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2024-03-16 00:34:30

Flipboard@flipboard.social

FediForum 2024 is almost here! Flipboard CEO @mike catches up with conference co-organizer and Dazzle Labs CEO @J12t to get a taste of top-of-mind topics for fediverse stewards, including how this space can cross the chasm into the mainstream. It’s a new episode of Dot Social, the first podcast about the open social web.

https://about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/johannes-ernst-of-dazzle-labs/

To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here:
http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

#Flipboard #Fediverse #FediForum #Federation #ActivityPub #Podcast #DotSocial #Peertube

show all 13 comments

2024-03-16 12:05:41

damon

damon@social.wedistribute.org

@Flipboard @mike @J12t Awesome person as a guest! Also, happy the show is back.

2024-03-16 20:09:22

Mike McCue

mike@flipboard.social

@damon @Flipboard @J12t thank you! I think this Fediforum is going to be super interesting.

2024-03-16 20:09:22

damon

damon@social.wedistribute.org

@damon @Flipboard @J12t thank you! I think this Fediforum is going to be super interesting.

2024-03-17 10:29:55

Olivier Simard-Casanova 🦋

o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social

@mike @damon @Flipboard @J12t It’s a great podcast, every episode has been fascinating to listen!

Is there any plan to run an episode, or even several, on some of the issues that are documented within the Fediverse? In particular, the racism that pushed many Black users out of the platform, the reply guy problem (I’m considering stopping publishing on Mastodon because of that), or the many moral panics targeted at projects a vocal, but toxic, minority doesn’t understand?

2024-03-17 10:31:55

Olivier Simard-Casanova 🦋

o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social

@mike @damon @Flipboard @J12t I’m all on board with the Fediverse and its philosophy. But these problems can severely hamper its growth, hence why I think they need to be discussed and addressed.

Of course, those are just suggestions!

2024-03-17 14:08:48

damon

damon@social.wedistribute.org

@o_simardcasanova @mike @Flipboard @J12t Thank you for asking the important questions and highlighting these issues. I love #DotSocial but it does often look with a rose coloured lens and ignores some of the negative & harsh realities of the Mastodon subculture which can and will have negative impacts on the bright future that’s always discussed. They touched on big companies being able to shutout projects but neglected to state how many projects have been shutdown and or severely altered due to the vocal minority of Mastodon. It gives devs the impression they can simply build without issue and that’s not reality. Also, a future that doesn’t really have Black and Brown people is not a bright one.

2024-03-17 17:42:48

Olivier Simard-Casanova 🦋

o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social

@J12t @mike @damon @Flipboard Thanks for the suggestion - and for organizing this event!

I will definitely keep following the evolution of the Fediverse. But after receiving another wave of abuse from the same subset of extremists earlier today, I’m on the verge of reducing significantly my use of Mastodon, at least for the time being.

I’m fine, but the constant abuse is not a pleasant experience. I also have very limited resources, they will be better spent on the AT Proto ecosystem.

2024-03-17 21:47:34

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Olivier Simard-Casanova

Is there any plan to run an episode, or even several, on some of the issues that are documented within the Fediverse? In particular, the racism that pushed many Black users out of the platform, the reply guy problem (I’m considering stopping publishing on Mastodon because of that), or the many moral panics targeted at projects a vocal, but toxic, minority doesn’t understand?

These aren't necessary problems of the whole Fediverse. Mastodon maybe, but not the whole Fediverse. Just because Mastodon's self-moderation capabilities are limited to mute and block, doesn't mean this goes for all the other Fediverse projects just the same.

Just to give you one example: Here on Hubzilla, I've got 17 general interaction permission settings, each with multiple values to choose from. I could even limit who is allowed to reply to my posts to:

everyone, authenticated or not
everyone who is authenticated (this is the default)
all Hubzilla users, but nobody on any other connected platform/project (Diaspora*, Mastodon, the rest of the Fediverse etc.)
everyone on the same hub as the main instance of my channel (hub.netzgemeinde.eu)
all my connections, accepted by me or not
only my accepted connections
only users whom I explicitly grant that permission
only myself

The other 16 settings have at least the last seven of these options, sometimes all eight.

And that's only Hubzilla and only a part of it. (streams) goes even further than that. If you want a safe haven social network, and you don't absolutely have to be mollycoddled with maximum ease-of-use, then (streams) could be your safe haven. And yes, (streams) is part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon if you want to stay in contact with your old acquaintances.

In general, if you're discontent with both ? and Mastodon, the remaining alternatives aren't only Threads and Bluesky. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon, and the non-Mastodon Fediverse is not just simply Mastodon with more characters and a different UI. There are places in the Fediverse that can do things beyond most Mastodon users' imagination.

About the Mastodon users who completely flipped their shit upon the Bridgy Fed Bluesky bridge announcement, and every last one of them was on Mastodon: I've taken a closer look at their behaviour. They seemed fully convinced that they know everything about the Fediverse, but even some of those who had joined in November, 2022 apparently also thought that the Fediverse is only Mastodon, and none of them really knew how far the Fediverse actually stretches.

Proof: There was a lot of demanding the Fediverse be ActivityPub-only with no bridges to anywhere whatsoever. What these people actually meant was for the Fediverse to stay ActivityPub-only.

What they don't know, however: The Fediverse isn't ActivityPub-only right now. It wasn't at that point. And it has never been. Hubzilla runs on Zot6, and it's bridged to ActivityPub. (streams) runs on Nomad, and it's bridged to ActivityPub. Until recently, Friendica ran on DFRN, and it was bridged to ActivityPub. By that logic, all instances of all these three projects would have to be Fediblocked.

In fact, the Fediverse itself started long before ActivityPub. Friendica, the oldest current member of the Fediverse, dates back to 2010. The term "Fediverse" was first used in 2012. ActivityPub, on the other hand, became a W3C-appointed standard in 2018 and was first used in 2017. No, not by Mastodon. Hubzilla was faster by two months.

CC: @Olivier Simard-Casanova @Mike McCue @Flipboard @Johannes Ernst

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

2024-03-17 22:05:30

Olivier Simard-Casanova 🦋

o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social

@jupiter_rowland There’s no discussion that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon and ActivityPub, you’re 100% correct to remind this. Personally, I would even consider Bluesky as part of the Fediverse.

What I meant was that as the largest platform on the Fediverse, what happens on Mastodon sets the tone for the Fediverse more broadly, at least partially. This is that worried me, as there is this vocal, and toxic, minority on Mastodon that has very few limits.

2024-03-17 22:06:48

Olivier Simard-Casanova 🦋

o_simardcasanova@mastodon.social

@jupiter_rowland My worry is that this minority gives a poor image of the Fediverse, especially on more mainstream platforms such as Threads.

And the problem is that once an image has solidified, it’s really hard to change it.

2024-03-18 04:10:06

Mike McCue

mike@flipboard.social

@J12t @o_simardcasanova @damon @Flipboard Yes live conversations at FediForum will be helpful for this. I will also work on a Dot Social episode dedicated to the issues you are raising.

2024-03-18 10:54:44

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Olivier Simard-Casanova

There’s no discussion that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon and ActivityPub, you’re 100% correct to remind this.

In general, when Mastodon users learn that the Fediverse is more than just Mastodon, they don't fight it because that'd be senseless. They're okay with there being something else than Mastodon in the Fediverse as long as this something else plays by Mastodon's unwritten rules, and it doesn't disturb Mastodon users. This something else is highly likely to break Mastodon's unwritten rules, either due to its own cultures being different from Mastodon's or due to design choices or both, but even then, I guess most rather resort to blocking individual rule-breaking users.

There are a few who don't accept something else being connected to Mastodon, and who want the Fediverse to be only Mastodon. But they aren't vocal.

With ActivityPub, the case is different. Those who want the Fediverse to be only ActivityPub-based projects are vocal. And what they actually want is the Fediverse to stay only ActivityPub-based projects. Which implies that they think this the Fediverse currently is only ActivityPub-based projects. Which, in turn, means they know neither Hubzilla nor (streams).

If you tell them that there are also Hubzilla and (streams), they're okay with that. That's because they think that Hubzilla and (streams) are and have always been based on ActivityPub themselves. Because, like, everything in the Fediverse has always been based on ActivityPub, right? Can't be any different, right?

But then you tell them that Hubzilla is based on a protocol called Zot6. And (streams) is based on a successor of Zot named Nomad. And in both cases, ActivityPub is implemented via a bridge plug-in named PubCrawl. PubCrawl is an official add-on, so it isn't third-party, and there is one of these bridges per channel and not one for all instances. But still, both Hubzilla and (streams) are not based on ActivityPub, and they're both bridged to Mastodon. Oh, and Hubzilla has been both in the Fediverse and using ActivityPub before Mastodon.

Then they have two options. They can accept Hubzilla and (streams) because they're free, open-source and non-commercial and reduce their anti-bridge stance to an anti-third-party-bridge-to-commercial-platforms stance which more reasonable Mastodon users already have, and which they express when you tell them that Hubzilla and (streams) are bridged, too.

Or they can stand their case and demand the full defederation of both Hubzilla and (streams). I've never seen anyone do that, but I guess that's because these people really don't know Hubzilla and (streams). Until I write to them, they've never come across a single post from either of these. But I guess if they're frequently enough exposed to posts from Hubzilla or (streams) that break Mastodon's unwritten rules, and if they can draw a line between the rules being broken and the users in question being on Hubzilla or (streams), that could trigger them to demanding full defederation.

What I meant was that as the largest platform on the Fediverse, what happens on Mastodon sets the tone for the Fediverse more broadly, at least partially. This is that worried me, as there is this vocal, and toxic, minority on Mastodon that has very few limits.

In this regard, it's hard to be safe anywhere in the Fediverse.

Once you move elsewhere, be it Akkoma or Iceshrimp or something, you start using your new home project as you're supposed to use it. You start making use of features that aren't available on Mastodon, just like Mastodon users started making use of features that aren't available on ?. It's only natural.

But in doing so, you break Mastodon's unwritten rules, and you trigger Mastodon's Fediverse purity police into going ballistic. Posting over 500 characters at once is bad enough already. Text formatting is even worse. Quote-posts are generally associated with harassment, so they're just about the worst crime you can possibly commit in the Fediverse, along with quotes because the Mastodon purists can't see the difference between these two.

Never mind that pretty much everything outside of Mastodon supports all of this. I think even the 2SLGBTQIA+ community on Sharkey gleefully makes use of all of this, quote-posts included, the same people who, according to the Mastodon purists, should be against quote-posts the most fiercely because quote-tweets were used to harass them on ?.

However, if the general, non-Fediverse public becomes aware of the "Make the Fediverse only Mastodon again" purists, they'll automatically make fools out of themselves. A demand to make the Fediverse only Mastodon again implies something which both mass media and tech media currently prefer to ignore for simplicity's sake, namely that there is actually more to the Fediverse than Mastodon.

If media took the time and effort to dig deeper in this case, they'll be told that a) this is normal, b) this is by design, c) this is the very concept of the Fediverse, and d) some Fediverse projects have actually been there before Mastodon. So the Fediverse has actually never been only Mastodon which renders "Make the Fediverse only Mastodon again" delirious rubbish.

"Make the Fediverse only Mastodon" wouldn't look much more sensible in this light either. Why would everything that isn't Mastodon have to be excluded from the same Fediverse that was founded by parts of this very same everything? Because it doesn't play by rules that aren't written down anywhere? Because it's different? By design even?

This would be the very revelation that there's intolerance and "digital racism" in the Fediverse, not to mention attempted colonialism.

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

2024-03-18 12:45:47

damon

damon@social.wedistribute.org

@mike
Please don’t take our criticism as slights. We are very appreciative of the fedi advocacy and how quickly Flipboard has embraced the Open Social Web. We just want to be inclusive but also reflect the total image. Thank you for being willing to read and understand