Jeff Smick (he/him)
blaine"Mastodon sucks because any one of the 5000+ communities can set their own rules and might accidentally deprive people in that community of my witty hot takes for a reason I personally believe to be flippant" isn't the sick burn that the Twitter user with 50k followers thinks it is.
Michael 
@blaine maybe not, but I’m not looking forward to repeatedly explaining to friends and family why they can’t see their favourite celebrity’s toots any more.
Scott JensonBut that's exactly the difference in a nutshell. Centralized social networks naturally gravitate towards massive celebrity accounts. Federated servers tend to gravitate towards communities. It *is* smaller, by design. I have 1/25th the followers I had on Twitter yet the engagement is far higher (and much better) so from my point of view, it's not a loss)
Rob Porter 🎶🐦@scottjenson @blaine @mykd yep, I’ve seen a massive increase in engagement with less than a tenth of my Twitter followers — and it started right off the bat after setting up here. I never realized how much the algorithm had been suppressing my content, I just thought there were better accounts putting out better stuff, so I stopped posting much.
OliverUv@songbirder I've had basically the exact same experience both on twitter and here
dekks herton 
Great explanation, couldn't have done any better, i can see more FAQ pages coming about how to find specific people.
@scottjenson @blaine Hmm. I’m not sure I’d totally agree. Certainly I’d say that if a platform was built and populated primarily by people who considered themselves marginalised they might emphasise affinity groups in the way they organise it. But when my family members join? They’re just going to join a general or place-based instance. They’ll then look for friends and family and their preferred big accounts in news, entertainment, sports etc.
@mykd @blaine That's perfectly fine, but what they want, is by definition a centralized platform with all of humanity on it (and all the risks that come with that kind of power)
But there is a middle ground. All of your family members can email to each other. Of course this is NOT the same, it's a compromise. If you each join whatever server works for you, you can STILL find each other and see each others content.
@scottjenson @blaine they want something that *presents itself* as a single platform, with consistency and reliability and openness. They don’t care about the implementation unless it gets in their way.
If they find that their instance is too opinionated about what they can see or say, they’ll moan about it and when they understand why, they’ll move to somewhere else.
If they find that their instance is too opinionated about what they can see or say, they’ll moan about it and when they understand why, they’ll move to somewhere else.
@dekkzz78 @scottjenson @blaine
A million people have joined Mastodon in the last two weeks. Eternal September is a warning to you, not to them.
@mykd @scottjenson @blaine in your opinion, we'll see how many stick it out if they are as attention span limited as you think. At it's core #Mastodon isn't twitter, if they really want that someone else will build it.
@dekkzz78 @scottjenson @blaine
I never mentioned attention spans.
Mastodon is pretty close to Twitter of say ten years ago. That was good enough to keep people engaged once they joined.
"They’re just going to join a general or place-based instance. They’ll then look for friends and family and their preferred big accounts in news, entertainment, sports etc."
Twitterati need to do at bit of research to get the best of the #Fediverse. The above quote suggest your saying if it's not in their face they wont hang around.
No, it’s saying they’ll just switch server if they accidentally end up on one that’s too opinionated. Probably though they’ll just join a top ten server, and never even have to think about the technology.
Armin Hanisch@scottjenson @mykd @blaine if I may add, federated networks also don’t stop discovery. Never heard of you on Twitter (mea culpa), but found you here. Many people who came from Twitter never used the old distributed networks and experienced that this actually works in a good way.
Cosmo 
@scottjenson @mykd @blaine the engagement is higher because an algorithm isn't choosing what you need to see for you. People often get lost on the bird app because they don't necessarily engage with the people they read. I'm Iove the chronological timeline of Mastodon.
@mykd I fully expect to see the emergence of NormCore ActivityPub networks ("family-safe pixelfed" vs "pixelfet"), and more fluidity around person-to-person follows vs the behaviour of server-level blocks (i.e., the server lets an individual see their grandfather's posts on RepublicanNet, but doesn't propagate them in the fed timeline)
@blaine that’s really interesting. I know we’re only in the early days of people *really* having to worry about the fediverse becoming massive, but I’ve not seen much widespread appreciation of the changes that could be anticipated and planned for as the user base becomes more complex and uncategorisable. “Fluidity” sounds like a useful concept to bear in mind.
Stefan Bohacek@blaine @mykd You might've seen this, but just in case: https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1589665959337656322
@mykd @blaine Definitely. I think having to pick a server when joining Mastodon will continue to be a big barrier for non-techy people, so getting major social media sites (or whatever new site that replaces Twitter) to adopt ActivityPub is the best bet for it to succeed. Tumblr could pick up a chunk of Twitter users, so this would be really awesome and I hope it does go through.
Joseph E. Edwards VIII@blaine @mykd It should be interesting to see if that plays out. When fascist Gab switched to Mastodon a few years ago, they were universally defederated. It's why the question of blocking lists is being asked by new instance admins. If they don't block Gab (or "Truth" Social, which also uses Mastodon tech) then they risk being defederated, too
Yeah, but Gab was clear-cut. What should the position be about an instance that allows police officers to join it? There are admins out there who will block that server. Journalists? Ditto. Politicians? Very probably. Etc etc.
Without more nuanced control mechanisms being available, there’s a risk of a chasm developing between ever-larger “reasonable free speech” instances and tightly curated “safety first” instances. And what will that do to the fediverse?
MetrognomeWe’re talking about accounts being banned though, not the current lack of recommendation algorithms. I really see no value in telling my mum “Sorry mum, you can’t see Stephen Fry’s toots because your admin doesn’t want you to. It’s for your own good.” I’d just set her up on mastodon.social and never even say the word “fediverse”.
OpenDNA⚙️
@@mykd @blaine Be the instance admin you want to see in the world! Create a small host for your extended family, talk with them about some ground rules, block or don't whatever celebrity they want to follow, keep instances that suck blocked. If they start at other instances, teach them to migrate to yours.
Be proactive, take matters in your hand?
LatteBadger@mykd @blaine if they got blocked by a bunch of feds, then it was probably for a reason that's probably worth a conversation about withbyojr freinds and family and if they still want to see said celebs toots then there free to move fed or set up there own fed, this system is 10,000x better, because we can all find a place and a set of rules that suits us.
@mykd @blaine being trans, I'm extreamly happy that I can enjoy social media as it was ment to be, sharing memes and cst pictures, pictures of coffee, fun and sad moments in life without the fear of some JK Rowling shit goblin suddenly appearing to "debate" my existence on a photo of me with cold brew on a Monday morning along with there thousand other little shit goblins they bring with them.
@mykd @blaine under this system the shit goblins are forced onto a handful of feds that will have them, and then our ausome mods at tech.lgbt just block those feds and we can get on enjoying our lives and cat pictures, so personally having to explain that is a good trade for not having TERFs force there crap on me via a bot farm and a trending page because I dared to see what was in the news 🤷♀️
@BadgerGirl @blaine
I 100% agree and support this strength of the federated network.
My concern is that as more and more people join the fediverse, maintaining the safety and peace of such spaces will mean having to block an increasingly large numbers of accounts.
Unless there are powerful, flexible, targeted tools and processes to support doing so, your mods may just end up saying “screw it we’re defederating from all mastodon.* servers.” All we would all have lost.
@mykd @blaine I talked in a thread roughly about this, there are solutions from kncreased mod teams to AI filtering assistance, though ultimately it should be each fed that decides its own moderation solutions, what works best for them, personally though I don't see an issue with large block lists, if those blocks are right for that fed, personally if I didn't see a giant list of blocked christian and Conservative feds I'd be worried the mods had left me open to harassment.
@mykd @blaine I'm more concerned about what we have been seeing as a strategy of the alt right in recent years of subverting existing communities and groups by infiltrating them, infiltrating the mod teams and slowly turning the place into a vipers nest to steal the authority and reputation of a group that they can't get for there own groups. for example mumsnet.
@BadgerGirl @blaine
Yes, technical solutions will need to be able to do a lot more at the interfaces between instances esp with a greater variety of tool as you and Blaine have mentioned.
I agree that still leaves space for bad actors to subvert each community. We know that the more isolated a group is, the greater the likelihood that its beliefs and norms drift away from those of other groups. Bad actors can weaponise that. The more connected we stay, the harder that gets.
Pelle Wessman@blaine A slight problem with federated micro-Twitters versus fully decentralized IndieWeb setups in a way.
Mastodon instances amplify their users in a different way to actual independent web pages / the IndieWeb.
But still, yeah, you’re right. I’m just sad that eg the WebFinger setup ended up a lot less static site friendly than the original and is much more catered to micro-Twitters than to actually independent sites.
@voxpelli ❤️
For me, the webfinger stuff was/is just an idea - how can we give people an online name that they control?
(There's some new thinking in this direction that is very exciting, and I think better than any of our previous approaches!)
@blaine Yeah, I remember WebFinger itself never really being intended to be a spec in itself, rather just a pattern for how to apply Host Meta rules to usernames
Which new thinking are you referring to? IndieWeb ones? Crypto ones? Browser based ones?
@voxpelli none of the above! 😅 There were some exciting conversations in Lisbon recently, and I'm working with some folks on a synthesis of a bunch of things that have emerged recently to build a better webfinger (also: we have a new name, lol). More soon!
@blaine Exciting! I hope it will be working well with static sites 😁
Sebastian LassePlease also note that webfinger is not part of any ActivityPub spec.
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#conformance
It is just a masto thing.
But the fediverse is so many wonderful softwares.
@sl007 @voxpelli the http spec also doesn't have anything to say about html, nor does webfinger say anything about ActivityPub, as it should be. Webfinger isn't "just a masto" thing, either - any social software will need to use the pattern if adoption and sharing is a concern.
It's perhaps best to think of webfinger as "DNS for people"
Steve@blaine @sl007 @voxpelli Speaking of DNS... for email, I use my own domain name and I can use any email service provider I want and switch the provider by changing the DNS MX records. I wish there was something like that for the fediverse so my identity doesn't change when I move to another instance.
@blaine @sl007 @steve here’s a link to how @[email protected] does it: https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
#TwitterMigration, first time? Have posted notes to https://tantek.com/ since 2010, POSSEd tweets & #AtomFeed. Added one .htaccess line today, and thanks to #BridgyFed, #Mastodon users can follow my #IndieWeb site @[email protected] No Mastodon install or account needed. Just one line in .htaccess: RewriteRule ^.well-known/(host-meta|webfinger).* https://fed.brid.gy/$0 [redirect=302,last] is enough for Mastodon users to search for and follow that @[email protected] username. Took a little more work to setup Bridgy Fed to push new posts to followers. Note by the way both the redundancy & awkwardness (it’s not a clickable URL) of such @-@ (AT-AT) usernames when you’re already using your own domain. Why can’t Mastodon follow a username of “@tantek.com”? Or just “tantek.com”? And either way expanding it internally if need be to the AT-AT syntax. Why this regression from what we had with classic feed readers where a domain was enough to discover & follow a feed? Also, why does following show a blank result? Contrast that with classic feed readers which immediately show you the most recent items in a feed you subscribed to. Lastly (for now), I asked around and no one knew of a simple public way to “preview” or “validate” that @[email protected] actually “worked”. You have to be *logged-in* to a Mastodon instance and search for a username to check to see if it works. Contrast that with https://validator.w3.org/feed/ which you can use without any log-in to validate your classic feed file. Why these regressions from the days of feed readers? - Tantek
@voxpelli @blaine @sl007 Thanks for the link. It looks like the fed.brid.gy bridge/proxy is the magic sauce. Maybe I could self-host something like that instead of a full instance to make my user id portable.
Ed Davies@blaine “It's perhaps best to think of webfinger as "DNS for people"”
I see it as more like DNS for resources (as in the R in URL). That could, of course, be a person but more usually it'll be a person's account. Webfinger acct:[email protected] returns different data from acct:[email protected].
@edavies @sl007 @voxpelli yup! I don't think of the two as oppositional, since people have multiple identities, depending on context.
But yeah, webfinger is also a useful construct to talk about things or anything where the underlying handler might change (different server, same name) but registering a domain or setting up a subdomain isn't easy. So, strictly not people, but I've always used that as a way to simplify the concept. ☺️
“any social software will need to use the pattern if adoption and sharing is a concern.”
I mean, the fediverse consists of many softwares.
Just see our Conferences
https://sebastianlasse.de/#home
And those who do only implement ActivityPub and no webfinger is superfine too.
I do not see any advantage.
@sl007 @voxpelli I appreciate your perspective. I think you're missing some important subtleties, but I've been having this debate with technologists who I believe are prone to missing important subtleties for nearly 15 years now since I introduced webfinger, and I don't think we're going to resolve it here. The world's a big tent, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. ❤️
Yes. Maybe.
Just hoped there would be arguments to use it.
Quite interesting when former twitter people tell the fediverse what it needs.
I did not say that webfinger is bad.
What I am saying is:
New implementors look at the official ActivityPub spec.
An implementor can be any human being in this world, even marginalized or disabled or even an anticapitalist working remote (crazy, I know).
This why I want that every kid can implement it !!!
They do not know that they need webfinger for implementation x but butter cream cookies for implementation y …
They just want to use it and interoperate. That worked all the time. Also without webfinger.
The problem is that webfinger is not part of the spec.
That's it.
If you believe it should be, this is what the Fediverse Enhacement Proposal Process (FEP) was made for or if it should be an official extension, the group can vote.
Just want to understand.
“I've been having this debate with technologists” - I am journalist and artist, sorry.
@sl007 I appreciate that, thanks.
For context: I wasn't just a Twitter employee, I created much of it but have been written out of the history because I am an anti-capitalist. I both tried to make twitter decentralized, creating the first fedi-instance with @ralphm and, when I was forced out of Twitter, was very involved in designing the protocols that became ActivityPub a decade later (thanks to the work of *many* people who came after).
@sl007 for what it's worth, I don't think webfinger should be inscribed in ActivityPub, any more than DNS should be in HTTP or HTML, and likewise webfinger shouldn't have anything to say about ActivityPub, just as DNS doesn't have anything to say about HTML or HTTP. They're complementary tools, and abstraction and decoupling here makes them all more powerful.
@blaine @sl007 +1, the web consists of URL:s and hyperlinks. Hyperlinks links together two URL:s and can specify a relation from one to another.
None of URL, Hypertext Markup Languages or Hypertext Transfer Protocols needs to know the semantics of a relation and that relation can be specified independently of them and by a user be composed into a new creation.
Relevant spec: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8288.html
We eg. did that at Flattr. We used rel-payment.