I don't understand why this poll isn't closed now. hasn't it been a full 7 days since Nov 2 11:29am. But getting over 1000 votes would be cool. so, hey @neilhimself, wanna boost it?
right now I love #ActivityPub. but something like a Personal Data Server that I can keep at home or pay somebody to manage, move whenever I want and connect to any new service that somebody develops, seems like the inevitable way forward. a blob with all my stuff as safe as I am willing pay for, where these companies are competing to be the most trustworthy and reliable. instead of having it spread out everywhere or with Google or Apple. and them pushing me to use their services. #SocialWeb
My read on #bluesky is that they are effectively sucking the air out of the decentralization balloon, whether they intend to or not. On the tech side, the #ATprotocol will prevent much decentralization from ever happening and divert the focus that was on #ActivityPub development. On the culture side, they deter a critical mass from developing here, which we need to overwhelm the influence of our most annoying users and lure in the people most people want to follow and interact with. #fediverse
The use of email #newsletters and #rss could mostly disappear if there were dedicated #ActivityPub apps to ingest/parse feeds and read or listen to articles. The bonus being that we'd also have comments and virality. Then podcasts and video too. #fediverse#OpenSocialWeb
@wjmaggos This is something we really want to do with We Distribute, but the integration doesn't really support mapping activity types to WordPress post types yet.
Which is a shame, because it could make following a website infinitely more powerful! Imagine following a site, and seeing a medley of status updates, articles, videos, images, and more? But, it can all be broken into different contexts in different apps, like a video could be seen in PeerTube, whereas a podcast night show up in Funkwhale?
imo the fedi is gonna be undeniable when all these pieces developed separately like Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube etc...come together. when AP is as ubiquitous as HTTP. it becomes "this is just the usually best way to do this" instead of this is how we do it here and they handle this same thing that way over there. #platypus
Listening to @mike and @Gargron, Mike brings up that it's a perfect way to steal usage from #xitter. That an open protocol is a huge advantage for creators who now know how closed platforms (and esp Elon) will freely fuck up a platform and abuse the relationship they have with their fans.
So while decentralization seems like bad business, sometimes it's not. And it's a great way for Zuck to get back at a guy he hates.
Don't let your hatred of Musk con you into thinking Zuckerberg is Mastodons friend. He'll use it to his advantage then screw us over a soon a he can. Zuckerberg has screwed over countries, he's not going to give a damn about a network full of people that came here because we are sick of capitalist explotation of the web. Meta is the biggest abuser on the web.
Elon freaking out about these companies not advertising with him is evidence that they could all join together and create their own servers on the #fediverse (and build their own #ActivityPub software) and promote it and all their followers would follow them here and they'd be securing their social media freedom and independence forever. Like when AOL was dominant but they all built their own websites and people learned to use a browser. That they have the power in this relationship.
@wjmaggos IBM, Apple, and Disney et al already have the power in this relationship: they picked up their money and went home and there ain't anything filling the space they left except "buy gold coins" alex jones level advertisers.
They don't need to create their own servers on the fediverse, and indeed we don't want apple, ibm, and disney and their types trying to monetize the fediverse. Would you want to interact with an account from disney .social?
Finally, AOL was never dominant in anything besides attracting the dumbasses of the world. Their business model was people paying X dollars a month for dialup modem access when everyone with a clue was using broadband.
#Threads looks like it's gonna suck based on what we who most love the #fediverse care about. My hope has always been that #meta federating would give us the opportunity to convince a huge number of their users to move here based on it simply being a better deal for users (and democracy), since folks would no longer lose their connections. Lock-in has always been the hardest hurdle to overcome. If they're dumb enough to open that door, fuck yeah we'll make the case. Guess we'll see.
The #BBC now has their own #fediverse instance. An experiment, but this is exactly what we need, journalistic outlets with their own space on the decentralized #socialweb. Just like when media created their own first websites in the early days of the public internet (going beyond AOL keywords etc). This place is about news imo, so being embraced by journalists is key. I hope their list of accounts grows quickly, and other outlets follow their lead.
I hope developers from all the projects can work closely with them, to do their best to give them what they need ASAP. This is such a huge opportunity to get rolling on decentralizing media.
@wjmaggos@micahloewinger@onthemedia@mastodonmigration precisely my reaction! I was particularly disappointed in the line about how ALL social media is set up the same way in terms of centralisation and monetisation except for Reddit—what are we, chopped liver?
It was honestly a good piece otherwise, but boy did they manage to miss one hugely important angle.
Marketing sucks, but I think we're failing to push the "unique selling proposition" (ugh) of the #fediverse. So many kinds of social media exist, but this place is about "attention democracy". We are "decentralized boosts with dialogue". That the best art, info and ideas go viral, as decided by everyone collectively. No gatekeepers or advantages for advertisers. It embraces journalism's ideals. It's why it matters at a cultural level. It should be the focus of future development and our message.
again, effectively, I think it allows that spreading of ideas. the admin who wants to be strict will lose users (more over time imo). the admin who just goes after jerks is also gatekeeping, but probably in a way that both attracts users and encourages the positive virality I want to see, especially compared to letting jerks create a toxic environment. you're right about what's possible, I just don't see it happening a lot. and yes, like any open system, community vigilance is vital.
primarily I want to share one id/account. we don't need separate private messaging here. when people try to do that, it should be a matrix conversation. etc.
This is why we will win (if #threads ever fully federates). Over time, people will recognize that algos and ads serve the interests of the platform owners (and maybe the top .0001% of most popular accounts) over those of the users. Your time on social media can be spent seeing stuff from the people you follow (and what they boost), or what the platform owner decides you should see. What you want is not what they want. Given a choice and no lock-in, people will move here. https://mstdn.social/@renwillis/112209102930667255
I don't think it's intelligence. The influence of money over how people think is stronger here than anywhere else. To the greatest degree possible anywhere, we're programmed to be lazy thinkers. Buy shit. Don't question. The 1A is awesome but combined with the worship of capitalism here and how mass media evolved, it allows for a lot of fuckery with the American psyche.
@wjmaggos
A friend of mine was told "Be kind to American's. They're the most propagandized people on the planet" while that may ring true for many, it's probably a very competitive category these days. @errhead
Can #podcasting be made to work with #ActivityPub as well as #RSS? Then podcatchers could work like a #Mastodon client, allowing us to interact directly via comments, favorites and spreading around the best episodes via boosts. #podcasts
update: it exists but no podcatcher fully supports it yet.
imo the magic here is that we can make everything natively able to go viral. there aren't separate episodes, articles and videos we link to from here, but the item itself is an #ActivityPub post. creators stay in control. that's our killer app and how we sell creators on the #SocialWeb.
The social network where each journalistic outlet, government agency and institution has its own instance will obviously become the best place for news eventually. Where no third-party can ever decide whether or not we see what gets posted/boosted by the people we follow, and nothing else shows up in our feed either.
It's just taking way too fucking long for them to figure this out and join us here.
sure but RSS feeds 1) were (probably) never adopted by as many people as social networks 2) lack the simplicity of a boost to make an article or post go viral 3) never felt like you were participating in a community
@wjmaggos I know what you mean! I don't understand why they don't just create an instance on their own domain.
It would certainly be a way to make sure people know the content is really from them, and they won't be subject to being "censored". And if they really come up with reprehensible content, we know to just block their whole server.