Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Why would someone join an instance with advertising and fees? The beauty in the way mastodon works is that you have a choice. It cannot be centralized even if it is!
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
@The Explorographer @Śéáń Most people find effort on the internet to be not worth their time so they would happily stick with what they know. If that weren't the case tons more people would have come over here sooner.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
I disagree. It isn't just the effort. It's more the knowledge. It's also easy to say it's effort rather than get out there and help people get it done. That's all I have been doing for the past week and a half. It wasn't until I learned more about the ecosphere here that I understood it and realized it was the better option. And I have actually had an account here for several years.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
there are a lot of people who just do not want to think about new concepts like mastodon or the fediverse. tons and tons of people i followed on twitter, and even friends i know in real life, just do not want to spend the time to learn. I've even had someone say that "likes and retweets being called favorites and boosts is too confusing". Never underestimate people's ability to misunderstand things.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
You know, I'm starting to think that we reached the point wherein we see a repeat of “old” vs “new” generations.
When the Internet was new, when mobile phones were new, our parents don't like the new technologies. I think our generation is like them today. Most doesn't want to learn new things (for various [valid] reasons).
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
I don't think it's a generational thing. When I was a kid the Internet was purely a domain for geeks. The rest of my generation didn't come to the Internet until much later - at around the same time as my parents. But there were 'silver surfers' even back then. And even now, one of my nephews just uses the Internet for YouTube and gaming, and the other is learning code.
Thats the marketing and incentive part which currently open source lacks. May be some day open source technology like blockchain (than can program incentives) solves it.
Campbell's law can be hard to solve, but still, there is the possibility of aligning incentives and producing the desired result, if the game is well thought out.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
honestly felt that way about Twitter most of the time from start to end. My main and first account is/was a joke account that posted birds, was named after a species of bird, etc.
Selfishly, I like being here as a new community forms. Twitter was like arriving to the party late and things are just starting to wind down.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
I am one of these people. Mastodon seems pretty much a drop-in replacement for Twitter to me in terms of how I use it (follow what your friends and various notable people are up to, have interesting discussions), with the added bonus of having less alt-right trolls. Am I using it wrong? Was I using Twitter wrong?
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
There's a lot of answers to that. Obviously mastodon has a differnet culture but there are also technical differences.
First of all Like and Retoot work a bit more intutitively like they are on twitter. Over there they were important to tell the algorythm that it should show this post more to others and better in their timeline whereas in mastodon they work in the way how its looks 1/
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
so a like is (only) telling the poster you liked his post. A boost is to push the visibility. That is important as it pushes the post more often in timelines and over different server borders into the different server timelines.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Then there's the features that did not exist on twitter (and new people tend to not use). The content warning like in this post is to shield political and other discussions away from people that are (potentially) not interested. I often use it also as headline. Its asked for for twitter, trump, nudity, violence or otherwise controversal topics. 3/
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Then there's the image alternative text. You will notice that people ask that you give an alternative text for images being posted that people with screenreaders can get an idea what the image shows (and maybe get through the hassle to increase the picture or contrast or else to make it maybe visible to them). 4/
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
That’s also a feature of Twitter (and I had the reminder set so that I always remembered to add it). I realise the community is more keenly aware of the need for it here, but in my use I don’t think that’s a difference. Of the options I originally suggested, I think we’re converging on “I used Twitter wrong/weird”.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Actually, having just tried posting an image for the first time, I can’t work out how to add specific alt-text in the Mastodon client—there’s a reminder to describe the image but no control to add it… is that a missing feature of the client, or my server, or the protocol as a whole? (Or am I just missing it?)
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
I used “CW:” on Twitter when it seemed appropriate, it’s nice to have it as a full feature here but again, in use it seems like an iteration of how I was using Twitter…
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Yeah, that’s how I used it on Twitter. I’ve been Boosting a bit more than I ever Retweeted but that’s because I’m generally more OK with the audience here.
I have an allergic reaction to anything short of retweet/equivalent that doesn't have an obvious visible result, typically Reddit / Slashdot style moderation. I'm also sparse with RT/equivalent, mainly stuff that I feel up to discussing further if someone else goes there.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Hm, on Twitter I “liked” stuff I liked (to signal to the author) and “retweeted” stuff I wanted others to see. What Twitter’s algorithm did with that was up to them, really. I was never trying to “make the algorithm do something”.
A similar UI to birbsite would be Soapbox (I'm using it on my Pleroma instance, but it's Mastodon-compatible), but I'm conflicted about keeping it because of some "political" choices by its devteam. Sucks because it looks really good and fairly polished.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
The effort angle is true but more salient is that if there are downsides to federated management. Mostly decision latency. If a big platform is worming into the fediverse making deeply transformative proposals in bad faith, it will be hard to coordinate a unified resistance. Impossible, probably.
in 2006 Bethesda were ridiculed for charging money for some in-game horse armour for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and these days you have a generation of game players justifying the existence of battle-pass systems on the basis that they're "just cosmetic" items.
The overton window for consuner acceptability is always shifting, no matter how gradual.
Not saying the above is at all assured, but it's certainly not without precedent.
There is a huge difference between game companies asking you to pay for Armor literally upping your stats and cosmetic items. Plus, I think Bethesda is ridiculed for more than just that which definitely led to the outcry. I don't know, maybe talk to the modding community about Bethesderp.
both were cosmetic, my point is that the idea of charging customers for cosmetic items went from being a point if ridicule to the default in less than one generation of gamers. The values of a customer base can be changed over time.
I see people say this a lot but the ultimate goal for many games, or at the thing that keeps a lot players there long term, seems to be acquiring cosmetic items.
hey, it takes game company designers time to make these items time is money they have to get paid for their work. If someone is passionate about a game and it makes them happy who am I to tell them that they can’t buy something that makes them even more happy in the game with real money. I think people are tired of other people telling them what’s good and what’s not. It’s like having 1 million angry dads running around. This goes for NFTs as well.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
I think news sites could run their own instances and give their users access to it. I think that might be interesting. They would likely want to have Ads on it if they did. Lots of people that subscribe to a news site and wouldn't think to sign up would just suddenly have an account. Is this really a bad thing?
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
mostly convenience, specially in respect to the kind of things cloud services can do better, like device-agnostic synchronization and integration with other services
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
People keep saying to me "I don't understand Mastodon. I don't know how to choose a server." I talk them through it, but I know what they really want is for me to say "You should be using this one," and take the decision away. Once a company starts doing that, people will love it, ads or not.
We don't particularly need to argue that point, it happened. And the aforementioned Google Talk was what happened, because it integrated nicely with the Gmail you were already using and removed most headaches for average users. At the cost of being less and less nominally interoperable.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
why are people on Gmail if there's free mail servers without adds? Because it's faster and (back then relevant) google offered more storage. Just allow people to upload long videos or have Twitter spaces. Anything that's too taxing on a server
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
because people trust companies more than admins that they know and have a chance to give a beer.
That's sad and imho wrong. but still that's the case very often.
Also a lot of people don't mind Ads and find the tracking not as bad. small functional problems are a lot bigger problem for them than ads including their tracking.
Not my opinion but often a point if you discuss with people there.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
the people using this hypothetical corporate server won't have any clue what activitypub/mastodon is. they just notice that a new box is there in their gmail. everyone else is forced to bend to big corp's will to ensure compatibility with a new majority of users, while those majority of users don't feel compelled to move because change is scary and gmail is just so convenient
It's "federation" in the sense that @jerry (my mastodon maintainer) is dealing with Deutsch Telekom. Basically told him to pound rocks with his users using emails with t-online.de . Basically they choose not to federate with small mail providers.
If the biggies federate, and then throw their clout around, it could be a real bad time for everyone.
well, my prediction is the same end but the first step would be more likely that Microsoft will offer mastodon as a service. Governments love Microsoft and hate IT staff, so this is the wedge they use for digital colonialism.
I understand where this is coming from but the takeover scenario is mighty difficult with a truly federated network. I think it is important that each server is a separate community of users linked to other communities. I'm not sure big business will see this as their native home and they will stay on Meta ( they are certainly fleeing the other site). I'm hopeful and optimistic. I hope I'm right.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Honestly, I don't care. I won't be. I left Twitter because of too many internet dads. Everyone gotta WARN you about something or yell at you for your decisions. It is out of control annoying. So, I am out! Doom and gloom and all that. Have a good one all!
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
all of this is true, but in the worst case, the option to defederate would mean a return to the status quo for the part of the fediverse that's non commercial. It's a weird sort of resilience.
I hope that any big tech employees on the fediverse would object to moving in on the space; the embrace -> extend -> extinguish trajectory is impossible for them to avoid.
Because of that, it's imperative that we be ready for them to try it, and aggressively contain them via non-federation pacts.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
If someone can find stats when Google Plus shut down, that could be a good basis for predictions. ;) The #Diaspora network (called #TheFederation) received the bulk of #GooglePlusMigration then.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
as I've said before and I will say again... This is the reason why when any Big Tech company creates a mastodon instance, it must be ruthlessly defederated.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
these, and many more similar attacks for e.g. spam, are trivial to imagine and not too terrible to execute. In many cases the answer is social, not technical — collective governance or at least powerful consensus — and it looks like there is no will to improve that situation among large instance mods & admins.
Content warning: re: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Don't forget that they can also lobby for regulations that are relatively easy for a large company to deal with but impossible for an individual or small team.
We need self-governance tools (this is something I've been saying since 2017) so that we can organize and collect resources to fight back.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
That's an interesting take. It's a "worst case scenario" and therefore I think not super likely, but something like it is possible, even probably. Heck, even the prospect of Tumblr and Flickr adopting ActivityPub, as they are now, could tilt the scales dramatically.
Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
true, but: 1) Google's track record on social is terrible. Yeah, *maybe* they'll get it right this time...
2) It's been decades, and IMAP/POP/SMTP support are still in Gmail. So some federated protocols *are* resistant to the EEE. Worth thinking hard about why that is.
I've seen plenty of discussions in recent days over the network structure of Mastodon and whether it can remain decentralized as large commercial players begin taking an interest in the fediverse.
![xg15 29 minutes ago | next [–]
I think the real danger for the Mastodon/greater Fediverse community is that, should Mastodon really become the "next Twitter", it will catch the attention of the other FAANGs. And the way the Fediverse is structured currently, it appears highly vulnerable to the old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish playbook:
1) Establish a corporate Mastodon server and deeply embed it into your existing platform. ("We love the Fediverse! We love it so much that we've built native support for it into Google mail. That's right! Starting tomorrow, every @gmail address is also a valid Mastodon user! No need to sign up anywhere, you can just follow and toot and boost right from your Gmail app!")
1a) Think influx of a few 1000s of users is bad? How about a billion? [1]
2) Bombard the community with proprietary extensions and attempt to take control of the technical standards. ("We love ActivityPub too! That's why we're planning to add YouTube integration to it! And Google Calendar invites! And Maps locations and advanced emotes and and and... Developers of servers and third-party clients are encouraged to follow our new ActivityPub Extensions living standard. Feedback is encouraged!")](https://friendica.myportal.social/photo/preview/640/4055930 "xg15 29 minutes ago | next [–]
I think the real danger for the Mastodon/greater Fediverse community is that, should Mastodon really become the \"next Twitter\", it will catch the attention of the other FAANGs. And the way the Fediverse is structured currently, it appears highly vulnerable to the old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish playbook:
1) Establish a corporate Mastodon server and deeply embed it into your existing platform. (\"We love the Fediverse! We love it so much that we've built native support for it into Google mail. That's right! Starting tomorrow, every @gmail address is also a valid Mastodon user! No need to sign up anywhere, you can just follow and toot and boost right from your Gmail app!\")
1a) Think influx of a few 1000s of users is bad? How about a billion? [1]
2) Bombard the community with proprietary extensions and attempt to take control of the technical standards. (\"We love ActivityPub too! That's why we're planning to add YouTube integration to it! And Google Calendar invites! And Maps locations and advanced emotes and and and... Developers of servers and third-party clients are encouraged to follow our new ActivityPub Extensions living standard. Feedback is encouraged!\")")
A.D.
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
anubis2814
in reply to A.D. • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
like this
zanzaKlaus, ProtectiveHen, Rev. Bussy Body of The Church of America MLM and Shooting Club, ML2, Notavi, houkai amplifier and Xerz~! :blobcathearttrans: like this.
reshared this
Nazis can fuck off, MinameH❇️, Jacob White and JMFT reshared this.
A.D.
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
zanzaKlaus
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣
in reply to zanzaKlaus • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
When the Internet was new, when mobile phones were new, our parents don't like the new technologies. I think our generation is like them today. Most doesn't want to learn new things (for various [valid] reasons).
@theexplorographer @anubis2814 @fiercemilder
Rebecca
in reply to ♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣 • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Amiya Behera #FBPPR
in reply to zanzaKlaus • • •Josh Conway :donor:
in reply to Amiya Behera #FBPPR • • •Anything regarding money, AND I DO MEAN ANYTHING, can and will be distorted to insane absurdity.
And seriously, fuck all cryptocurrencies. Every last one. I don't support climate destroying ponzi schemes.
Amiya Behera #FBPPR
in reply to Josh Conway :donor: • • •Campbell's law can be hard to solve, but still, there is the possibility of aligning incentives and producing the desired result, if the game is well thought out.
adage about perverse incentives
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)smidbot
in reply to Amiya Behera #FBPPR • • •Pam
in reply to zanzaKlaus • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Selfishly, I like being here as a new community forms. Twitter was like arriving to the party late and things are just starting to wind down.
The Doctor
in reply to zanzaKlaus • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
The Doctor
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
mc.fly
in reply to The Doctor • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
johnaldis
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
mc.fly
in reply to johnaldis • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
First of all Like and Retoot work a bit more intutitively like they are on twitter.
Over there they were important to tell the algorythm that it should show this post more to others and better in their timeline whereas in mastodon they work in the way how its looks 1/
mc.fly
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
A boost is to push the visibility. That is important as it pushes the post more often in timelines and over different server borders into the different server timelines.
Its way more important than on twitter. 2/
mc.fly
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
The content warning like in this post is to shield political and other discussions away from people that are (potentially) not interested. I often use it also as headline.
Its asked for for twitter, trump, nudity, violence or otherwise controversal topics. 3/
mc.fly
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
johnaldis
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
johnaldis
in reply to johnaldis • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
johnaldis
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
johnaldis
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
emurphy42
in reply to mc.fly • • •johnaldis
in reply to mc.fly • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Lucent
in reply to The Doctor • • •Permagriculture
in reply to The Doctor • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
@anubis2814 @theexplorographer @fiercemilder
Home · Pinafore
pinafore.socialPam
in reply to anubis2814 • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
If a big platform is worming into the fediverse making deeply transformative proposals in bad faith, it will be hard to coordinate a unified resistance. Impossible, probably.
Śéáń
in reply to A.D. • • •The overton window for consuner acceptability is always shifting, no matter how gradual.
Not saying the above is at all assured, but it's certainly not without precedent.
A.D.
in reply to Śéáń • • •Śéáń
in reply to A.D. • • •A.D.
in reply to Śéáń • • •Joe Kemp
in reply to A.D. • • •not a tame owl 🦉
in reply to A.D. • • •Dell Cameron 🐈⬛
in reply to A.D. • • •A.D.
in reply to Dell Cameron 🐈⬛ • • •savagejen
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
João Santos
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Matías Eyzaguirre Miranda
in reply to João Santos • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Jennie Kermode
in reply to João Santos • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Michael :mastodon: reshared this.
♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣
in reply to Jennie Kermode • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
IIRC, when the fediverse started in 2008, the core driving force was freedom of choice. Getting away from silo'd / walled garden SNS only came second.
And we're back to square one, it's a battle between “freedom [of choice]” and “make the decision for them”.
@jmcs @theexplorographer @fiercemilder
towo
in reply to A.D. • • •Dubi is here :Dambo8:
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
dantose :unverified:
in reply to A.D. • • •Elias Mårtenson
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Bindestrich
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
mc.fly
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
That's sad and imho wrong. but still that's the case very often.
Also a lot of people don't mind Ads and find the tracking not as bad. small functional problems are a lot bigger problem for them than ads including their tracking.
Not my opinion but often a point if you discuss with people there.
octoturt
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Diane
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: re: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
o ifrit
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Josh Conway :donor:
in reply to A.D. • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
It's "federation" in the sense that @jerry (my mastodon maintainer) is dealing with Deutsch Telekom. Basically told him to pound rocks with his users using emails with t-online.de . Basically they choose not to federate with small mail providers.
If the biggies federate, and then throw their clout around, it could be a real bad time for everyone.
Arvid E. Picciani
in reply to A.D. • • •Chris_Swan
in reply to Śéáń • • •Mx. Alba :blobcatenby: :nd:
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
A.D.
Unknown parent • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
A.D.
Unknown parent • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Matías Eyzaguirre Miranda
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
It's a weird sort of resilience.
Ronathon Livingston Seagull
in reply to Śéáń • • •Because of that, it's imperative that we be ready for them to try it, and aggressively contain them via non-federation pacts.
#UserFreedom #faang #mastodon #resistance
♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣
Unknown parent • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
#3 in the screengrab happened.
Still, XMPP survived. And a few months ago, or was it last year, I read somewhere there is work to federate XMPP and Matrix networks.
♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣
Unknown parent • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
@theexplorographer @fiercemilder
Mx. Alba :blobcatenby: :nd:
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Aura, Lady of a Thousand Names
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Daniel (CactiChameleon9)
in reply to Śéáń • • •Microsoft business strategy in acquiring software platforms
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)ilmari
in reply to ♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣 • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Address syntax · matrix-org/matrix-bifrost Wiki
GitHub♾️ Yuki (스노 雪亮) 🐬 🦣
in reply to ilmari • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
@lbruno @fiercemilder
Mark Crowley
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Ernie Smith
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Diane
in reply to Ernie Smith • • •Content warning: re: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
https://octodon.social/@alienghic/109378703162203306
(linking to my post of it because I added alt text)
Diane 🕵 (@alienghic@octodon.social)
the OctodonJon Henshaw :coywolf:
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: re: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
We need self-governance tools (this is something I've been saying since 2017) so that we can organize and collect resources to fight back.
Scot Hacker
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
maarten brouwers
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
C. Scott Ananian (he/him)
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
1) Google's track record on social is terrible. Yeah, *maybe* they'll get it right this time...
2) It's been decades, and IMAP/POP/SMTP support are still in Gmail. So some federated protocols *are* resistant to the EEE. Worth thinking hard about why that is.
Sebastian Lasse
in reply to Śéáń • • •Content warning: Risks to Mastodon with increasing popularity
/ @janboehm
Josh Braun (@josh@sciences.social)
sciences.social