Fediverse in 2020

https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-in-2020

by buovjaga • 6 years ago

168 99 6 years ago

fediverse.party

sdfjkl• 6 years ago

502 Bad Gateway

https://web.archive.org/web/20210102052512/https://fediverse...

_gmnw• 6 years ago

How do things like this make it to the top of HN? I know it's unrelated, but I'm curious, is it due to the users post history? I mean within 15 minutes of posting it was down, and it already had 50 upvotes?

berkes2• 6 years ago

Why do think it should not make it to the top?

(Edit: parent comment sounded as if it didn't think the article deserves to be on frontpage HN. re-reading, I see that I might have misread it: sorry in that case)

sbierwagen2• 6 years ago

People upvoting based on the title, without clicking on the link.

TheJoYo3• 6 years ago

it's back up

fsflover• 6 years ago

See also the statistics here: https://the-federation.info/.

eitland3• 6 years ago

Users do.

And since this isn't an attempt to squeeze out money from users there is little need to let users that mods find toxic stick around and it is also OK to slightly raise the bar (some instances ask you questions to verify that you are local or know the local language or something, something Facebook and Twitter could never do.)

Also users that are kicked can either create their own instance or find anlther were they are welcome.

warkdarrior3• 6 years ago

some instances ask you questions to verify that you are local or know the local language or something, something Facebook and Twitter could never do

Some neighborhood groups on Facebook do ask you hyperlocal questions before you can join. It's up to the moderators to decide the joining criteria.

FalconSensei• 6 years ago

The facebook groups I was in were pretty well moderated, and also asked questions before allowing you to join. I would even say that I had better experience asking for help with things on my facebook groups than Reddit.

bob292• 6 years ago

The Fediverse is an interesting social experiment testing the hypothesis of whether the ad revenue/profit motive of twitter, and the subsequent algorithms that maximize engagement, are the primary source of toxicity and other negative qualities of social media that have been documented recently (social dilemma et al)

Interestingly, the* (see edit) Fediverse data point seems to show that really none of Twitter's problems are solved when its the user's paying and admining the servers themselves.

EDIT: only my conclusion based on personal experience and expectations, encourage anyone to look for themselves

AnthonyMouse2• 6 years ago

Interestingly, the Fediverse data point seems to show that really none of Twitter's problems are solved when its the user's paying and admining the servers themselves.

It doesn't really tell you that until it becomes a more dominant form of social media. Otherwise most of the users there are also users of Twitter and Facebook, where they go to get radicalized and pick up nonsense conspiracy theories and vitriol which they then bring everywhere they go.

Also, you're wrong and most parts of the Fediverse are already much less toxic than most of Twitter.

And notice that you would otherwise expect the opposite of this if the major platforms are booting off any significant number of actual asshats for legitimate reasons, who then move to invade any alternatives. The relative success with which most decentralized alternatives have fended off this onslaught is a very good sign.

kixiQu3• 6 years ago

Plenty of problems are solved. They may not be ones you care about, but they're not "really none". Anecdotally, the instances I know of take a much harder line on moderation of transphobic content than does mainstream social media, which is something desired by some communities and made possible by heterogeneous moderation policies; "no ads" is a problem solved in of itself; no QTs gets rid of about 70% of the "dunking on this bad take" posts relative to Twitter; lower stakes discoverability means people express themselves differently; content warnings make your feed more manageable; etc. etc.

young_unixer• 6 years ago

What's a QT in this context? Are cuties getting banned from Mastodon?

warkdarrior3• 6 years ago

So this proves that much stricter regulation and censorship can be maintained effectively in a decentralized setting.

jl6• 6 years ago

heterogeneous moderation

Does this mean users sort themselves into filter bubbles rather than having algorithms do it for them?

bob292• 6 years ago

This and sibling comments make good points about improvements it has made. I edited my comment to be less universally judgemental.

My experience is based on a pretty generic unknown low drama instance, that doesn't really block or get blocked, instead relying on users to mute/block/instance block themselves per-account. So initially I saw a lot of ugly things, the usual culture war topics discussed without nuance or compassion, bots and spam, etc.

jancsika• 6 years ago

interesting social experiment

A social experiment where people from the variable group randomly and freely wander into the control group?

I don't think so.

mariusor• 6 years ago

Personally I kind of lost confidence in the non-viciousness of the microblogging fediverse, when Wil Wheaton got driven off of it because he got upset at being trolled by someone.

Digory5• 6 years ago

The Fediverse solves the problem of authoritarian silencing.

It doesn't solve the human inclination to share strong emotions with likeminded people, and to exclude and punish people who make you mad or sad. That causes many good things, but not in absolute terms, it seems.

What we don't have is a Taleb-like model for anti-fragile speech under new tech. Is there a mix of social speech that includes "trans criticism" that makes trans people stronger, or encourages social cooperation even with the 'transphobic'? Is there any circumstance where "sticks and stones" helps, or are we rejecting that totally?

mkr-hn• 6 years ago

"Critics" are free to make their own instance and invite people on, but they are not owed a debate by trans people who are just trying to socialize and live their lives.

devmunchies2• 6 years ago

The Fediverse solves the problem of authoritarian silencing

I would say it "addresses" the problem but you can't solve it. Battling powerful classes of people, whether businesses or governments, will be a constant fact of life. No resting or your laurels.

sjg0073• 6 years ago

Can elaborate on what you mean by antifragile in this context?

devmunchies2• 6 years ago

think of the fediverse like social media parallel to email. you can create your account on someone else's service (e.g. gmail or yahoo) or self-host your own service.

Nothing is preventing a server from putting ads in their service. It would be like protonmail or gmail jamming ads down your throat. but because it federated like email, you can leave. its not centralized, but its still owned instances.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 6 years ago

Perhaps "toxicity" has always been found on computer networks, consider 1990's Usenet. What is different now is that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are "monetising" web usage, any sort of usage (e.g., purely recreational, non-commercial usage), by selling web users out to advertisers, not to mention political campaigns. Imagine if all Usenet usage had been carefully surveilled with all possible deomgraphic and behavioural data collected whereupon the people doing this surveillance proclaimed "we are a startup" and tried to "services" to advertisers or political organisations.

"Centralisation" makes surveillance much easier, hence "decentralisation" is percieved as a panacea. It also helps to curb the viral spread of low quality information. As long something makes surveillance and data collection more difficult, it is helpful. Because when the surveillance is no longer easy, the profit motive should decrease. The data collection frenzy should start to fade. We can close this ugly chapter in business and get back to real work.

Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. want centralisation. They need sustained, heavy web traffic, lest they could not make money. They still do not have a legitimate, viable "business plan" outside of surveillance, data collection and perpetuating an online ad circus.

The smart way to deal with all of this is to pass laws regulating the collection and usage of data on web users. Unfortunately leadership today is at crisis levels, corruption is on the rise, so this may not come anytime soon. In absence of legal protections, web users must fend for themselves.

Triv888• 6 years ago

The Fediverse is an interesting social experiment testing the hypothesis of whether the ad revenue/profit motive of twitter, and the subsequent algorithms that maximize engagement, are the primary source of toxicity and other negative qualities of social media that have been documented recently (social dilemma et al)

that's not why it was created

avivo• 6 years ago

Yup. I repeated this enough that I ended up making a term for it. 'The "magical decentralization fallacy" — the mistaken belief that decentralization on its own can address governance problems. What do I mean by governance problems? Things like misinformation and harassment.'

(https://aviv.medium.com/the-magical-decentralization-fallacy...)

twelfthnight• 6 years ago

Great article. Especially how you tie decentralization to governance, which is actually the issue at play. The decentralization argument to me often feels like it framed like the only choices are a mercurial monarchy (Facebook) or balkanization (Fediverse). Enjoyed your ideas on alternatives.

gremlinsinc• 6 years ago

Very interesting points, lead me to your twitter account. I've been thinking a LOT about the intersections of thought police, censorship, big tech, the polarization of America, and more.

I saw your tweet here: https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1349073861476823040?s=20

It got me to thinking. Cumulatively, reddit seems pretty high up on a lot of the scores. So, say you were to create a new hypothetical social network and use reddit as a base.

Some of the lower points it gets is for safety, encouraging humanization of others, strengthening local ties, show reliable information...

I'd say being able to network with people you know, while remaining anonymous in certain "contexts", like for example sharing a story in /r/askredditafterdark it may not be a real shit post, or anything bad but it could be embarrassing.

Having one verified account, with aliases/contexts you can switch to for different purposes would be a way to have better safety.

Encouraging humanization of others. What if instead of moderation teams, there was some reward mechanism like steem or hive, and everyone who wanted to be rewarded could randomly be on "jury duty". Every post would be randomly juried by members of a sub, and it'd simply ask the questions:

* If this is news, does it seem factual? * Does this represent hate speech? * Does this belong in this sub?

That last one, might be something everyone can answer and an algorithm would choose what to allow or prune.

Alternatively, there could be opportunities for people to flag content. Which would all get put in a weekly mega-thread, where there's no commenting just voting on flagged content, whether to redeem it, or Perma-ban the post from the sub. If someone else reposts, it'll automatically just be banned.

On your account profile you can choose to put your location. This allows you to filter and see only content people within certain radii of your location, or your specific city or state or province. Essentially, you can jump into a "nearby users" context.

Subs also would have marketplaces built in, and that and ads would be the way it's monetized. However, no tracking cookies just topical/sub-Reddit ads. These could feature local or shipped goods/items or event tickets.

Another thought is what if you created something like Wikipedia meets archive.org. Essentially every news/blog post gets archived per revision. Then there'd be an API to essentially "characterize" links. Give them context and a single source of truth that other social networks, federated instances, etc. Could use, whether something is "fake news", etc.

The biggest issue I see with that is how you convince people from either side of the political spectrum to "believe" the fact-checking of said sites. The best would probably be allow pros/cons for each link with descriptions, then the user can follow a footnote and see why 60% say it's true, and 40% say it's fake. Say Pat Robertson says it's "fake news" and "Paul Graham" and some Nobel prize winning scientist says it's true.

Could have professional scores as well to a link like 65% of athletes say true, 85% of scientists, 75% of actors, 33% of theologians, 55% of politicians, 65% of news anchors, 75% with a college degree, etc... Could use AI too, maybe to give it a base score like: Article appears to lean 55/45 left:right.

All that data for these "painted links" could be used when new submissions come in to determine things like does it fit the category, etc... The problem with misinformation I think is not enough context. Having more and more context on the information that's out there can help combat the misinformation.

rakoo2• 6 years ago

Your solution is a very interesting take on the issue, and it is definitely worth giving it a try.

It reminds me of Aether (https://getaether.net/) which has an interesting moderation process: Everyone receives all the content, and some mods also distribute a list of what should be hidden. This keeps the traditional system of human moderation, which will tend to become monopolized by a group of people, but this group of people must do what the users want because it is really easy to demote them. It's not exactly multi-centralization as you define in your article but rather centralization with a very powerful check

cccc4all• 6 years ago

The technical implementations seem interesting. But, who scrubs the toilets in this social network? Who does the boring, dirty jobs required to clean up after users?

TheJoYo3• 6 years ago

I host a single user instance, so I do the clean up which is none at all.

kstrauser6• 6 years ago

Same. I've got a couple thousand users, and on average get a moderation request every other month or so.

riffic• 6 years ago

The secret sauce of the Fediverse is that you really don't need crazy software like Mastodon or Pleroma to participate in it.

Have a WordPress site? Throw this plugin on it and you've entered the Fediverse:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/

Cancel that!

zozbot2342• 6 years ago

Any Fediverse/ActivityPub plugins for traditional server-hosted forums/message boards? Support in Wordpress is nice but that's purely a single-user thing; it's not much of a "social" platform.

TheJoYo3• 6 years ago

I host a single user instance that's purely social.

I'm not sure what your point is.

dnzm• 6 years ago

I believe Discourse was planning things but decided to scrap them. The person behind PixelFed (a federated Instagram-like platform) hinted at a [forum platform](https://mastodon.social/@dansup/105425592966902917), but I have no idea if there's any progress on that.

And of course, there's [Lemmy](https://lemmy.ml/), which is kinda like Reddit, but federated.

benibela• 6 years ago

What if you only have a static website, HTML files only?

tedunangst2• 6 years ago

You can publish activitypub objects statically, but fundamentally it's a push model. You receive follow requests, then push new posts.

sbierwagen2• 6 years ago

A pure HTML server won't work, of course. You need something that can execute code.

rakoo2• 6 years ago

you really don't need crazy software like Mastodon or Pleroma to participate in it.

You may not need crazy software, but it's not like you just have to "implement a spec" to be part of it: read https://schub.wtf/blog/2019/01/13/activitypub-final-thoughts... for more details, where you'll learn that ActivityPub is not really a specification but rather guidelines for doing things. You can't "implement ActivityPub" and expect your app to play well with the network; the specification is vague enough that multiple incompatible behaviours are technically valid with the specification so you actually have to "implement Mastodon" and "implement Pleroma" and "implement Pixelfed" etc...

russdpale2• 6 years ago

honestly, I find the fediverse a bit too distributed and fractured to have any relevance. Creating an account for each new instance is a pain in the ass, and franky, no one really wants to do that.

I pretty stopped posting on all my fediverse accounts because what is the point? No one I personally know wants to switch over and the instances have little user interaction.

msoucy• 6 years ago

The whole point of federation is that you don't need an accout on each instance, you can interact (respond, boost, favorite) with posts from one instance from the comfort of another.

Brendinooo3• 6 years ago

Yeah, but this is a bit weird, conceptually.

zanny• 6 years ago

A lot of people seem to be making private instances that can talk out but aren't public which means you are stuck making new accounts for each such instance.

crocodiletears• 6 years ago

Imo, that doesn't work in practice. You can join an instance that looks decent, and have the whole thing cut off from the network because a few bad actors gave your instance a bad rep, or because it's in the wrong political block, or because your admin decided to throw a fit about one of the instances you want to interact with.

Functionally you end up stuck in some narrowly scoped insular community, large swathes of-which you could be cut off from without much prior notice.

Everytime you join an instance, you're rolling the dice on the quality and breadth of your experience.

The alternative is the overhead of running your own instance, which seems to be the route taken by most of the people I know who use Mastodon, and recommend it.

russdpale2• 6 years ago

If I find a different instance and I want to follow that instance or become a part of that community, I have to sign up on it.. I don't see a way to follow a single instance and filter it out of the federated timeline. Perhaps I just don't see that option?

Open-Sourcery• 6 years ago

The link is 502ing. Here is the archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210120190550/https://fediverse...

IndySun2• 6 years ago

Unless decentralized networks are vigorously policed by users and nodes alike, for, what has been called here, stuff with an unacceptably high ick factor (child porn and worse), then it will continue be a magnet for such material.

And if it is policed vigorously can it still be considered 'decentralized'?

makeworld• 6 years ago

I think you are missing the point. The fediverse is a network of servers that can host content and communicate with each other. Each server is moderated individually. Some are "policed vigorously" and some are not, some have issues with illegal content and some do not. The decentralization is inherent in the system, no matter each individual server is moderated.

IndySun2• 6 years ago

Makeworld. you seem to have rewritten my point, added your name, but omitted my final question.

clacke2• 6 years ago

Of course. The vigorous policing is decentralized, so you can choose which community standards you would like your interactions to be guided by. There are safe spaces, there are crazy freezepeach places, and there are many places in between.

A US server may have content that is illegal in Germany, a Japanese server may have content that is illegal in the US, and an LGBTQ-friendly server may not allow subscribers from a server full of "gendercritical" people. You can pick where you feel at home, don't get ick thrown in our face, and don't get accused of ick for things that seem harmless to you.

Fediverse in 2020

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