Could you maybe reconsider your stance towards enabling tildes to be a federated service with ActivityPub? PS. Sorry for the slight off-topic question.
Could you maybe reconsider your stance towards enabling tildes to be a federated service with ActivityPub?
To be blunt about it, I don't have any personal interest in working on a decentralized/federated platform. There are a ton of extremely difficult problems to solve to make them work, and I'm...
To be blunt about it, I don't have any personal interest in working on a decentralized/federated platform. There are a ton of extremely difficult problems to solve to make them work, and I'm honestly not even fully convinced that it can work for sites similar to Tildes. There are positive aspects to decentralizing, but there are also negative impacts on aspects like privacy, ability to moderate, etc.
I want to focus on building a good centralized platform. If someone else wants to take the Tildes code and build federation on top of it, they're totally welcome to (as long as they open-source their version too, to satisfy the AGPL). Federated platforms are interesting, and I'm glad that people are working on them. But I don't want to be one of those people.
I don't see this being useful for Tildes either because as far as I understand Tildes isn't a social network meant to operate at global scale for everyone, it doesn't need to be federated for the...
I don't see this being useful for Tildes either because as far as I understand Tildes isn't a social network meant to operate at global scale for everyone, it doesn't need to be federated for the same reason a tech support forum doesn't need to be.
OK, fair enough, you work on the things which interest you, I won't begrudge you that. But, as somebody that's implementing such a federated link aggregator, I will be missing the great community...
OK, fair enough, you work on the things which interest you, I won't begrudge you that.
But, as somebody that's implementing such a federated link aggregator, I will be missing the great community tildes fosters as part of the greater federated network that will inevitably exist.
And in my opinion federation can definitely work for a link aggregator, the mechanisms for privacy and moderation are yet to be fully built, but no problem is insurmontable.
As an administrator of an instance (or just as a regular user), ActivityPub provides you all the information and vocabulary you need to silence individual actors, or full other instances, or keywords, tags, what have you. I will admit that in my journey to create my link aggregator I have yet to worry about these things - I don't even support proper federation yet - but, like I said before, the information is there, what's missing are the tools, and we could always benefit for another mind to think hard about these problems instead of declaring a-priori that it "won't work". :)
Anyway, I'm rambling, probably a bit frustrated that this federation problem is not as interesting to other developers as it is to me.
Allowing Mastodon and Twitter to interoperate would be a fascinating sight and I can't rightly decide which platform would benefit from it more. My first instinct would be to say it'd benefit...
Allowing Mastodon and Twitter to interoperate would be a fascinating sight and I can't rightly decide which platform would benefit from it more. My first instinct would be to say it'd benefit Mastodon because it would potentially remove one big issue they have: the lack of "big name" content creators.
"Big name content creators" are not something that a lot of the Mastodon users want. Last year Wil Wheaton was driven off the platform because he had a slight overreaction to a joke. Cancel...
"Big name content creators" are not something that a lot of the Mastodon users want. Last year Wil Wheaton was driven off the platform because he had a slight overreaction to a joke. Cancel culture is going strong on Mastodon, don't expect the people to be completely different than they are on Twitter.
I think you're kind of not oversimplifying with the Wil Wheaton thing. Not just because he's only one user but also because he's a very specific type of person. When I say big names I mostly mean...
I think you're kind of not oversimplifying with the Wil Wheaton thing. Not just because he's only one user but also because he's a very specific type of person. When I say big names I mostly mean people like SwiftOnSecurity or Dril, people with "tweeting careers" so to speak but who have no interest in using any other platform.
Plenty of Mastodon users also have dual twitter accounts in order to follow their favorite personalities, so I can't really agree with the notion that it's not something Mastodon users want, maybe that's true for a select few who are really deep into the platform and surrounding fediverse culture but I don't see it for said culture at large.
I'm somewhat torn on this topic myself. But, let me clarify first that i think mastodon and by extension the rest of the fediverse (gnu social, pleroma, etc.) would benefit at least a little more...
I'm somewhat torn on this topic myself. But, let me clarify first that i think mastodon and by extension the rest of the fediverse (gnu social, pleroma, etc.) would benefit at least a little more than twitter would. I think the existing twitter users - who haven't already left to the fediverse or other (?) alternatives - have no incentive to leave the twittersphere. So if/when twitter interacts with new instances of the fediverse, it might only add a tiny set of new users for the existing twitter users to twee with/against. So, i see that as not much that's new for those twitter users. On the flipside, for people who now live mostly or wholly in the fediverse, well, they just got a whole bunch of new users to interact with/against (or re-interact with if they'll be re-connected with their twitter friends/connections which were lost when they fled to the fediverse).
That being said, in the last few years, my time has been spent far, far more on the fediverse than the regular social media silos like twitter. So, I'd feel somewhat validated if such a big player like twitter would look towards interacting with the fediverse. It would feel as if AOL back in the day opened up their email system to be able to send email messages to people outside of the AOL walled garden. On the face of this - for humanity's sake - i think this is a good thing for all. However, I also feel - perhaps a tiny bit selfishly - like the guy who has been going to a secret-ish club or restaurant that has been such a cool, fun destination, and is now about to get swarmed by annoying tourists with all their materialistic glitz and jerky behavior. But, I'm really trying to slow my judgement and think optimistically. ;-)
These aren't decisions people make one time and then they're set. It's better to think of them as always having some forces pushing them out of Twitter and some other set of forces keeping them...
I think the existing twitter users - who haven't already left to the fediverse or other (?) alternatives - have no incentive to leave the twittersphere.
These aren't decisions people make one time and then they're set. It's better to think of them as always having some forces pushing them out of Twitter and some other set of forces keeping them in. Some of the forces pulling them out might be attractive forces from an alternative service, and as those forces get stronger they will leave.
That being said, in the last few years, my time has been spent far, far more on the fediverse than the regular social media silos like twitter.
Honestly I like the idea of the Fediverse, but find the reality of it to be kind of boring and groupthinky. The fact that they went all in on cyberbullying someone as innocuous as Wil Wheaton off the internet made me wonder if they've actually solved the "moderation at scale" problem at all.
That's a great point! I should not have assumed behavior in this context is static or binary. I agree that there's an ebb and flow to all this, and people could float back-and-forth, and...
These aren't decisions people make one time and then they're set...
That's a great point! I should not have assumed behavior in this context is static or binary. I agree that there's an ebb and flow to all this, and people could float back-and-forth, and back-again, etc.
Honestly I like the idea of the Fediverse, but find the reality of it to be kind of boring and groupthinky...made me wonder if they've actually solved the "moderation at scale" problem at all.
As much of a supporter and believer that i am in the fediverse (and I am, I really, really am!), I acknowledge fully that moderation has not been solved. While federated networks do allow for more groupthink, there's nothing theoretically stopping people from cross-pollinating towards other groups. In fact, in the current silos, users could group around there own bubbles, or follow and engage with opposing thinkers...so the fediverse doesn't change this dynamic as much as other supporters would like to admit. (Yes, maybe there are small changes, but not as drastic.) As far as the boring part, I find it personally similar to conventional social media silos; for the most part, it is no better nor less boring. That is, whether on the silos or on the fediverse, substantive or entertaining or interesting content really depends on who you follow and interact with.
Finally, while there might be myriad reasons why users flock to the fediverse, for me [0], it has been primarily about gaining at least some agency and a modicum of control (for my online persona). Little though it might be, I feel like i have more freedom and control "living" on a non-centralized social media silo. Secondly, I'm a technologist, so setting up and managing my own instance on the fediverse provides an interesting and educational opportunity for me. I say these things not to win you over to the fediverse, but merely to provide background.
The micro.blog creator had some good thoughts as well: https://www.manton.org/2019/12/11/twitter-to-decentralize.html
Could you maybe reconsider your stance towards enabling tildes to be a federated service with ActivityPub?
PS. Sorry for the slight off-topic question.
To be blunt about it, I don't have any personal interest in working on a decentralized/federated platform. There are a ton of extremely difficult problems to solve to make them work, and I'm honestly not even fully convinced that it can work for sites similar to Tildes. There are positive aspects to decentralizing, but there are also negative impacts on aspects like privacy, ability to moderate, etc.
I want to focus on building a good centralized platform. If someone else wants to take the Tildes code and build federation on top of it, they're totally welcome to (as long as they open-source their version too, to satisfy the AGPL). Federated platforms are interesting, and I'm glad that people are working on them. But I don't want to be one of those people.
I don't see this being useful for Tildes either because as far as I understand Tildes isn't a social network meant to operate at global scale for everyone, it doesn't need to be federated for the same reason a tech support forum doesn't need to be.
OK, fair enough, you work on the things which interest you, I won't begrudge you that.
But, as somebody that's implementing such a federated link aggregator, I will be missing the great community tildes fosters as part of the greater federated network that will inevitably exist.
And in my opinion federation can definitely work for a link aggregator, the mechanisms for privacy and moderation are yet to be fully built, but no problem is insurmontable.
As an administrator of an instance (or just as a regular user), ActivityPub provides you all the information and vocabulary you need to silence individual actors, or full other instances, or keywords, tags, what have you. I will admit that in my journey to create my link aggregator I have yet to worry about these things - I don't even support proper federation yet - but, like I said before, the information is there, what's missing are the tools, and we could always benefit for another mind to think hard about these problems instead of declaring a-priori that it "won't work". :)
Anyway, I'm rambling, probably a bit frustrated that this federation problem is not as interesting to other developers as it is to me.
Allowing Mastodon and Twitter to interoperate would be a fascinating sight and I can't rightly decide which platform would benefit from it more. My first instinct would be to say it'd benefit Mastodon because it would potentially remove one big issue they have: the lack of "big name" content creators.
"Big name content creators" are not something that a lot of the Mastodon users want. Last year Wil Wheaton was driven off the platform because he had a slight overreaction to a joke. Cancel culture is going strong on Mastodon, don't expect the people to be completely different than they are on Twitter.
I think you're kind of not oversimplifying with the Wil Wheaton thing. Not just because he's only one user but also because he's a very specific type of person. When I say big names I mostly mean people like SwiftOnSecurity or Dril, people with "tweeting careers" so to speak but who have no interest in using any other platform.
Plenty of Mastodon users also have dual twitter accounts in order to follow their favorite personalities, so I can't really agree with the notion that it's not something Mastodon users want, maybe that's true for a select few who are really deep into the platform and surrounding fediverse culture but I don't see it for said culture at large.
I'm somewhat torn on this topic myself. But, let me clarify first that i think mastodon and by extension the rest of the fediverse (gnu social, pleroma, etc.) would benefit at least a little more than twitter would. I think the existing twitter users - who haven't already left to the fediverse or other (?) alternatives - have no incentive to leave the twittersphere. So if/when twitter interacts with new instances of the fediverse, it might only add a tiny set of new users for the existing twitter users to twee with/against. So, i see that as not much that's new for those twitter users. On the flipside, for people who now live mostly or wholly in the fediverse, well, they just got a whole bunch of new users to interact with/against (or re-interact with if they'll be re-connected with their twitter friends/connections which were lost when they fled to the fediverse).
That being said, in the last few years, my time has been spent far, far more on the fediverse than the regular social media silos like twitter. So, I'd feel somewhat validated if such a big player like twitter would look towards interacting with the fediverse. It would feel as if AOL back in the day opened up their email system to be able to send email messages to people outside of the AOL walled garden. On the face of this - for humanity's sake - i think this is a good thing for all. However, I also feel - perhaps a tiny bit selfishly - like the guy who has been going to a secret-ish club or restaurant that has been such a cool, fun destination, and is now about to get swarmed by annoying tourists with all their materialistic glitz and jerky behavior. But, I'm really trying to slow my judgement and think optimistically. ;-)
These aren't decisions people make one time and then they're set. It's better to think of them as always having some forces pushing them out of Twitter and some other set of forces keeping them in. Some of the forces pulling them out might be attractive forces from an alternative service, and as those forces get stronger they will leave.
Honestly I like the idea of the Fediverse, but find the reality of it to be kind of boring and groupthinky. The fact that they went all in on cyberbullying someone as innocuous as Wil Wheaton off the internet made me wonder if they've actually solved the "moderation at scale" problem at all.
That's a great point! I should not have assumed behavior in this context is static or binary. I agree that there's an ebb and flow to all this, and people could float back-and-forth, and back-again, etc.
As much of a supporter and believer that i am in the fediverse (and I am, I really, really am!), I acknowledge fully that moderation has not been solved. While federated networks do allow for more groupthink, there's nothing theoretically stopping people from cross-pollinating towards other groups. In fact, in the current silos, users could group around there own bubbles, or follow and engage with opposing thinkers...so the fediverse doesn't change this dynamic as much as other supporters would like to admit. (Yes, maybe there are small changes, but not as drastic.) As far as the boring part, I find it personally similar to conventional social media silos; for the most part, it is no better nor less boring. That is, whether on the silos or on the fediverse, substantive or entertaining or interesting content really depends on who you follow and interact with.
Finally, while there might be myriad reasons why users flock to the fediverse, for me [0], it has been primarily about gaining at least some agency and a modicum of control (for my online persona). Little though it might be, I feel like i have more freedom and control "living" on a non-centralized social media silo. Secondly, I'm a technologist, so setting up and managing my own instance on the fediverse provides an interesting and educational opportunity for me. I say these things not to win you over to the fediverse, but merely to provide background.
I really appreciated your comments! Thanks!
[0] = https://mxuribe.com/posts/private-social-network/