this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Fediverse

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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

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Another “governance” think tank has its eye on the fediverse (infrastructureinsights.fund)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Three months ago I posted about the Atlantic Council’s interest in the controlling the fediverse: https://lemmy.ml/post/6641106

I think these projects are the continuation of the successful American “intelligence community” censorship of corporate social media platforms. They even tried to formalize the system two years ago as the Disinformation Governance Board.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

This Tech Won't Save Us podcast episode makes a very important point: any movement that does not have a structure and some form of leadership can easily be taken over by anyone willing and able to fill that kind of power vacuum.

Fediverse currently does not have a structure nor a form of leadership other than perhaps "whatever Mastodon is doing". That's problematic. I hope that we recognize this and do something to fix it, before that power vacuum gets filled by… someone we might not like.

I do see that the researchers involved in the OP link are Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi. That's fantastic. They are truly fedi old guard, deeply engaged, very knowledgeable, and generally wonderful human beings.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can certainly tell you that Lemmy wont blindly follow what Mastodon is doing. They arent doing a good job for the Fediverse, for example they make zero effort to improve compatibility with other projects. Instead others are left to reverse engineer their federation logic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I can certainly tell you that Lemmy wont blindly follow what Mastodon is doing.

Good to hear.

They arent doing a good job for the Fediverse, for example they make zero effort to improve compatibility with other projects. Instead others are left to reverse engineer their federation logic.

Yeah. Plus, the sheer size of mastodon.social and the monoculture of Mastodon-based instances is just unhealthy. I wrote about it at length.

[–] halm 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed, Kissane and Kazemi are community forces to be reckoned with in this context. Their research into governance has been funded for at least the first half of 2024.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Wonderful!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think Mastodon is already compromised

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I think throwing around vague but scary-sounding terms like "compromised" is a very bad idea.

[–] AMillionNames 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

One thing is decentralized, another is simply not caring, and a lot of instance admins don't care about how other instance admins acts in regards to federation and defederation, just about the message they may or may not be promoting. It's cyber feudalism rife for the exploiting.