Chris TrottierThis is the year that the Fediverse overtakes the Metaverse.
That's right.
According to GlobalData, 2023 is going to be a "Metaverse winter" and a "Fediverse spring".
It's stunning how VCs and Big Social simply didn't see the Fediverse coming.
They put so much money into VR and crypto -- all pumping this tech up as the "next big thing".
Little did they know that web standards, open protocols, and decentralization would make a breakthrough -- yet again.
Many people are saying, "Nobody could have predicted the growth of the Fediverse."
Actually, many people predicted the growth of the Fediverse -- including me.
It's just that the people who predicted growth weren't VCs and Press.
Another reason for the "Metaverse winter" and "Fediverse spring":
Cost.
Starting up a Fediverse service is vastly less expensive than starting up a Metaverse service.
Remember, when the Metaverse gained popularity, companies were flush with cash amidst ongoing lockdowns.
But conditions change.
Now companies are preparing for an oncoming recession. And fewer people are staying home.
Let's also consider the physical realities of Metaverse vs. Fediverse.
Metaverse requires hardware that does not yet have mass adoption. You need a VR headset or AR glasses -- something most people don't readily have available.
Those who do have that hardware are constrained by limitations such as battery power.
In contrast, the Fediverse works on desktops, laptops, smartphones -- even a Raspberry Pi.
Hardware is no bottleneck for the Fediverse.
Meta's push into the Metaverse is Exhibit "A" for corporate sunk cost fallacy.
They continue to invest in it because they've already sunk billions of dollars into it.
To stop investing in the Metaverse is to acknowledge failure.
This company is so invested, they even changed their name.
What's going on with "Metaverse" is a textbook Kansas city shuffle.
Big Social recognized that there was a con.
They believed they were too smart to fall for the con -- thus invested in it.
But while they were looking right, something else happened to the left -- outside their field of vision.
Specifically, their so-called "users" aren't joining the Metaverse. They're going somewhere else.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kansas%20city%20shuffle
Urban Dictionary: kansas city shuffle
A type of con which depends on the mark realizing they're being conned, but incorrectly guessing how it's being done. When they try to foil the fake con they think they've uncovered, they fall into the real con. This con is most effective against marks who are "too smart for their own good", and will try to beat the conman at his own game instead of backing off when they discover he's trying to con them. Named after the song by J Ralph. There are two Kansas Cities, and while one is in Kansas, the larger, more well-known one is actually just across the river in Missouri. Somebody unfamiliar with the region might go to the smaller one when they really wanted to go to the larger one, because they made the assumption that "Kansas City is obviously in Kansas". The song uses this confusion as an analogy for the way a mark thinks when they're being conned by a Kansas City Shuffle-type con.
Big Social has some very smart people working for it.
They've combed through the metrics of the Metaverse. They've charted growth. They've looked through all the data and validated how it's trending.
All the while, they've dismissed the Fediverse because it's not amenable to metrics and is therefore *not* validated.
This is the con: metrics.
Big Social ignored the Fediverse because they've conned the world with metrics for so long -- they now believe in it religiously.
I have no doubt that Big Social is still dismissing the Fediverse, believing that any growth is a result of a "black swan event".
I mean, why else would they do such silly things such as banning 3rd party apps that access their APIs?
The likes of Meta, Twitter, and TikTok believe they "own" the network effect -- that they can shape it to their liking.
The simple fact is that Big Social got conned by their own con.
Case in point: AltspaceVR is being shut down.
Microsoft likely regrets their investment in a Metaverse social network.
It is indeed a "Metaverse winter".
Many people ask, "What's next for the Fediverse?"
Building more infrastructure!
This means protocols, frameworks, instances, and clients.
And while we're at it, documentation as well.
But what's apparent to me is that the Fediverse will *not* be built by Big Social, but by small developers and enthusiasts that believe in its mission.
It's the Fediverse's core mission (freedom, safety, open protocols, de-centralization) that makes it captivating.
Brataaaaan@atomicpoet Do you have recommendations for good sources (e.g. specs) for building fediverse apps? :)
(beside the obvs. ActivityPub spec)
@brataaaaan Best place to start is activitypub.rocks
@atomicpoet Thanks :)
Any tipps for finding people to start a FOSS project?
@brataaaaan I recommend putting code on a Git repo. If people like it, contributors will come.
James@atomicpoet If we need documentation, we need tech writers. I happen to know a load. Is there a place (or several) I could point them? As a bunch, they love to get involved in stuff, but need help knowing where to start.
@DancingGeek Best place to start is activitypub.rocks
Extinction (our fate)@atomicpoet That's corporate America for you. Have to find ways to incent people, punish the cost centers, and draw in propagandists, ads and other maleficent clients. Big Tech had to play that game in spades after the dot com busts.
Rufus J. Cooter@atomicpoet To borrow and/or mangle references to @pluralistic & Lord Kelvin: that which can't be measured, won't be measured
(also: if ya ain't seen it, this is a great post about #metrics
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust )
toxtethogrady@atomicpoet What's going on with the Metaverse is I'm not the least bit interested in virtual reality. And I'm not alone in that thought. I originally signed on to Facebook because it was a social gathering place where I had friends I knew and found other friends I could chat with. What I was unable to see is that it was a propaganda vector designed to direct us to Meta's advertisers (or to various bad actors with their own agendas). Hearing that they coddled Trump and extremist viewpoints because it was good for business or brought in advertising revenue was unsettling but inevitable. Experiencing their censorious protection of their brand was a breaking point. But I have no use for alternate reality; I leave that for Kellyanne Conway...
Seth Junot@atomicpoet How does this end for Meta?
@seth Red ink! Or even worse: bankruptcy.
But Meta will never again be what it once was.
pauli assume there will be a split in the population with liberals on decentralized platforms.
the centralized platforms will continue to convince the rest that liberals are satanic.
k cavaliere@atomicpoet FB became "uncool" with the kids. Instagram tried to be FB Lite. The negative press didn't help and the brand was going toxic.
Meta is not going to help. It's like 3D TV. That went nowhere.
Xantulon 
@atomicpoet I'm starting to wonder if this is what late stage/terminal stage blitzscaling looks like
Jason, Human, Average 
@atomicpoet
Bonus: Fediverse has 100% fewer billionaires. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely a healthier choice.
Bonus: Fediverse has 100% fewer billionaires. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely a healthier choice.
@jhoward Billionaires are here. And they're watching.
solient@atomicpoet all the VR enthusiasts I've met are middle class white guys whose entire examination of privilege is having the word as part of a vocabulary lesson in school.
The Fediverse scales better.
graphictruthI would bet that adoption chokepoints are intentional, because the Metaverse existed long before Facebook co-opted the name.
Second Life exists, and there's any number of semi-federated clones, some even with associated "currency." It has had significant community support. If there was a compelling case for it, it would have already been a thing. It's worked with a huge variety of devices. The difficulty is transactional and personal security.
Gen X-Wing@atomicpoet The Metaverse, no matter how much they wish it was the one from Snow Crash, isn’t a -verse.
It’s a one company product, where that company is in charge of *everything*. It’s Facebook vs The Web.
And who knows, activity pub might get a sibling in the future, of a VR variety.
@breadbin It might possibly be this one. https://web.immers.space/
@atomicpoet Took a look at it, and pondered for a bit. I don’t think this solves any of the issues I see. It feels like a Web Standard Steam client for apps.
What I am hoping for is a fediverse identity (that works with any app), and a VR fediverse protocol that lets me traverse the Metaverse and interact with both other identities and apps.
Think Snow Crash Metaverse on Fediverse with 2023 VR tech. It’s still the coolest fictional version of the internet.
@breadbin I agree that the notion of federated identity needs a lot of work.
@atomicpoet Does it? Trying to think it through. I think identities doesn’t have to change much, but the underlaying software/protocols needs to.
It’s a shame this wasn’t a primary design choice (super easy to complain though, totally see why it was overlooked. Easy to do.)
Scott M. Stolz@Chris Trottier One thing that would be a game changer would be making federated identity a way to authenticate. Making federated identities work with things like #^OpenWebAuth and OpenID would allow people to use their federated identity to log into websites and apps. Then it would become like Login with Facebook, except federated.
Stephen Castro-Starkey@atomicpoet @breadbin Yes it does. Do you know of folks working on it worth looking into?
@atomicpoet @breadbin @blaine @youid @kidehen Thanks! I think there is a bit to do to separate out the “I am this person” from “This content was published by this persona” — balancing privacy with trustworthiness, for example. And I’m sure there’s much more to tease out, too!
Kingsley Uyi Idehen@atomicpoet @Stephen @breadbin @blaine @youid Yes, an identifier is used to denote an entity associated with a particular persona -- as expressed explicitly or discerned inferentially from associated profile data (expressed as an entity relationship graph).
@youid simply allows you to create a variety of #X509 certs that can be associated with different personae expressed in their respective profile documents via subject denotation using http:, acct:, or mailto: scheme URI.
Sorta.
The difference here is that signing-parties are now an act of #hyperlink lookup (or de-reference) that resolves to a profile document comprising a machine-computable entity relationship graph.
This is about bringing the magic of the #Web to the notion of a "Web of Trust" (#WoT) via an #TLS handshake tweak.
Dr. Lola PolitickaMy experience in the Metaverse is that it is overpopulated with rich teenagers running around trying to find something to do. The games often give me motion sickness (and I am so not alone there) and the various attempts to create business-type environments are all fairly poor: difficult to travel, difficult to manipulate things, and difficult to communicate and find people. I LOVE one app: Walkabout Mini-Golf -- that is fun, social, and where all the manipulable aspects are easy and bug-free.
The Metaverse is really in beta: it seems like there was a horde of developers working at it, say, a year ago, but apps are breaking, not being kept up, and new ones are not that plentiful.
RiderExMachina 
@atomicpoet
Another thing: the metaverse and the technology aren't exciting to the masses.
People don't want Brand New, they want similar new. The Fediverse provides that in spades: the web front ends that meet the users where they are, the email analog, the discovery of "the old web."
The Fediverse plays to nostalgia AND progress, making it a win on both fronts.
sparseMatrix ✅✅✅ 📻only if you make stereoscopic virtualization a defining parameter of ‘virtual world’.
See https://opensimulator.org and https://osgrid.org
Meta isn’t failing because of Zuck, or because VR is too expensive - it’s failing because it’s an almost 20 year old also-ran.
The #Fediverse is the part of a broader #SemanticWeb focused on #SocialNetworking.
IMHO — #VC struggles are deeply aligned with historic confusion associated with the notion of a Semantic Web and monetization possibilities.
Most ironically, in a Semantic Web, monetization doesn’t have to be driven by #SurveillanceCapitalism and all of its #privacy obliterating bad-practices 😀
Jim Love@atomicpoet The real question for me is not who predicted the growth of the fediverse but rather, how can we encourage the further growth of the fediverse?
@therealjimlove I also talk about that quite often 😉
owais@atomicpoet there's a reason scientists and engineers are always at odds with politicians, marketing and management.
r҉ustic cy͠be̸rpu̵nk🤠🤖@atomicpoet There has to be some degree of empathy to understand, folks want to enjoy a sense of community and not just buy things or sell attention. Of course Big Social and VCs missed it
Neil A. Evans@atomicpoet not really, all of the big social companies run social networks as a sideline. The actual businesses are algorithmic advertising platforms: they’ve had their eye off their main products for a LONG time.