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?
@vegos I agree. To most organizations, their primary concern is reach. So they congregate on big #corpocentric #socnets, even when the central corporation running things is actively hostile to their point of view.
Then they're butthurt when their accounts are shadowbanned.
Years ago, I tried to persuade some local Black churches and ethic-focused organizations to join !GNUsocial and #Diaspora, but was unsuccessful. I think they all joined #Facebook, where their posts are hidden by the algorithms.
He's talking about things that decentralized networks (and the people and software projects involved in them) can do to be better (more attractive to users) than #corpocentric networks. Naturally, he's focused on the #ActivityPub subset of the #Fediverse, but some of this applies to other decentralized networks as well.
Unfortunately, some parts of the #Fediverse (primarily, but not exclusively #Mastodon) have marketed themselves with promises of privacy, control, immunity from recourse, and personal security that none of these networks (nor the protocols they use) were ever designed to provide. The article looked at that as failure, instead of recognizing it for what it was: marketing & advertising puffery.
None for me, thank you. I see the kinds of garbage that gets into the #Google #Play_Store. I’d rather rely on a few motivated #F-Droid maintainers to inspect and package the software on my devices than your auto-scan software.
(BTW, let me emphasize again that #de-google is NOT ENOUGH. #DecentraLife ... I want to remove not just Google from my life, but all #corpocentric gatekeepers.)
Oh, it does. The family suggested we use it instead of WhatsApp.
End-to-end encryption seems to be in place only with the "secret" or "hidden" chats, that is, it can be activated (depending on the chat type) but is not activated by default. But I only want to talk with my nieces, not engage in something reckless:
(ISIS has been booted from Telegram until recently as mid December 2019)
But I guess I will only use it for to chat with family, and here only very rarely.
And no, I don't care much if it's #corpocentric . I always feel a bit uneasy about refusing to give away at least some (meta-)data, as it can/could make you deemed suspicious by the authorities. And I really don't want to be on the radar of Homeland Security, the Big Five, and the "Server in the Sky" program...
@simsa03 I don't really know much about #Telegram. The client is open source, and it uses "C2S" encryption, I'm not sure whether end-to-end encryption is turned on by default. Nor do I know whether metadata is stored or even available to the service provider.
No one I know uses it and I don't want to suggest another #corpocentric service. Sorry if this does not help.
@sim In other words, we often intentionally try to look like the #corpocentric networks and hide the things that make this one different. Then we are caught off-guard when users (especially new users, but sometimes people who have been around for a year or two) show ignorance about the fundamental differences inherent a #federated network. We need to make it clear, from the beginning, that this is NOT really a clone of Twitter or Facebook, but something far different.
This is worth a read. This person has spent some time thinking about these issues. I'm not saying his/her conclusions are "the right" conclusions or that he/she has discovered all the potential issues. But when we discuss these topics, we need to have a (shared) starting point, where everyone understands what particular terms mean.
@tealturtle I knew of some people from West Africa (but none from Southern or Central Africa) years ago, before the #bifurcation.
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I think they were #lost to the #corpocentric networks when Identica switched to #Pump.io and many #StatusNet instances closed.
I don't think that having a different kind of discovery from #corpocentric networks means that the #Fediverse's discovery mechanisms are wrong. Having been a #Twitter user for over a decade, they don't have the greatest discovery mechanisms either. They try to fill that in with "who to follow" and trending tags suggestions that are almost always wrong, wrong, wrong.
No universal view is a positive feature, not a negative one. If your group is using the tag #abc123 for something in your local scope (your instance and the instances where your contacts are hosted), it doesn't necessarily collide with another group using #abc123 in their own local scope. This can reduce confusion and conflict. It also means that people can post in whatever languages they desire on instances where said language is the majority and not have posts they can read buried under a multitude of other-language posts.
Many existing Mastodon and Pleroma instances have shared announcement servers (that's not the official name, but I can't recall it right now) that collect public and hashtagged posts and distribute among the other instances using that server. So with judicious choosing of announcement servers, the advantages listed above can be spread over a larger subset of instances and users without as many collision issues as a global view would cause.
No, discovery is not perfect. But let me ask you this: How do you discover e-mail addresses of people you wish to contact? Outside of your organization's address list, you can't just search a directory. You have to ask them or people that already know them. That's probably a better solution than plugging "firstname lastname" or "usual_nick" in a search box anyway.
I also think that if you have more than 10-20 active users, you should probably ask members of the community to contribute if they can ... financially, moderation-wise, admin tasks, customizing the design and function of the site, and so on. We do our users no favor by reinforcing that sites and servers are provided without any cost. That's what the #corpocentric networks do, but then they have ads and data-collection to extract resources anyway.
If we think that peer-to-peer is the eventual goal, then everyone will be responsible for their own bandwidth, backups, and administration (updates, settings). That cannot happen if we keep teaching people that "I can play for free because someone else will do the work without any cost".
Not everyone can or will contribute, of course, but if a few people help in those areas, it can be the difference between keeping the instance going or shutting it down.