Mastodawn

Annalee Newitz 🍜

Based on two unscientific polls I conducted here, people's biggest fears about the future of the Fediverse are: 1) volunteer moderator burnout; 2) too much defederation causes fragmentation; 3) people are driven away by racism; and 4) Mastodon.social gets too big.

Here are the polls:
https://wandering.shop/@annaleen/110318754714238485
https://wandering.shop/@annaleen/110318806416458197

Annalee Newitz 🍜 (@[email protected])

What is your biggest worry about the future of the Fediverse? [ ] mastodon.social gets too big [ ] Tumblr federates & sells ads against Masto content [ ] Bluesky [ ] too much defederation causes fragmentation

The Wandering Shop

dr2chase May 7, 2023

@annaleen
I fear that 4 choices is too few for a poll. Like, will we run out of bits if we let people have 12? This is open source software, you'd think that we (while still not implementing quote-post) would get our choice of voting systems for our polls (approval, ranked choice, range, ...) and a choice limit of something like 16.

Annalee Newitz 🍜May 7, 2023

@dr2chase sure that seems like something you should implement

llewelly May 7, 2023

@annaleen @dr2chase
I don't know the specifics, but there is other fediverse-compatible software out there that allows polls with more than 4 options. I don't think the 4 option limit is part of the the ActivityPub protocol; it's just a mastdon-specific limit.

@llewelly @annaleen @dr2chase It's Mastodon specific. I changed the limit on flipboard.social to 14 and it seems to work well. Here is an example use I did for what was everyones favourite Star Wars movie.

llewelly May 7, 2023

@greg @annaleen @dr2chase
Thank you for the confirmation. That's rather what I expected.

dr2chase May 7, 2023

@greg @llewelly @annaleen and "Multiple choices" is approval voting, so why was I complaining? Stupid me. Sure wish they'd bump the default up, though, what's the point of tiny polls?

llewelly May 7, 2023

@dr2chase @greg @annaleen
I don't know.

Mathematically, if the choices are set to exclusive (the default), having more than 2 choices results in spoiler effects, making polls with 3 or more choices unfair in some sense. If the choices are set to allow multiple selections (can be done with a click in mastodon), you can get false ties. But for non-serious polls, neither of these issues really matters, and for serious polls, mastodon shouldn't be used anyway, for a thousand other reasons.

dr2chase May 7, 2023

@llewelly @greg @annaleen I'm not sure "false ties" are really a problem, and approval voting is robust otherwise. We could get range voting with a 0-1 slider instead of a check box or radio button, that would be amusing.

And of course not serious voting on mastodon, but I'd love to get people thinking, sometimes. Also might be amusing to map range voting onto other voting systems to demonstrate how outcomes might (not?) change.

llewelly May 7, 2023

@dr2chase @greg @annaleen
I don't know if false ties is anything other than a mathematical issue.

I would like range voting with a slider, and the ability to map range voting onto other systems sure would be nice. But it's not that important to me.

Thank you for bringing these things up.

James M.May 7, 2023

@annaleen maybe we need a poll tournament, with the winner of each poll advancing to the next round.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦May 7, 2023

@annaleen I am actually finding this hopeful. I share these concerns, good to know they seem to be on other people's minds as well.

This means we might actually find ways to deal with them.

Thank you so much for doing these polls and sharing the results.

NTFB Scott May 7, 2023

@annaleen I love that the top concerns include both too much fragmentation and too much concentration.

maegul May 7, 2023

@ntfbscott @annaleen

Well decentralisation is arguably unfragmented and unconcentrated provided it is mostly interconnected. So I’d say these results aren’t inconsistent.

There’s almost certainly a conversation to be had on what it means to have the configuration of instances, often fairly large, and the defederation practices that we have.

While blocking is a fundamental and protective aspect of the fediverse, fragmentation is probably a real phenomenon people are feeling.

Gotanda 🏞️ 🗼May 7, 2023

@annaleen
All quite serious concerns. 4 should be easiest to address. 1 and 2 seem interconnected. 3 seems sadly least tractable as it has already been going on for a long time.

llewelly May 7, 2023

@annaleen
my biggest fear is that legislation in the USA will effectively make it inaccessible to those of us in the USA.

Mackaj May 7, 2023

Racism? I would have thought our moderation model would stamp on that pretty hard wherever it rears its ugly head.

H. A. Kirsch May 7, 2023

@mackaj @annaleen I’ve seen many posts calling out very significant racism towards BIPOC on mastodon to the point that something like “black twitter” won’t happen in the fediverse currently

Mackaj May 7, 2023

'something like “black twitter” won’t happen in the fediverse currently'

This is something I really don't understand. The fediverse is designed to allow people to create communities around purpose built spaces. Mastodon specifically has both general and themed instances. Look at how Art, or hobbies or LGBTQ+ communities have sprung up around instances fostering those groups. Why can't "black mastodon" for example enjoy the same?

H. A. Kirsch May 7, 2023

@mackaj @annaleen I am extremely white cis-gay male so I can only repeat the things I've read, which is basically, “when black people make toots and reply to toots, they get attacked with vicious racism right away"

I don't really... I mean... what sorts of people DO that anyway? And are they really all over mastodon??? I thought they'd have stayed on twitter etc.

Gareth Kitchen May 7, 2023

@mackaj It's quite complex, taking that line is basically saying to black and brown people, go set up your own instance. Not cool. But black and brown people who talk about racism get jumped on and told to CW. The vast majority of instance owners are white and poorly equipped to moderate. I'm aware because of anti-racist stuff I do, but trip up on things and a clumsy at times, but aware. I don't know the answers and it's a difficult subject.

Mackaj May 7, 2023

"[go] set up your own instance. Not cool."

I wasn't thinking of it like that, I assume you thought I meant putting them in a box. But rather I was thinking a strong core, a solid base to work from, and an easy way to discover, connect and share experiences and culture. An instance run by white mods is never going to know and understand black culture the same way a black owned and run instance would. I'm reminded of this interview with Denzel Washington...
https://youtube.com/shorts/_PxAQTJsbcE?feature=share

It's Not Color, It's Culture - Denzel Washington inspirational speech

YouTube

Gareth Kitchen May 7, 2023

@mackaj Soz, can't listen to that right now. The thing is black and brown folk, I'd guess, would prefer to be on the same instances as everyone else. I'm a middle aged balding white geezer, I don't think it's for me to suggest solutions, because how could I even begin, let alone fully understand the issues? I think the fedi community will eventually reach some sort of compromise, that's almost bound to be inequitable, but that's for others determine. I'll just be supportive in helping the community get to where it wants to go.

Earthworm 🐌May 7, 2023

Here some ideas for 1) and 2)

https://kolektiva.social/@earthworm/110326368587507702

Earthworm (@[email protected])

Content warning: Defederation/mod discussion

kolektiva.social

Erlend Sogge Heggen May 7, 2023

@annaleen without getting into rankings of fedi-wide sentiments, a great piece of data we've gained from this informal poll is that plenty of people care about volunteer moderator burnout.

That positioning is incompatible with the anti-commerce sentiment I've noticed around here. I suspect a confounding with anti-capitalism. Cooperative commerce is in fact anti-capitalistic in nature.

To mitigate moderator burnout, we simply have to increase the commercial viability of #fediverse development.