Fediverse

So, fediverse actors (re: Mastodon, Kbin, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc.), should we talk about Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier) now or what? Self-sovereign identity is a necessary step, if we want a coherent #fediverse, with less friction to roam around instances.

Can't wait for Internet Historian to cover Reddit protest

#fediverse

I'm curious about Pixelfed. Do I need a new account to ingest that stuff, or can I explore it from Kbin somehow?

#fediverse

An eventful week in the fediverse, filled with discourse and drama about Meta's new microblogging platform. A summary of events and a separation of the different topics that were talked about. Beyond that, WeDistribute, a blog with a long history and legacy talking about decentralized social networks is back!

The rapid rise of Lemmy and Kbin, dubbed the 'threadiverse', have altered the dynamic in the fediverse. A look at how this changes the structure and the dynamic of the fediverse at large.

That's it. I'm curious.

What kind of platform do you think the fediverse is lacking?

It could be a brand new platform or a much needed fork of an already existing one.

Would you actively participate in that platform if it existed? If so, in which way?

What, do you think, the incorporation of a platform of that type can add to the growth of the fediverse?

What features should this platform have?

Hmm, okay. Way too much sketchy energy going into promoting #Bluesky, the billionaire-backed, supposedly decentralised, algorithmic alt-Twitter app led by techbro types who profited from Twitter's sale to Elon Musk and will aim to make Bluesky profitable, when we already have #Mastodon and the #Fediverse that unlike Bluesky can feasibly exist in an idealised anticapitalist world (which is always a neat little measuring stick). Ultimately, let them crack on; we'll keep trying to build a new world in the shell of the old.

I'm changing my stance on the whole Meta/project92 thing after reading this article. I think the entire* fediverse should block project92 by default. Later, some instances can re-evaluate whether to maintain those blocks, once we have a better idea of what the benefits and consequences of federating will be:

Of course, it's possible to work with companies you don't trust. Still, a strategy of trusting the company you don't trust until you actually catch them trying to screw you over is ... risky. There's a lot to be said for the approach scicomm.xyz describes as "prudently defensive" in Meta on the Fediverse: to block or not to block?: "block proactively and, if none of the anticipated problems materialise within time, consider removing the block." Georg of lediver.se frames it similarly:

We will do the watch-and-see strategy on our instance in regards to #meta: block them, watch them, and if they behave (hahahahaha) we will see if we unblock them or not. No promise though

Previously, I'd thought "some block, some federate" would be the best approach, as described in this post by @atomicpoet:

My stance towards Meta is that the Fediverse needs two types of servers:

1. Lobby servers that explicitly federate with Meta for the purposes of moving people from Meta to the rest of the Fediverse

2. Exit servers that explicitly defederate with Meta for the purposes of keeping portions of the Fediverse out of reach from Meta

Both approaches not only can co-exist with each other, they might just be complementary.

People who use Meta need a way to migrate towards a space that is friendly, easy-to-use, and allows them to port their social graph.

But People also need a space that’s free from Meta, and allows them to exist beyond the eye of Zuckerberg.

Guess what? People who use Meta now might want to be invisible to Meta later. And people who dislike Meta might need a bridge to contact friends and family through some mechanism that still allows them to communicate beyond Meta’s control.

And thankfully, the Fediverse allows for this.

One more post about how things are going inside the Fediverse now that #Project92 has joined the Fediverse. I have two ideas: One is that the Fediverse has ALWAYS had to make hard choices about things like this, but we’ve always found a way. We’ll do it again. The sky isn’t going to fall, and there probably won’t be a “Great Schism.” It’s a mess, but we get through it. I think that a small part of the Fediverse will take a preemptive maximalist stance and try to defederate Meta before they even launch, even though we’ll still have 3 months after they launch to find out what their policies are.

Everyone who’s into the fediverse concept should read this article.

“ Her şeyin göründüğü gibi olmadığı, her karakterin bir veya daha fazla gizli gündemi olabileceği ve hepsinin oynayacak rolleri olduğu casus türüne aynadan bakan film, hikayeler ve gerçeklik arasında gidip gelmek gibi harika bir deneyimi de vadediyor. SATURDAY FICTION (2019) Original title: Lan xin da ju yuan Director: Ye Lou Cinematography by Zeng Jian Yorum: https://boxd.it/4jf2pP

Attached: 1 image Günlük hayat içerisinde varolan gerçeklerin yapay efektler kullanmadan da dehşet unsurlarının olabileceğini ve kutsal aile kurumunun ne kadar çürümüş olduğuna işaret eden olay örgüsü içinde soğuk ama derinlemesine bir kültürel çalışma olan +18 bir film. Kurgu, oyunculuklar, yönetmenlik ve senaryosunun oldukça başarılı olduğu film, Yunan Tuhaf Dalgası içinde Lanthimos'tan alınan bayrağı daha yukarı taşıyor. MISS VIOLENCE (2013) Director: Alexandros Avranas Yorum: https://boxd.it/4jtZPP

Attached: 1 image My husband had to wait for 6 years to capture this view of #TheNeedles. Taken as the #moon set at 4.30 am last summer. This shot is only possible a couple of times each year. He almost had it in 2016 but it was slightly too breezy and the telephoto lens couldn't keep in focus. It causes controversy as some think it's fake, I promise you that it is not. It involved much research, persistence and luck with the weather! It's the cover shot on our 2024 calendar #IsleofWight #photography

İyi bir okur olduğumu düşünürdüm ama uzun süredir başımı ekrandan kaldırıp da şöyle su içer gibi usulca bir metin ya da kitap okumadığımı fark ettim. Kitabı görünce nedendir bilmiyorum ama heyecanlandım! İlk fırsatta okumak-okunmak için sözleştik..

So, I saved Kbin as a web app for convenience, but I just realized it doesn't respect my Android orientation lock, meaning it always rotates when I'm reading it in bed laying on my side.

Does it happen to anybody else?

#fediverse

Corporations don't just sit out on new technologies, and no matter how hard you try you can't force them to. Defederating from Meta's new project preemptively is naive, and will not do much of anything.

Protocols are going to be adopted by corporations, whether we like it or not. SMTP, LDAP, HTTP, IP and 802.11 are all examples of that. If it ends up that meta is able to destroy the fediverse simply by joining it, that is a design flaw on OUR end. Something would then clearly need to be different in order to prevent future abuse of the protocol.

FOSS is propped up by corporations. By for profit corporations. If you want to stop those corporations from killing projects, you put safety guards up to make sure that doesn't happen. You don't just shut them out and put your head in the sand.

Another year, another incredible music contest. Check out the winners, and listen to the 43 different music entries from around the network!

I'm just musing on the end game for #Meta here, and would love to hear what others think.

On the topic of how there have been rumors that Meta wants to federate with only instances that will follow their moderation standards:

Twitter had entire teams to moderate and control content. It cost so much money in moderators and tools. We have seen first hand what happens when that breaks down - advertisers leave.

Reddit used unpaid moderators and never made money because of the amount of content that was not advertiser-safe - now that they are trying to break from that and control moderation in an advertiser-friendly way, they are seeing first-hand the break down of moderation and the revolt of unpaid users as moderators. They will have to suddenly put a lot of money into probably paid moderation and mod tools if they want to pivot to a really advertiser-safe platform.

Meta doesn't want to spend all that money, obviously. It costs a lot. So of course they will look to instances with volunteers who are willing to moderate friendly spaces and content for them, and probably pay them a pittance. And if those instances fail to moderate, Meta can simply defederate and stop paying those instances - they can absolve themselves of responsibility very easily.

I was over here theorycrafting on how much money it would take for me to run an instance and sell out to Meta, and I thought that they would have to pay me not only enough for server and hosting costs, but also for my salary to essentially make running an instance and small team my full time job, and enough for me to pay salary to moderators, and to a devops person to keep the server up and running and updated, take any new protocol changes Meta implements, etc. Of course they wouldn't pay me that much. If they were willing to pay that much they would do it themselves.

Basically, Meta is playing a very smart corporate game here. Any instance that is going to choose to federate with Meta is making a deal with the devil to suddenly be extremely accountable towards Meta, and if it's a sufficiently large instance then they're suddenly accountable for a LOT of moderation or else Meta pulls support and suddenly they're responsible for a big instance and have to shoulder the financial burden themselves. It's a losing game, in my opinion.

If anyone has any bandwidth. I would love to get a project going for an encrypted fediverse alternative to Discord. Thoughts?

#fediverse

#Facebook actually has a lot of fake accounts for investment/romance scams.
Scammers take advantage of the propensity of people to blindly trust Facebook's capital power.
#Fediverse instances might keep distance from Facebook to avoid scamming incidents even if Facebook adopts #ActivityPub.

If you’re new to the Fediverse you should know about ActivityPub and why it gives the Fediverse an edge over other social networks.

It's really important for those of us who've lived through previous megacorp attacks on free software ecosystems to TEACH that history.

This article rehashes a lot of relevant stuff in some detail. Regardless of what you feel about the decisions around the fediverse and Facebook, knowing the history can only help.

When we learn from history, we are NOT NECESSARILY condemned to repeat it.

I'm getting an itch to talk about hidden gems like Moon.

A legendary blogger weighs in on reactions from a user-run social network towards a big corporation diving into the space.