mccNov 29, 2022

The paradox of Mastodon is no one (not even mastodon.social) likes mastodon.social dominating the network, or Eugen G being the sole arbiter of extensions to the common protocol,

but on the other hand, ultimately, the reason we all use Mastodon (IE, the part of the Fediverse people think of as "Mastodon", modeled on the Mastodon extensions to ActivityPub) instead of Secure Scuttlebutt or identi.ca or whatever is because Mastodon was the AP implementation that had one person's singular vision.

Show threadmccNov 29, 2022
We *need* standard protocols like ActivityPub, but ultimately, users do not want a protocol. People do not want a formless ball of infinite potential. They want "Products". They want a clearly presented thing that they can put into their web browser or phone and it slots them into a legible user flow satisfying a specific user story. This is not because they are brainwashed by capitalism. It is because most people *have other shit to do* and don't want to bother with software that's unfinished.
Show threadmccNov 29, 2022

This is what separates a semi-functional open source project on GitHub from a thing that becomes widespread with end users. Mastodon dot social was not the first ActivityPub frontend. But it was *opinionated*, and it anticipated common user desires (like an API for phone apps). You need to understand this if you want to bring a Mastodon successor system into being. Your system, or the user-facing part, has to be opinionated.

A piece of software which is not fully conceptualized *is unfinished*.

Show threadmccNov 29, 2022
This creates a big problem, because in general we ("we" meaning "humans") aren't good at creating Things with singular, consistent visions unless there's a specific single human in charge of the entire vision. And "we" don't have many social structures that allow for a creation like that unless that single human winds up with inordinate control over the final creation, leading to either corporate control or (in OSS) "BDFL" projects where a single overworked maintainer becomes a point of failure.
Show thread🔜@[email protected]
@mcc this didn't happen to bittoreent, almost no one uses the reference client. same with the web. and in both cases clients implement their own protocol extensions
Nov 30, 2022 at 6:07amWeb
Show threadmccNov 30, 2022
@parataxis well bittorrent sure but I'd argue Netscape, with its nonstandard extensions, was specifically the "opinionated" version that overtook the standard-but-incompletely-conceptualized Mosaic.
Show threadHishamNov 30, 2022
@parataxis @mcc ...almost noone uses the reference client *anymore*, but ppl definitely did in the early days. The P2P space was booming when it appeared, and the user-facing design of the many tools copied each other, starting from Napster's, which was itself a user-ready product.
Show threadmccNov 30, 2022

@hisham_hm @parataxis Before this goes offtopic I think you should assume Bob is well familiar with the specific history & any differences of opinion here will be over interpretation of events.

My personal opinion is BitTorrent/original (which I did use a few times), Azureus, and uTorrent were all "opinionated" products in their way, but I don't think overall the model I'm describing in this thread fits all that well. It's also a special case because BitTorrent is a relatively narrow-focus tool

Show threadHishamNov 30, 2022
@mcc @parataxis *nod*nod* upon rereading I realized I sounded totally 'splainy, sorry bout that. What I meant is that in my recollection BitTorrent was "the" BitTorrent for a good while back when it was new, and my memory of alt clients for P2P tools was mostly from playing with Linux alternatives.