Baffled by how little interaction my Instagram posts are getting nowadays, especially since I'm posting from a big Europe trip. I assume it's the algorithm not showing my posts to anyone. I used to get at least 10 to 15 likes on everything, now I'm struggling to get up to 5.
Should I give up? I really loathe Instagram's timeline nowadays, full of video and ads and general rubbish.
Point blank, a mass Fediblock isn't going to work with #Meta.
The cold truth is that people will use #Barcelona whether it federates or not. Even if it fails, Barcelona will probably have more users out of the gate than almost every project save Mastodon. Hell, it will probably eclipse #Bluesky too.
And even if you convince every server to defederate -- which you won't -- this will not be a PR coup for the Fediverse. Newspaper headlines won't blare "Fediverse successfully resists Meta." Instead, they will probably follow @gruber take with "Open source zealots complain that an open protocol is open."
Again, as I've said countless times, I'm not saying you should federate with Barcelona or any Meta-owned property. If you want, defederate. The joy of the Fediverse is freedom of association.
But a mass Fediblock doesn't solve a few important problems with Meta, and perhaps makes them worse.
The most critical problem is that Meta users need to migrate away from Meta-owned social networks. Until now, a migration path has simply been unfeasible to most. But when Barcelona gets launched, it is possible that many of them will become aware of a greater Fediverse.
How to build that awareness? By interacting with them through services beyond Barcelona.
This approach works. I've interacted with many Mastodon users through services beyond Mastodon, and this has resulted in adoption of other Fediverse software. #Calckey is a case in point.
However, there's a bigger problem concerning Meta: Fediverse replacements for Meta-owned social networks aren't getting mass adoption. And it's not because these apps aren't good.
#Pixelfed is an #Instagram replacement. It is also one of the slickest apps on the Fediverse. Yet, Pixelfed only has 150,000 registered accounts.
#Friendica is a #Facebook replacement. It's been around since 2010. It is a mature product that does many things very well, but Friendica only has 17,000 registered accounts.
The software is great but we are failing to effectively market the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Now I'm trying my darnedest to change this, and so are many people. But facts are facts. Fediverse alternatives to Meta are a blip on the radar.
Refusing to federate with Barcelona won't change this. How do I know?
Because we don't federate now, and the status quo remains intact.
Meanwhile, Meta is practically gifting Pixelfed and Friendica an opportunity for federation, and it would be foolish to not consider broader implications.
How is it that more people aren't considering this opportunity?
Dare I say that most people -- including devs -- suffer from myopia concerning what the Fediverse is. The Fediverse is not Mastodon, and it is wrong to view the Fediverse solely through the eyes of Mastodon.
And I'll go further: by focusing Barcelona on text, I suspect that Meta is likewise making the same mistake of viewing the Fediverse as a "Twitter killer".
What they may not be considering is that the Fediverse might be a "Meta killer" too. And connecting Barcelona to the Fediverse is opening a can of worms Meta hasn't entirely considered yet.
If Barcelona is indeed text-based, what will happen when a Barcelona user encounters Pixelfed and asks, "Why does this post show reels? And why can't I do the same?"
Believe me, this is the kind of content that triggers migration.
We need to think bigger than Fediblock. Yes, for your own mental health and safety, you may not want to federate with Barcelona. However, there needs to also be a means for Barcelona users to encounter content outside Barcelona.
Perhaps there needs to be "lobby" servers that help Barcelona users enter the greater Fediverse -- helping them make the switch beyond Meta.
1/ The point of EEE is to grow from the fediverse by siphoning it. But how is that going to work? WHO would ever drop mastodon to join Meta?? Meta doesn’t even need to siphon anything, they have 1 Billion users already. The 1.2M of monthly-active fediverse users mean nothing to them. There is nothing to siphon.
This is what’s going to happen: They give us access to the ActivityPub API, cool. They drop the access, ow too bad, guess we’ll continue without Meta. They cannot absorb 1.2M users when those 1.2M users care more about their values than about growth.
Meta isn’t going to absorb the fediverse, there is nothing they can do to convince us to join. EEE cannot work here. It won’t work.
2/ No, the journalists already know matodon. I don’t know if they’ell understand the fediverse, but "barcelona ≠ mastodon" and "barcelona is compatible with mastodon" isn’t hard to understand.
3/ P92 is literally IG. Advertized as such, same accounts, same follower/following list, same blocklist/blocked keywords, same everything. Mastodon users will not migrate back to Meta. They can defederate it won’t change a thing. They don’t even need our userbase, we’re a dwarf next to Meta.
The reverse is not true, we can drain a lot of users from Meta to mastodon/pixelfeed. Not all 1 Billion, but a decent amount and more than they can drain from us.
4/ This is not true. A lot of people migrate out of mastodon. Alternatives are growing and draining users from mastodon to those alternatives.
5/ This is a good reason to work even harder and make the fediverse an even better place. But when I see that bluesky is considered a good alternative, the number of features required to gain users’ interest might be actually pretty low.
6/ This is an issue. I do not envy fediverse admins.
7/ P92 is IG
8/ Speculation. And even if broken, seeing a lot (even 1% is enough) of @ user@ not-instagram is going to get them curious. People complaining about broken posts will make them curious. People complaining about Meta banning nudity will makee them curious. etc. If we don’t federate, we don’t exist, if we federate we have visibility they can see us, our messages, our complains our struggles, our values, etc.
So, part of the standards process is that we work in the open with lots of different parties.
Meta is a member of the W3C and has participated in other standards. I and other members want to make sure they have the information necessary to implement the standard well.
If Meta is implementing ActivityPub, I'd like to make sure they do it in the most interoperable way possible, so all our Free and Open Source software stays compatible with it.
I just went back on IG because my publisher told me so, and literally every second post I see is an advertisement or a "recommended for you" thing. Is this normal? I am not used to this anymore.
@WTL@rolle It's not a bug. Just not implemented yet. We will have to rework a lot of how our polls work to support multiple choice. We will get to it eventually.
@J12t Given Meta’s history, shouldn’t the assumption be they intend an asymmetric plan rather than a symmetric one? Seems like the right default assumption to make here.
@greenback they even started introducing advertisements on the web version recently :(
Yet, all my friends remain there; Instagram's importance as social fabric (at least in my context) is undeniable (with all the negative implications that has)
Folgt ihr uns eigentlich schon auf #Instagram? Nein? Dann wird es Zeit! Dort gibt es tolle Fotos, Videos, Quizze sowie Eindrücke unserer Wanderausstellungen auf Tour. Kommt vorbei und klickt „folgen“. Wir würden uns freuen! ☺️ #FollowUs#WillyBrandt
@BWBStiftung
Es wäre viel netter, wenn ihr zu @pixelfed kommen könntet. Dann könnten wir aus dem #Fediverse auch hier eure Posts anschauen und ihr habt eure Daten nicht bei einer US Megacorp. Vielleicht setzen euch die bei @bfdi auch einen Server auf.
#Facebook / #Instagram planning to leech off of #Mastodon. Notice how, “Users on [Mastodon] will be able [to] search for, follow and interact with your profile and content” but no mention of following Mastodon accounts, a la “The plan as of now is that the MVP (minimum viable product) will definitely allow our users to broadcast posts to people on other servers. It may or may not enable our users to follow and view the content of people on other servers.” https://fosstodon.org/@rauschma/110414457697371791
Ich bin ja skeptisch, ob es für das #Fediverse wirklich so gut ist, wenn die etablierten großen Player hier mitmischen. #Automattic und #Tumblr traue ich ja noch halbwegs, aber #Meta / #Instagram?
@prefec2 das Problem ist nicht mehr so richtig auf Lizenzebene. Es ist eher so dass viele FOSS-Ökosysteme so funktionieren, dass die Konzerne den Weg bestimmen trotz GPL und co. Oder es gibt andere kulturelle Probleme wie zB bei Wikipedia. @Weltenkreuzer
@benni@Weltenkreuzer ja das stimmt, dass in einigen zentralen Projekten Unternehmen viel Einfluss haben. Aber sie bezahlen auch die Entwicklung. Es ist da natürlich schwierig eigene Ideen unterzubringen. Um das zu lösen bräuchte es eine Art Überwachung durch einen Rat. Aber das ist auch nicht der Weisheit letzter Schluss. Wikipedia ist da nochmal eine andere soziale Herausforderung insb. in Deutschland.