It's pretty disappointing that Mozilla chose to go with Mastodon. There are already plenty of org-backed mastodon instances. It would have been nice for the supposed primary steward of the web and decentralization to really show the power of the fediverse and use a different implementation. Mozilla, and any other orgs starting up instances, could really help expand the fediverse, instead they're helping to cement mastodon in it's Gmail position.
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2022
42 points (100.0% liked)
Fediverse
17717 readers
3 users here now
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
- What is the fediverse?
- Fediverse Platforms
- How to run your own community
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I think doing something more decentralized than twitter is better than doing nothing at all.
I often hear this argument: you should've done "this" instead of "that". I think it's misleading. Doing "this" is already good. Doing "that" may be good too. Why not do "this" and "that", not only one of them. Resources are not limited: there can be a lot more developers making new products.
Disagree. There are already thousands of mastodon instances; having one more doesn't have a huge effect. And the downside, as I mentioned, is reinforcing mastodon's hegemony, which is a net negative for the fediverse. Organization/company instances have a wider reach than small instances and so does their choice of software, especially when that organization is one that stands for openness and decentralization.
There is no mastodon hegemony and won't be in near future. The hegemony is Twitter, Facebook etc. While they are dominant other fediverse projects don't compete with each other, they compete with centralized social sites.
There is no mastodon hegemony and won’t be in near future
This is demonstrably not true. Check any of the network trackers like https://fediverse.party. You'll see mastodon instances greatly outnumber instances of every other fediverse software combined and mastodon users greatly outnumber users of every other software as well. And the mastodon team uses this to their advantage. There are myriad instances of the mastodon team deciding not to implement greater compatibility with other (perfectly spec compliant) implementations because it would be too much work for mastodon (there's an outstanding issue about lemmy compatibility that the masto team has no interest in fixing). Webfinger is a defacto requirement for the fediverse because mastodon won't interoperate with (perfectly spec compliant) implementations that don't use webfinger. Check https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ and you'll see alot of AP development is focused specifically on interoperability with mastodon. Brand new implementations start off testing against Mastodon and only test against other services later (if at all).
That is a hegemony and because of it, Mastodon receives more contributions, has a larger patreon, and receives more public funding than any other AP service. The fediverse is powerful because of its diversity, but if its controlled by a single project, that project can dictate its direction and capabilities.
I agree. And the hegemony is getting stronger by the day. The announcement in The Guardian about Mozilla for instance has this headline: "Firefox and Tumblr join rush to support Mastodon social network". Not Fediverse, but "The Mastodon Social Network". And I continue to see new fedizens tooting elightened thoughs that there's more than Mastodon, yet still getting it wrong (e.g. "There are more social networks than Mastodon on the Fediverse, like Pleroma").
Potential of Fediverse is for the creation of a single interoperable "social fabric". I wrote about this in Let's Reimagine Social. How the Fediverse can enable a Peopleverse, which also entails de-emphasizing the role of individual apps, which are like siloes. App-free Computing is possible.
I have been moderator of SocialHub for a couple of years. Mastodon contributors only sporadically interact in that dev community. I cannot blame them for that. They naturally care most about their own FOSS project, and furthermore that is a Microblogging app, so why care about different app types? The major challenges of maintaining open standards in a grassroots movement are all social in nature (though they may have partially social-technical solutions) and tackling how FOSS projects can be incentivized to collaborate beyond their own direct project boundary.
Btw, for anyone interested in a good overview of fedi projects, I co-maintain the 3 fedi-related delightful lists.
Mastodon is the "corporate-oriented" Fediverse implementation. It is unfortunate, but Gargron has done a great job in marketing his own project to all sorts of commercial organizations. Other Fediverse software implementations are mostly targeted towards hobbyist (and non-"mainstream") communities and personal uses, which makes them less "appealing" to corporations (Mozilla is one of them, however they would like to claim otherwise).
Just look at the recent Mastodon updates, especially 4.0 and the ones leading up to 4.0. All of them are trying to make Mastodon more Twitter like and more uniform (so that instances are less distinguishable from each other). That is Gargron's way of marketing, and he has succeeded in doing so. I as a long-time Fediverse user absolutely hate all of this development, but that is the unfortunate side effect of wanting to go mainstream.
I agree that Mozilla could be of better help to other Fediverse programs. Like they should use something that would be easy for them to change over their blog posts or other long-form items (Friendica or Hubzilla). Mastodon is fine and all, but aside from the stuff already stated it would be nice to see them be a "safe" starting point for people. I could see them easily making use of Pixelfed or even PeerTube (PeerTube especially could make good use of having big names to get normies curious enough to try). Though if they want to stick with microblog stuff, I have liked the more interesting layouts that Pleroma and Misskey/Foundkey can have. I can only guess they are picking Mastodon because they think it is less confusing to people that have been hearing about it because of the Twitter stuff. Even if they don't try the other options any time soon. They could maybe help or release extensions that help with Fediverse related stuff. If they do extensions then it doesn't add bloat to Firefox for those that don't use or care about it. Would like to avoid another Pocket situation. lol
I understand all of that, but Mozilla is an organization that knows its way around open source and understands open ecosystems. The idea of multiple implementations of open standards forming an open ecosystem is a very obvious parallel to the browser space that is Mozilla's main focus. That's why it's particularly disappointing they chose the leading implementation instead of using their position to improve diversity and awareness of other projects.
No. It's not.
Friendica has different Identities with only one login. You can drive forum or newsaccounts (joining an rss-feed for example, an bring it to fediverse) and so on.
It allows you, to do short messages and long formated text with subject. Good for publishing and discussion along.
Why do you say they chose to go with Mastodon? The post doesn't seem to say that (They say they are aware of the fediverse).
While we’re starting this exploration on Mastodon — as a mature, stable project, it’s an ideal first step into the Fediverse — we believe the potential of the Fediverse is bigger and broader than Mastodon alone.
From the thrid paragraph
Ah I see. Missed it first time.