0x1C3B00DA
@0x1C3B00DA@kbin.social
- Comment on Forgejo v7.0 is now available 6 months ago:
There is no better. Maybe they pick a name that's more intuitive for you, but it'd be less intuitive for someone else.
- Comment on Forgejo v7.0 is now available 6 months ago:
They have a pronunciation guide in their FAQ on the website. There is no branding that would be obvious/intuitive to everyone
- Comment on Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media 8 months ago:
Thank you for the detailed explanation. It matches what I've heard from others while having this same debate. Now allow me to explain my side.
I have consented to functionality in which my posts are distributed to other instances within the Fediverse. It’s widely advertised and clearly explained that is how things function. I can readily find which implementations are part of the fediverse
This is the part I think is wrong and the cause of all of this. You can not find which implementations are part of the fediverse. No tracker that you can use has an up-to-date and accurate listing of implementations. New ones come online every day as some random developer builds something new. The fediverse doesn't have clear boundaries and I think the advertising that you mentioned does a disservice by implying it does. The fediverse is similar to the web; they're both based on open protocols and can be guided but not controlled, because anybody can build something on those protocols.
One response to this fuzziness has been to demand most features be opt-in. The reason I don't think this is tenable is because you have to have a hard boundary to determine what should be opt-in and what is ok to be opt-out. Your heuristic was native ActivityPub implementation. I don't think this scales (I feel like you're going to say this is a technological argument and therefore invalid, but it's also a social argument. Ppl don't want to use something that they have to constantly maintain. Constantly adding new servers/users to an allowlist is a chore that would drive ppl away. See google+ circles). It doesn't scale because like I said above new implementations pop up every day and these implementations are starting to branch away from the static archetypes we're used to (Twitter-like, Facebook-like, Reddit-like, etc). And some of them are existing projects that add AP support.
For instance, Hubzilla/Friendica has been bridging AP content for years. Do all of those instances require opt-in because they use a different protocol in addition to AP? There have also been bridges that translate RSS feeds to AP actor for years. Did the owners of those RSS feeds opt-in and should they have been required to?
What I'm trying to say is I think you're right that you can never keep up with the boundaries of the fediverse and where your posts end up. And I don't think there's an easy delineation for what should be opt-out vs opt-in. So instead we should be demanding that implementations add controls to our posts. Thinks like ACLs and OCAPs would allow you to control who can see your posts and interact with them and not care about new bridges/instances/whatever. Which is why I think the argument over opt-out vs opt-in is a distraction that will only keep the fediverse in this quasi-privacy space where you're dependent on yelling down any actor who is doing something with yours posts you don't like.
- Comment on Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media 8 months ago:
I said the two things are different, you said how does that make asking for consent for the two things different, and my response was that for one of them it already works that way without your consent. That is a clear difference. Yes, I'm talking about the technology to explain the difference, because it's a concrete fact. Your argument that a bridge should be opt-in requires an abstract boundary that some instances are are allowed to federate on an opt-out basis and others are not.
You don’t build trust in users by using practices like opt-out, which is again, the only argument I am trying to make.
The instance you're on uses opt-out practices. You didn't consent to your post federating to kbin.social and yet here we are. If you don't trust the bridge, fine, block it. Every tool on the fediverse that you already use to deal with its inherently opt-out nature is available for you to use with this bridge.
- Comment on Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media 8 months ago:
in terms of giving one’s consent, exactly how the two are different?
Because in the second case, the user is choosing to post on a network where any other server can request their posts. A bridge is just an instance that understands more than one protocol. There's no difference in it and any other server requesting your posts. That's how the network works.
- Comment on Bluesky and Mastodon users are having a fight that could shape the next generation of social media 8 months ago:
I think there's a huge difference in scraping your content to churn out a for-profit "AI" and federating your public posts on a federated network.
- Comment on Tear Down Walls, and Build Bridges 8 months ago:
I suppose this is where the root of our disagreement lies. For me the technical network that links tools is not the fediverse. The fediverse is what is built on top of that network and it is inherently linked with the community
I wrote a long reply disagreeing with each of your points, but you're right. This is our disagreement. You're using the term fediverse to apply to a specific group of ppl/servers that share values with you and I think that's co-opting the term. The fediverse is more akin to the web (a platform based on technology that allows ppl access to other ppl and information) and it doesn't make sense to talk about it as a single organization.
I think trying to change its meaning like this is flawed and leads to issues like we're having now with Bridgy-Fed. You can't shout at everyone to use the tech in the way you want, because eventually there will be ppl/orgs that just don't listen. Instead, I think you should be pushing for existing platforms you're using (lemmy, mastodon, etc) to give you more control of your own data. There are ways to allow small-fedi users to create the exact type of spaces they want and anybody else to have the wide open fediverse they want, if the various project would implement them.
I'm happy to continue discussing this with you or leave it here. Either way, thanks for the chat and have a good one.
- Comment on Tear Down Walls, and Build Bridges 8 months ago:
For example, free software, no advertising as a business model, not commercial, not run by big corporations and talking over AP.
None of those are requirements to be part of the fediverse. The fediverse existed long before ActivityPub was even proposed. Free software, ad free, non commercial, not run by big corporations are all just coincidence because its a grassroots effort. Even now, there's multiple companies invested in the fediverse: Mozilla, Flipboard, Facebook, Automatic being the most obvious.
Even if you take those as given, none of those dictate any shared values. Bridgy-fed itself meets all of those requirements but clearly holds differing values. Truth Social, Gab, Spinster, etc are all on the fediverse despite being abhorrent to the majority of the rest of the fediverse.
I'm in favor of groups maintaining shared values and enforcing policies based on them. But those policies can never apply to an entire network made up of distinct projects, servers, and people all with different ideas about how it should work.
- Comment on Tear Down Walls, and Build Bridges 8 months ago:
the nature and direction of the fediverse
The fediverse is a decentralized network. It doesn't have a cohesive nature/direction. It's made up of servers providing twitter-like experiences, servers providing reddit-like experiences, forums, personal websites, video platforms, etc. You'll never know all the places your fediverse data has reached because the fediverse doesn't have hard boundaries so you can't possible measure it all.
Which is why I think complaining about other what other software does is pointless. Instead, users should be pushing their own software to adopt more features to allow them to control their experience and data.
- Comment on Tear Down Walls, and Build Bridges 8 months ago:
a lot of people want nothing to do with it.
And nobody is disagreeing with their right to do that. They have the tools to curate their own experience. But they can't demand the fediverse work they way they want it to and no other way.
- Comment on Tear Down Walls, and Build Bridges 8 months ago:
It doesn't scrape or facilitates scrapping. Your server sends your posts to the bridge and it federates it to other servers. That's how federation works. If you define that as facilitating scraping, then every instance on the fediverse facilitates scraping.
- Comment on Beer and Wine are vegan drinks. 9 months ago:
In the southern United States, we have biscuits made with bacon grease and sausage rolls, which are just rolls with ground sausage baked into them.
- Submitted 10 months ago to fediverse@lemmy.world | 8 comments
- Comment on The free fediverses should emphasize networked communities 10 months ago:
no just like federating with mastodon.social doesn't make your instance a part of the Gargron fediverse. Meta can't control non-Meta instances that federate with them
- Comment on Why the Fediverse is not (yet) Billionaire-Proof, or: The 51% Attack for the Fediverse 10 months ago:
This is nonsense. The fediverse isn't cryptocurrency. Having 51% of the fediverse doesn't give you any more control than having 1%. If your instance(s) implement a feature that the rest of the fediverse doesn't like, they can defederate.
Other instances either react by defederating, but because they only have 49 percent, due to network effects, they get extinct
If 49% of the fediverse defederates from the other 51%, it is now 100% of a new, smaller fediverse. You can't just claim that "network effects" will cause them to go extinct. Whether those instances have enough userbase to sustain a cohesive network depends on the actual number of instances/users. And the fediverse has sustained itself for over a decade with less than the current ~2 million accts and most of that time it had substantially less than 1 active accts.
- Comment on Authorized Fetch Circumvented by Alt-Right Developers 10 months ago:
Sure, but that's already solved on the fediverse by using HTTP Signatures and isn't related to Authorized Fetch.
- Comment on [deleted] 10 months ago:
I downvoted because they posted about an intentionally non-federated forum in the fediverse community. The post doesn't belong here.
- Comment on I'm Starting A Search Engine For The Fediverse 10 months ago:
and having a bot thrashing a server indexing everything
This is a completely separate argument and one that we already have mechanisms for. Servers can use status codes and headers to warn about rate limits and block offenders.
It is also one thing to read/interact with a site as that adds value to the site as a whole
A search index adds value as well; that's why this keeps coming up. And, again, there are existing mechanisms to handle this. A
robots.txtfile can indicate you don't want to be crawled and offenders can be IP blocked - Comment on I'm Starting A Search Engine For The Fediverse 10 months ago:
I don't think an admin's permission has anything to do with it. If you post publicly on the fediverse, your posts are public. You should have the option to opt out of any indexing (just like you do for the rest of the open web). But saying its ok for you to read this post if it happens to come across your feed but you shouldn't be allowed to find it via a search is ridiculous. Users get to make the choice with each post whether its public or not, but they don't get to control how people consume those public posts.
- Comment on I'm Starting A Search Engine For The Fediverse 10 months ago:
That’s not how the fediverse functions
That is how the fediverse functions. Instances send posts to anyone who request it, unless a block is in place. ActivityPub is opt-out and the web has always worked this way.
be mindful of the culture
There is no "the culture" on the fediverse. Your talking about a subgroup, which has a different opinion from other subgroups. They don't get to define "culture" on the fediverse.
- Comment on I'm Starting A Search Engine For The Fediverse 10 months ago:
Those vulnerable groups should have the tools to protect themselves, but that shouldn't stop the rest of us from having a functional and discoverable system. The internet, and the fediverse specifically, have always been a semi-public space and searchability has been a part of that since the beginning.
- Comment on I'm Starting A Search Engine For The Fediverse 10 months ago:
That post wasn't claiming that a search engine would only be used by trolls; it was explaining that they shut down their project because a chunk of the fediverse thinks that and complain about any search engine projects. Discoverability is one of the network's biggest challenges and a search engine could really help with that.
- Comment on If we're going to have an effective strategy against FB/Meta, we should clear up some misconceptions around defederation 10 months ago:
before they end up with a seat on the activity hub team. Then we’re back where we started.
There is no activity pub team. There is an informal group discussing enhancements at https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks but anybody can join that and submit proposals. Any nobody is required to accept or implement those proposals. I have joined the forum and submitted a proposal myself, but nobody has implemented it or even seems likely to.
Also, not blocking threads doesn't make your instance a "meta controlled instance". Meta has no power over any instance other than Threads. Even instances that don't proactively block Threads can't be forced to use any hypothetical Meta extensions to AP. And its really unlikely that people who started servers on a minuscule network (most likely for fun or philosophical reasons) are going to follow Meta's lead just to have access to more people. Everyone who is here and everyone who started a server here knowingly did that on a network that is a tiny fraction of a percent of the size of other social networks; an increased userbase isn't some big reward for fediverse server admins.
- Comment on Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse 10 months ago:
Ok. Your point was that you can view Threads content without a Threads account and even if they required an account to view Threads content, users with other fediverse accounts could still see the content because that's how federation works.
Sorry, i misunderstood your point .
- Comment on Embrace, Extend, and Exploit: Meta's plan for ActivityPub, Mastodon and the fediverse 10 months ago:
Don't you have to have an Instagram account to use Threads? Every service on the fediverse makes you create an account. And all of them can put all its content behind that account; nothing in ActivityPub prevents that
- Comment on 41% of fediverse instances have blocked threads so far!!! 10 months ago:
They are different because most users weren't aware of XMPP. They weren't making a conscious choice to use an open standard. The fediverse, on the other hand, has grown specifically because people are seeing the value of an open ecosystem.
When google started removing XMPP support, users weren't aware and didn't care (other than losing contact with a few holdouts). If Meta implements AP support and then removes that support or modifies it so that it breaks some of expectations of the fediverse, most users will move to instances that don't use Meta extensions. Meta can not take your instance or make it use their extensions, so an open fediverse will always exist.
- Comment on Mastodon founder touts Threads' federation, saying it makes his X rival 'a far more attractive option' 11 months ago:
exactly! The end result of EEE is basically the state we're already in. I also don't believe that's what Meta intends. Despite how a lot of ppl here feel about it, the fediverse isn't worth the effort of EEE. I think its more likely that Meta knows it's on its last leg and is looking for something to latch on to (see also: their failed metaverse initiative). And the EU's recent regulatory drive probably makes the fediverse look even more useful for Meta to attach itself to
- Comment on Mastodon founder touts Threads' federation, saying it makes his X rival 'a far more attractive option' 11 months ago:
No it doesn't because you can't extinguish a publically available standard when anybody can write their own software. XMPP is the horror story used to warn about EEE, but it still exists. The fediverse is a small network right now. If Meta tried to EEE it, server admins who don't want to participate in a Meta-controlled network would not implement Meta's extensions. The network would splinter into a Meta-fediverse and the actual fediverse, which would be smaller than it is now but still exist as a free and open network that could continue to grow.
They can't turn off our servers, or force us to implement their tech, or stop us from implementing freedom/privacy preserving features.
- Comment on Polls on reactions to Threads 11 months ago:
They already have those users. Giving them access to the tiny pool of users in the fediverse isn't going to give them an appreciable increase in data.
- Comment on Mastodon founder touts Threads' federation, saying it makes his X rival 'a far more attractive option' 11 months ago:
Implementing ActivityPub at their scale costs way more than allowing a drop-in-the-bucket network to go on existing. The fediverse is not really competition for them