@maegul@hachyderm.io
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

maegul

@maegul@hachyderm.io

A little bit of computing and a little bit of neuroscience.

he/him/they

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

feditips, to random
@feditips@mstdn.social avatar

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.

(1/4)

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@feditips I think this is a very important point.

It makes a lot of sense to start talking about what is required of platforms to be considered good fediverse citizens.

AFAIK, both Pixelfed and Lemmy actively encourage people to diversify into multiple servers.

Without a good set of ideas around what’s required, and why, it’s pretty meaningless to just get upset and predict nightmare scenarios. You need thought out principles and consequences.

☝️This is a good start.

atomicpoet, (edited ) to fediversenews
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social avatar

"What if Google starts their own Google-branded Fediverse instance?"

They already did.

Google Buzz used OStatus as part of its protocol stack.

OStatus later evolved into ActivityPub.

As for Google Buzz? Like most Google social media projects, it died -- later to be replaced by Google+.

@fediversenews

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@kevinyoung my memory of it is that many thought it was good but ended up just staying on Facebook because that’s where people were, and the greater amount of manual control you had in Google+ was good in theory but annoying in practice for enough people that it just never really stood a chance.

Lessons for v big social? (An exercise for the reader)

erlend, to fediverse
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

https://blog.erlend.sh/fragmentations-in-the-fediverse

Drawing preemptive lines in the sand is not conducive to a healthy . In fact, it could very well be its downfall. Large scale separation is antithetical to the social fabric of the world wide web.

Can we take a breather here?

Hostile VC takeovers are very far down the list of problems facing our nascent community of fedizens. Onboarding and retention on the other hand is easily in the top 3.

We need:
Account migrations
Account aliases
Account sovereignty

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@erlend I agree both with you and @feditips, through a synthesis of sorts:

Are we talking about symptoms or causes/diseases?
@feditips is highlighting symptoms, which if left untreated can evolve into new and worse symptoms.

You’re more focused on causes/diseases (ie, the UX story around instances is sub-optimal), and making the argument that targeting the symptoms too dramatically will simply cause unwanted side effects.

I think both approaches have a place.

maegul, (edited )
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@erlend @feditips The value of the approach of @feditips (compared, say, to happily mastodon focused advocacy such as from @davidslifka ), IMO, is that fundamental it recognises is an organisation with its own motives, assets and power, which ultimately deserves, to some extent, an antagonistic position, or at least preemptively canvassing as much.

Mastodon may raise all boats and still be a problematic fediverse actor.

anildash, to random
@anildash@me.dm avatar

Been playing around with Bluesky a bit & it’s pretty interesting. They have an easier consumer experience (signup/discovery/UI works like Twitter) and it all feels very snappy. I like how they use domain names (or subdomains) instead of what look like funky email addresses. By far the biggest problem Jay & co face is that Jack Dorsey has effectively poisoned the well on everything from people assuming it’s a crypto platform (it’s not) to assuming (understandably) that be bad at trust & safety.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@anildash
You don't think the (allegedly) better "nomadic" identity (or account mobility) built into AT Protocol is worth making a new protocol over?

Do you think the same functionality could be added to ActivityPub despite the ATProtocol claims?

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@oblomov @anildash I don’t know, but my understanding is that hubzilla and streams (and the zot protocol) provide nomadic identity within their own platforms/protocol. With their own zot protocol, I think they’re much more akin to AT Protocol and BlueSky, and, I’m guessing, don’t add anything to ActicityPub that can be picked up by other ActivityPub platforms.

Green_Footballs, to random
@Green_Footballs@mastodon.social avatar

There’s a lot of talk about the harm social media does to society, but I’d argue that mainstream media is a FAR larger problem.

Fox News may be the biggest example, but there’s a rot in the entire news media complex and as usual it comes down to money. Journalism has increasingly been replaced with “narratives” and both-sides rhetoric, chasing after clicks and views and advertising dollars.

This is how fascism takes root in the 21st century, through late stage capitalism.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@Green_Footballs same argument happened ~20yrs ago (around take off of YouTube) and was true then too.

Bottom line was/is that the internet and social media prompt people to be active and to engage. TV and mainstream media prompt people to consume from a central source.

If the former goes awry, you get dynamics with built in potential for self correction/buffering.

The latter going awry risks the collapse of the society and its civilisation, or at least its corruption.

evan, to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

So, one thing that's tricky about moving accounts between servers on Mastodon is that your old stuff doesn't get copied over.

One way to do this is to have the new account re-share all the old account's activities. Very noisy for followers!

Another way that would be cool is if, when you move, the new account creates a collection of the old activities that's navigable from the new account. This would just be a single Create activity, so not very noisy at all.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@gub @evan @Troll I think that can simply come down to federation. I’d two servers federate, then their users’ content is mutually hostable.

Otherwise, any future issues can have a variety of solutions:

  • server imposed CW on all of the archive
  • archive removed if archived content problems not resolved
  • user removed if problems not resolved
mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Inchoate thoughts, no particular conclusion:

I have a split, in what I want for Mastodon/"The Fediverse"/Decentralized Social Media, between

"What I want out of the service I use"

and

"What I want to exist in the world".

The two goals conflict, in part because a big component of "what I want to exist" is I want Twitter to die. Actually end.

There are elements I think are necessary for a Twitter successor "everybody" moves over to, but which I personally wouldn't want to use a service with.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@mcc I think I’m totally with you on all of this.

I’ve kinda been thinking about it from the perspective of what broadly makes a good fediverse (where the current one isn’t good IMO) and I’ve been vaguely reaching for what you’ve said hear.

bastianallgeier, to random
@bastianallgeier@mastodon.social avatar

I couldn’t be less interested in Bluesky - another Jack Dorsey experiment. As if we learned nothing from the past.

But it’s also interesting to see how Mastodon‘s flaws are now used as an argument. No quote feature? Instances are hard to find? We need an entirely new platform with better UX. As if this was unfixable.

It’s the restlessness of an industry that no longer seems to be able to overcome any form of discomfort and leaves at the slightest hint of hype for a new place.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@avuko @bastianallgeier And perhaps most significantly, would such a place/platform attract more businesses, institutions, influencers and broadcasters, which then attract more users etc? Probably.

The interesting part for those us not vulnerable to abuse etc is whether such a place could provide a diverse enough culture, feature set and federated flexibility to be everything we want in social media from the fediverse? Would we join? If our friends are there? Heros?

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@avuko @bastianallgeier A much more awkward extension to this is whether there’s a “central” cultural majority that want things to be “nice” but not restricted (in features such as search etc) by the need to protect the vulnerable.

How big is this majority? I’d imagine large.

Would they prefer to populate a new place with better features? Yes.

Would they be happy to leave the vulnerable behind on a niche platform with an “odd” culture and fewer features? Yea.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@bastianallgeier @hmans For me, the greater commitment in the protocol to nomadic identity justifies keeping an eye on it (incl that the protocol is open).

The “feudal” nature of the fediverse (ie servers/admins are only first class citizens) feels intermediate to me in the evolution of social and off-putting.

It’s be interesting to see how a federated social protocol with nomadic identity develops and if so whether there’re advantages over time.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@avuko @bastianallgeier I think it’s low-key, and rather subtle but widespread, one of the major hindrances to growth for Mastodon, for better or worse.

It’s an interesting though-experiment: what if migrants were given their own instances to populate and build from the ground up like migrants IRL often do, creating distinct sub-cultures but interacting through federation? I feel like a good social federation would have done that.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@avuko @bastianallgeier I also suspect in line with this there’s a desire to move to a new place where the culture isn’t settled yet compared to “migrating” to an older place with an already established and vocal culture that you may or may not understand or get rebuke from.

However much you value the culture here and what it stands for, I think the awkwardness, however slight, of moving in is fairly obvious.

A blank canvas of newness is comparatively more attractive.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

By the by, many people on BlueSky are mentioning how Mastodon didn’t feel welcoming and was very confusing.

Especially people from marginalized communities like Black Twitter.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@torb @emmah @thomasfuchs so I’m curious (as a majority cis-straight etc) as to what extent this is true. Like, for example, are there trans or queer communities out there made up of non-techie people that just don’t see the point of the fediverse or see the dynamic you state here and happily don’t care about it?

Please feel free to rebuff me if the question is onerous or or annoying in anyway. It’s just that you imply an interesting division for the fediverse.

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@emmah @torb @thomasfuchs “website boy”?

streetartutopia, to random
@streetartutopia@mastodon.online avatar

And Earth Without Art is Just Eh

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@streetartutopia Really should be an alt-text on this one:

"
Graffiti with a speech bubble containing the following text:

There will always be
A "lie" in believe
An "over" in lover
An "end" in friend
An "us" in trust
And an "if" in life
"

jo, to fediverse

I saw @Uraael mention how their engagement had really skyrocketed with the influx of folks from #mastodon at calckey.social and they posted a screenshot of their activity graph. Thought I'd heck mine, too.

Yeah, that's absolutely crazy. 😅

#Calckey #migration #fediverse #FindsAServer

maegul,
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

@jo @Uraael ooooh … is there a migration happening? Are there any other numbers showing this? Definitely interesting to see … do you know why exactly it’s happening?

psychictides, to random

deleted_by_author

    •
    maegul,
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    @Benfell @psychictides for me I was weirded out by the fact that it was all just an analysis of other people’s poll data. As a scientist, where any good scientist knows to be suspicious of the analysis and statistical results, it was hilarious to see a guy get hype for doing the snake-oil part of science.

    Like, couldn’t he have started his own polling process based on his statistical insights?!

    Funny how his arc parallels the data-science bubble or hype-curve.

    wihtlore, to random
    @wihtlore@thefolklore.cafe avatar

    Just watched Nemesis for the first time in 20 years. Yeah it’s not brilliant, but it’s fun enough. Doesn’t deserve all the hate — a lot of it, just not all.

    maegul, (edited )
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    @wihtlore I also recall the depiction of the romulan senate being off-putting. Many of us understood that Romulans are space Romans. But the strong parallels (down to political office names) were always pretty sparse so as to avoid being completely on the nose.

    The senate in Nemesis, IIRC, was depicted as straight-up Roman. For anyone who picked that up, it just felt like “why! We all get it, but you have to keep it somewhat alien for gods sake! Don’t you watch Star Trek!”

    maegul,
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    @wihtlore that makes sense. I think at the time it really felt like it was a waste of space. Like it felt like there really wasn’t a point to the movie and it was made because they could. Similarly, there were enough “off the mark” vibes that lost many fans by the half way point of the film. The buggy chase scene. The clone that didn’t look like a clone. B4 out of nowhere for no reason.

    maegul, (edited ) to fediverse
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    So, reading @anildash on the existence of cultural barriers to broader growth in Mastodon (link below) got me thinking.

    There's clearly a spectrum here along a safety - virality/growth axis) (or vulnerable-privileged?).

    Given possible upcoming changes to , eg QTs, and maybe search, is Mastodon heading to an effective software forking moment of some sort?

    Feels like culturally it's already happened but could yet easily manifest at the software lvl.

    https://me.dm/@anildash/110252376733242467

    @fedidevs

    maegul,
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    There could be forks made of Mastodon with a number of current mastodon instances simply running with the preferred flavour.

    Alternative platforms could gain traction, though I'm not sure how many cater to those who require "safety" features.

    There are many possibilities here, but in a demonstration of how much the instances/admins matter, none of it matters unless someone is happily running a large enough instance with the desired software/masto-fork.

    maegul, to random
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    Reflecting on as a whole (as one who enjoyed S1 and S3, but not S2, at all), I think maybe the mistake at the beginning (Stewart's fault it seems) was to be allergic to fan-service and TNG reunions.

    With S3, obviously, it happened anyway, and everyone ate it up.

    In hindsight, S1 was maybe too entitled and committed to doing its own thing.

    The better approach would have been to try to intertwine new stories with S3-like TNG reunions. Aim for a continuous "best of both worlds".

    maegul, to fediverse
    @maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

    With 's dominance on the , I think it's worthwhile to conceptualise what it means for a platform to be a good or bad citizen on the fediverse.

    In mastodon's case, I think the argument could be made that more could be done to promote diversity (in both masto-instances and other platforms). Can't have fediverse without diverse.

    Interestingly, by comparison, @pixelfed impose a default limit of 1000 users per instance for exactly this reason: diversity.

    https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/110253230361422399

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