Fediverse hot takes:
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The only true client is the browser.
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Microblogging be damned.
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it’s the instances/servers that are federated, not the users (ie us) … and damn that too.
While I only use browsers for enagement with all the fediverse applications I’ve used (5+) I wouldnt consider it the only true client.
- since MySpace, social media has been primitive in the forms of expression afforded its users … essentially plaintext and an emoji or two. This has produced exceedingly low expectations in users about the richness of what content they are permitted to author online. Damn that.
@maegul@hachyderm.io @fediverse@lemmy.ml That’s bugged me too. Part of why I kept blogging, I think.
I’m looking forward to Mastodon at least preserving incoming formatting so that more people will start seeing it and realizing that (at least with some software) some formatting is possible again!
- The great big elephant in the room for the fediverse (apart from #Mastodon ) is that choosing an instance is simultaneously meaningless and important. But the ways in which this is so are not intuitive or even known to anyone but acolytes and admins.
5a) Proof: even if you learn the details of how instance interactions work and cause things like incomplete reply retrieval, you will forget it until reminded, because it’s unintuitive.
- The Fediverse’s biggest mistake so far was not laying out the carpet for the Twitter et al Migrants. They were forced to recognise that the fediverse was always
“correct”/good and to simply “join” a foreign place and obey its customs.
Instead, they should have been given their own “place” (a soft Mastodon fork and separate instances) to grow, call and have a culture of their own.
If new platforms eat the fediverse’s lunch (eg BlueSky), it will be by providing this experience.
@fediverse
7) In the aggregate, #Mastodon / #fediverse are simply unintuitive.Add up all of the design missteps or confusions (which happen), mixed and confusing but often strongly felt cultural standards, lacking or hard-to-find documentation or explanations, and, federation strangeness/quirkiness … and you get a platform that crosses past the reasonably intuitive line.
It’s reparable, but probably not easily so.
@fediverse
8) The ideal fediverse is (?):- Everyone is on single-user instances with much personal control (hosted by one of many services).
- People congregate in various “platforms as communities”, which is where the real moderating and community management happens.
- A variety of software and platform options exist for both the user-instances and community platforms.
The flaw of the #fediverse is that it conflates hosting and community services (ie, 1 & 2) and so underperforms at both.
@fediverse
9) Like #Twitter and #BlueSky, the fediverse also likely has had its well poisoned … by “tech libertarianism”.Twitter: “Nazi bar”, BlueSky: “Crypto scam”. Fediverse: “tech libertarianism fanatics”.
You may disagree, but others, perhaps many (?) see it that way and feel that the virtues of a properly designed and managed centralised social media are superior to chaotic volunteer-run decentralisation.
Maybe we should be forced to “work it all out together in the public square”?
- see https://hachyderm.io/@maegul/111678459007073773 and the thread there.
@maegul @fediverse what is an example of platforms as communities? I’ve been struggling to find one as a single-user instance
@redscroll_py @fediverse I don’t know of any. I was proposing what I’d prefer the fediverse were made of.
Have you ever used Facebook? That is unintuitive. Twitter as well, most of the big platforms are.
@maegul@hachyderm.io @fediverse@lemmy.ml
It was such a missed opportunity when the first twitter exodus happened. Makes me sad when I see accounts here I want to follow but that have been inactive since then and are now fully back on twitter.
I also think it’s pretty selfish to demand that everyone in the Fediverse has to obey your norms and values. If you don’t like someone you can defederate/block, but I don’t have a button that makes the people I’m interested in appear here.
@wenzel @maegul@hachyderm.io @fediverse@lemmy.ml
Huh … you dug up some of my older posts on my main account (😊).
Just to clarify, it’s in a series of running “hot takes” I post mostly for myself as a record of my thoughts as I experience the fediverse. I’m not necessarily convinced that they’re true, but when I write them they feel like that they’re true enough to be valuable even in the arguments that they prompt.
Also … calckey meet lemmy … this thread is all under a lemmy post in the “fediverse” community on lemmy.ml
@maegul @maegul@hachyderm.io @fediverse@lemmy.ml Didn’t check the dates but those are timeless insights anyway :)
@wenzel @maegul@hachyderm.io @fediverse@lemmy.ml
Well, everytime I see someone get a kick out of all that calckey has to offer, I think back to my hot take 4, which I wrote before I really knew about the UI/UX of the *key platforms, and which says basically that the fediverse should be full of things like calckey.
- The Fediverse’s biggest mistake so far was not laying out the carpet for the Twitter et al Migrants. They were forced to recognise that the fediverse was always
@maegul @fediverse Clients like @elk’s https://elk.zone erase the line between web and native apps.
- it’s the instances/servers that are federated, not the users (ie us) … and damn that too.
Not sure what you mean, but maybe: Are you aware of “nomadic identity” that is not tied to a specific server or address, created by Mike MacGirvin in Hubzilla and now also in (streams)? Not sure of this is what you are looking for.
@witcraft I’m aware, thanks! Seems interesting!
But, to my point, one platform having a feature isn’t really the same as it being an aspect of the fediverse. If only Hubzilla has nomadic identity, one can’t really be that nomadic can they?
@maegul
That depends what you expect. Nomadic identity allows you to migrate (or switch) between multiple instances, which keeps your identity quite invulnerable. If you want to switch between social purposes: Hubzilla can do nearly all of them (It’s the swiss army knife of the fediverse). Hubzilla handles all that actually sticks to the AP specification. But AP is not (yet?) capable of doing so, so when you actually migrate an identity for good, you would have to rebuild you AP address book (which is unfortunate, but is caused by lacking features of AP, not by Hubzilla). But you get to keep all your content of all types, and all Zot-(Hubzilla)/Nomad-(streams)-connections. You can even migrate from Hubzilla to the streams platform, but that would be a one-way road because streams has a newer protocol that is “backward-compatible”, but not identical. So you cannot clone or migrate back to Hubzilla. The Nomad protocol is newer with more features (trying to bring Zot functionality implemented with AP means), but the streams server software is more streamlined. So Hubzilla will probably continue to have the far larger population for now.But I agree: If AP had picked up the key features Hubzilla / Zot had been created for in the first place (more than a decade ago, actually), that would make the AP galaxies much more future-proof, and thus, the whole Fediverse more powerful.
Can you expand on 2)?
@mkarliner @fediverse I don’t like microblogging. Specifically, I don’t like it as a primary or dominant medium or platform structure. I think it’s bad for bringing people together, for having substantial or fruitful conversations or for aggregating wisdom/expertise.
It’s main quality is it’s Freeform random chatty nature, which works best IMO as a glue-platform between more structured platforms.
@mkarliner @fediverse I like the analogy of a conference or exhibition. There’s the main event, which is held in (multiple) theatres or presentation rooms. This is structured. Usually a presentation of prepared material followed by managed Q/A time.
Then there’s the hallway/atrium. People mingle, socialise and discuss informally. Microblogging is the latter. The former is traditionally valuable. But both are good. But the latter on its own is poor.
I guess my trouble is I’m only good at one liners…
Agreed! Microblogging is great to explore diverse people, but any critical yet constructive conversation needs a structure
yes, weird how microblogging is being damned through…a micro-blog post.
@altair222 @mkarliner these are “hot takes” and I intend a degree of humour to them though I stand by their substance at least points worthy of contention.
That being said, I’d prefer all of these and any additions I make being a single blog post.
Not also that I’m posting them to Lemmy, which means they’re all comments to the parent post in a single thread/conversation. All better, IMO, than microblogging.
Would love to read a blog!
Do you consider lemmy (this post) to be a micro-blog?
Or are you referring to other federated platforms?
[I’m asking because I genuinely don’t know]
@picoblaanket no not at all. I’m not aware of any limit on the number of characters in a post or comment. And the way comments are threaded with each other and within a post is a structure that microblogging doesn’t have at all.
Yes that’s true. This format is great for quality posts and discussions.
@maegul Well, it sure outlines that if you want a centrally coordinated approach, a decentral system has it’s drawbacks. One of them being sufficient FLOSS ressources to transform earlier platforms to newer protocols (I am sure Hubzilla devs would not opposed to make the transformation to Nomad - sufficient dev support provided - which I am not so sure about with AP platforms). Anyway, we agree that it would be of much benefit if AP specs provided the existing means for nomadic identity (and if platforms not using it now would incorporate it).
Unless someone can suggest a better solution, that is.
Voyager.app for life. Screw the browser.
