-

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 17:37:12 +0200

are0h@h-i.social

So, over the weekend, I’ve been talking a lot about the need to take Mastdon into a new community-focused direction, so I took time to write down some thoughts.

Spread this far and wide because it’s time for us to do something else.

https://h-i.works/2024/04/a-case-for-community.html

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments (in good faith) because this is a convo we need to have.

And I’m ready to get started today.

show all 12 comments

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 17:57:27 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

If you like Mastodon how it is, that’s fine. This is not for you.

This is for people who are uncomfortable with the direction Mastodon is going and want to contribute financially, technically, philosophically, etc, to a new direction for that project to give the current Mastodon populace another option.

Because I think we’ve been patient enough with that project. It’s time to try something else.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 13:25:18 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Secret Right Wing Cult Leader The only way in which Mastodon is "forward-thinking" is in how to a) cosy up to even bigger players, b) railroad all Fediverse newbies not only onto Mastodon, but into the official silo and making it hard to escape from it and c) hide the rest of the Fediverse from Mastodon users' eyes or, if that fails, make it look bad and broken to them.

Otherwise, Mastodon is the most lack-lustre, underwhelming and actually out-dated of all Fediverse projects. The only reason why it's so "popular" is because 99.9% of all Fediverse newbies and at least 50% of all no-longer-newbie Mastodon users don't know that there's anything else in the Fediverse, much less what this "anything else" has to offer. Oh, and because it's so hard to move away from it unless you want to start from scratch.

@tallship and @The Nexus of Privacy are already proposing a hard fork whose goal it is to pry Mastodon and its users away from Rochko's attempts at building a new walled garden.

So two things I suggest a hard fork like Awujo to have are:

an indicator that shows which instance type a post came from; this stops the belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon
migration on Sharkey's level; this makes it easy to migrate from mastodon.social and other vanilla Mastodon instances to Awujo; at the same time, make sure that it's easy enough to move away from Awujo

These should be basics.

Another thing that has just come to my mind: Implement full HTML rendering for posts so that Awujo can even display elaborate blog posts in all their glory, arbitrary number of embedded images and all. And then stop reducing Article-type objects to links. This is something that Rochko staunchly refuses to add, one of the major reasons why Friendica and Hubzilla creator and (streams) maintainer @Mike Macgirvin ?️ and current Hubzilla maintainer @Mario Vavti, as well as the Hubzilla and (streams) user communities, are so disgruntled about Mastodon.

Speaking of Mike Macgirvin: Follow him. Follow closely what he's working on. As said above, he is the creator and maintainer of the streams repository which has 14 years of work behind it. And he is currently working on stuff that could revolutionise the whole Fediverse: nomadic identity based only on ActivityPub without having to resort to Zot or Nomad, nomadic identity across different Fediverse projects, (streams)-level permission control for ActivityPub.

The latter would provide the "better safety tools" on a level unknown to the Fediverse unless you know Hubzilla or (streams). The former two would make the dream of one identity across Fediverse projects come true and make it resilient against instance shutdowns.

Both, all by themselves, are concepts that have been implemented some four years before Mastodon was launched. What's new is only that they're being ported to ActivityPub, having required different protocols until now.

Of course, from a developer's POV, the easiest way would be to hard-fork Mastodon into nothing more than an alternative UI theme for (streams) and, ideally, write a new doc for (streams) itself once its current backend redesign is done. But even if Mastodon's UI is kept unchanged as much as possible, the backend would work so radically differently from Mastodon that the whole UX would confuse the hell out of those who thought that the Fediverse is only Mastodon and only Twitter-style microblogging ten minutes earlier.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Fork

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 14:30:05 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

@jupiter_rowland Ha, well don't you have a lot to say?

You seem to have a grudge against Mastodon, and I have no interest in entertaining that.

I'm aware of those projects.

I'll take some of the points you make under advisement.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 14:52:50 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Secret Right Wing Cult Leader

Ha, well don't you have a lot to say?

Greetings from a project from before Mastodon that has never had any character limits and thus doesn't have character limits in its culture.

You seem to have a grudge against Mastodon

This isn't too atypical in my corner of the Fediverse. It comes from Mastodon not only deliberately limiting itself, but deliberately and apparently intentionally making itself incompatible to the rest of the Fediverse. It even makes its users believe first that Rochko invented the Fediverse, and Mastodon is either the Fediverse proper or the one and only Fediverse standard.

But if there's someone who really holds a grudge, it's Mike. Read this commentary of his, for example. And I can understand him.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 14:57:06 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

@jupiter_rowland Ha, you seem very proud of not having character limits. Good for you.

Again, I’m not interested in grudges against Mastodon.

I'm interested in the future.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:01:27 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Secret Right Wing Cult Leader

I'm interested in the future.

As long as this future will acknowledge and embrace the rest of the Fediverse instead of walling itself up against it and pretending it isn't there...

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:07:00 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

@jupiter_rowland A lot of the fedi is unsafe for people who don't look like you, so I understand people's hesitancy to explore the larger fedi.

If the larger fedi wants to be embraced, it's going to have to deal with that reality.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:47:07 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Secret Right Wing Cult Leader And parts of the Fediverse are actually safer than Mastodon or any Mastodon hard-fork could ever hope to be.

That's not because they're devoid of white cishet males, but that's because they've got advanced anti-harassment, anti-stalking, anti-just-about-everything-unpleasant countermeasures that have been developed, advanced, evolved for longer than Mastodon itself, and that go way beyond not only what Mastodon has now, but even what minorities want to have on Mastodon.

Again: Follow @Mike Macgirvin ?️. Read what he has to say.

Yes, he's a privileged white cishet male living in a fairly wealthy country with a Western culture. But he's the only one who is working on actually making the Fediverse safer. And he has been successfully doing that since when Eugen Rochko was still a school kid. This guy has been developing software since before Rochko was even born. So I guess it's pretty safe to assume that he is competent and experienced, and he knows what he's doing.

Yes, he holds a grudge against Mastodon. But he also points out that, no, Mastodon is not the safest possible place in the Fediverse.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 16:08:10 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

@jupiter_rowland This is hypothetical, as you cannot say what is safe or not for people like me.

I already told you I'm familiar with his work.

And I did not say Mastodon was the safest. What I did say is that I understand why people are hesitant to explore the larger fedi.

If we're going to talk, you need to listen to what I am saying instead of pushing your bias.

I'm open to whatever, but your anger towards Mastodon is of no interest to me as I have no loyalty to it.

You need to adjust your approach because you're coming off as every other sanctimonious white dude I deal with in this space.

And that's a poor way of showing how your part of the fedi is allegedly safer.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 16:25:04 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

@jupiter_rowland And trying to tell ‘minorities’ what they want is not the direction you want to.

You need to step back, take a breath, and think about what you're trying to accomplish here.

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 22:00:41 +0200

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Secret Right Wing Cult Leader

This is hypothetical, as you cannot say what is safe or not for people like me.

Okay, basic question: What is your idea of safety?

And I did not say Mastodon was the safest. What I did say is that I understand why people are hesitant to explore the larger fedi.

That's because a common implication towards members of minorities who have fled from Twitter to Mastodon is that everything that isn't Mastodon is potentially chock-full of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fascist subhumans who are just waiting for their next victim. And Mastodon is the only place guaranteed to be safe for them.

I mean, it's understandable. I guess what they're looking for primarily is a place where there simply is nobody who'd harass them. Guaranteed.

Mastodon appears to be just that to them, what with how welcoming it is in general, and how the vast majority of users is very left-wing. At the same time, they know exactly zilch about the rest of the Fediverse, maybe except a few names they happen to catch. So they don't know if it's safe.

Well, and if someone like me comes along and throws into the room the fact that just about everything in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon has quote-posts built in, it doesn't exactly make the rest of the Fediverse look sympathetic, now, does it? After all, they associate quote-posts with harassment. So what motivation would a Fediverse project have to implement them, seeing as Mastodon has so staunchly refused to do so until recently?

I'm open to whatever, but your anger towards Mastodon is of no interest to me as I have no loyalty to it.

So it's a purely pragmatic approach because Mastodon is what your target audience is used to, and you simply don't want them to re-learn everything again?

Maybe in combination with taking Mastodon away from the GmbH, the Inc., the self-imposed "this is what microblogging is" restrictions and the "we are the Fediverse" attitude? For this part sounds sympathetic if it's done right.

See, I'm looking at the Fediverse differently from most other Fediverse users. I'm looking at it from a mostly technological point of view. Also, my first contact with the Fediverse was not Mastodon. It was Friendika before it was renamed, and that was in 2011. So my experiences are different, especially technological experiences.

When I'm looking for solutions for Fediverse problems, it's only natural that I look beyond Mastodon first and foremost.

And seeing how Mastodon treats the rest of the Fediverse, especially the projects from the years before Mastodon's own launch, I can impossibly not be biased.

And that's a poor way of showing how your part of the fedi is allegedly safer.

Well, I could rattle down the permission settings available on Hubzilla, including which options you have, and then tell you that (streams) goes even beyond that. But I guess that isn't what you want to read either.

If you're looking for a social or cultural solution, I'm not the one to discuss that with.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 22:11:59 +0200

Gorgeous Killer

are0h@h-i.social

@jupiter_rowland Based on your unending assumptions, constant racist references to ‘minorities’ as a monolithic group and speculating what they need based on absolutely nothing, and your constant need to tell me how much you believe you know about the fedi, it’s pretty clear you are not the person I need to be talking to.

Be well.