@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

polotek

@polotek@social.polotek.net

Web developer, movie buff, and pretty much the best guy you know. Married to
@operaqueenie

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polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

Somehow found myself arguing with someone who talks about "the fediverse" like it is a) a singular thing and b) a separate thing from bluesky. It helped remind me of a fundamental truth about talking to people who are mad on the internet. What they're mad about is entirely uncorrelated with how well they understand the issues. Anger is an emotion. So is fear.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

In my commentary about mastodon and bluesky today, I didn't say all that much about my thoughts on the core issues of privacy and consent. That's what most people actually want to fight about. For people who are worried about that, anybody who isn't immediately on their side is the enemy. I'm used to that specific internet dynamic, so I'm not that bothered by it.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

What I'm realizing is that I don't wanna talk about that though. Not because I don't care. I do. But there are much smarter people who have spent way more time on those issues. It's a deep and gnarly topic. So I don't have anything to say about it that is smarter than what is already being said by people who are actually working on the issues.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

Instead, my musings from the peanut gallery are driven by something else that is bothering me as I observe people's evolving relationship with The Fediverse™.

To me, one of the fundamental things to understand about the concept of decentralization and federation is that nobody is "in charge". There's no central authority to appeal to.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

In short, who are you yelling at? Who do you expect to "fix" things for you? Right now people are coming down on the guy who is building the bridge to bluesky. That specific guy. They're yelling at him and telling him to make different decisions to protect their personal privacy. Is that what people think they signed up for with the fediverse? Fighting with other individual humans and trying to force them to do what you want?

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

I keep feeling like I'm missing something. But it seems clear to me that fighting with every other individual in the whole world until you carve out the specific level of visibility that you are comfortable with is a solution that doesn't scale very well.

More importantly though. I thought the whole point of the fediverse as a concept was that each of us can chose a platform that gives us the tools we want so that we're not beholden to the choices that other people make.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

What's wild about the bluesky bridge thing is that it seems to be trying to follow all of the rules. It's using the same ActivityPub protocol as everyone else. It has a name and the author is trying to make sure it respects everybody else's moderation settings. You can block it or defederate from it. But very few people who I've seen talking about it seem to be placated by that. They're still mad for some reason.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

As I was puzzling through that, I landed on what I think is a core issue. People do not feel that the tools necessary to protect themselves are in their hands. They're still operating as if they have to ask other people to do the right thing. (Or yell at them as the case may be). Is that a failure of the way mastodon is set up? Have we not gone far enough with "you get to decide how your presence on the internet works"?

polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

I'm increasingly convinced that a lot of people on here really just wanted a private group chat with everybody they like and nobody they don't like.

Wanting that is completely understandable. It sounds lovely. But it's pretty important to understand why you can't have that, and that no amount of browbeating other people will make it appear.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/111926571396973550

polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

It sounds like a lot of mastodon people want to post in public but also have everybody leave them alone as if it's not public. As far as I can see, their current strategy for achieving this is yelling very loudly in public posts hoping everyone else will see it and then shift everything around in order to accommodate them.

It's a bold strategy. I look forward to finding out if it works.

janl, to random
@janl@narrativ.es avatar

Felt cute with my metal hair. 🤘

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

@janl oh wow. That is definitely not the picture of you that I had in my head. Nice.

polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

For web developers who aren't great at design/UX. Do you use a wireframing tool to explore UI for your projects? I'm open to recommendations. If it costs money, please say a little about why you think it's worth paying for. If you don't use a tool, tell me what you do instead.

polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

I'm starting to feel like Firefox should be charging money for providing an internet experience with greatly reduced ads and tracking. It's clearly hostile to lots of sites. To the point where a news site gave me a popup literally pleading with me to allow ads.

This may seem non-intuitive. But ad-blocking tech is clearly taking money out of people's pockets. That's gonna create pressure. So it sort of feels like it should be generating money in order to make sure it can sustain itself.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

@mrcompletely @paninid @mhoye I understand how you got to these conclusions. But the reality is that lot business across all sectors seems to have "no real value" to a wide majority of people. But that's only because most people aren't interested in learning how all of the shit they take for granted actually happens and gets paid for. Destroying business is not something that should be done cavalierly.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

@mrcompletely @paninid @mhoye you're comfortable with talking about it for sure. But if you wanted it to actually happen, it feels like your praxis would be deeper than what's currently on display. That's all I'm saying.

Zee, to fediverse
@Zee@social.coop avatar

As a Child of the 90/00s Internet; the current model for building and maintaining digital relationships is... Well...

Shite.

As a teenager, I was a member of a community of thousands of nerds who loved pushing computing hardware to its limits across several websites.

Two had private sections where hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computing equipment was swapped, bought, and sold; with little fraud and "drama".

How can we design the make healthy relating the norm?

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

@Zee @toolbear so a few thoughts on this. One thing I've come to understand is that we greatly underestimated how much our previous communities were based on being niche. It was full of mostly nerds with the same obsession. It was homogeneous across several axes. That's just not true anymore. Even niche communities can be found by a much wider range of people. And there is less cohesion in terms of why people are showing up.

polotek, to random
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

I've spent significant time on Bluesky and Mastodon for the last few months. They're very different experiences, and I like them both for different reasons. But I think they are headed in different directions. They're going to continue to diverge in terms of what they offer.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

If you haven't read Anil Dash's Rolling Stone piece, you should. He has always been an ambassador of the way weird subcultures help shape the web for the masses. We've been missing that, and it might come back. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/internet-future-about-to-get-weird-1234938403/

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

So here's what I see as the barriers for both endeavors. Bsky's biggest problem is straight forward. It seems to operate under a model that requires centralized revenue. They gotta start making money at some point.
https://bsky.app/profile/polotek.bsky.social/post/3kkjqelc3ql2w

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

When you have to make money, that means you're gonna start doing things that your users don't want so that you can make money. I don't know exactly what it'll look like. But it's inevitable. There's no other option.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

The upside is that we have experienced all of the horrors of profit-motivated social media. It's bad, but it's a known quantity at least. And we know that ultimately people will still show up. So it can work.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

The other problem that bsky has is more subtle. They took a bet on creating their own protocol. And I think that was a mistake. I don't think it will gain adoption, and I don't think they're going to succeed at becoming a truly distributed system.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

If bsky stays centralized, then it's just another upstart platform trying to compete for users in a market of huge players. For better or worse, Meta got threads to work. So along with Twitter, bsky is competing with two giants and not just one. It's not looking good tbh.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

With mastodon, the problems are completely different. It still has a revenue problem. But it's not centralized. Which means it can't depend on collecting large pools of capital. Some things can only happen quickly when you pay people lots of money to do it.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

Mastodon is missing lots of polish. The experience is slow and laggy. Not just on the official client. I mean everywhere. The UI on most clients is bad. Not ugly per se. But you can tell that it doesn't have a team of professional designers going that extra mile to make it great.

polotek,
@polotek@social.polotek.net avatar

@timbray @phanpy I'm using Tusky. I know how to explore options. But at some point it becomes a chore. And the outcome is that it reflects back poorly on the platform. If people have to work this hard to get to a good experience, they're just gonna skip it.

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