Maybe a hot take, but if you want this big libertarian anarchist federated system you get all the pros and cons along with it. Not having a central authority means you have no real power to stop someone from coming in and taking it. It’s inevitable by design.
But… the majority are federated? And if counted by affected users I don’t even know how large they federated majority is since the biggest instances are all federated iirc.
Either way I think it’s good that we can at least choose our own experience by selecting which instance to join.
I mean they haven’t infiltrated the private phpbb forum me and my friends have been running since 2008, for the simple reason that they aren’t invited.
Same difference with the fediverse. I have no problem going back down to pre-2019 levels where it’s just a few hundred of us, chatting and sharing #caturday pictures. The fedipact means we can easily find those networks of like-minded communities to federate with.
I mean they haven’t infiltrated the private phpbb forum me and my friends have been running since 2008, for the simple reason that they aren’t invited.
Mark Zuckerberg smiled to himself. Nobody knew that he was DarkWolf47.
I have no problem going back down to pre-2019 levels where it’s just a few hundred of us, chatting and sharing #caturday pictures.
IRC did do that on a few cases, where one federated IRC network had irreconciliable differences with another and you had a split, with a new IRC network forming.
EFnet or Eris-Free network is a major Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network, with more than 35,000 users.[1] It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.
In July 1996, disagreement on policy caused EFnet to break in two: the slightly larger European half (including Australia and Japan) formed IRCnet, while the American servers continued as EFnet. This was known as The Great Split.[5]
Undernet was established in October 1992 by Danny Mitchell, Donald Lambert, and Laurent Demally as an experimental network running a modified version of the EFnet irc2.7 IRCd software, created in an attempt to make it less bandwidth-consumptive and less chaotic, as netsplits and takeovers were starting to plague EFnet.[4] The Undernet IRC daemon became known as “ircu”. Undernet was formed at a time when many small IRC networks were being started and subsequently disappearing; however, it managed to grow into one of the largest and oldest IRC networks despite some initial in-fighting and setbacks. For a period in 1994, Undernet was wracked by an ongoing series of flame wars. Again in 2001, it was threatened by automated heavy spamming of its users for potential commercial gain. Undernet survived these periods relatively intact and its popularity continues to the present day.
Sure, but the rhetoric behind it is my point. Trying to get everyone to do it is antithetical to the design of the system.
No, it is precisely the kind of action that we must take collectively in order to protect what we value about the fediverse. This is the work of maintaining a positive community space. If you don’t agree that is fine, genuinely I think it is good there is a diversity of opinions here, but it is pretty obvious to me that if we don’t have a lot of conversations about the importance of solidarity in defending the fediverse from corporate capture then history is just going to repeat itself.
…I am tired of history repeating itself, I like this place. I like you!
We can’t stop a massive corporation from interacting with open source, but we can choose whether massive corporations are allowed to get away with pretending they are benign members of an open source, federated community. At the very least, it raises the dollar amount these corporations must allocate in trying to convince us they are benign doesn’t it?
They have the money and time to convince us, even if you disagree with everything I say you can’t argue it isn’t a better strategy to be difficult to convince. Massive corporations will spend money and time up to the point marketing calculates the change in public perception is worth it and not a dollar further. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs well if they behaved otherwise and judging by how desirable those jobs are I feel like at least some of those people are pretty good at their jobs…
Call me a pessimist, but people are caring way too much about the idealistic implementation of the technology and missing the fact that the tech doesn’t mean shit compared to the community. If you don’t care about the community growing, then that’s one thing. But if you do, Threads is the competition that you won’t be able to beat if they feel like putting in the effort.
“No, it is precisely the kind of action that we must take collectively in order to protect what we value about the fediverse. This is the work of maintaining a positive community space.”
But therein lies the problem. The fediverse isn’t one homogenous entity. Although there seems to be an overall leftie tint to much of the fediverse, opinions on what is" valued" and “positive” vary quite a bit. The beauty of the fediverse is that you can choose your experience based on the instance you join. Trying to control the entire fediverse goes against the point of the fediverse imo.
Is that really a problem? It’s not trying to “control” anything. It’s a voluntary pact meant to conserve the non-corporate fediverse, as it is right now.
The beauty of the fediverse is that you can choose your experience based on the instance you join
This is never going to change. If you just don’t like the intent behind the fedipact, no problem - the majority of the fediverse will be talking with threads. You get the personal choice of which instances you make accounts on. Hell, you can make your own instance.
I don’t think trying to control is the best way of looking at it. There’s a hive mind about the fediverse that has a purpose, that wants to protect it as part of the identity of it. So a collective of instances banding together to keep that intact seems right up its alley.
anti-meta activism is not a bad thing at all. The billionaire corps have their marketing teams, individuals and communities have their activism. Everyone can listen to both and take an informed decision.
They are just that, activists, informing everyone about a possible issue. There’s nothing wrong with that. They are not enforcing anything on anyone.
The worst that can happen is that if your instance admin decides to ban Threads and you want to federate with Threads, you’ll have to switch instances. Not a big deal. You’ll still be able to interact with the Fediverse, it’s not like you were in Twitter, you had to leave and now you’ve lost all your contacts there.
The worst that can happen is that if your instance admin decides to ban Threads and you want to federate with Threads, you’ll have to switch instances.
Honestly, the lack of cross-instance account portability is one of the major issues that I think the Fediverse has today.
I’d rather have some sort of public-private key system to permit for moving across instances and being able to associate accounts.
I don’t see moving instances as this simple thing that everyone else does. Until I can bring my comments and subscriptions over instantly it’s a huge waste of time. Regular users aren’t going to do that. I’m on my third instance already and almost didn’t make the third jump due to the annoyance of adding them all again.
Not at all. Instances are free to ask other instances to not federate with Threads. And the other instances can tell the original instance to fuck off or agree with it.
And then instances start fighting and decelerate from each other and it becomes this annoying game of will I be able to see the content I want to tomorrow? We’ll see how it turns out. Needing to keep moving instances isn’t my idea of a good thing like everyone else seems to think it is.
You’re touching a sore topic. Hence the downvotes, many that have bought into the fediverse, believe (in a religious cult way) that its architecture won’t be taken advantage of by bad actors. Even though history has proven the opposite.
I get that cult feeling for sure. There is a lot less nuance here. I’d be curious of the average demographic because I see a lot of naivety that’s probably linked to age & experience.
That’s such a reductive sweep of a whole userbase. It’s not because you have a negative outlook that everybody has to be like you.
People are thrilled to try and build something new and people like you come and shit on them to try to recreate reddit.
At the very least, people are trying to take back a part of the internet that corporations controlled for more than a decade. So it’s normal that when a megacorp come and try to muddle the water, people are refusing that because they know their M.O.
People are thrilled to try and build something new and people like you come and shit on them to try to recreate reddit.
I’m not stopping you. If you want to re-lean the lessons of the past because you ignore those that experienced them, feel free. You can’t design a system ripe for corporate takeover and act shocked when it happens.
I just want to find the content I like, the content that helps me solve problems, and a way to interact with it without being forced to see ads. I’m not going to use a worse product just because it’s not controlled by a corporation and I don’t think I’m alone in that across most of the population.
I don’t see it as a problem. If my instance starts walking off the content I like, then it’s a problem. But it’ll be a slow burn where I just use it less and less.
I disagree that fediverse is inherently libertarian/anarchist. In fact, a big selling point is that you can find an instance the administration agrees with your politics and will implement moderation policy accordingly.
In real life you’re probably not traversing three or more countries in a single day. You’re much closer to small communities at this scale, and having all these differences at that level is terrible for community building. Reddit was complicated enough with subreddit specific rules for regular people. Now you may not be able to find the same content as your friend if they signed up for a different instance, which is suggested as a feature not a bug. It’s exactly the same time of idealism without thoughts of consequence that libertarianism has.
I was going to use communities as my examples due to the relatively small size of each, but decided country was a better metaphor due to each instance’s ability to fully control their own rules or “laws”, where as communities in the real world are usually beholden to the higher laws of their countries.
Yes. Imagine if every culdasac had its own set of laws that you’d have to consider. Some your friends can’t come i to. Others don’t acknowledge the culdasac next door exists. Sure you could move to the culdasac you fit in with the best, but I wouldn’t want to limit my friends or interests that narrowly, nor would I want those things to be taken away from me and be forced to move all the time. I don’t see it as better.
Yes. Imagine if every culdasac had its own set of laws that you’d have to consider. Some your friends can’t come i to. Others don’t acknowledge the culdasac next door exists. Sure you could move to the culdasac you fit in with the best, but I wouldn’t want to limit my friends or interests that narrowly, nor would I want those things to be taken away from me and be forced to move all the time. I don’t see it as better.
Nah, the Fediverse is based on freedom of association while most people live in countries they were born in and leaving one is really hard in most cases. Not to mention that ‘self-hosting’ a state just for yourself would be considered an extremism by existing states.
In theory. In reality you’re bringing feather dusters to a nuclear bomb fight. A handful of hobbyists hosting instances with how many users? Couple hundred thousand? Against a 100 Billion dollar company with 3 Billion people? Yea good luck with that.
How do you think this works? Yes, Meta will partake in the Fediverse. No one is trying to stop that. That chart won’t get to 100% and no one cares if it does. People are just ensuring that there’s a place where Meta won’t be, and you don’t need billions to do that.
Look at a pie chart of “internet users of x type platform” from pre fediverse. If original internet dies and fedi does take off, it will be the same chart but they will be instances instead of www sites. There are still plenty of those prefacebook, premyspace forums on the www, it’s just only a few people use them.
What are we competing on exactly? Profitability? We’re not a company, we’re just a bunch of people talking among ourselves. This is like saying your casual Friday hangout with your buddies is no match for the likes of Rogers Telecom Combined International Userbase - like, by wtf metric? It’s not even a competition. They’re a company, and we’re a community.
We’ll just keep doing our thing, and if threads gets annoying then I’ll pressure my instance to block them, and if they don’t I’ll just move to a nicer place. 🤷
If it’s no big deal why the immediate talk of defederating? And if they get annoying, every one of the instances I happen to follow something on has to defederate to keep the community at the same engagement level. I can personally block instances which is great, but that’s not helpful if the community starts posting there. It’s already sometimes difficult to keep topics together across who knows how many instances, with random defederation it makes it more difficult to experience lemmy with users on different instances.
It’s just my opinion, but the reddit backend wasn’t the important part that we lost, it’s the content and community. If my instance goes to shit I can move somewhere else, but I’m disconnected from my posts, follows, etc. that’s what I care about. Not the tech. I try not to, but I can’t help but be pessimistic on the idea when I feel like the point is being missed entirely.
Nah you’re just attached to the old idea of the One Big Marketplace of Ideas, where all the saints and sinners of all the world gather 'round and hash it out. I get it. But it didn’t work out, specifically because corpos put profit over community well-being, so that’s why I’m here.
I’m sure there will be bridging or collating tools for people like you who don’t want to give up precious content just because it comes from a problematic source. Personally, I think wanting it all misses the point of real community.
What are you talking about? There’s nothing stopping corporations from coming here and doing the same exact thing they’ve gone covertly on Reddit. If Lemmy becomes popular enough it will happen. Arguably it already has from certain interests and people here are extremely naive if they think it’s not.
I think the fediverse in general has a better chance because it’s built on an anti-corporate philosophy, from the software, maintainers, admins, moderators, and much of the community (though increasingly less so, as it becomes more popular).
If you have a problem with corporate influence on Reddit, then your ability to act on it ends with your subreddit’s moderators. To the admins and owners of reddit, that kind of influence is a feature.
Hell they can even monetize it, bake it right into the DNA of the back-end, give the corps a nice little API to poll, maybe some webhooks…
That is not something I see happening on the fediverse as long as its open source and run by the community.
Things like fedipact are the main way of dealing with such abuse in ancap.
Funny, I’ve never gave a thought to this before, but Fediverse works on ancap principles. Even in pushing out ancaps.
Not even generally libertarian, but specifically ancap.
It’s also funny that the system I’m imagining and would prefer (if it weren’t imaginary) is closer to being generally libertarian and further from ancap.
Maybe a hot take, but if you want this big libertarian anarchist federated system you get all the pros and cons along with it. Not having a central authority means you have no real power to stop someone from coming in and taking it. It’s inevitable by design.
I’d argue the system is working quite well, every individual and/or community has the liberty to choose what to do about Meta.
That’s what federation is all about, no central power taking decisions in behalf of everyone else.
Sure, but the rhetoric behind it is my point. Trying to get everyone to do it is antithetical to the design of the system.
This is demonstrating the exact opposite. Community organization is valid.
But… the majority are federated? And if counted by affected users I don’t even know how large they federated majority is since the biggest instances are all federated iirc.
Either way I think it’s good that we can at least choose our own experience by selecting which instance to join.
We’ll see. I don’t think you can beat a 100 Billion dollar company with 3 Billion users if they are motivated enough.
I mean they haven’t infiltrated the private phpbb forum me and my friends have been running since 2008, for the simple reason that they aren’t invited.
Same difference with the fediverse. I have no problem going back down to pre-2019 levels where it’s just a few hundred of us, chatting and sharing #caturday pictures. The fedipact means we can easily find those networks of like-minded communities to federate with.
Mark Zuckerberg smiled to himself. Nobody knew that he was DarkWolf47.
IRC did do that on a few cases, where one federated IRC network had irreconciliable differences with another and you had a split, with a new IRC network forming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undernet
How do you know about DW?
No, it is precisely the kind of action that we must take collectively in order to protect what we value about the fediverse. This is the work of maintaining a positive community space. If you don’t agree that is fine, genuinely I think it is good there is a diversity of opinions here, but it is pretty obvious to me that if we don’t have a lot of conversations about the importance of solidarity in defending the fediverse from corporate capture then history is just going to repeat itself.
…I am tired of history repeating itself, I like this place. I like you!
We can’t stop a massive corporation from interacting with open source, but we can choose whether massive corporations are allowed to get away with pretending they are benign members of an open source, federated community. At the very least, it raises the dollar amount these corporations must allocate in trying to convince us they are benign doesn’t it?
They have the money and time to convince us, even if you disagree with everything I say you can’t argue it isn’t a better strategy to be difficult to convince. Massive corporations will spend money and time up to the point marketing calculates the change in public perception is worth it and not a dollar further. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs well if they behaved otherwise and judging by how desirable those jobs are I feel like at least some of those people are pretty good at their jobs…
Call me a pessimist, but people are caring way too much about the idealistic implementation of the technology and missing the fact that the tech doesn’t mean shit compared to the community. If you don’t care about the community growing, then that’s one thing. But if you do, Threads is the competition that you won’t be able to beat if they feel like putting in the effort.
“No, it is precisely the kind of action that we must take collectively in order to protect what we value about the fediverse. This is the work of maintaining a positive community space.”
But therein lies the problem. The fediverse isn’t one homogenous entity. Although there seems to be an overall leftie tint to much of the fediverse, opinions on what is" valued" and “positive” vary quite a bit. The beauty of the fediverse is that you can choose your experience based on the instance you join. Trying to control the entire fediverse goes against the point of the fediverse imo.
Is that really a problem? It’s not trying to “control” anything. It’s a voluntary pact meant to conserve the non-corporate fediverse, as it is right now.
This is never going to change. If you just don’t like the intent behind the fedipact, no problem - the majority of the fediverse will be talking with threads. You get the personal choice of which instances you make accounts on. Hell, you can make your own instance.
There is no problem here.
I don’t think trying to control is the best way of looking at it. There’s a hive mind about the fediverse that has a purpose, that wants to protect it as part of the identity of it. So a collective of instances banding together to keep that intact seems right up its alley.
anti-meta activism is not a bad thing at all. The billionaire corps have their marketing teams, individuals and communities have their activism. Everyone can listen to both and take an informed decision.
They are just that, activists, informing everyone about a possible issue. There’s nothing wrong with that. They are not enforcing anything on anyone.
The worst that can happen is that if your instance admin decides to ban Threads and you want to federate with Threads, you’ll have to switch instances. Not a big deal. You’ll still be able to interact with the Fediverse, it’s not like you were in Twitter, you had to leave and now you’ve lost all your contacts there.
Honestly, the lack of cross-instance account portability is one of the major issues that I think the Fediverse has today.
I’d rather have some sort of public-private key system to permit for moving across instances and being able to associate accounts.
I don’t see moving instances as this simple thing that everyone else does. Until I can bring my comments and subscriptions over instantly it’s a huge waste of time. Regular users aren’t going to do that. I’m on my third instance already and almost didn’t make the third jump due to the annoyance of adding them all again.
I meant on Mastodon, where it is that simple. After all, it makes more sense since they are both microblogging.
In Lemmy it’s a bit of a hassle, but the devs were working on it.
Haven’t really done much with Mastadon, I always liked following topics over people, and when I last tried it was still firmly people based.
Not at all. Instances are free to ask other instances to not federate with Threads. And the other instances can tell the original instance to fuck off or agree with it.
And then instances start fighting and decelerate from each other and it becomes this annoying game of will I be able to see the content I want to tomorrow? We’ll see how it turns out. Needing to keep moving instances isn’t my idea of a good thing like everyone else seems to think it is.
You’re touching a sore topic. Hence the downvotes, many that have bought into the fediverse, believe (in a religious cult way) that its architecture won’t be taken advantage of by bad actors. Even though history has proven the opposite.
I get that cult feeling for sure. There is a lot less nuance here. I’d be curious of the average demographic because I see a lot of naivety that’s probably linked to age & experience.
That’s such a reductive sweep of a whole userbase. It’s not because you have a negative outlook that everybody has to be like you.
People are thrilled to try and build something new and people like you come and shit on them to try to recreate reddit.
At the very least, people are trying to take back a part of the internet that corporations controlled for more than a decade. So it’s normal that when a megacorp come and try to muddle the water, people are refusing that because they know their M.O.
I’m not stopping you. If you want to re-lean the lessons of the past because you ignore those that experienced them, feel free. You can’t design a system ripe for corporate takeover and act shocked when it happens.
If that is the case, then the Lemmy will start to shrink or straight up die, but that is life.
That’s the risk of the federation. But I much prefer that than a monolithic black box controlled by a mega corpo.
I just want to find the content I like, the content that helps me solve problems, and a way to interact with it without being forced to see ads. I’m not going to use a worse product just because it’s not controlled by a corporation and I don’t think I’m alone in that across most of the population.
Then maybe Lemmy isn’t for you then. The way the fediverse is structured at its core seems to be a problem for you.
I don’t see it as a problem. If my instance starts walking off the content I like, then it’s a problem. But it’ll be a slow burn where I just use it less and less.
I disagree that fediverse is inherently libertarian/anarchist. In fact, a big selling point is that you can find an instance the administration agrees with your politics and will implement moderation policy accordingly.
If you consider each instance as the “person” it’s essentially libertarianism.
No, each instance is more like a country with it’s own laws, and trade agreements with other countries to share or block content.
In real life you’re probably not traversing three or more countries in a single day. You’re much closer to small communities at this scale, and having all these differences at that level is terrible for community building. Reddit was complicated enough with subreddit specific rules for regular people. Now you may not be able to find the same content as your friend if they signed up for a different instance, which is suggested as a feature not a bug. It’s exactly the same time of idealism without thoughts of consequence that libertarianism has.
I was going to use communities as my examples due to the relatively small size of each, but decided country was a better metaphor due to each instance’s ability to fully control their own rules or “laws”, where as communities in the real world are usually beholden to the higher laws of their countries.
Yes. Imagine if every culdasac had its own set of laws that you’d have to consider. Some your friends can’t come i to. Others don’t acknowledge the culdasac next door exists. Sure you could move to the culdasac you fit in with the best, but I wouldn’t want to limit my friends or interests that narrowly, nor would I want those things to be taken away from me and be forced to move all the time. I don’t see it as better.
Yes. Imagine if every culdasac had its own set of laws that you’d have to consider. Some your friends can’t come i to. Others don’t acknowledge the culdasac next door exists. Sure you could move to the culdasac you fit in with the best, but I wouldn’t want to limit my friends or interests that narrowly, nor would I want those things to be taken away from me and be forced to move all the time. I don’t see it as better.
Nah, the Fediverse is based on freedom of association while most people live in countries they were born in and leaving one is really hard in most cases. Not to mention that ‘self-hosting’ a state just for yourself would be considered an extremism by existing states.
The Fediverse is clearly a libertarian idea.
Sure, to a certain extent. But having an ability to opt out is far healthier than the walled gardens we have now.
In theory. In reality you’re bringing feather dusters to a nuclear bomb fight. A handful of hobbyists hosting instances with how many users? Couple hundred thousand? Against a 100 Billion dollar company with 3 Billion people? Yea good luck with that.
How do you think this works? Yes, Meta will partake in the Fediverse. No one is trying to stop that. That chart won’t get to 100% and no one cares if it does. People are just ensuring that there’s a place where Meta won’t be, and you don’t need billions to do that.
Look at a pie chart of “internet users of x type platform” from pre fediverse. If original internet dies and fedi does take off, it will be the same chart but they will be instances instead of www sites. There are still plenty of those prefacebook, premyspace forums on the www, it’s just only a few people use them.
What are we competing on exactly? Profitability? We’re not a company, we’re just a bunch of people talking among ourselves. This is like saying your casual Friday hangout with your buddies is no match for the likes of Rogers Telecom Combined International Userbase - like, by wtf metric? It’s not even a competition. They’re a company, and we’re a community.
We’ll just keep doing our thing, and if threads gets annoying then I’ll pressure my instance to block them, and if they don’t I’ll just move to a nicer place. 🤷
If it’s no big deal why the immediate talk of defederating? And if they get annoying, every one of the instances I happen to follow something on has to defederate to keep the community at the same engagement level. I can personally block instances which is great, but that’s not helpful if the community starts posting there. It’s already sometimes difficult to keep topics together across who knows how many instances, with random defederation it makes it more difficult to experience lemmy with users on different instances.
It’s just my opinion, but the reddit backend wasn’t the important part that we lost, it’s the content and community. If my instance goes to shit I can move somewhere else, but I’m disconnected from my posts, follows, etc. that’s what I care about. Not the tech. I try not to, but I can’t help but be pessimistic on the idea when I feel like the point is being missed entirely.
Nah you’re just attached to the old idea of the One Big Marketplace of Ideas, where all the saints and sinners of all the world gather 'round and hash it out. I get it. But it didn’t work out, specifically because corpos put profit over community well-being, so that’s why I’m here.
I’m sure there will be bridging or collating tools for people like you who don’t want to give up precious content just because it comes from a problematic source. Personally, I think wanting it all misses the point of real community.
What are you talking about? There’s nothing stopping corporations from coming here and doing the same exact thing they’ve gone covertly on Reddit. If Lemmy becomes popular enough it will happen. Arguably it already has from certain interests and people here are extremely naive if they think it’s not.
I think the fediverse in general has a better chance because it’s built on an anti-corporate philosophy, from the software, maintainers, admins, moderators, and much of the community (though increasingly less so, as it becomes more popular).
If you have a problem with corporate influence on Reddit, then your ability to act on it ends with your subreddit’s moderators. To the admins and owners of reddit, that kind of influence is a feature.
Hell they can even monetize it, bake it right into the DNA of the back-end, give the corps a nice little API to poll, maybe some webhooks…
That is not something I see happening on the fediverse as long as its open source and run by the community.
the point of freedom is that authoritarians deserve it too, and when they want to use their freedom to take your freedom away, it’s fair game.
That’s the tolerance paradox by another name.
Things like fedipact are the main way of dealing with such abuse in ancap.
Funny, I’ve never gave a thought to this before, but Fediverse works on ancap principles. Even in pushing out ancaps.
Not even generally libertarian, but specifically ancap.
It’s also funny that the system I’m imagining and would prefer (if it weren’t imaginary) is closer to being generally libertarian and further from ancap.