from that. I wanted to come back alive. After leaving Facebook and Twitter behind got more energy. But no matter how safe, free and open the platform is, it can become a mental burden and insidious time cruncher. We must remember that also good things can be tiring.
There is suddenly a lot of talk about #Bluesky out there.
Why would the bazillionaire founder of #Twitter embark on the creation of a competitor to #Mastodon, if the true goal is open, decentralized social media? Why not just contribute to the #Fediverse?