It's crazy that people would rather migrate to a social media managed by a power hungry capitalist than to a "libre" platform
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Fediverse
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Majority are not too techy to understand fediverse, nor they really care of the benefit decentralization provides.
Is it really crazy? Most users don't give a shit about the tech or politics, they just want to go where the people they are interested in are, and most of them don't care either! Bluesky is actively promoting itself as the new old Twitter, so that's where people who want that are going.
I have a mastodon and honestly, it's hardly a replacement. different instances are far too isolated even when federating together. Finding user accounts is difficult, and basic stuff like seeing content on another instance is needlessly kneecapped compared to other ActivityPub stuff like Lemmy.
Fediverse isn't intuitive
Most people dont give a fuck. They just want something better than X and popular. "Power hungry capitalism" doesn't even cross their minds.
I agree, but I think it does cross the minds of many. They just still choose not to care.
It's unfortunate, but regular people don't want to learn about new things and just want one platform where everybody is, basically "Twitter without Musk".
Bluesky is twitter. All the issues we have with X now are bound to happen with bluesky when it gets relevant.
The fediverse is the only viable alternative.
Bluesky is part of the fediverse. Isn't it?
They built their own protocol which interacts with nothing else.
They don't speak the same language as Lemmy and Mastodon, so can't really federate with anyone else at the moment
@[email protected] Diaspora don't speak the same language either yet we consider it part of the fedi. It's one of the OGs that refused to adopt ActivityPub.
@maegul @fediverse I find BlueSky to be a lot more diverse and also far better for news than Mastodon. But at the same time it's a nastier and more superficial place.
Comparatively, it's definitely a lot more into shitposting vibes, for sure.
I think their biggest problem right now is they don't have good community self-organising features (nor masto, but the boost culture corrects for that IMO), so those who want more serious sub-cultures aren't getting much footing (and may never).
Feeds are interesting but not very fruitful IMO and hashtags are new, so it's a bit flat community-wise there, and many users are "wait & see" I suspect.
@maegul @fediverse The lack of community tools might be the biggest technical gap, but the real problem is a lack of communities who want to use either.
Because of this, I think both Mastodon and BlueSky have hit their highwater marks under current conditions and no technical changes can alter that.
A million each is enough to survive and stagnate but it doesn't enable growth. Only some major antitrust action against Meta by EU could do that :)
Agreed (and said the same myself)!
As I've said it ... alternative social has run its course in this post-musk-twitter moment. Everyone's settled down where they ended up.
And yea, either more major disruption or some new killer features (rather than clones of big social) will be needed to shake things up. Neither seem particularly likely in the short term ... your EU-meta smackdown is probably the best bet??
So none of you thinks the Threads / Activity Pub thing will have an impact?
My personal opinion is that its a strategic move to avoid regulation by being able to claim they are open.
@mkarliner @maegul @fediverse We see a lot of actors using the same machinery as Mastodon, from Meta to Truth Social. I think it's just because it's easy for them to do so, and hence the marginal costs are low for them. Rather than it pointing to any strategic intent or meaning anything for the 'Fediverse'. Although in that sense Mastodon has already had a phyrric victory in the protocol wars, because its enemies are using it.
Why pyrrhic? Genuine question.
@mkarliner @maegul @fediverse because what we know as the Fediverse will not grow and may disappear, even as the tools it developed and proved could work become widespread and even dominant.
I may be an optimist, but maybe adoption of AP will help reduce the worst of social media monopolies, and the "our" Fediverse culture is always going to be a minority taste, which is possibly OK.
@mkarliner @maegul @fediverse It will probably have some effect, yes. But a de facto monopoly based on having almost all the users is almost as significant as an actual monopoly.
The Fediverse will grow. Especially, with Threads joining and potentially Tumblr and Post.news. You’re right that the Fediverse we know will disappear. I believe there will and needs to be a great schism. You have strong actions of Lemmy and Mastodon that are anti Threads and anti growth, let’s call them small fedi. Then you have those that will federate with Threads and want the Open Social Web to become the major focus and how most people engage socially online, big fedi. You already have a culture with a lot of infighting and some fundamental incompatibilities, it will only get stronger. It’s best to separate now.
@maegul @fediverse people are actually on twitter
LOL ... yea plenty right.
I do wish for the Fediverse to grow though, and to include more groups from all over the world. But I feel done with corporate social media, regardless of their MAUs.
Fair (kinda the simple explanation why I'm anti-threads-federation).
While I'm no BlueSky-stan, the idea/promise of the system is a hybrid, which I think is generally worthwhile (especially while things like twitter and threads *dominate*) but also interesting.
How hybridised it becomes (and can become) is the question though with *big* outstanding questions.
@maegul @fediverse Bluesky appears to be just a creative way to build a bird site without Moskhos ie indexing and proprietary open source code, & little blueskies within bluesky- if it becomes successful it can’t be long before litigation. Federations are only as good as the people who live there - little moderation means parts of X are like Zombie City - I like it here people are mostly warm, funny, unique, intelligent & reasonably tolerant of each others eccentricities.
Is blue sky part of the fediverse?
No
I thought they had plans to at one point? Maybe misremembering
Their federation protocol was called ActivityTrack, which is different than ActivityPub that much of the Fediverse uses. There were some efforts to host relays that translate between the two protocols but some people got upset that their data is being accessed and processed in order to do that.
Ahh that fills in the gaps. Thanks for the explanation 🤘
but afaik they aren't effectively decentralized yet. might as well use Twitter.
Yup. they "decentralised" servers for hosting profile info but it's still totally centralised for receiving and sending posts.