this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Microblog Memes
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You explain it to normies by saying it's a link aggregator and discussion site and microblogger, like R/T. What they are really asking for, however, isn't a rundown of federation mechanisms but a rationale for the fed itself. 'How does it work?' really means 'What are the crucial differences and why do they matter?' So a good answer to that must talk about ownership, the profit motive, user friendliness, the perils of consolidation, etc.
I actually have a go-to explanation for this. I give them a brief summary of Cory Doctorow's enshittification talk, namely that as any social platform starts to get big, starts generating network effects to keep people there, it starts to get complacent. It starts making things worse for the users, because what are they gonna do, abandon all their friends to go somewhere else? The Fediverse is a social platform that's designed to be immune to enshittification, and here's how it does it.
Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, Peertube etc. (the Fediverse equivalents of Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube respectivley) aren't social platforms in and of themselves. They're pieces of open-source software that anyone with enough technical know-how can spin up on any old HTTP server and create their own little mini-Twitter/Reddit/Facebook/YouTube that they are the admin of. That sounds like a nightmare -- here's why it's not. All of these so-called "instances" can talk to each other and sort of act as one gigantic social network, so when you create an account on one instance, you can still follow someone on any of the others (this is where I usually take a slight detour to explain defederation). Basically, no matter what instance you join, barring any sort of defederation (which is actually quite common), you'll be able to see more or less the same content.
Now here's the kicker. Mastodon supports account migration. Suppose you have an account on a Mastodon instance that you feel no loner aligns with your goals. Maybe some really horrific shit got posted and didn't get taken down. Maybe the admin is starting to show some colors they hadn't shown before. Maybe the instance is about to go offline due to legal reasons. Whatever the reason, you have options. You can just go into your settings page, export a list of your followers, create an account on a different Mastodon instance, and set up your old account to forward to your new one, and pick up right where you left off with scarcely a break in the flow. You'll still continue to see all the same content, and anyone who was following your old account will be automatically redirected to your new one the next time they log in without any action on their part. Even if all of your friends were on the dying Mastodon instance and no two picked the same instance to flee to, you'll still be able to talk to each other and continue to browse the Fediverse as though nothing had happened.
The Fediverse makes itself immune to enshittification by making the cost of deleting your account and switching platforms effectively zero.