> The ability to opt-out of quote posts is also currently planned, which makes it that Mastodon’s implementation will not be compatible with other fediverse implementations of quote posting.
Not surprising. Even before ActivityPub was announced, when the #fediverse was still powered by #OStatus, Mastodon was already breaking compatibility. There were countless of heated debates about almost every Mastodon-only "feature" they implemented that all other Fediverse devs were forced to implement.
And here we are with yet another.
I wonder what will supporters of opt-out or anti-quotepost camp will do if the other Fediverse devs ignore this Mastodon-only "feature", and just continue with the common implementation of quote posts? Are we going to see a new reason for "fediblock", and finally fragment the Fediverse network?
An important distinction is slowly being uncovered about the definition of the term "fediverse." Who is it that gets to decide what this place is? How are we being represented? These are not easy questions to answer and if we don't do a better job describing ourselves, then the job will get done for us by people who don't understand the underlying values we hold. #fediverse#meta#threads
@liaizon Personally, and the way the term was used, since it was first coined, was any software with #OStatus support (later #ActivityPub).
When there were discussions of having a new name, I ran suggestion threads and polls about it, and one suggestion/choice was mycelial, mycelium. I like it so I started using it myself.
"Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.
"free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally
The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.
Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.
Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!
Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety
Emphasize "networked communities"
Support concentric federations of instances and communities
Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)
Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'
Build a sustainable ecosystem
Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light
Reduce the dependency on Mastodon
Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity
Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses
Thank you for the optimistic PoV on the entrance of others to the #DeSoc of the Fediverse. It is an optimism that I share - especially with Matthias' announcement just an hour ago that his team behind the development of the #WordPress ActivityPub plugin has just released version 2.0.0 - considering the enormous footprint of WordPress installations across the entire Internet belonging to both common, everyday individuals and companies alike, of every shape and size, this is HUGE news.
It instantly, overnight, positions common folks and businesses to leap into the freedoms afforded them by the existing, privacy respecting, #FOSS based Fediverse that hitherto was... well, a bit of a leap for them psychologically. But now they have a familiar platform with which to begin a journey through the minefields of the deprecated, privacy mining, monolithic silos; its proprietors programming their masses of #subjugated_chattel into livestock holding pens, where they are weighed, measured, packaged, placed into inventory, and sold.
That does raise the issue of an error in your assertions however. You mentioned, "instances in Meta's fediverses and on Bluesky".
The truth however, the reality, is that each are merely a single instance - One big monolithic silo, as described above, with the same incentives of monetization through privacy mining techniques that have made them the dreadnoughts that they are; at least in the case of #Meta (Threads).
Bluesky is of that vertically scaling market as well, but much smaller than the #Faceplant and #InstaSPAM engines operated by Meta, and now their new spearhead into the DeSoc space occupied by ActivityPub and other decentralized or federated protocol based, horizontally scaling instances.
#Bluesky hasn't actually shown their hand yet to the general public, but already, they've disenfranchised (fired) much of their talent; some, actually principal architects of their monolith who were frustrated and disillusioned with the direction Jay has been taking the company - moving further and further away from the disowned public community they spawned, organized, and abandoned following the initial trials and tests of the open source preview version of what became #ATP protocol (ATX).
Even Jack has moved on and embraced yet another horizontally scaling protocol in the DeSoc space, #nostr, and it's already bridged and interoperating flawlessly with the ActivityPub powered portion of the Fediverse, which in turn interoperates with instances running other protocols such as #Nomad, #OStatus, #Streams, #Diaspora, and #ZOT... all of them part of the Fediverse.
Many of the extant #ActivityPub powered instances in the Fediverse merely need to install these capabilities with a couple of clicks to enable this interoperability, while others bridge the divide through infrastructure developed and deployed over the past year or so.
What will be Meta's use case here for their business product?
That's the main question I think folks need to address - not punish the good people on the so-called evil side of the divide, the hitherto subjugated chattel that populate Marks so-called Metaverse or whatever he thinks he can compel people to adopt and endure. The point is, childish, domain level blocking by juvenile minds operating ActivityPub powered #Fediverse server instances only serves to paint themselves (and the users who have to date trusted those admins with being told what they can and cannot see and do) into a corner where they effectively cancel themselves, and find that their users have migrated to other spaces... maybe WordPress, where they truly control their own destiny in the DeSoc space and can now fully participate and engage with others - but on their own terms, not someone else's.
And that, I believe, is what the whole thing has always been about, going back as far as #AngelFire and #GeoCities :)
I do agree with you that we should indeed embrace these common, everyday individuals who, through their programmed ignorance, are mostly clueless as to exactly what the Fediverse is, and more importantly, has always promised for them. This is an opportunity, like Steve Austin, (the Six Million Dollar Man): "We can rebuild them, we have the technology, we can make them better, stronger, faster..."
One more thing I should correct you on, the Fediverse is an internetwork of networks, on the Internet - there are no fediverses, Fediverse is itself a plurality, but your intent wasn't lost on me.
Great article, I enjoyed the read and most of all, your optimistically tempered intent. Thanks for sharing and I hope to see much more from you in the future!
:brain0: Jumping from one corporation-backed, short-lived, and centralized social media platform to another.
:brain14: Hanging out on one decentralized social network for over a decade, possibly not on the same instance the entire time.
How does the Mastodon software deal with video uploads? Is their transcoding outsourced to eg. AWS, or does Mastodon handle this itself? How does it generally tackle the serving of larger assets?
@hmans Could be that they are lazy fetching it or something
I was quite amazed to see issues like this be totally left to the implementers of #ActivityPub
Especially as #PubSubHubbub / #WebSub which #OStatus and other predecessors use (and the #IndieWeb still use) was specifically designed to avoid thundering herd problems that arise from a lot of subscribers all eagerly fetching content at once upon receiving a ping about new content
In the beginning, there was Laconica, which later became known as StatusNet. A massive amount of the work that went into this is due to Evan Prodromou ( @evan ) , who is now spearheading an effort to standardize work on a communication protocol with the W3C Social Working Group.As a networking project, it was the first public implementation of the communication protocol known as OpenMicroBlogging, which later evolved into the OStatus protocol. These technologies provided a significant building block for future federated networking projects to study and reference.
In terms of how StatusNet was used, it resembled an early version of Twitter, with the added benefit of group functionality. What made it unique is that users on one Laconica server could communicate with users on completely different servers.
da das #Fediverse immer noch am wachsen ist und es jetzt wohl gerade größere Wanderungsbewegungen weg von #Reddit zu #Lemmy und dem Fork #kbin gibt, hier mal ein aktualisiertes Übersichtsdiagramm um zu zeigen, dass das Fediverse nicht nur aus #Mastodon besteht.
Erst mal vielen Dank an @kuketzblog und @imke für das erstellen des Diagramms.
Dann gibt es natürlich auch noch ein paar Links zu Seiten auf denen man sich einen Überblick über das Fediverse verschaffen kann:
All these “fediverse browsers”, like Lemmy and Kbin, are commonly referred to as fediverse software. (extra info: Wikipedia calls Lemmy, Kbin, and similar answers-type or Threads-type software as “Link-aggregators”.)
There is no “Mastodon network”. There is no “mastoverse”. There is no “threadiverse”. There is no “Threadinet”, or whichever -verse / -network people are coming up with.
Any software that is using the ActivityPub protocol is part of the “Fediverse network”. Just like how any software that uses the HTTProtocol is part of the Web.
That clear so far?
Now, we go to your question.
Q: I moved to lemmy.world and have noticed that lemmy.ml has been popping up as another featured instance. What differs from lemmy.world vs lemmy.ml? Is .ml more active?
lemmy.world and lemmy.ml are called instances (the terminology used to refer to a fediverse server/service). These two are only two out of many fediverse instances available. In paritcular, these two instances are only two out of probably a hundred Lemmy-based instances available.
What differs between the two? As far as features and functionalities go, none. Since these two Lemmy-based instances are using the same software, they have the same set of features. The only difference would be if one instance fell behind in Lemmy version upgrades.
Since lemmy.ml is one of two flaship servers of the Lemmy software project, naturally it will get the bulk of registrations and content.
For example, before the Reddit Migration, there were already existing communities for many similar Subreddits, and many of those are in lemmy.ml and are very active. So, when Subreddits started to migrate, some chose lemmy.world and other lemmy instances. Which allowed lemmy.world to catch up with the number of users and number of active communities that lemmy.ml already have. AND, some of these are about the same topics/fandom.
It’s still visible on Identi.ca today, although the URL format changed a few years ago, and the redirect plugin stopped working a few years after that.
I've been reading the threads of pundits punditing about the future of the #Fediverse, saying that it will only succeed if it gets taken over by Google, or Twitter becomes an instance, or the app gets a no-choices-required signup, or the current users stop being protective of "their" network.
But as long as they keep talking about "the Mastodon protocol" and "the Mastodon network" and fail to see the bigger #Fediverse then they don't know what they're talking about and I'm gonna ignore 'em.
@Gargron, estás centralizando el fediverso. Además, el sitio web joinmastodon.org es privativo. También sería mejor que fuera libre para evitar la concentración de poder.
> Mastodon-the-software is used by far by the most people on fedi. The biggest instance, mastodon.social, is home to over 200.000 active accounts as of this writing. This is roughly 1/10th of the whole #Fediverse, on a single instance.
> Worse, Mastodon-the-software is often identified as the whole social network, obscuring the fact that Fediverse is a much broader system comprised of a much more diverse software.
In the blogpost ⬆️ I mention the history of #StatusNet (the software), #OStatus (the protocol), and identi.ca (the biggest instance). Identi.ca used to be about 1/10th of all of "OStatus-verse". Then it got redeployed using incompatible software and tore the heart out of that decentralized social network.
I feel this history is very relevant today, as mastodon.social is about 1/10th (by monthly active accounts). And continues to grow.
Last Week in Fediverse – ep 65 (fediversereport.com)
Forum federation, Ghosts, Event Planners and the source code of Truth Social.
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