Bloonface

Bloonface, 1 month ago

You really couldn't be more wrong.

You don't have to be a Randroid or a libertarian, or even right wing, to understand that a discourse predicated on everyone getting everything for free with no real trade-off doesn't really make sense in the real world.

Bloonface, 1 month ago

For example, I spent years on Reddit happily arguing with wrong people, deriving my "value" from just having fun interacting with folks about stuff. The server resources that Reddit expended supporting that were fairly trivial in dollar terms. [...] Instead Reddit hired 2000 staff for some reason

They hired 2000 staff because they were running one of the most highly-trafficked websites on the Internet, with hundreds of millions of users, something which unsurprisingly takes quite a lot of people to administer and maintain. Were Reddit to not invest in people and resources to keep the website running at that scale, you would not be able to use it in the way you enjoy and it would have nowhere near as much utility to you.

This is the entire point of the article that you missed - there are a shit-ton of costs in running a massive community that have to come from somewhere. Your approach is "well I don't think those costs are necessary". But they are.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

For context, Instagram has two BILLION users. Facebook has just shy of three billion.

Mastodon has a total of ten million.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

It gives my partner absolutely banging migraines in more than tiny quantities. I find it gives me huge cravings for junk food about an hour or two after drinking it.

I'd be happy if it disappeared.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

Should have thought about that before you started treating them like serfs.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

You've literally quoted two industry bodies who have a vested interest in keeping aspartame on the market.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

Same here.

I find that Bing is about on par with Google now, with the added side benefit that Microsoft pay me to use it.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

I've always been underwhelmed with DuckDuckGo as a search engine, and for context on that remark I use Bing as my main search engine.

Bloonface, 2 months ago

I use Waze but will absolutely not follow some of its more stupid routes.

I will happily spend an extra half a minute on a journey to not have to go through a bunch of winding side streets and then try and pull out onto a busy main road, rather than just staying on the main roads.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

No trying to be explicitly contrarian, but the EEE strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) is well known by this point and it always ended up with the open standard not being used anymore and falling into irrelevance (as it happened to XMPP after google and Facebook embraced).

XMPP was irrelevant before Google and Facebook had anything to do with it.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

ODF has been supported natively by Office for years now, and LibreOffice is able to open .docx files just fine.

I've never found a PDF "broken by Adobes bs".

Bloonface, 3 months ago

The flipside is that a standard's not really open and a network founded on one isn't really resilient if certain groups or corporates arbitrarily aren't seen as "allowed" to use it, or if conversely a big corporate joining it is so toxic to the entire endeavour that it must be blocked on sight.

Chris Trottier, someone who I disagree with quite a lot and is a far bigger advocate for decentralisation as a public good than I am, is quite sanguine about P92 on those grounds.

Personally, I have no plans on my instances to submit P92 to any more stringent rules than I would with any other server blocks, that is I will give them exactly enough rope to hang themselves with.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Once Meta gets their foot in the door, I guarantee they will try to bully the fediverse into doing things their way. Hard pass for me.

Can you give any reasonable by means in which they could do this and succeed?

So much of this stuff just sounds like infeasible conspiracy theories. If, hypothetically, Meta did do such a thing (somehow, still not clear how or frankly why?) all that it would mean is that anyone who disagreed could defederate from Meta, or would be defederated from Meta... which given half the servers in existence seem to want to defed them up front anyway, doesn't seem to make any odds.

It's all just very confusing hearing about these lurid ideas for things Meta could do with the fediverse that simply don't make a lick of sense either in terms of motivation or implementation.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

It'd be entirely open to Meta to simply turn off federation, in the same way that Truth Social and Counter Social have.

But honestly if I were them, given the hostile reaction I'd probably just do that and knock the whole ActivityPub thing on the head. It feels like a waste of time when realistically they would get more people on Threads/P92 in one day than a million Musk-buying-Twitters could do with Mastodon. Then everyone is happy - no Meta on fedi, Meta gets its new exciting Twitter clone that it fully controls.

Put it this way - either they're up to some form of non-specific evil, in which case they can probably achieve whatever goals they have far more concretely if they fully control the content on Threads, or they're not and all this is actually in good faith, in which case they're doing this for the benefit of a few hundred thousand fedi nerds who have reacted mostly with hostility and are going to block it on sight.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

While they at first would adopt open standards and protocols, what stops them from creating proprietary extensions and using those and its dominance and resources to make it difficult for users to switch to other platforms in the Fediverse?

Nothing, which should probably raise concerns around how good a standard ActivityPub actually is if all it takes to drive a truck through its intent is one bad actor.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

I don't want Facebook to have access to my account information, posts and comments.

I hate to break it to you, but the very nature of the fediverse (as a distributed network where posts and account information automatically get distributed to hundreds if not thousands of independent servers you may or may not be aware of, that do not necessarily have to honour your deletion requests) means that it would be absolutely trivial for either Facebook or any other random bad actor you could think of to have access to all of that, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

This is an example I've given a few times, but if Meta were really just wanting to suck down data for the evulz (why they would do this I have absolutely no idea because it's not like they could use that data for anything), they don't need to start an instance amid a blaze of publicity. They could just go on Mastodon.social, sign up for a no-name account, grab an API key and suck down the contents of the fediverse in real time and that's the end of it. The fediverse is not private and its very nature means that control over one's own data is not quite as secure as ActivityPub advocates would like to pretend.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

God thank you, I swear some people fail to realise just how ActivityPub federation works!

Post something on fedi and you lose effective control over it; for all intents and purposes, it's out there on hundreds of different servers who don't have to respect your deletion requests, and it's never coming back.

And to be perfectly honest, I'm more comfortable with Meta archiving all my shitposts than, I dunno, all the nazis.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

For some reason, your link doesn't work.

The second part of your comment doesn't answer my question, nor would "they want our data!!!" explain why Meta would want or need to create an instance in order to get it, or how the "data" (what data? Your posts? The ones that ActivityPub syndicates to hundreds of other servers automatically? Do you know exactly which servers your posts are on at the moment?) of other users on other fedi instances could somehow be "monetised" by them.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

But that wasn't my point. It's not that I think that Facebook or Google cannot scrape Fediverse platforms/instances, it's that even if they do, they cannot serve targeted ads based on our activity here.

This is another one of those things where Meta's claimed motivations for this don't seem to stack up.

How exactly are Meta supposed to serve "targeted ads" to me, @bloonface, if I am on finecity.social and not [whatever Meta's instance is]?

If I don't have an account on their service, and never visit their website, they have no opportunity to put a tracking cookie on my computer, no opportunity to serve an ad to me (other than directly messaging me, behaviour which would absolutely get them defedded instantly by anyone who is even close to being on the fence about their presence), no link between my finecity.social account and any Meta accounts I may have... what benefit do they obtain from this?

Bluntly - how is this dastardly plan of theirs actually physically supposed to work?

A lot of people seem to have ascribed omnipotent powers to Meta far beyond what they are actually technically capable of. They can't deliver you a tracking cookie or make your instance display a banner ad to you through ActivityPub, ffs.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

I mean, it is just one bad actor.

If you look at it in these terms, you understand that Facebook has an interest in making sure that ActivityPub doesn't too large without Facebook having a say in it.

I don't think that ActivityPub is having any present difficulty keeping itself niche without Facebook's help - fedi has a total active user base of something like 2million, it's very literally a rounding error on Meta's user numbers. If there's a battle here, Facebook is already winning.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

OK, I've read that link and it still doesn't really explain how exactly Meta intends to monetise other peoples' posts - "collect data from and monetise", how exactly are they going to monetise other peoples' posts on other instances, when they have no ability to e.g. serve ads to those people?

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Wow so in your view anyone who just says "I think this isn't a big deal and it'll be fine" has been paid off?

Regardless of the fact that's something with absolutely no evidence?

And you're supposed to be the rational one here?

Some people on this thread have lost their damn minds.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Yeah, I'm "defending" Facebook by pointing out that people keep letting 2 + 2 = 57845789478945 and that many of the "risks" being talked about are simply imaginary, technically impossible and/or do not require Meta to start an instance to materialise.

The technical details rather matter when people are coming up with random nonsense and/or don't actually seem to understand the nature of the platform they're coming to the defence of.

I don't trust Meta. I don't like Meta. That doesn't mean I need to also accept as true random confabulations about people being paid off and data being scraped for ends that don't make any sense. There's been a whole heap of heat around this subject and basically no light.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

That statement is refreshingly sane. Really sick of the amount of heat over this situation and the lack of light.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Most people who use social media disagree, and unfortunately for you, it's their opinions that matter most as to whether they use a given social media platform.

I don't really care to follow celebrities and athletes either, but I recognise at least that I am in a minority.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

My view is if they did do that last thing, we'd be in exactly the same place as we were when we started - with "fediverse" as a tiny niche social network mainly populated by nerds, off to the side of all the others.

I think people have kind of failed to keep a sense of scale here - fedi has something like 2million active users, Facebook has a thousand times as many. We are quite literally a rounding error.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

the masses pick their form of fediverse rather than the one not controlled by big tech.

You say this as if the masses are currently interested in fediverse in general, and give a shit about whether it's controlled by big tech or not.

Fact is most people don't know about fedi and a great deal of those who do don't care, and the only chance you'll get them anywhere near a fediverse service if someone (be that Meta, or anyone else) wraps it up in a little bow for them and delivers it to them.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Facebook didn't "destroy" XMPP. XMPP was a tiny messaging protocol nobody used, Facebook picked it up for a bit, stopped using it after a while, and then XMPP returned to being a tiny messaging protocol nobody used.

People are acting like Jabber was hot shit when Facebook picked it up, and its present state of irrelevance is because of big bad Zuck. No, no fucker used Jabber and it saw basically no mainstream adoption until Facebook and Google got involved, and as soon as Facebook and Google weren't involved (as it turns out that XMPP actually kind of sucks and its unique features are things end users don't care about) it returned to being a complete irrelevance. A well-intentioned irrelevance, to be sure, but an irrelevance.

Fediverse is the same, mutans mutandis. We're tiny. I know it's nice for us to psyche ourselves up and say that we're going to destroy the big bad corporate media! but in reality we are a niche constellation of social networks that has literally 0.1% of Facebook's user base and whose adoption has been, shall we say, not stellar.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

I have read that and been linked that multiple times.

I responded to it here: https://finecity.social/notes/9gcoisoofl

tl;dr: Facebook and Google didn't "destroy" XMPP. XMPP was used by basically nobody before Facebook and Google picked it up, and after they dropped it again XMPP is still used by basically nobody. Its spec also doesn't include support for features that consumers expect to have in messaging software, which is part of why nobody uses it.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Not stellar? We're having this conversation, aren't we?

The fact that I (nerd that knows all sorts of shit about fedi and is interested in tech topics) am able to use Kbin/fedi to converse with other nerds that know about fedi and are interested in tech does not mean that the fediverse is a storming success.

I can have a conversation with one other person using tin cans and string. This does not mean that tin cans and string are the future of telecommunications.

In reality the people who I have tried to get on here who do not fall in that category were either disinterested from the start, were turned off by the complexity of how it works or stopped coming on it when it turned out there was nothing for them here.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

That article has been posted several times and does not explain how Google "destroyed" XMPP - it assumes that XMPP was some hot shit everyone was using before Google and Facebook picked it up, when in reality it was used by next to nobody, most people who used it with Google or Facebook were just using it to talk to other Google or Facebook users, XMPP doesn't support a lot of features that consumers now expect in messaging, and since Google and Facebook dropped it it has returned to being a niche FOSS thing - only now its advocates blame Google and Facebook for its failure rather than the fact it's not a very good protocol and nobody uses it.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

I mean... realistically, why would that be their fault if they were to start a fedi instance and everyone else blocked them?

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Their following press releases would probably spin a very different narrative about immature tech and privacy concerns.

What else do you expect them to do? Say "oh yeah I guess a bunch of guys on fedi say we are arseholes, so we must be"?

Bloonface, 3 months ago

It's been quite funny seeing people talking about how Meta is going to come onto fedi and scrape everyone's Mastodon posts.

1. Inasmuch as Meta gives a shit about scraping content, it is so that they can translate that into marketing reach. They don't give a shit about your toots because they have no reasonable means of generating value for themselves from those posts, because they have no way of making you look at ads based upon them.
2. Even if they could somehow generate value from your posts, they don't need to start an ActivityPub-based social network to scrape everything you say. They can just open a no-name account on a reasonably-well federated server like Mastodon.social, grab an API key and suck down as much as they please. There's no mechanism to prevent them from doing so.
3. ActivityPub is not private and never has been. While obviously it's morally dubious to scrape fedi, there's nothing technologically preventing anyone from doing so, and frankly there are many worse actors that could do so than Meta.
4. The normal operation of ActivityPub itself means that the moment your post gets federated to other servers, you lose final control over its viewership and destination.

Basically I think if you don't want other people you may not want seeing, downloading or storing what you have to say, don't post it publicly and definitely don't use ActivityPub.

Sorry, bit of a tangent, but a lot of people are pretty oblivious to how obnoxiously unprivate fedi is.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

YouGov is a top-tier reputable polling company that weights its samples to avoid any such confounding factors.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

That kind of oversells what bias they might have.

They're well known as a reputable and honest polling organisation, regardless of their origins.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

In addition to games, which is one of the primary reasons I use my PC, I don't like LibreOffice and I don't like the big Linux desktop environments that exist and I can't be bothered to sort through the smaller ones to find one I vibe with, when I'm perfectly happy with Windows as a desktop OS.

WSL offers the best of both worlds.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Proton can't run a lot of the games I want to play and like to play.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

This is one of the key issues with the entire Fediverse setup and it's not one there are any good answers to.

Not least since it makes being on the biggest instance objectively the best experience, this defeating the point of decentralisation.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Gotta say I have no love for the big leftist subs but that's a pretty cheap shot.

Their choosing to purchase luxuries, in a world where luxuries must be paid for in a system they didn't design, choose or want to live under, doesn't negate that they are opposed to capitalism.

If you want to argue that they're possibly a bit too sanguine about the prospect of their favourite luxuries existing under communism or whatever, fair enough. But that's a separate argument from whether they're stupid to pay money for stuff that makes them happy.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Nobody. But they want to have Reddit coins to reward people who do things they like. So they have to pay for them to satisfy that want.

They might also pay for pizza, beer and cinema tickets too. Same difference.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Yeah but you can tell from the context that search results are just a list of random web pages that maybe what Google says is bollocks.

Google gives you a bunch of results and says "here, look at these". LLMs confidently tell you things that they may have simply made up and present them as if they're real.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

That is precisely why I run my own instance, it's essentially a backup from YouTube of my own dumb videos: https://peertube.bloonface.com

But honestly that's pretty much all it is. It's not really worth much more than that to me.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

Me and my partner pay jointly for Premium and I wouldn't want to go back. No ads on any device we watch on, knowing that the creators get a good chunk of change from it, is bliss.

Bloonface, 3 months ago

I've got no opposition to that at all. I kind of already run Fine City Social on the basis that it's Norwich and Norfolk, despite the name!