#Medium link; don't be surprised if it does weird things before showing you the article.
"Mastodon brought a protocol to a product fight"
> Yes, yes, the network is under immense strain as people flee the Elon strain infecting Twitter. But come on, there are folks who really believe this is going to replace, or even stand alongside Twitter, as a massively scaled social network? I call bullshit. While it’s impressive that millions of users have apparently given Mastodon a try, the product is far too slapdash and clunky to keep folks engaged. A lump of coal.
No, it isn't meant to be a #Twitter replacement. Keep your Twitter account until you no longer want it--or the company closes and the site shuts down--you can use Mastodon alongside Twitter.
And the #Fediverse networks are much more than just #Mastodon. Don't think you have experienced the network and all it has to offer if all you've done is briefly tried to use Mastodon, because you haven't experienced it.
> I’ve somehow avoided signing up for the service up until now. Largely because signing up was and is so comically obtuse — pick your server everyone, hope you choose wisely!
Have you not used e-mail? It works the same way. You pick a server, such as Gmail or Outlook dot com, and sign up. Please tell me you realize that the people you communicate with are not all on the same e-mail service that you use.
> But, but, it’s not a product, it’s a protocol. Yeah, that’s a nice thing to say. And to believe in. But I truly believe the ship has sadly sailed for such idealism in this space. Jack Dorsey can talk about how this should have been what Twitter was from the get go until he’s bluesky in the face. It’s just not going to happen. And he’s more to blame for that than most everyone else. As is he for the Elon element of this current equation. But that’s a different story.
Okay, so how about this story: Twitter has only been profitable two or three years of its entire history. Since it started, it has existed by burning through investors' funds. Eventually, with or without Elon Musk's ownership, that runs out. Without such funding, their corporate-centralized ( #corpocentric ) model cannot exist very long. And same for their centralized competitors, such as Post.news, Gab, Parler, and so on. What is left is either #federated or #peer-to-peer approaches, where no single entity is responsible for funding and managing the entire network. So whether it is the #Fediverse ( with #ActivityPub and #OStatus and their successors ) & the Federation ( with #Diaspora ) or #Bluesky, or #Twister, or #NOSTR, the eventual future of #socnets is #decentralized, if not entirely peer-to-peer unless a national government takes over Facebook and Twitter in order to provide effectively unlimited resources. It is the protocol that makes it possible for thousands or millions of instances to displace and replace one big centralized instance.
One thing about this surge of people migrating from #Twitter to the #Fediverse is that people who gave up on #federated #socnets years ago and solely used #corpocentric platforms are now coming back.
Thus, I get announcements about people I knew from #Tent (thanks to fellow former Tentler @bthall) along with news about people from #Identi.ca and other #StatusNet and #Pump.io instances returning.
#ByteDance owned #TikTok tracks employees and journalists in unsuccessful attempt to find who leaked internal information. TikTok is under substantial pressure from federal and state agencies concerned that it gathers infromation for the Chinese government.
Here's a hint: if you make gathering any information above the minimum necessary to operate into a crime, both TikTok and all other #corpocentric #socnets will have to make major changes.
As an instructor taught us decades ago, "All information that you collect will eventually be stored. All information that you store will eventually be misused."
To what @lxo posted, because vertical scaling ("bigger servers") has its limits, the big #corpocentric #socnets split things up and use technological workarounds to appear to be one big server.
For example, one of the first things is to move the #database management system ( #dbms ) to a separate machine. Once this happens, hoizontally scaling the database by clustering (multiple servers handling the same db) is possible.
Next, we can perform similar clustering with the web server, and we can perform similar clustering at the processing layers.
Once we do this, we can expose things through various interfaces. This is what #cloud providers do with their separate compute, database, and storage services. Each such service relies on hundreds of servers pretending to be one.
Finally, we come to #federation, where we skip the pretense that everything is one big server and instead have many separate individuals and organizations running servers.
It isn't inherently more complicated, but it does mean users have to know that we're not all on big-centralized-server.com.
This points to a serious observability issue in communications software. Nearly every #corpocentric chat platform and videoconferencing / teleconferencing platform claims that communications sent via that platform are encrypted. Many, if not most, claim to be end-to-end encrypted ( #E2EE ).
But there's no easy way to tell whether the system really is encrypted all the way from you to your friends / family / business contacts, rather than from you to the communication intermediary and from the intermediary to your contacts. Nor is there an easy way to tell what metadata is not encrypted (e.g., what information is necessary for the intermediary to set up your call, what is unneeded by available to them in unencrypted form anyway, what information they are required to collect by various governmental agencies), and whether encryption is required or optional.
Finally, laypeople have no way to judge the quality of the encryption. Is this "Deputy Jim-Bob can get a decrypted copy by entering some data in the company web site" encryption? Is this "Joe BadGuy can record the encrypted data and crack a 30 minute call in 3 hours" encryption? Or is this "the NSA, MI-6, BND, Unit 8200, DGSE & DCRI, FSB, or GRU would have to devote three weeks of their best supercomputers' time in order to crack a 30 minute call" encryption? How can one tell the difference?
It would be nice to have a big chunk of the people who are using #corpocentric #socnets like #Twitter and #Facebook and #Instagram move some or all of their presence over to the #OStatus and #ActivityPub branches of the #Fediverse, but I'd much rather they come because they want to try something different instead of coming because they are fleeing some change or impending change over there.
Why? Because these networks will never give them everything that those did. I personally believe that these networks can give some benefits that those cannot, but thus far, we've mostly tried to replicate their functionality ... without the benefit of nearly unlimited VC cash and a centralized model which puts $CentralizedNetwork at the center of its users' communications, where benefits built upon centralized knowledge of users' actions / choices / contacts.
Therefore, in 2-3 weeks, I expect 9 out of 10 new users to have have returned to Twitter ... or to some centralized network that springs up to duplicate Twitter without the Musk factor.
This has happened before. Maybe not on this scale, but it has happened. Multiple times. And always, most of them leave.
I need to reread this. Is the writer arguing that we should force Twitter & Facebook to continue hosting her false and toxic posts? That we should extend the public square to privately owned social sites?
That I should be forced to host racists and KKK-ers and extremists of every stripe who want me dead?
No thanks.
If the argument is that deleting such accounts is bad for freedom, I agree, but only because $CELEBRITY won't hire someone to spin up a GS / Mastodon / Pleroma instance for them to post on. Their own choices put control of their freedom to post in the hands of #corpocentric
Seriously, #POSSE is the way:
* Publish on your
* Own
* Site,
* Syndicate
* Elsewhere
I do see their point, in that #corpocentric services depend on people paying attention to them ... if we could find a way to divert that attention, platforms like Twitter and YouTube would implode within a few months.
But if you're trying to observe conversations by most people, chances are, you'll have to observe them on those platforms.
I know that Gargron was invited to participate and even paid some amount of EURO, but I recall he said he did not integrate #Eunomia into #Mastodon.
My impression is that there were some API hooks that could be used for their "social credit" system, and that those may have been enhanced. However, that is just my impression and not documented fact.
I also get the impression that Eunomia is not just about the #Fediverse--they would like to eventually hook into #corpocentric #socnets also--and that Fediverse-related activities pretty much stalled out years ago.
Also, #Signal and #Telegram are said to be flooded with new users.
I'm both glad and unglad to hear that.
Signal is fully end-to-end encrypted ( #E2EE ), so that's better than all other #corpocentric alternatives, but:
* they are centralized
* they collect data such as telephone number (can't use it without giving said info)
* I haven't used it, but I hear their video and audio calls are poor quality
Telegram has optional E2EE on certain types of communications.
* I believe their encryption is home-grown, so not battle-tested like professional algorithms.
* They are centralized
Anything is better than using any product or service owned by Facebook, so I'm glad to see the outmigration, but not glad that other centralized services are the main beneficiaries.
I'd argue that given their duopoly on mobile operating systems, the power to arbitrarily kick someone out is scary (regardless of how deserving Parler might be; I'm not even sure I've seen a screenshot of the site). I'd argue that this is evidence that the mobile OS and app store groups of both companies need to be split up, so that competition can come ... including strong competition for mobile app stores on each platform.
Again, Parler may deserve it, especially if their users used the socnet to organize their insurrection attempt. (Though I suspect many of them probably used odious #corpocentric sites like #Twitter or #Facebook, which are not being punished.)
Over time, I was concerned about the lack of continuing security patches, so we pulled it down.
While he's off work for the next few months, he's going to try to do more photography , and he's looking to host his work again. I'd like to be able to suggest something that isn't Flickr / 500px or other #corpocentric site.
Federation is not needed, as he's looking mostly for a way to market his work and maybe sell a few prints. I suggested that he look at #PixelFed, but I don't know enough about it to even be sure it could meet his needs. I don't know if his hosting is capable of something like #MediaGobllin (Python based), but that project is still awakening from a long hibernation.
Anyone have knowledge of a self-hostable PHP based photo gallery?