I think it's good enough for now, for some purposes, but we should try to do better. Currently you have to either entirely trust a random volunteer host or self-host, and neither seem great....
I think it's good enough for now, for some purposes, but we should try to do better. Currently you have to either entirely trust a random volunteer host or self-host, and neither seem great. Distrust between hosts and users hampers things like account portability. A host can't allow users to upload an archive of their posts from another server because they don't know if it's authentic.
Threads doesn't seem particularly promising, but who knows. Bluesky seems to have some good ideas for making account portability easier.
My hope for the future is to move farther into self-hosting land for this (social media) and many other services...but to the extreme point that "self-hosting" transforms into direct peer-to-peer...
My hope for the future is to move farther into self-hosting land for this (social media) and many other services...but to the extreme point that "self-hosting" transforms into direct peer-to-peer paradigm...in cases like where there is minimal or almost no "server" involved; thus avoiding the need for complex self-hosting maintenance, etc. Now, to clarify, the "self-hosting" that i mean would need to be extremely minimal to empower tech and especially non-tech users to be able to very easily self-host things. Wjhat do i mean? Well, for example, the matrix.org (messaging network) folks are literally trying to develop the matrix standards in the direction where there will not even be a need for a home server at all in order to send/receive matrix messages, etc., and basically "house" both clients and servers within the single, same application, etc.! The idea seems crazy (and maybe not easy to do), but in my opinion, would empower many users to adopt more federated applications, and by extension give users more freedoms and at the same avoid encumbering them with typical self-hosting overhead. Of course, my wish here is quite idealistic...but i am not alone in this wish. ;-)
You have to trust the host of any centralized service, too. And unless you pay for their service, you really shouldn't trust them, because their customers are the adverdisers, not the users. With...
Currently you have to either entirely trust a random volunteer host or self-host, and neither seem great.
You have to trust the host of any centralized service, too. And unless you pay for their service, you really shouldn't trust them, because their customers are the adverdisers, not the users.
With decentralized services, you can at least switch hosts without leaving the network altogether and losing that entire branch of your social network.
Trust isn't binary, and I still think we can do better. Cryptography (as distinct from cryptocurrency) isn't going to make moderation disputes easier, but can be used to put in place some basic...
Trust isn't binary, and I still think we can do better. Cryptography (as distinct from cryptocurrency) isn't going to make moderation disputes easier, but can be used to put in place some basic guarantees.
Trust isn't binary regardless of who's hosting. I also don't understand how your line of thought ends up at cryptography. Decentralized services use cryptography as well as centralized ones.
Trust isn't binary regardless of who's hosting. I also don't understand how your line of thought ends up at cryptography. Decentralized services use cryptography as well as centralized ones.
Suppose you could sign your posts in a way that proves you wrote them (they are associated with your domain name) and also proves the date you wrote them. Then we could have portable message...
Suppose you could sign your posts in a way that proves you wrote them (they are associated with your domain name) and also proves the date you wrote them. Then we could have portable message archives that could be mirrored anywhere. I believe BlueSky is doing something like this. It promotes decentralization because you don't need to trust the mirrors. It also means that big archive sites are less of an issue.
One not-so-great thing about it is that you can't really delete a message. At best you could mark the message as deleted, but the version history would still be there, much like git. This is worse than screenshots because screenshots can be faked. A signed post is a better "receipt." But I try not to write things I'll regret later.
I mean, why does anybody actually have an expectation that you can remove things from the internet? Its not even like it was a thing offline either. Can't redact a letter or a voicemail. As far as...
I mean, why does anybody actually have an expectation that you can remove things from the internet?
Its not even like it was a thing offline either. Can't redact a letter or a voicemail.
As far as integrity of messages, that's what PGP verification does, and does well. There's no foolproof way to prove dates, short of publishing wildly and publicly. I suppose regularily rotating your PGP key could serve that purpose provided your start/end dates are publicly recorded on keyservers.
There could be servers that attest that a post’s time stamp is approximately correct and also emit something like a certificate transparency log that others can use to verify that the timestamp...
There could be servers that attest that a post’s time stamp is approximately correct and also emit something like a certificate transparency log that others can use to verify that the timestamp servers are legit.
OK, thanks for explaining. This sounds like Scuttlebutt. (As usual, Wikipedia explains it better than the homepage.) In theory, you don't even need internet access because you can download your...
OK, thanks for explaining. This sounds like Scuttlebutt. (As usual, Wikipedia explains it better than the homepage.) In theory, you don't even need internet access because you can download your feed updates whenever you meet any Scuttlebutt member.
The trust is centralized in both situations. It doesn’t matter if the protocol is decentralized - your instance is still centralized from a trust perspective.
The trust is centralized in both situations. It doesn’t matter if the protocol is decentralized - your instance is still centralized from a trust perspective.
There are proper NGOs running Mastodon instances so there's something inbetween too. Many bigger orgs, like governments or universities self-host which is a selling point for them. Fediverse is...
There are proper NGOs running Mastodon instances so there's something inbetween too. Many bigger orgs, like governments or universities self-host which is a selling point for them.
Fediverse is not trying to replicate corporate social media but fix it.
Although there are some differences, I don't see NGO's as being entirely different from companies. They are organizations with leadership, staff, and funding. Each one is different, some are...
Although there are some differences, I don't see NGO's as being entirely different from companies. They are organizations with leadership, staff, and funding. Each one is different, some are better than others, and they need to be judged on a case-by-case basis. None are guaranteed to last forever; any of them could decide to do a "pivot," shutting down some services and doing something else.
For example, I would trust GitHub (and by extension Microsoft) over some NGO I never heard of, because I think GitHub is going to be around for a long time and I'm unlikely to have any policy dispute with them.
It's possible that some Mastodon service will end up being that reliable a host, but it's centralized in its way, and I think we could do better.
Did you miss the Copilot controvery? Maybe it wasn't an issue for you, but it was for many others, and their next move could put you in a similar situation. Nothing lasts forever, but I'll put my...
I'm unlikely to have any policy dispute with [GitHub].
Did you miss the Copilot controvery? Maybe it wasn't an issue for you, but it was for many others, and their next move could put you in a similar situation.
Nothing lasts forever, but I'll put my trust into any grassroots non-profit organization before I'll even consider investing into a side project of some giant corporation whose only non-obscure motive is to maximize profits.
I'm fine with Copilot, and also with any open source code I write being used to train any other language models. I think the point of publishing open source software is to give up control over it...
I'm fine with Copilot, and also with any open source code I write being used to train any other language models. I think the point of publishing open source software is to give up control over it and allow anyone to use, modify, and learn from it. "Anyone" includes AI researchers at giant corporations. If I wanted to control how my source code gets used, I would think twice about publishing it at all.
I do think it's possible that someday GitHub will do something that I dislike enough to move, but in the meantime I'll continue to enjoy using their services.
One of the difficulties of avoiding Twitter is that it continues to be, in practice, the major and often only venue for quasi-official and official political, governmental, and state...
One of the difficulties of avoiding Twitter is that it continues to be, in practice, the major and often only venue for quasi-official and official political, governmental, and state announcements. Large media outlets could choose not to post on Twitter, but they would be unable to report effectively without reading and citing it.
Even just in daily life, there are several state-run rail services, in multiple countries, where it I want information on whether there are unexpected service interruptions, I have no choice but to use Twitter, because that is simply the place where they officially make announcements.
Wouldn’t it be swell if, say, usps offered an official (at least) alternative? There are instances where it’s best to have a well regulated monopoly. Air traffic control is another example. Also...
Wouldn’t it be swell if, say, usps offered an official (at least) alternative?
There are instances where it’s best to have a well regulated monopoly. Air traffic control is another example. Also enforced standards, like the phone and other transport protocols.
I want to preface this by saying that I like mastodon. However, the stuff in the article about how Mastodon is actually easy to use and the people complaining are just dumb made me roll my eyes....
I want to preface this by saying that I like mastodon. However, the stuff in the article about how Mastodon is actually easy to use and the people complaining are just dumb made me roll my eyes. I’m hardly tech-illiterate and have used it for years, and I can still recognize that it’s needlessly annoying to use. Some of it, like boosting posts from other instances, seems to have actually gotten worse with changes like only being able to copy the URL rather than sign in and view it on your instance automatically. Just because it’s interesting to see how decentralized social networks can work doesn’t mean I want to deal with all that unnecessary friction when I just want to hang out with friends. All that being said, Mastodon is definitely valuable on its own rather than simply as a replacement for Twitter. I just don’t think it does any favors to act like the people in the article by oversimplifying the actually complicated parts and pretending the issue is that people just can’t figure out how to go through a signup page.
I think it's good enough for now, for some purposes, but we should try to do better. Currently you have to either entirely trust a random volunteer host or self-host, and neither seem great. Distrust between hosts and users hampers things like account portability. A host can't allow users to upload an archive of their posts from another server because they don't know if it's authentic.
Threads doesn't seem particularly promising, but who knows. Bluesky seems to have some good ideas for making account portability easier.
My hope for the future is to move farther into self-hosting land for this (social media) and many other services...but to the extreme point that "self-hosting" transforms into direct peer-to-peer paradigm...in cases like where there is minimal or almost no "server" involved; thus avoiding the need for complex self-hosting maintenance, etc. Now, to clarify, the "self-hosting" that i mean would need to be extremely minimal to empower tech and especially non-tech users to be able to very easily self-host things. Wjhat do i mean? Well, for example, the matrix.org (messaging network) folks are literally trying to develop the matrix standards in the direction where there will not even be a need for a home server at all in order to send/receive matrix messages, etc., and basically "house" both clients and servers within the single, same application, etc.! The idea seems crazy (and maybe not easy to do), but in my opinion, would empower many users to adopt more federated applications, and by extension give users more freedoms and at the same avoid encumbering them with typical self-hosting overhead. Of course, my wish here is quite idealistic...but i am not alone in this wish. ;-)
You have to trust the host of any centralized service, too. And unless you pay for their service, you really shouldn't trust them, because their customers are the adverdisers, not the users.
With decentralized services, you can at least switch hosts without leaving the network altogether and losing that entire branch of your social network.
Trust isn't binary, and I still think we can do better. Cryptography (as distinct from cryptocurrency) isn't going to make moderation disputes easier, but can be used to put in place some basic guarantees.
Trust isn't binary regardless of who's hosting. I also don't understand how your line of thought ends up at cryptography. Decentralized services use cryptography as well as centralized ones.
Suppose you could sign your posts in a way that proves you wrote them (they are associated with your domain name) and also proves the date you wrote them. Then we could have portable message archives that could be mirrored anywhere. I believe BlueSky is doing something like this. It promotes decentralization because you don't need to trust the mirrors. It also means that big archive sites are less of an issue.
One not-so-great thing about it is that you can't really delete a message. At best you could mark the message as deleted, but the version history would still be there, much like git. This is worse than screenshots because screenshots can be faked. A signed post is a better "receipt." But I try not to write things I'll regret later.
I mean, why does anybody actually have an expectation that you can remove things from the internet?
Its not even like it was a thing offline either. Can't redact a letter or a voicemail.
As far as integrity of messages, that's what PGP verification does, and does well. There's no foolproof way to prove dates, short of publishing wildly and publicly. I suppose regularily rotating your PGP key could serve that purpose provided your start/end dates are publicly recorded on keyservers.
There could be servers that attest that a post’s time stamp is approximately correct and also emit something like a certificate transparency log that others can use to verify that the timestamp servers are legit.
OK, thanks for explaining. This sounds like Scuttlebutt. (As usual, Wikipedia explains it better than the homepage.) In theory, you don't even need internet access because you can download your feed updates whenever you meet any Scuttlebutt member.
The trust is centralized in both situations. It doesn’t matter if the protocol is decentralized - your instance is still centralized from a trust perspective.
There are proper NGOs running Mastodon instances so there's something inbetween too. Many bigger orgs, like governments or universities self-host which is a selling point for them.
Fediverse is not trying to replicate corporate social media but fix it.
Although there are some differences, I don't see NGO's as being entirely different from companies. They are organizations with leadership, staff, and funding. Each one is different, some are better than others, and they need to be judged on a case-by-case basis. None are guaranteed to last forever; any of them could decide to do a "pivot," shutting down some services and doing something else.
For example, I would trust GitHub (and by extension Microsoft) over some NGO I never heard of, because I think GitHub is going to be around for a long time and I'm unlikely to have any policy dispute with them.
It's possible that some Mastodon service will end up being that reliable a host, but it's centralized in its way, and I think we could do better.
Did you miss the Copilot controvery? Maybe it wasn't an issue for you, but it was for many others, and their next move could put you in a similar situation.
Nothing lasts forever, but I'll put my trust into any grassroots non-profit organization before I'll even consider investing into a side project of some giant corporation whose only non-obscure motive is to maximize profits.
I'm fine with Copilot, and also with any open source code I write being used to train any other language models. I think the point of publishing open source software is to give up control over it and allow anyone to use, modify, and learn from it. "Anyone" includes AI researchers at giant corporations. If I wanted to control how my source code gets used, I would think twice about publishing it at all.
I do think it's possible that someday GitHub will do something that I dislike enough to move, but in the meantime I'll continue to enjoy using their services.
One of the difficulties of avoiding Twitter is that it continues to be, in practice, the major and often only venue for quasi-official and official political, governmental, and state announcements. Large media outlets could choose not to post on Twitter, but they would be unable to report effectively without reading and citing it.
Even just in daily life, there are several state-run rail services, in multiple countries, where it I want information on whether there are unexpected service interruptions, I have no choice but to use Twitter, because that is simply the place where they officially make announcements.
Wouldn’t it be swell if, say, usps offered an official (at least) alternative?
There are instances where it’s best to have a well regulated monopoly. Air traffic control is another example. Also enforced standards, like the phone and other transport protocols.
It would be nice if we had a bit more experimentation and new "indie" online communities.
I want to preface this by saying that I like mastodon. However, the stuff in the article about how Mastodon is actually easy to use and the people complaining are just dumb made me roll my eyes. I’m hardly tech-illiterate and have used it for years, and I can still recognize that it’s needlessly annoying to use. Some of it, like boosting posts from other instances, seems to have actually gotten worse with changes like only being able to copy the URL rather than sign in and view it on your instance automatically. Just because it’s interesting to see how decentralized social networks can work doesn’t mean I want to deal with all that unnecessary friction when I just want to hang out with friends. All that being said, Mastodon is definitely valuable on its own rather than simply as a replacement for Twitter. I just don’t think it does any favors to act like the people in the article by oversimplifying the actually complicated parts and pretending the issue is that people just can’t figure out how to go through a signup page.